> Oh, those absolute engine foulers. I hope their eggs rot.

>

> – Radio transmission from Voices for Non-Citizens

I scanned the crowd, instantly activating Analyze. Was my family here? There was Micah! Cassie, out of her cloudcar. Vince. Micah-

Wait, another Micah?!

Oh, no.

I focused on my Life Sense. Yes, there it was: subtle, but unmistakable. About half the crowd registered ever-so-slightly differently to my senses. They felt similar to humans, but not as strongly, like ghosts or shadows.

A tall man behind me lifted a knife.

I didn’t wait to find out his intentions, charging through the crowd toward maybe-Cassie.

Half the people in here are fakes, and I think they’re hostile! The rest are real, so be careful!

I struggled to come up with a plan. I could try to take out some of the evil clones, but such overt hostility might lead me to being attacked by other humans if they couldn’t tell what I was doing.

Another Announcement rang out on the heels of mine, in… Spanish, maybe? I hoped it was a translation of my words, or at least someone who’d realized the same thing. The fact that they were trying to communicate was a plus, at least.

The Cassie I was heading toward was holding Pointy. Could the clones duplicate abilities? Wait, Analyze! I knew what Cassie felt like. This was her, for certain.

She summoned her Cloudcar as I reached her, and I yanked open the door Telekinetically and pushed her inside. “Pointy! It’s me! I’m real!”

“I know! The subsurface scattering through the duplicates’ skin is overly blue.”

So there was more than one way to identify the dopplegangers. That was good to know, but neither Pointy's method nor mine would work universally; they weren't things that could be easily recognized with base human senses. What even was subsurface scattering?

A man backed up into me, shoulder bleeding from a gash. Life Sense identified him as real.

I swung an iron plate in front of him to guard him from an attacker. “You! What language do you speak?!”

His response wasn’t anything I could make out, but Pointy was close enough. I heard her squeaky voice as clearly as though she was speaking in my ear. “I’m translating!”

Good enough. I clapped a hand on his shoulder. “You’re real. I’m real. The kid in the car is real. Guard her, okay?!”

I didn’t wait for a response, using Analyze to pick the real Micah out from the crowd and dashing toward him. As an afterthought, I threw a basic hologram over the cloudcar behind me: a large heart with letters cut out from it saying “real kid.” That shouldn’t look like a target to anyone, right?

The crowd was dense, and I was more focused on moving than dodging. Most of the blows directed my way came from the evil clones, but a few came from real people who took my approach as a sign of hostility, even though I hadn’t yet drawn a weapon.

My helmet and armor deflected most blows, reducing them to mere bruises, but one woman - a real one - swung a mace at me as I ran by, a panicked look in her eyes. I got my shield up to block, but the hit was hard enough to send me flying. I crashed into a pair of people who’d been locked in a grapple, breaking their standoff.

No, wait: not a pair of people. One was fake.

Assisted Strike gave me an advantage in confusing situations, and I used it, slamming the edge of my shield against the underside of the false woman’s chin hard enough to make her head snap back. I bit back a scream; when I’d blocked the hit from the mace, my bone had probably broken, and moving my arm for that attack had been agonizing.

Why didn’t I activate Parry?! Idiot!

My arm sagged as I rolled away. The man I’d landed on scrambled to his feet, drawing a sword but not using it. He was staring at the fake woman with confusion.

“She’s not real!” I shouted.

He didn’t seem to understand what I was saying. Fine, then. There wasn’t time to switch my shield to my other arm, but I used Telekinesis to lift it. It still hurt to move my arm, but much less than when I was supporting the weight personally.

As I left, I used Telekinesis to thrust a knife through the underside of the disguised monster’s chin. It was a relief when it penetrated and the monster grew still. I was reluctant to hold a weapon with my own hands and make myself more of a target. My floating knife could be attributed to anyone.

“Mom!” Micah had spotted me through the crowd. He had his spear out and had erected four Shockwalls around himself, spinning slowly. As I got closer, he dropped the wall nearest to me.

I didn’t waste time glaring at him, reserving my focus for the people and monsters around us, but that didn’t stop me from criticizing. “Why’d you do that?! What if I was fake?”

“You’re not! You’re 101 degrees Fahrenheit.”

