I quickly followed the path through the trees to the bridge, where Sigrid was standing alone, staring at the beach.

Sigrid Sorrensen

Team Maple Leaf

Affinity:

Air - Competent

Gifts:

Danger, Will Robinson

Heavenly Body

Powers:

Shield Maiden - Competent

Your Achilles Heel is Showing - Novice

Skills:

Affinity Control - Competent

Fitness - Adept

Kung Fu - Competent

Sword - Adept

Spear - Adept

Oh thank god.

I joined her on the bridge. “You really should use your power to detect weaknesses more. It’s a potential game changer but it’s still only at Novice.”

“Making sure I’m not a Doppelganger, eh?” she said. “Smart.”

“How was it with fake Jane?”

“Like talking to a piece of toast,” she said.

“Dry and full of bad carbs?” I said, making her laugh.

“Something like that.” I went on to explain the plan.

“Oh, so that's what Arthur wanted. That's okay, then. When’s it happening?” she said.

“No time like the present.”

She squared her shoulders and took a deep breath. “Let’s rock.”

We casually made our way back to the beach where everyone else was still congregated, and took our positions. It was time for the signal. We’d decided to use the same one as before, and once I made sure everyone was ready I sent out the flare. A bright flash appeared over the lake, and we went into action. It was a good plan. Too bad it all went to hell.

Let’s start with telling what went well. It won’t take long.

As soon as the flash appeared, Byron wrapped his arms around fake Nina, immobilizing her. Bruce was beside them, and he quickly bound her hands behind her back. Simple, effective.

So much for what went well.

Sigrid was a bit less gentle with fake Jane, grabbing her by the back of the neck and shoving her face first into the sand. Then Sigrid took her wrist and wrenched her arm behind her back, pinning her down while Andy tied her up too. But the moment he finished tying the knot, fake Jane blinked away with her teleport power, reappearing a few feet away and drawing her rapier.

At the signal, Kenji grabbed Chika. While I knew that his level of ninjutsu was more than enough to beat her basic jiu jitsu, I hadn’t considered her powers. As soon as he grabbed her she jumped, bounding up into the air spurred by her leaping power. Then her super strength was more than powerful enough to break free from Kenji’s grasp. He fell with a splash into the lake while she landed gracefully on the other side.

Meanwhile, Arthur was having a hard time with fake Galahad. I’d underestimated just how potent Galahad’s powers were, even at Novice level. Arthur grabbed him and tried to push him down onto the ground. Nothing happened. Galahad remained rooted to the spot thanks to his power to resist being moved. He also had the power to increase the pull of gravity on an object, and Arthur counted as an object. Galahad shoved him away, then increased gravity on him. Arthur was the one who ended up being pinned down.

I wish I could say I had more luck with Sam's double, but I had tried to get fancy and it backfired. Instead of grabbing Sam myself, I tried to use Shadow -- the opposite of his Nature affinity -- to trap him. I guess I'd been inspired by Kiki's minion Derek's shadow ropes, but using Affinity Control to bind him. It was nominally effective, but didn't stop him from using his own power. The ground around fake Sam shimmered and vibrated. Then a wave of sand rose up and transformed into a pair of fierce lions. They moved in front of him, growling as they bared their enormous fangs at me.

Without warning, one of the lions lunged. I felt its teeth sink into the flesh of my thigh, right down to the bone. I’d like to say I didn’t scream, but I think I did. Hey, I was allowed. It hurt like hell. Then the pain got worse when it jerked its head to the side, ripping its teeth away and taking a good chunk of my leg with it. Needless to say, I fell down, lost focus on my Affintiy Control, and fake Sam was free.

Wayne’s deep voice rumbled near me. “Allow me, Daniel.”

The sand in front of me did the vibrating thing before it rose up to become four skeletons. Their armor was tattered, their swords chipped, and their shields dented, but at least they were between me and those fangs. The muzzle of the one that bit me was soaked in my blood and it had been looking at me like it wanted another taste. Two skeletons took on each lion in a battle of summoned creatures. The lions tore at the skeletons with claws and fangs. The skeletons hacked back. All I could do was lie there in agony, trying to stem the flow of blood from my leg with Laying On Hands, and watch the battle unfold around me.

