A few minutes later, we were far from the crime scene, riding on Siegfried's bike at full speed. It was obvious that he hadn't filled up the tank with coolant, or taken the bike to a garage, as I had suggested. He had been busy bombing the BioBank, and probably the GSNS too.

He had given me his black backpack so that I would put it on my back. He told me to hold on tight to him. He rode with aggressiveness, as if he didn't care much for his own life.

I didn't know how to read him, though: not only had he been proud about being a just terrorist, but also sad and emphatic when it came to my grief. The clones in the BioBank must've had spouses, parents, friends, or children. Death might've meant different things to him.

I leaned my left cheek on his broad back and cried as we drove on. Daniel was dead. It was undeniable. That was the reason his chip wasn't emitting any signal. His involvement in the attacks was nonexistent.

But could I trust that guy?

I didn't know what to think because I had never met anyone like him. I felt lost and frozen, marvelled by the unlimited possibilities that freedom and true privacy granted me – both of us. He could easily lie to me. Besides, he seemed deeper, like the tip of an iceberg.

Siegfried was out of clone law. He could lie as much as he pleased – and so could I. He gave the impression that he was used to living freely, and completely in control of his own life. Only God knew the unspeakable things he might've done!

I could hate him for bombing the BioBank because my brother had been in the building, for failing in his mission to prevent the clones from kidnapping my brother. However, I could thank him for hacking my nanochip and releasing me from those clone bonds. But I could hate him even more because that could get me in trouble in the future.

And I could also hate the President for endangering his own life to the point he needed an urgent transplant.

I wished I could row against the tide of time and rewrite the past.

I decided to trust him for the time being, even though I was sure he would mean trouble for me. Now that my chip was hacked, I needed to know the rules of that brand-new world of possibilities. I was scared to live in a clone world with a hacked device in my brain. Maybe that person I needed to meet would help me understand the scope of the mess I was in.

A few minutes later, we were deep into a neighbourhood called Dawn, the fishermen's home, riding all along the promenade with the bright orange glow of the afternoon sun on our backs. The Neon Sea was roaring wildly by the shore, on our right.

The Neon Sea, where fish went rogue and fishermen went mad on account of them, kissed the shores of Dawn, a rather slim and long neighbourhood located at the east of Thalis. Dawn broke every day on its wild waters – hence the name. The Neon Sea sparkled brightly in blue and turquoise hues at night due to a special type of plankton and seaweeds that thrived in the raging pollution that had been caused by human activity over the years.

Only Silver Island, a small island in the middle of the Neon Sea where trees had silver-coloured leaves which shone brightly in the wind, didn't seem to be affected by that high level of pollution. It was bursting with life in its small, self-contained biosphere.

The fish that lived in those waters were monsters. They seemed schizophrenic in their behaviour. They were far bigger and more intelligent. They fought back whenever a fisherman tried to fish them. Pollution might have triggered a violent course of evolution, very much like the extremely poisonous, multicoloured marine mushrooms that crowded the deep ends of the sea. Only a team of really well-equipped marine biologists from Clone University had been able to study them.

You could get seriously injured if that water touched your skin. Nobody ever bathed in it. Luckily, an artificial barrier kept the pollution of the Neon Sea at bay. The fishermen who had the misfortune of accidentally falling from their ship were found dead in a few seconds. Needless to say, we never ate fish at home. God knows what was in it.

Therefore, Dawn was a synonym for madness and antinatural. The neighbourhood and its people had been stigmatised for years. I knew the feeling. At the end of the day, I was one of the damned.

Siegfried had reduced the speed by the time we were almost at the end of the promenade. Was he living there?

He eventually stopped his motorbike at the end of the promenade, close to Angel Rock, the huge, high rocky formation that divided the Neon Sea in the east from the Tame Sea in the west, the sea which bathed the shores of the Shell neighbourhood, the most fashionable touristic area in Thalis. It was called Angel Rock because of its large, wing-shaped rocks spread over the waters.

I was staring at the Neon Sea from up high, at the end of the promenade, as I climbed down from Siegfried's bike. The breeze was soft and the warm sun caressed my skin, but I was too engulfed by my feelings of loss and sadness that I could barely register it as pleasant.

Losing my dear brother was something still alien to me. Our dream to start a garage business together was dead, too. My father was forty-four years old, so I would lose him in a few months. I would be left alone. Both of them were my only reason to live. They fuelled my hopes and my happiness every day. They were the only two people who loved me for who I was – mistakes, tantrums, imperfections, and all – and I loved them in the same way.

"Come with me," Siegfried whispered to call my attention.

