He brought Lucky back into the room and arranged me on the floor—I felt vaguely ridiculous lying there naked, surrounded by fourteen candles, but still relaxed. He warned Lucky that if anything went wrong it would be up to her to wake one of us up, and that no matter what she should make sure the candles stayed lit. Then he sat down and went into a trance.
    And I started remembering things. A rapid backward reel of events took me through the previous day, week, month, moving ever more quickly, back to Ellis, and the airport, and the months of quiet working before that. Then I was in my apartment, unpacking, humming to myself and happy to be there, and expected to remember packing up everything before that.
    Instead I was cold, lying on a hard surface, with deft hands moving here and there across my body, and a strange sensation in my head. I could see vague figures moving, strained to focus the memory—
    Protocol Zed. Programming has been violated. Kill them.
    That's the last thing I remember for a while, so I'll have to tell this as Lucky told me it happened.
    After a little while I had begun floating off the ground, adding that faint glow to the candles. The light spread to cover most of the room, and soon books and skulls and other small items were whirling in a steadily faster orbit. Lucky turned on her staff, ready to fend off anything that might strike her, and then suddenly it all fell to the floor.
    "Oh, shit," Chandler said quietly, and his eyes opened. Then he started coughing up blood. Thank God, I couldn't hit him a second time before Lucky waded in. Her stick bounced back from my shield without evident effect, and then she felt the weird internal shiver that meant I had just missed her. She knocked over a candle and saw Chandler jerk, hesitated and then morphed her staff into a flaming spear, hurled it. It penetrated the shield, vanished, and reappeared in her hand. I was out cold. She called for paramedics and Phoenix and went to see to Chandler, who didn't look good at all.
    "Could you—call an—ambulance?" he requested. "I think—I'm going to pass out now."
    "I already did, lie still."
    When I woke up my right side hurt fiercely and someone was wrapping a sheet around me. The room was a shambles, and Lucky was looking at me with a distinctly wary expression.
    "What happened?" I asked. The presence of people in white registered, moving gingerly through the wreckage. They were putting Chandler on a stretcher. I put the pieces together. "Oh my God," was all I could say. "Oh my God, oh my God. Is he OK?"
    I swear, if I'd killed him.... I wanted to die.
    "He'll be all right," reassured the man tending to me. "You've got a wicked burn."
    "What happened?" I asked Lucky again, but just then Phoenix arrived, wanting to know the same thing. My worst fears had been realized. The ride to the hospital took an eternity.
    They salved and bandaged my burn, and then there was nothing to do but wait for word on Chandler. Apparently I "only" ruptured a few arteries. They were optimistic. I sat in my sheet, since no one had remembered to bring my clothes, and no one said anything at all.
    Then Dawn walked in. Phoenix sputtered.
    "I woke up as soon as you got here," she said simply. The scar doesn't detract from her beauty, somehow. "What's going on?"
    He launched into a speech about how sometimes weird shit happens, and people get mind controlled, and they don't know what they're doing. I felt like crying; he was actually making excuses for me.
    "It wasn't mind control," I interrupted harshly. "It's inside my head." So much for my sense of well-being; I curled up on the uncomfortable chair and put my head on my knees, entirely withdrawn, almost relishing the pain the movement caused. The uncomfortable silence lasted until Reilly showed up. I didn't look up while the rest of the team filled him in.
    He's hard to unbalance; whatever he was thinking, it didn't show. "Needle, I did some more digging around, and found another case."
    "Of what?" With an effort, I could make my voice sound almost normal.
    "Cloning. 1981, out in LA, a gang of five called the Sisterhood. Their main power was invisibility."
    "Anyone get a picture?"
    "No, but there's a police composite."
    They look like an unrelated batch. "Huh. No real leads, but interesting."
    "I'll keep looking."
    "Be careful," I warned him. "Look, I don't know if I should consider myself on duty, until we know what triggered this." I was trying hard to maintain an objective tone and outlook; what I wanted to do was go to bed and never get up.

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