Before all the fighting, while we’d been taking our positions near the Doppelgangers, Kay had moved away to create some distance between herself and the rest of us. She now used that distance to help Arthur by shooting a flurry of arrows at fake Galahad. After the third one hit, he lost concentration on his gravity power and Arthur was free to move again.

Arthur scrambled to his feet, pulling out the Knight Commander’s sword. Crackling sparks of electricity arced along its length as he triggered its Affinity Blade power. Galahad’s body jerked as Kay’s arrows continued to strike home, and Arthur finished the job by running the fake Galahad through. When it died, its skin twisted and rippled as it turned back into the natural appearance of a Doppelganger: a hairless, sallow, gray-skinned creature with yellow eyes and two rows of sharp teeth like a shark in a gaping gash of a mouth that slashed across the entire width of its long head, almost dividing it in two like a Canadian in South Park and reminding me of the Jackalope.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Galahad wasn’t a small guy, but in its natural form the Doppelganger was even bigger, and a few of the leather straps that held Galahad’s armor on its body snapped.

Fake Jane may have had Jane’s abilities, but it lacked her style. It was fencing with Sigrid, but instead of using Jane’s technique that was 50% swordsmanship, 50% dancing, 50% gymnastics, and 100% cool, the fake Jane’s fighting seemed static and dull. Sigrid was having no problem defending against it, but there was still the issue of Jane’s teleportation power. The Doppelganger version of her seemed to have no problem using that.

With a sigh, Andy used a big chunk of his mana to nullify the teleportation. After that, Sigrid tackled fake Jane to the sand and held the monster down while Andy tied it up again.

Back by me, the battle between summoned creatures continued. Fake Sam’s Summon power was only at Novice, so Wayne’s skeletons not only outnumbered the lions, but they were also stronger. The sand was soon stained crimson by the animals’ viscera spilling onto the beach. Once the lions were out of the way, I decided to have another go at fake Sam. I had a grudge to settle. Although my leg had been partially healed by my skill, it still wasn’t in any shape to support walking. I ignored the pain and surrounded fake Sam’s head with Void, and I didn’t stop until it had fallen to the ground and ceased twitching.

That only left fake Chika, who had dashed into the trees after landing on the other side of the lake, heading for the door.

“Don’t let her get away!” Kay shouted, firing an arrow after the fleeing creature but missing.

“I’ve got this,” Sigrid said as her wings erupted and she leapt into the air. From our perspective on the beach Chika was hidden among the trees, but Sigrid could clearly track her from above. She hovered, then made good use of her earlier mid-flight spear throwing practice. A muffled cry told us that her aim was true. Sigrid dove behind the trees, then moments later when she rose again she was holding Chika's double under one arm and her bloodied spear in the other hand. She flew back and dumped the Doppelganger on the beach before gliding down to a soft landing.

Dang, these Players were some pretty tough hombres.

The monster Sigrid dropped onto the sand still looked like Chika, which meant it was still alive, though by the looks of its wound not for long. As Andy was about to tie it up, I hobbled over then knelt and used Laying On Hands to treat the gaping hole where Sigrid’s spear had punctured its back.

“What are you doing?” Andy said.

“It’s hurt,” I said.

“But it’s a monster.”

I stood up and brushed the sand off my knees. “I have no problem with killing something that’s a danger to us, but I do have a problem with causing unnecessary suffering to anyone. Or anything, as the case may be.”

“Whatever,” Andy said, sounding unconvinced, but since it was no longer a threat there wasn’t much basis to argue with me. It might be an artificial construct created for the game, but what I’d seen on the creature’s face was genuine pain. It hadn't helped that it was using Chika's face at the time.

I caught Morgan looking at me with a frown and had a sudden pang of guilt about the baby rats I had sent to their own deaths, but I took some comfort knowing that getting crushed in that trap had probably been quick and painless. I tried not to think of the one that had struggled and squirmed for a while before finally succumbing to the spike that had impaled it. I cringed inwardly at my own hypocrisy.

By the time the Doppelganger version of Sam I’d suffocated with Void regained consciousness it had been trussed up and left sitting on the sand with the other three that were still alive. I was standing over the body of the dead one with Arthur and Morgan, leaning on Arthur’s shoulder for support.

