The problem with cats is that they get the exact same look on their face whether they see a moth or an axe-murderer.
-Paula Poundstone
Clones, I had finally decided. There was the twins option, of course. However, the fact that there were three identical men sitting with me at the 7-Hand table, one acting as banker outside, and one currently enjoying a view from space, made that very unlikely. Their age differences were the final tip off. Each one appeared to have been decanted about 5 years or so after the other. My Singer might have been in his late forties or early fifties, so that might explain a gap in ages, though there was still quite a jump between the eldest here in his early forties, and the banker in his early sixties.
I picked up a card, Nine Red. A quick scan of the table revealed several patterns establishing themselves. There was a Grand Prime happening in front of a rail thin woman two seats down, a triple colors next to her, and various simple sequences.
Since I was working towards a Grand Fibonacci, I didn't need the nine, but an examination of the Singer to my left indicated that he might. I scanned the cards that were passed to me. Since I was trying to mask the sequence, I added a five to a pair, making it three of a kind, discarded the nine, and passed the cards along, picking up the cards passed to me from the Singer on my right.
It was obvious that they were playing through me. They had in the last two hands, and I had let them. I suspect that the third at the table was also playing at this little fleece job, though I had less control over his cards.
We played in silence. The room did not invite conversation. It was much larger than the small patch of light which illuminated our illicit gaming area, and Darwin had plenty of dark shadows to hide in. So did anyone else for that matter. That part concerned me somewhat.
I was here to get information, a lead to Gregson, or even to Leena, and so far all I had managed to do is lose much of Singer 1.0's money, and to discover that he had a family.
Another hand passed, and another. The Fibonacci was coming together, but I needed to win this game to stay here. I took a breath, and thought of Joanie.
She had been amazing at Wheel of Life, particularly 7-Hand. She would talk, laugh, engage the other players in light banter or ribbing, all the while slicing out the cards she needed and cutting out the other players. I never did manage to win when she was playing.
She had been amazing at Life, particularly mine. She had torn her way through the barriers I had wrapped myself in, insisting that I could love and be loved. Perhaps it was her plan all along, but she drew me in, and we shared our griefs and our joys and for a brief moment, all was a colorful dream of possibilities.
Then flames and tears and the sound of emergency vehicles suppressing the fire that was consuming the house I had inherited from my parents. Consuming my mind as I watch Joanie's life weep away. Consuming my soul as I heard the laughter of a madman and the harsh judgement of her father, blaming me for her death.
The cold blackness of my heart echoed the siren song of my grief and I recoiled in horror. I recoiled from the grief, from the love, from life. I opened my eyes. All this had taken but a blink.
I could now clearly see the links between the three clones, dark lines that passed between them. The twitch of an eyebrow, the placement of fingers on the table or the cards, a thousand imperceptible signals merged to form a message. This card, not that one. I need a five green one would say and the others would react.
The other players knew nothing of this. The rail thin woman had been singled out for destruction in this game, though I didn't know why. Perhaps it was a game for them, practice targeting and eliminating enemies, as it had been in my training.
I sensed the game as a whole. My Fibonacci had been detected by the clones, and they were suppressing the cards I needed. I switched my tactic to 2-3-4, which looked very similar to a Fibonacci but paid less. I watched as the young man to my right struggled with his addiction and was finally pushed over the edge by the clones, betting his entire life's fortunes.
I knew I had moments left before the discovery that I had no collateral, so I expanded my awareness. I was right, we were not alone in the room. Besides Darwin in the darkness, I could sense others, though they were still, waiting for a signal to act if they were needed.
A breath of air, a minute change in pressure, the gentle wafting of the black curtains in the dim hall, the scent of an unwashed body. Then a new face entered the room through curtains. An impossibly small thin man with short cropped grey hair and a long pointed nose that overhung protruding teeth. He looked for all the world like...
"Ah, Bornam, just in time," one of the clones said to the weasley looking man. I sensed recognition, not deception. So this was the real Bornam Singer. Who were these clones, then? Why had one of them been sent to kill me? By who?
"We were just having some fun," the clone in charge said, "and I was about to propose an increase in our wager. Is our new guest solvent enough to handle that?"
