spinning her fallen weapon out of reach. Her hand reached out to grasp weakly at my ankle, her skin pressed against mine. Warm and still alive. In that moment of contact I felt… something. A spark of some feeling I couldn't identify hissed up the nerves of my leg and into my skull. It illuminated something there I hadn't been able to see – a part of me I'd forgotten existed.
I shook my head, trying to dislodge that uncomfortable spark and the unwelcome illumination it brought. I walked to the two fallen body guards and picked up their guns in my left hand, then shoved them into the waistband of my trousers. They were slick with gore and I wiped my hand against my t-shirt after I was done, leaving a perfect red palm print on the white cotton.
'I'm just as fast and just as strong as you now,' I told Ash. 'Don't even think about it.'
'Why would I want to? We're the same now, you and me. We want the same things.'
Did we? A half of me seemed to think so, but something else had shaken loose, blasted free by the shot I'd fired into Kelis. I felt a split inside me, a rift between two parts that had seemed like a whole. 'I'm not your brood- mare,' I told him, one thing at least that both halves agreed on. 'I'm Cured too.'
'I provide the seed, you provide the eggs – it's an equal contribution. And the end result will belong to both of us. They'll surpass us both.'
My eyes drifted as my mind struggled with itself. I felt compelled to make these children, this new race. That feeling was so strong it seemed to seep into every part of me. But then I saw the bodies of the two guards, the women I'd killed, and I saw the rounded swell of their stomachs, the embryonic lives inside which I'd murdered at the same time. 'You need to save the half-breeds too,' I told Ash. My voice was thick as I said it. A part of me was resisting these words.
'It's too late,' he told me. 'The death of my wives will buy time for you and me to escape. We can find another city, gather new receptacles. They're finished – but we can start again.'
'No. You can still save them.'
'How?' There was interest in his voice. He took an involuntary step towards me until he saw my eyes narrow and stopped where he stood. He was almost close enough to touch now.
'Tell them to surrender. Give the signal. Queen M will spare them if they lay down their arms.'
'Or she might just kill them all,' he said.
I shook my head. 'They're fit, and they're fighters, and they're pregnant. Believe me – she'll want them.'
He stared at me for a long moment. My eyes didn't waver, though inside I felt as if my head was tearing itself apart.
Finally he nodded. Holding his hands carefully away from his body, he walked to the control bank at one end of the room, incongruously high-tech in the middle of all the faux old-world opulence.
'This is your leader speaking,' he said. Distantly, I heard the words echo back, and I knew that he really was doing as I'd told him. 'Lay down your arms, the fight's over. You've served me well, but now I'm asking you to switch your allegiance. Join the forces you're fighting, take your commands from your new queen. This is the last order I'll ever give you. You're hers now.'
I couldn't be sure that the order would be obeyed. Or that if it was, Queen M would believe it. But I'd tried to save them – and one half of me at least was glad of that.
I waited until he'd pressed the switch that ended the transmission before I stepped closer. My breath felt tight in my chest, my vision narrowed down to just his face, his eyes. My mind felt like an inferno, burning up.
'I guess that's all that I really need you to do,' I told him.
I could tell in his face that he knew what I intended. He didn't look afraid, exactly. The Cure didn't allow fear. But he didn't want this to happen and he refused to believe that it would.
You know that thing they say – about being able to see yourself reflected in the pupils of someone's eyes? Bullshit. When you're standing that close to a man, all you can see in the centre of his eyes is darkness. But when I looked at him, I did see myself. An epileptic flash of memory on my retina, I saw myself back when I'd first met him. Jesus, how was it possible to ever be that young? And then an epileptic flash of the future, I looked at him and saw what I would become.
He smiled, a vivid flash of white in the brown of his face. And, despite everything, I smiled back. 'Jasmine,' he said. 'How did this happen? How did you and I come to this?'
I raised the gun and pressed the muzzled hard into his cheek, the soft flesh yielding around it. I gave him the gun, because it was easier than the answer. 'We did this to ourselves,' I told him. 'It's only right that we're the ones who pay the price.'
'But our children,' he said. 'The new race. You need me.'
He's right, the Voice said, somehow separate from me again, but louder than ever and almost impossible to ignore. There was another sound in the room, quieter but more profound, the sound of Kelis breathing. I fixed all my attention on that; each painful, rasping in-breath, every wet exhalation. In – one, out two. In three, out four. On the fifth in-breath I pulled the trigger.
The bullet passed through his cheek, leaving a ragged hole. I could see the ruined remnants of his tongue through it, flapping in a wordless scream against the roof of his mouth. It only lasted a second. He looked smaller when he lay on the floor, as if his body had already begun to decay and fall in on itself. A pool of blood spread around his head like a dark halo.
'Mary mother of God,' Kelis gasped. 'I know it needed to look convincing, but did you have to shoot me in the fucking gut?'
I turned to face her. My gun was still in my hands and I saw them raise it until it was pointing straight at her. I'd fired four bullets since we'd entered the building – more than enough left. She wasn't looking at me as I said, 'No – I meant to put it through your heart. I guess my aim was off.'
She chuckled weakly, the sound turning into a gurgle of pain. But when she lifted her head to look at me the laughter died. 'Jasmine..?'
'I told you, Jasmine's gone.' Somewhere inside me, something was protesting that, but the Voice was quite sure. It had lost Ash – there was no way it was letting me go too.
Face twisted in agony, Kelis pushed herself upwards, first to her elbows then slowly, painfully, to her knees. 'No,' she said, her voice just a thread. 'You're still you.'
I took a step towards her, stumbling over my own feet. 'That's not true. I've killed hundreds of people. I've shot pregnant women. Jasmine would never do that. It must be the madness.'
A thin trickle of blood leaked from her lips. Her breath gasped in and out of her as she struggled to form the words. 'We'd all like an excuse for what we've done – but that's just cowardice, and you're not a coward. You killed all those people. You, Jasmine. Accept it and move on.'
I took another step closer. My finger was tight around the trigger of the Magnum. Another millimetre, another milligram of pressure, and Kelis would stop saying those terrible words. 'I don't know myself any more,' I gasped.
Amazingly, she managed a smile. Her lips were crimson with her own blood. 'That's OK, I know you. And you're not so bad.' Her eyes wouldn't let mine go, no matter how much I wanted them to.
I could kill her. I wanted to kill her. I could surrender to the Voice and let it take all the decisions. Let it shoulder the responsibility. Or I could live with all the things I'd done. I could go on making all the awful, impossible choices that this world forced you to make. The only sane response was to go crazy. Let go. Just let go.
And yet.
Kelis' eyes. The lips that I'd kissed, only a few days ago. I had to take the responsibility for that. I couldn't kill her and let that death be nobody's fault.
I didn't know I'd thrown the gun away until I heard it clatter against the far wall.
EPILOGUE
I bandaged Kelis' injuries as best I could. The bullet had done less damage than it might – a through-and- through which had missed the organs she'd need the most. The exit wound was the worst, muscle beyond repair, ragged scraps of skin. In front it was just a small hole, black and burned round the edges. The bandage stopped the blood loss but I didn't give her five hours if we didn't get her some more serious care. And even then…
