“Why?” said the Faust. “It’s all you are, really. Whereas I am The Flesh Undying, incarnate. I have been given power over flesh, all flesh…Even yours. Want to come out and play, little girl?”
He took one measured step closer and extended one oversized hand. Melody raised her machine-pistol threateningly, but the Faust ignored her. He gestured imperiously, a harsh, beckoning movement, and Melody lurched on her feet as she felt him draw something out of her. She tried to say something and couldn’t, held in place where she was. The machine-pistol dropped from her unfeeling fingers, and her hands rose on the air before her, pulled forward by an unseen force. Long, thin tendrils of some white, spongy substance extended slowly from her fingertips, stretching away from her, hanging unsupported on the air like long white chalk-marks. She shook her hands, trying to break off whatever it was, but the white streaks clung to her, growing longer and thicker. They inched away from her fingertips, across the empty air, growing longer and thicker…Melody’s hands tingled heavily with pins and needles, but more like the loss of vital warmth than the return of circulation. She opened her mouth to yell or scream or curse, and more of the white stuff erupted out of her mouth, stretching her jaws wide with its presence. Still more jumped out of her eyes and nostrils, to shoot out across the air.
Melody was losing something; or rather, something was being taken from her. She could feel it. The long, chalky, white tendrils were slowly coming together on the air before her, forming one huge pallid mass.
The white shape was almost human now. Standing upright, with arms and legs and a rough head bulging up from its shoulders. It slowly straightened up, on the other side of the wall of machines, and snapped into focus. Entirely human in shape and form, an exact duplicate of Melody, down to the smallest detail. Including her clothes. The dupe shook her head slowly, then glared at Melody.
“What the hell are you doing, behind my equipment? Get out of there!”
Melody’s first reaction was,
“These are my machines,” she said coldly. “Because I am the real deal, and you are not. As far as I can tell, you’re made out of snot and mucus, and I’m not letting you get your nasty ectoplasm all over my nice clean instruments.”
“Girls, girls,” muttered the Faust. “Don’t argue. Or, on second thought, do. Argue! Dispute! Kill the unworthy duplicate who wants to take your place in the world. I’ll hold your coats if you like.”
“Shut up!” said Melody.
“Stay out of this!” said the dupe.
Neither of them spared a glance for the Faust; they were glaring at each other, eyes locked. The dupe snarled at Melody.
“I’m the real thing. I don’t know what you are.”
“You’re an ectoplasmic dupe,” said Melody. “Which is why I’m standing on the right side of the instruments.”
That threw the dupe for a moment, but she quickly shook it off. “That is a mistake, easily rectified.”
Melody sank down and shot up again with her machine-pistol in her hand, pointed right into the dupe’s face. “Yeah right. Let’s see you try, ecto-bitch.”
But the dupe had already brought up her hand, also holding a machine-pistol. She pointed it at Melody’s head. “Who are you calling a bitch, bitch?”
“Fight, fight, fight!” said the Faust, happily.
“Shut up!” said both Melodys, in perfect unison. And then they both stopped, looking at each other in a new way.
“He’s behind all this,” said the dupe. “He’s the enemy.”
“He wants me to shoot myself,” said Melody. “Because for all his fine words and grand claims…I don’t think he’s up to the task.”
“I don’t think we should solve this with guns,” said the dupe. “I don’t think we should give him that satisfaction.”
“Damn right,” said Melody. And she lowered her gun.
The dupe hesitated for a second, then lowered her gun, too. “Typical man, getting a woman to tear herself apart. But we’ve got to sort this out somehow. What do you suggest?”
“Put it to the machines,” said Melody. “They can scan us, right down to our DNA, and decide who’s who and what’s what.”
“Sounds good to me,” said the dupe. “If we can’t trust our instruments, what can we trust?”
She came behind the wall of equipment to stand beside Melody, who was already firing up the short-range scanners and putting them to work. It only took the machines a moment to study both women, inside and out, and come up with a definitive answer. That the dupe was the real Melody Chambers.
The dupe let out a long, slow sigh of relief, before turning triumphantly to face Melody. “See? When in doubt, put your faith in the machines.”
“Except when you know someone’s been messing with them,” said Melody. “Remember before the Faust made his big entrance?”
“No,” said the dupe. “No…”
Melody brought up her machine-pistol and put a single bullet through her duplicate’s forehead. The impact snapped the dupe’s head backwards and sent her somersaulting back over the wall of instruments to crash onto the floor beyond. Melody turned to the Faust.
“You bastard. Making me shoot myself. I couldn’t let her live; I could never trust her because she was your creation. Not really real…But damn you anyway for making me do it.”
And then she broke off as she heard low moans and scrabbling noises from the other side of the machines. Melody hurried out, to find her dupe lying sprawled on the floor, leaking a chilly white fluid from the small hole in her forehead and the larger hole in the back of her head. More ectoplasm was leaking from the dupe’s fingertips. Drifting on the air, slowly dispersing.
“You didn’t really think it was going to be that easy to kill yourself?” said the Faust. “You can’t kill ectoplasm by shooting it in the head. All you did was break the surface tension. Oh yes, you’ve destroyed your duplicate, all right…Now all you have to do is watch yourself die slowly. That’s me, you see, always two moves ahead.”
Melody ignored him, crouching at her duplicate’s side. The dupe looked up at her sadly.
“I’m sorry. He made me too well. I really thought I was me. I mean, you…And now I’m dying. I’m scared, Melody.”
“Don’t be,” said Melody. “I’m here with you.” She glared across at the Faust. “You worthless piece of shit. Don’t let her suffer like this. Do something!”
“I am!” said the Faust. “I’m enjoying it! More than one way to skin a cat, or break a spirit.”
Melody sat down on the floor beside the dying dupe and took her in her arms. She held her tightly, while the dupe shook and shuddered, slowly breaking up, losing basic coherence as ectoplasm leaked from everywhere at once. Melody didn’t know what to do. She’d never felt so helpless. But when the machines can’t help you, all that’s left is to be human. And care.
“I’m so cold…” said the dupe. Her eyes weren’t tracking any more.
“Hush,” said Melody. “Hush. It’s all right. I’m here.”
Ectoplasm boiled off the dupe’s body, rising like a thin white mist, dispersing quickly on the still lobby air. Melody could feel the dupe’s form growing soft and vague in her arms. The dupe grabbed at Melody’s hand with her own. Melody took hold of it firmly, and it fell apart in her fingers. The dupe’s face fell in, collapsing. The eyes and the mouth were the last to go. The dupe’s lips moved.
And then she burst. Great splashes of ectoplasm soaked Melody from top to toe. Her arms were full of a chalky, white, liquid mass, quickly falling apart into mists, which dispersed in the air and were gone. Melody was left sitting on the floor with empty arms. Her clothes were dry, all traces of ectoplasm gone. She got up, clambering awkwardly to her feet, and looked at the Faust with cold, cold eyes. He smiled easily back at her.
“So,” he said. “Are we having fun yet?”
“What are you?” she said. “Isn’t there anything human left inside you?”
“Why should I settle for anything so small, so limited? I am the Faust. I’m everything that ever scared you,
