I watched my father's stolen face go from shock and anger to something much scarier. It was almost like the weight and pain of multiple lifetimes had come crashing down on him all at once. He looked defeated, dejected and it was evident from the expression on his stolen face that he wanted to be anywhere else but here. I could sympathize.

Kasha also seemed to take notice because she blew a puff of smoke from her cigar in his direction. "Katzen got your tongue, Father?" She asked wickedly, no doubt enjoying his discomfort.

We waited for Gershwin to speak and when he did he had the demeanor of a surgeon explaining to a patient's family that the operation had not in fact been a success.

"I want you to know that I still love you, that I have always and will always love you. I would hope that you might put your anger aside and listen so that we can resolve this peacefully, because…" He hesitated and the words that were unsaid hung in the air.

Something inside of Gershwin seemed to shift as he adjusted to this new reality. "Can I just be honest with you for a moment?" He asked.

Kasha nodded for Gershwin to continue. "I love you very much." He finally said, "But the simple fact is that I can't save you or fix you and I hate it. I hate it so much that it makes my blood boil. But I can't change it and I'm sorry."

"You're sorry? When in your entire life have you ever been sorry?" Kasha demanded. "You fucking hypocrite! You threw me away and then you have the balls to pretend to be sorry now that I'm in control for once? Fuck you!"

Gershwin sighed. "If you want to see me suffer, and I do deserve to suffer, this is it. This is me suffering. This is hell for me, seeing you here and knowing what is going to happen while being completely unable to stop it."

"You're worried about me?" Kasha laughed cruelly. "I'm standing here with two dozen soldiers at my back and you're worried about what's going to happen to me? How big is your fucking ego that you think I would let you hurt me again? No. Never again."

Gershwin stepped forward until they were almost chest to chest. "You don't have two dozen soldiers at your back, you have two dozen soldiers waiting to put a knife in your back." He corrected her.

"You took over Ruhern's body but you aren't him, you can't manage his empire like he did. Even if you gun us both down right now it won't save you from what's coming. So yes, I am worried about you."

Kasha blinked and tried to play it off but I knew she was shaken. "That's not going to happen." She said, "I…"

"So if it's not going to happen, why do you need Kerner's gift?" Gershwin asked, "Because that is what you want, isn't it? You want to be able to create more of yourself so that you can escape or replicate until you have an army. But it doesn't work that way, unfortunately."

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

Gershwin rubbed his forehead like he was trying to relieve a headache. "I gave you the ability to body jump if you were in grave danger because I didn't want you to die but I made sure it burned out the original host for a reason. I didn't want your copies to murder each other."

"You don't know me!" Kasha raged. "You didn't even raise me!"

Gershwin sighed again. "When I brought you back one of the first things you did was try and murder your brother because you didn't like how much attention he was getting. You tried to drown him in the bath. That was why I sent you away to live with Sacher, or have you conveniently forgotten that fact?"

I blinked with surprise. Kasha had tried to murder me? I thought back, she had been so mean when we were little then one day she had changed… almost as if she was someone else.

Gershwin reached out and ran a finger tip down Kasha's muzzle. "I even warned Sacher about what you had done. But he took one look at your precious buckwheat fur and fell in love."

Kasha snapped at Gershwins fingers and in the process dropped her cigar. He caught it effortlessly and danced backward away from her. She started to follow but stopped when she remembered that Sacher was waiting to blow her apart with his rifle as soon as she left cover.

"Clever." Kasha growled. "You want me angry enough to make a mistake."

Then I got it. "No, he's testing you." I corrected, finally understanding why Gershwin was trying to provoke her. "He wants to see how you react, to see if you can control yourself."

Because that was the thing about Gershwin, the entire core of his being revolved around his love for his children. He didn't want to hurt her, quite the opposite in fact. He just wanted to know how she would react if he pushed her.

Kasha hadn't grown up with Gershwin so she didn't know him the way I did. She didn't know me either for that matter, which was her fault for murdering me. But I had grown up with versions of both of them. I knew how they thought.

I felt the hairs rise up at the back of my neck at that revelation. This wasn't how Edel would have done things. She wouldn't have played games. She didn't have the patience for it. Something was very wrong here.

I deep scanned Kasha with my wetware and held back a flinch as I realized that the jacket she was wearing was packed with explosives. I had missed it on the first scan because it was shielded and the cigar smoke was hiding the scent, but I saw it now. It looked like it had some kind of dead-hund's switch and a remote detonator.

I began to slowly back away. "She's wearing a suicide vest." I called out. "Be careful."

Kasha lunged forward and wrapped her arms around Gershwin. His small Katzen frame was no match for her. "Too late!" She laughed. "This heart to heart has been touching but-"

There was a sound like a sucking wound as Gershwin extended his claws and shoved them into her chest. She coughed blood onto his face and blinked with surprise, still gripping him tightly. He fought to get free but it was no use.

I started to run. I had to get out of the blast radius. I looked back to see Gershwin still looking right at me. There was his dying daughter in his arms and a bomb about to go off but still he was looking at me.

"I love you." He called out as he shoved Kasha to the ground and lay on top of her to mitigate the blast. "I love-"

Then the bomb went off and I didn't even have a second to think before the blackness claimed me. I was all alone. Alone in the dark.