"Hardly," the little man snivelled, "Valhalla 803 is unoccupied. Waste of my time." My assassin must have known Singer well, because his impersonation had been uncannily accurate.
The clone turned to me. "The redoubtable Mr. Singer here says that you have no collateral to support your debt. That makes for very bad business. What do you say to that, Mr. Jones?"
"What do I say to what?" said a woman's voice as she parted the curtain, accompanied by yet another clone.
There are several expressions for situations that only worsen. "Out of the Frying Pan, into the Fire," "Back against the wall and doing a 180," and "Going sideways/ downhill/ south," are perennial favorites. There is also the not-so-polite "Promotion to Colony Cruiser Captain," but I will simply stick with 'it went from bad to worse.'
I gathered my focus and drove down my natural inclination to analyse everything. There would now be no time to evaluate, only to react. Training was all that mattered here. Time slowed and everything started to move in sequence, like a ballet slowed to a dream state.
The new clone turned to look in the direction of the table, and recognition flashed across his face. I moved. The first rule of fighting is to never be where the enemy expects you to be. He drew a gun, aimed and fired at my chair, not having registered that I had leapt several feet into the air, and was flying across the table towards him.
"Omega!" he shouted.
Acting as one, the three at the table rose, drew weapons from under the table and shot the other three players point blank in the chest. A second shot was aimed at their heads before the first had lifted them off their feet more than a few inches.
I landed on the far edge of the table and applied my boot to the face of the clone nearest me, sending him reeling backwards in his chair. Using him as a stepping stone, I spun and continued to race towards my target.
I miscalculated, of course. These things never work out like they do in the vids. I had been so focussed on the clones that I forgot two important factors. Bornam Singer and Mr. Jones.
Singer was apparently more monkey than weasel and had swung himself up on to the table as well, unceremoniously using the rail thin body of the still falling woman as a ramp. As was I making my leap toward my target, he grabbed my collar and leaned back hard. At the same time, Mr. Jones lashed out with an expertly place kick and swept my feet out from under me. My trajectory was instantly changed, laying me nearly horizontal.
The clone who had recognized me had not been idle during this. He had readjusted his aim for my chest, but thanks to Singer, it was no longer where he had aimed. Signer's forehead, however, was. He was rocked back by the force of the explosion in his brain, dragging me back onto the table with him.
Then all hell really broke loose. As the three table clones turned back and aimed at my now fully exposed chest, a blur black fur and teeth bounded across the assailant to my right's chest, leaving gaping wounds that started seeping blood. Forgetting his work, the clone looked at his now visible ribs and started screaming.
I heard Mr. Jones scream in rage and start firing blindly, trying to hit Darwin as he careened around the room inflicting damage on the goons that started to melt out of the darkness. More often than not, she hit a guard that Darwin had just injured. Furious, the clone who had brought her in turned his gun on her and threatened to shoot if she didn't drop her weapon. He never made good on that threat as Darwin ripped through his arm. At that point, I lost track of Mr. Jones.
Still, engaged in my own battle, I continued the backwards roll that Singer had started me on, coming up feet first into yet another assailants face. The third clone, however, had a clear shot, but it couldn't be helped. I braced for the pain to come.
I will swear that I am reporting what happened next exactly as I saw it. The truth is different, of course, but this is what I experienced at the time. A section of the darkness extended itself briefly into the light and grasped the third clone by the shoulders, dragging him kicking and screaming back into the shadows. Even with all of the noise we were making, I could hear the cracking of neck bones.
The broken bodied clone was thrown back into the fight, neatly taking out a guard who had come running out the shadows, gun drawn. It takes a great deal of strength to defeat the inertia of a full grown man, even in the lower gravity near the center of the station. The velocity at which the body was flung was shocking.
I had no time to consider this however. More guards were flooding in from around the darkened borders of the room and a general melee ensued. I managed to lay out my clone with my combined heels connecting with his head, but I knew that it had only rendered him unconscious. I would still have him to worry about if I survived this ordeal.
As I attempted to get my feet back under me, a foul smelling guard stepped out of the shadows and grabbed my hair, pulling my head back. He wrapped his trunk-like arm around my throat. I stopped breathing. Blood had ceased its all important journey to my brain and blackness overtook me, but not before I saw claws and teeth rip across his face and shadowy arms envelop his neck. Then, darkness