“And a fever makes me trustworthy?”

Micah shrugged. “Half the people I check are like… 85 degrees. That’s not right.”

Then… Vince's infrared vision would be able to tell the fakes apart as well! About as easily as I could.

I paused for a moment, taking advantage of the shelter Micah had provided to scan the crowd while I transferred my shield to my unbroken arm.

Gavin was perched atop Cassie’s cloudcar with a small crowd of real people arrayed behind him. The space in front was largely open. Vince was standing in the middle of it, and most people were giving him space, probably because of the handful of corpses littering the ground nearby.

“Most people” wasn’t “everyone,” though. Two women entered the area from opposite directions, and Vince lunged decisively at one, spear burying itself in her chest. I froze for a second, worried that he hadn’t seen the second woman, but Gavin’s tail whipped out, lifting her into the air. After Vince freed his spear, he glanced at the woman Gavin had captured. I saw my husband say something, and my son pulled the woman back to the group and set her down.

I felt a rush of relief. Two of my kids were safe, protected by Vince, and the third was with me.

“Okay, Micah!” I had to shout to make myself heard, even though he was right behind me. “We need to make it back to Dad. Stay close. If anyone comes for us, send a Sonic Blast right at their head.”

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Micah nodded seriously. I had no idea how well his sound-based attack would do against the people-shaped monsters, but it was the most effective ability we’d found for taking down other people. Better yet, it was much easier to use nonlethally than most abilities. It was one of Micah’s lower synergies - just under 500% - but his blast was still powerful enough to rival a bonefur’s scream if he kept it narrow.

We made it back to the cloudcar without further injury. Partly because we were moving more cautiously, probably partly because people were reluctant to attack a child, but also because there were far fewer combatants in the room than there had been just a minute prior.

I didn’t enjoy stepping on and over multiple corpses, but I preferred it to fighting, especially with Micah close at my back.

The one woman who came after us was halted in her tracks by a quick blast from Micah. The first monster seemed to shrug off the sonic attack, but Micah was ready with a quick Shockwall when it got nearer. The electricity slowed it, and when I brought my flying swarm of knives and iron plates over to attack, the metal acted like lightning rods, drawing large amounts of current into the monster.

A second fake was almost upon us when the first one fell, but then the shaft of a spear hit the side of its neck with an audible crack and it fell, revealing Vince standing behind it.

“You okay?” he asked.

Gavin’s tail snaked by his father’s back, weaving over my arm and brushing Micah’s face. “I got them, Dad!”

A wave of well-being pulsed through me, and I jogged the last few feet to the cloudcar, flickering Analyze as I did a careful re-check of the crowd around the car. My kids were real. Vince was real. Everyone here was real.

The rest of the room…

Mostly real?

I only spotted six more adult fakes, a number that instantly suggested a solution to me.

“Cover me!” I said. “I’m ending this!”

I slid my shield up my arm and pulled my revolver from its holster, activating Assisted Strike multiple times in quick succession as I did my best Annie Oakley impression.

I didn’t watch the gunshots land. These monsters weren’t fast enough to dodge bullets, and they were far, far too human. I could have done with the “gore glitter” filter Cassie had applied to her Overlay.

My gunshots alarmed people, including the crowd of real people gathered behind the cloudcar. Vince threw his body between them and me, making them hesitate - he and Gavin had pulled most of them to safety - and Micah was quick with a few Force Shields to stop the stray attacks that were drawn my way from the rest of the room.

“Boom. Done. Room safe.”

“Just because they’re human doesn’t make them safe,” Pointy sniped. “Especially not after that display. And we still have to deal with the fake children.” Even as she complained, the turtle made announcements in language after language. Slowly, the tense atmosphere began to recede.

I hadn’t been the only one hesitant to target the monsters that looked like kids, or at least to use lethal force. Of the seven kids in the room, six still had living dopplegangers. Four had been restrained, including Cassie and Micah’s lookalikes, each bound to a mangled recliner’s twisted metal frame. The final two of those were injured to the point of immobility, including the fake Gavin, who’d lost his tail and the bottom of both legs. Every time I saw him, my heart leapt with fear and fury.

“Can you at least put away the gun?” Pointy asked.

