[hr][h1]Alice Barrett & Seraphine Campbell[/h1]

Alice paused behind a stall, her urge to throw up had only intensified since the entire fair had gone to hell. People were running screaming and a sniper had taken potshots at Deborah Jauvant. All in all, it was not a good day. Her head was pounding and her vision shaky, the explosions and clouds of metahuman gas were not helping her hangover, and she pushed her back against the flimsy wood and canvas construction to try and regain her senses. Her glock was in her hands, clutched in a ready position, though she hardly felt ready. She hadn’t fired, there were too many civilians, and her hands were unsteady enough that even if there was no danger of friendly fire she probably wouldn’t hit anything helpful anyway.

Unusually, she’d brought along her helmet, mainly in case someone got close enough to question her bloodshot eyes. She’d clamped it on as soon the first telltale cloud of metahuman suppressant had erupted amidst the RAVEN agents. At least her internal compass had still been bang on she’d extracted a handful of kids and put down one assailant, though more through luck than anything else. Now she was just crouching behind cover and waiting for the chaos to stop, hoping that none of her colleagues saw her and realised the reason for her lack of action.

She’d definitely be court-martialled if she was reported. She was hungover, sleep-deprived, and had a flask of whiskey in her pocket. She dreaded to think what might happen to her career. There’d be no more drinking after this, she’d stop, throw away the whiskey, empty out her cupboards, she couldn’t be on duty hungover or drunk.

She pulled out the flask, cocking her arm back to hurl it away, then stopped, ashamed. It wouldn’t work. She’d tried to give up drinking three times since the Eco-Natura attack, and each time it had only ended up getting worse. She slipped it back into her pocket. She’d just have to make sure she didn’t get caught then, she’d be damned if some pencil pusher was going to take her life away.

Alice pushed herself to her feet, and, gun extended, advanced into the swirling red mist. Her coms seemed to be out, but she could hear gunfire not far away, and shouts. She began to move faster towards the sound, gun held before her, hardly steady, but enough to hopefully dissuade immediate hostilities. She was wrong, it turned out, as she barrelled out of the fog and into the centre of a squad of heavily armed men. They weren’t in RAVEN uniform, and the way the guns were instantly trained on her revealed their allegiance. Alice vanished as bullets pockmarked the smoke behind her. She appeared behind them stumbling slightly, and fired a spray of shots. Only two found their marks, one man crying out and going down clutching his leg, another stumbling back as a round ricocheted off the plate in his back armour.

Alice swore, then emptied the entire pistol in their direction. Holding down the trigger until nothing but a hollow click emanated from the small, evil looking device. She vanished again, pleased to see when she reappeared that now two men were down. She reloaded, or tried to, her fumbling hands, normally so practised and assured, were far from adept under the influence of alcohol, and she dropped her spare magazine.

“Crap.”

She bent down to pick it up and met a boot coming the other way…

[hr]

Seraphine had been on a date tonight, well, a ‘date’, fully bought and paid for. She’d been on the arm of some rich guys kid, a brat about twenty years old who clearly had been looked after by Daddy’s money since he was born, and would be until the day his scrawny ass died. He’d run screaming at the first sign of trouble. Seraphine would have done as well if she’d managed to get more than ten feet. She’d been knocked down by a group of fleeing carnies, and was now covered in mud, her hair in disarray and clothes ruined. All in all, it hadn’t been a great date. Fortunately, the Society was not inclined to give refunds due to events outside of their control.

Now all she had to do was figure out how to get out of here alive. She was the Prime, and she had no desire to experience death again, second-hand was bad enough. Worse, if she died, that was it, the end, it was a terrifying, but sobering thought. There were explosions and screams all around her, but the red mist ahead of her seemed to be clearing, and she knew better than to try and make it through the thickest parts of it.

Holding her breath as best she could, she plunged through the smoke, grateful that the wind was picking up and beginning to clear the ground. What she hadn’t expected was to run into the middle of a fight, a spray of bullets shot past her, making her scream in shock as they carved contrails through the clearing smoke. There was a RAVEN agent, helmeted, but apparently out of action on the ground, and two men looming over her. One kicked her in the side, prompting a groan and a contraction from the prone woman. Apparently she was awake then, although not for much longer as a gun was lowered to her head. There was a click, and the man swore, apparently out of ammo. He began to reload his rifle, and Seraphine, unwilling to watch murder, charged, all four of her.

It was unclear whether the man were more effectively taken aback by the surprise attack, or by the fact that the four girls who attacked them were identical in every single way. One of them went down with a cry as two clawed at his eyes, the other grunted and doubled up at a knee to the groin. And then everything went wrong at once, the man on the ground kicked out, knocking one of the clones off him, he punched the other in the gut, then dragged a pistol from his holster. He levelled it at the nearest girl, and fired.

They all dropped, instantly. It was unnerving, as if they had all been the same person who had just been shot. “Fucking duplicator.”

He helped his comrade to his feet, then turned to finish off the women. Something was missing though, his rifle, and the black clad form of the RAVEN Agent.

The alcohol had saved Alice, even if it had put her in danger in the first place. It had helped to numb some of the pain, just enough to allow her to get back to her feet while the soldiers were distracted, and retrieve their discarded weapon. She levelled it at them now.

“You got half a second to drop em.”

They didn’t. She did.