It was as if each knew precisely what was in the other’s mind and was preparing to counter it before the initial action had even begun.
For several seconds they stood locked together, straining like statues. The Krysty with the knife spit at her twin, but the other woman turned her face away and the saliva pattered harmlessly into the lake of blood.
Ryan realized that the twin had all of Krysty’s memories and thoughts typed into its own brain, so that it knew everything that its original had ever done and was tuned in to anything that she might attempt.
“Help me, Ryan, lover,” called the first of the Krystysor was it the second one? They’d been spinning and staggering around, boots sliding in the blood, so that it wasn’t possible to figure which was which. “Cut the slut’s throat, lover.”
Ryan knew that Krysty almost never used bad language.
He drew his panga and started to move in, ready to slit open the neck of the speaker.
But the other Krysty called for him to stop. “I told you, she’s mine!”
There was a convulsive jerk as the two women wrestled close together, a gasp of pain and shock, and then they parted.
One had the knife buried in her chest up to the hilt, blood trickling down from the cut in the white shirt.
The other stepped back, panting with the effort of the fight, watching her rival, her other self, drop to her knees, dying.
“Krysty?” Ryan said doubtfully. “You all right?”
“Sure, lover. I worked it out. Wasn’t a stalemate like it looked. They used a mat-trans unit to clone me instantly. But this poor bitch was only a kind of first-generation copy of me. They programmed her by tweaking molecules or neurons or something to make her hate you. It was the last test. She could only react to what she thought I was doing. So, I positively decided to pull at the knife, then I pushed it instead. She just wasn’t quite quick enough to react.”
The twin rolled onto her side, hair matted in the coagulating crimson pool. Her eyes closed and she died, silently.
“Sorry for her,” Krysty said, “in a way.”
“How did you escape?” Mildred asked.
“Easy. Big alarm about some killing going on. Left me with only one sec man. I kicked him in the groin and sent his balls into the back of his throat. Came here.”
Ryan moved to hug her, feeling the tension in her body as be clasped her tight. “Good to have you back safe, lover,” he said.
“You, too. Reckon we should get our asses in gear, out of this place. Wish we had some plas-ex to blow the heart out of it. Seriously evil things going on.”
J.B. grinned, holding up two grens. “Got these babies and four more beside. Enough to start some real damage.”
“Lab’s next door,” Mildred said.
“Look, Dad,” Dean called from the side of the king-size bed.
Professor David Crichton, grandson of the founder, the mastermind behind everything that had gone on in the institute, was dead.
The last few minutes of violence and savage slaughter had been too much for his weak heart and he had simply fallen back on his pillows, lips pulled back off his yellow teeth, eyes staring into infinity.
“Don’t weep for him,” Krysty said.
“Wasn’t going to.” Jak grinned.
THE REST WAS MAINLY downhill and easy.
With all of the friends together and all fully armed, it was simple to split their force, with J.B. taking Abe and Jak into the vast laboratory next door, with their six grenades. They picked the main targets, including the pair of mat-trans chambers, using the delays to give themselves time to get out and close the doors, avoiding any danger.
Ryan spread out the others into a tight perimeter, covering themselves against any putative sec man attack from any direction.
But there was no direct threat.
Ryan was watching along a main passage that ended up in the central concourse. Twice be saw guards appear in the distance, then vanish quickly. There was no way they could know that their chief was dead, along with Buford and a dozen of their fellows. But it looked like fear alone was enough to keep them well away from the cold-blooded outlanders.