Doppelganger Corpse

Items:

Doppelganger's Brain

Doppelganger’s Hide

Green Mana Crystal

“So, ah, who’s going to get its brain?” Morgan said.

“Not me!” Arthur said.

“Not me!” Morgan said.

They both looked at me.

“Screw that,” I said, and knelt down at the Doppelganger’s feet. I grabbed its legs and pulled them into my inventory. “I’m done playing Dexter, let Sifu dig out this thing’s brain at the same time he gouges the Gorgon’s eyes out.”

An unnamed observer is disappointed

Oh not this again.

An unnamed observer wonders if you could show maybe just a bit of brutality?

I ignored the message window and finished stuffing the rest of the corpse into my inventory.

An unnamed observer will remember this

Yeah, yeah. I’ll deal with that later.

System: Quest update - Required material components collected

System: Distributing quest rewards - calculating contributions

System: Reward Tokens - 15 (+4)

“Well that’s a nice little bonus,” Morgan said.

I guess we all got Tokens, that’s good. I bet there's more rewards if we can find the Minotaur and get its horn too.

“Ugh,” Arthur said. “I am so not looking forward to wandering this maze again.” Both Byron and Kenji glared at him and he seemed to realize what he'd just said. “But we’ve got to find the others,” he added quickly.

I felt a pang of guilt that all I could selfishly think about were rewards; of course Arthur remembered that our friends -- and in some cases loved ones -- had been copied by Doppelgangers and were still missing, including the protagonist Jane.

“And then a way out,” Andy said.

Morgan sighed. “We’d better get going then. It’s a big maze, who knows how long it’ll take us to solve it.”

“We could do that,” I said. “Or, we could ask our friends here.” I gestured at the Doppelgangers. “I bet they know.”

It’s one thing to want to pry information out of an unwilling subject, but it’s another thing entirely to actually do it.

At first, Arthur took the role of lead interrogator. Which means he stood over the four living Doppelgangers with his hands on his hips and asked them: “Where are you holding our comrades?”

The one that looked like Chika smiled. “Like we’ll tell you,” it said.

The one that looked like Jane was sitting next to it. “Quiet,” it hissed.

Arthur chuckled. “Thanks for confirming that you didn’t kill them.”

Fake Jane hissed at fake Chika. “Dummy!”

Fake Chika hissed back.

That’s as far as Arthur got. He kept asking variations of the same question over and over. Where are they? Where are they being held? What did you do with them? The Doppelgangers just sat there staring up at him with our friends’ eyes, their mouths remaining resolutely closed.

Once Arthur had given up trying to get anything out of them a few of the others took turns interrogating, but none of them had any luck either. This was unexplored territory for all of us, and even though we knew these were just monsters, artificial entities created with the express purpose of being killed by us in the game, none of us had the stomach to go full Guantanimo on them.

None of us, that is, except for Byron.

After the third person had failed to get any result by more or less asking the same questions, Byron made a frustrated groan.

“You guys are lame,” he said.

He slowly stepped across the sand to where the Doppelgangers sat.

“Hi,” he said to them. “I’m Byron, but I bet you already know that. But did you also know that one of the people you’re holding is my wife?”

They said nothing, just glared up at him.

“I wonder. Do you have families? Parents? Spouses? Children? What you would do to get them back if someone had taken them?”

Fake Jane snarled at him. “We do have families, human. You just slew one of mine. Release me and see what I would do to one who killed my kin.”

Byron lowered his head. “I am sorry for your loss, truly.” Then he raised his head and gave the Doppelganger a look that would make most children wet themselves, and not just a few adults, too. “But if you do not wish to lose more your kin, you will tell us where our people are. If not, I will personally ensure that humans do not stop raiding this place until every single Doppelganger has been slaughtered. And if you happen to return, we will come and slaughter you again.”

Byron and the Doppelganger stared at each other for a long time, as though trying to slay one another with the power of hatred alone. It was so unlike Byron, it was literally scary. Neither seemed willing to back down, and I was afraid of how far Byron might have to force himself to go, so to save him the regret later I stepped in and put my hand on his shoulder.

“My turn,” I said.