I waved it. “It’s out of bullets.”

“They don’t know that, Meghan! Look… just… hold still for a minute, will you? Maybe tone down the death glares? I’m trying to get you cured.”

A man with Hispanic features had approached cautiously and paused about ten feet away. I didn’t know enough of the language to follow the exchange between him and Pointy - and the turtle wasn’t translating - but I definitely caught the word loco.

“Gavin? Vince?” Pointy said. “If you would restrain Meghan.”

“That’s not-”

My husband and son ignored my protests, Vince wrapping strong arms around me and grabbing my wrists as Gavin encircled me with four full loops of his tail. The man who’d been calling me crazy darted up and gave my hand the barest brush.

I didn’t actually feel immediately different, but when one of my guys gave me another heal, the intense and overwhelming aggression I’d been feeling suddenly left and stayed gone.

I sagged, letting my former restraints hold me up. I dropped the gun, using Telekinesis to tuck it away.

“Meghan?”

“It worked,” I said, embarrassed. “Sorry.”

He squeezed me. “Sorry for making you follow me down here. I didn’t know you guys were even in my Challenge.”

“We’re all alive,” I said. It wasn’t the same thing as telling him that it was okay, but Micah’s clone was thrashing in its restraints like a trapped animal, and I could see my oldest watching his double with an expression of horror. Cassie was scrunched up in the front seat of her cloudcar, eyes shut tight.

Gavin was looking at the room with tears in his eyes. “Are you sure all the ones you killed were fake, Mommy? I know some of them were. When I touched them and thought about healing them, they didn’t have stomachs and things.”

I patted Gavin’s tail, still wrapped around me. “I’m sure, sweetheart. I could see them with Life Sense. They looked different.”

“Okay.” Gavin’s voice was quiet, shaky.

The kids hadn’t needed this.

“There appear to have been a number of ways to detect the clones!” Pointy chirped. “Their blood is several shades darker than it ought to be, the color of dried blood even when it’s fresh. None spoke or used abilities. Life Sense revealed them, as did their variant temperature. People with other senses had detection methods too. That man over there? The one moving bodies around? He can tell them apart very easily. Apparently he can see into the ultraviolet spectrum and the copies have fluorescent patterns on their skin.”

Gavin stared at Pointy blankly.

“I’m trying to tell you that most of the dead are monsters. Those without a means of telling them apart tended not to go for killing blows except in self-defense.”

“Oh. Okay. I hope so. I should heal people, I guess.”

“Can I carry you?” Vince asked. “You can put your face on my shoulder, and I’ll let you know when I can use your help.”

Gavin let go of me, wrapping himself around Vince and accepting the suggestion gratefully, although it took him a moment to find a clean spot to rest his face. Vince was splattered with blood, although now that I was looking for it, I could tell that the stains were mostly too dark to be from any injuries my husband had taken. Pointy was right: there was a color difference… but it was subtle.

Pointy quietly put up a display for the rest of the children - just a collection of pretty colors like a computer screensaver - and started playing soft music from a record I knew Cassie enjoyed: some decades-old collection of saccharine children’s classics like “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” and “Polly Wolly Doodle.”

I got up to help sort through the bodies and find wounded people for the healers. Almost everyone was injured… but most of us had survived. The danger from the copycat monsters hadn’t been direct. When we’d sorted through the bodies, only five corpses belonged to human beings, and I was pretty sure three had been killed by other people. A review of my memories suggested two of those had been taken down by monsters in the first seconds of the ambush. The other three… Well, we hadn’t seen any evidence that the monsters were strong enough to cut people in two or incinerate them.

I was making my way over to check on Cassie and Micah when I nearly tripped over Vince’s corpse.

Not Vince’s corpse! I told myself fiercely. Vince is fine. You can see him and hear him. And look, the injury there has blood that’s too dark. You’ve got Analyze and a perfect memory. This isn’t him, it’s just a fake some sick fuckers made to upset you. Don’t let it work!

If only the heart listened to the head.

“The Challenge is ending in thirty seconds!” Pointy called.

Already? The aliens must have expected this to go down quickly. Or sorting through the bodies had taken longer than I thought.

I closed all my eyes.

There was nothing here I wanted to see anyway.