“No,” LizAlec shook her head frantically. She’d have known if she was a clone, LizAlec was certain of it.

“You belong here,” Sister Aaron said and the child in the mirror vanished as Sister Aaron gave LizAlec back her reflection. Except now they both knew exactly what flaws were hidden inside. Which didn’t make LizAlec feel good about herself — and it didn’t make LizAlec feel good about Sister Aaron, either.

Emotional manipulation, the girl thought bitterly, that’s all this was. Nothing more. She stopped looking at the mirrors and stared instead at the woman in front of her. In most ways Sister Aaron was way too exotic for LizAlec to understand, but in one way she wasn’t... LizAlec figured Sister Aaron had to have the same circuitry inside her head. Apparently that was something she shouldn’t have thought.

“Make your choice,” said Sister Aaron abruptly, and every mirror around LizAlec reverted to the crying child. “Be this, or be us. While you still can...” Her voice was cold and contemptuous, as if LizAlec had failed some test.

Maybe I have, LizAlec thought, but that changed nothing. Looking at Sister Aaron, LizAlec knew just what she intended to do. She was going to take back Anchee’s shrine, even if she had to kill Sister Aaron to get it. And then, when she got back to Paris, she was going to face down the bitch she’d thought was her mother and ask the questions no child was meant to ask.

Why?

Who gave you the right?

Why me?

The two women stared at each other, a hand’s breadth apart. And then LizAlec moved, spinning not at Sister Aaron but towards a mirror, hands flicking out in front of her. Shiori’s razor-sharp katana was in LizAlec’s hand before she was even conscious of it, metal flowing from between her fingers into a black blade that swung in a dazzling arc.

Katana hit molywire but it was the wire that snapped, whipping roofwards to smash another mirror on its way. A second stroke and another mirror broke free, falling a hundred metres to smash against the steel floor below.

Hove the sound of breaking—

That was Fixx for you, still polluting her head with soundbites even when she was trying to save his life. Actually, if Alex Gibson was right, it was everybody’s life, more or less. Lady-fucking-Clare included.

“Last chance,” said Sister Aaron.

LizAlec shook her head. No, her last chance was long gone. “Give me Anchee’s shrine,” LizAlec demanded and Sister Aaron laughed. Sharp as broken glass and cold as wind through an attic.

Bringing up the blade of her katana, LizAlec swirled towards another mirror and high-tension molywire ricocheted up into the distance as another sobbing child crashed to fragments on a walkway three levels beneath. Suddenly, there were mirrors everywhere, what looked like thousands of them, edging walkways at every level, reflecting LizAlec back at herself until she was being buried under her own memories.

LizAlec swung the blade in a clumsy arc around her head and turned to face Sister Aaron. “Stop it,” said LizAlec. “Stop it now.”

The face that smiled back was more beautiful than any LizAlec had seen, more beautiful even than Anchee. But the curve to her perfect lips was cold in the way that a Big Black was cold and her blue eyes were hard, inhuman.

“Walk away,” Sister Aaron offered. “Leave The Arc. Take that ship and your friends...” For a second LizAlec saw Fixx and Leon through the eyes of Sister Aaron. A washed-up, has-been tetsuo and a would-be street punk. “Take them and go.”

“No,” said LizAlec and knew she was saying the word three years too late and that no one would have listened to her back then anyway. But that wasn’t the point. Even late can be better than never learning to say it at all.

“Get out of my head.”

LizAlec made her blade sweep an infinity spiral in front of her, tracing its figure of eight faster than human eye could see. Both LizAlec’s feet were placed correctly, one forward for advance, one back and half turned to balance LizAlec on the rocking walkway... It wouldn’t convince the St Lucius sensei but it still felt pretty neat to LizAlec.

Something about it didn’t convince Sister Aaron either. Instead of backing away she stepped straight into the path of the blade, instinct making LizAlec throw wide her blow. Sister Aaron smiled.

“Sweet, aren’t you?” The voice had gone back to being amused. Elegant fingers reached out to caress LizAlec’s smooth cheek and the girl screamed. When Sister Aaron stepped back her immaculate fingers were lacquered in Mood.

Sister Aaron moved in again. Only this time LizAlec stepped back and swung her blade hard at Sister Aaron’s face, blinking as the woman spun effortlessly away. Fight or flight? There was no contest really. LizAlec turned tail and fled, sliding down to the next walkway, slamming into the bottom so hard that mirrors around the walkway rang like wind chimes.

Three directions, out to each side and straight ahead — and she didn’t have the faintest which one to choose. LizAlec went ahead — it was easier than trying to throw a turn on a walkway that rocked like a badly-built house of cards.

Ice dragged at her throat as LizAlec pulled frozen air into her lungs and jumped another flight of steps, hanging a right because that was all there was. She jumped again and instinct saved her — pure, animal, unmissable — as she threw up her sword in front of her and promptly catapulted onto her back as her blade slammed into molywire strung throat-high across the walkway.

Scrambling to her feet, LizAlec hacked at the molywire, severing it in a flash of sparks. She took the next landing at a lope, sword in front of her this time. In one way, every walkway she reached was the same. Mirrors overlapped mirrors, everywhere, in all directions, and all of them showed her...

There were gaps between the mirrors, spaces a body might slide through to reach walkways behind. But there was no way for LizAlec to find the gaps, short of running her hands over the face of every mirror she met, looking for where it ended and space began.

So instead LizAlec cut down her reflections, shattering the memories she’d worked so hard to forget. LizAlec as a small child, crying on her first day at the Lycee; the morning she lost her best friend; the Imperial ball, LizAlec sitting on a gilded chair on the edge while the Prince Imperial’s bastard son Louis danced with someone else; that first time Fixx got drunk at the club and walked out on her. Small hurts and bigger ones, all ripped out of her head.

LizAlec slammed the razor-edged katana into molywire, sending memory after memory crashing into shards onto the walkways below. However many mirrors she cut there were always more behind, more walkways, more steps... LizAlec took the next flight at a run, blade in front of her — no wires — and slid right to find herself face to face with Sister Aaron.

LizAlec’s blade swung for the woman’s throat and glass shattered.

“You can run, but you can’t hide...” Framed in another mirror, the ash-blonde woman adjusted her hair. Not a strand of it was out of place: no sweat patches stained her white sarong, the bitch’s hairline wasn’t even damp.

LizAlec shattered that mirror too and behind her Sister Aaron laughed, the real Sister Aaron this time.

“God, I love this game,” she told a breathless LizAlec. “I can’t tell you when I last had this much fun.” Fingers reached for LizAlec’s face and the girl ducked back, sword flicked up in front of her.

“Back off,” LizAlec hissed, really meaning it, and swung, hard as hell, straight at Sister Aaron’s head. But the woman just stepped sideways, elusive on her feet. “Temper, temper...”

LizAlec attacked again, swinging viciously towards Sister Aaron’s head and when that missed, she cut down hard towards the woman’s bare legs. Let her walk on stumps... Neither blow came close.