He left his bike parked in the nightclub's small parking lot and started walking to the mushroom-shaped building. I was thunderstruck.

Amanita. The most popular nightclub in Thalis. The best among the best, and the most expensive too. Only clones could afford to have fun there. I had heard that it was insanely beautiful from the inside.

I had only seen Amanita from Old Sue's clearing at night: its fluorescent beauty shone brightly in the night, second to no other building, including the mind-blowing modern skyscrapers made of glass and steel from the city centre. The multicoloured lights from the inside were cast outside through the round windows on the roof, illuminating the sky much better than the moon itself. It was a captivating place to stare at.

I had never expected to enter such a place in my entire life.

Siegfried knocked on the door. I stood by his side, waiting in silence while he checked left and right whether there was anyone in the street looking our way. Luckily, that part of the promenade was deserted. There was no one by the windows of the nearest buildings. The same went for the beach down below.

My heart was beating faster than an F1 engine in the last lap of a race. Then, a twenty-something young woman opened the door only a couple of inches. She had green eyes, red hair, and was chewing on green chewing gum. Her pupils dilated when she saw Siegfried, but they narrowed when she realised that I was standing beside him. Her amazement also became disgust when she fully opened the door.

"Who have you got here?" she asked defiantly.

Her red hair was natural and perfectly straight, with a generous, thick fringe. She was nice to look at, not drop-dead gorgeous though. Her skin-tight dark green dress was amazing but too slutty for my taste. She moved gracefully, like a cat, to let us in.

Siegfried entered and said nothing to her to my surprise. When he noticed I hadn't moved an inch, he motioned to come in.

"Come in, Daphne," he also said in a low volume.

She was looking meanly at me, scanning every single one of my physical attributes indecently as I walked in.

The nightclub felt sad, cold, and empty. The round windows were all shut. It was mostly dark but for some neon lights by the bar, which seemed an idyllic forest nook. There was no one there. Only the alcoholic drinks kept us company, resting on the shelves, which were made of thick tree barks decorated with moss.

The stillness was deafening. Amanita during daytime felt like a graveyard at nighttime: silent, lonesome, and unnatural. I guessed that the glamour I was expecting only took place at night.

The strange ginger-haired woman closed the door once I had crossed the threshold with a bang. I got startled.

"What are you doing?!" Siegfried exclaimed while frowning.

She didn't answer with words, only with a wry smile of superiority while chewing on that green gum. She got closer to me and tried to grab a handful of my hair. Luckily, I stepped back and she had only grazed it.

"Momo, leave her alone," Siegfried warned her as if he was sick and tired of her.

"She's... how could I put it?" she replied smirking. "She seems so dull. A pretty doll, but that's all. And have you seen her sandals?!" She chuckled. "Pathetic!"

As an automatic reaction, I looked at my sandals. They weren't pathetic from my point of view. They were practical, like me: dark brown sandals, cheap, and easy to wear and to move around in. Fashionable? Probably not. I only needed them to go to work. I just needed something neat and comfy.

"How dare you wear something so horrid and cheap to come here?" Momo asked as if she was laughing at me.

"Oh, screw you," I whispered defiantly, crossing my arms over my chest.

"Why have you brought her here?" she asked Siegfried, completely ignoring me as if she was above me. "The dirt beneath the soles of my boots is a worthier company than her," she added condescendingly while coming closer to him with a nice swaying of her hips. "Don't tell me she's my rival."

Momo irradiated sensuality from every pore of her body. The closer to Siegfried she was, the more obvious it was. Her soft purring musicality was meant to entice, but the guy didn't react to her siren's song. She fancied him, but the attraction wasn't mutual.

"She's new. And she's staying," he said dryly to her, but with authority. "Agape must've told you already, right?"

"You must be kidding, Sigi. This girl. So simple, so transparent! She doesn't have what it takes to stay with us. She will only be an annoying pebble in our shoes – and you know it."

"If thinking that makes you happy..." Siegfried replied not even looking at her, walking past her to the back of the club.

He seemed to be bored. I assumed they were used to acting like that to each other. Siegfried wasn't remotely interested in her, but Momo had never stopped smiling, not even when it was crystal clear that Siegfried didn't appreciate her sensuality. She was far too head over heels in love with him to admit he would never fall for her.

"Did you want me to meet her?" I asked him as I came closer to him. I didn't want to be left alone with Momo.

"No, of course not," he replied in a heartbeat. "Come with me."

Was I Momo's rival? I didn't think so. Siegfried looked at my face whenever he was talking to me, or I to him – and he did it nicely, unlike to her.

"Who is she, Sigi?" she asked defiantly, but seriously. "For real. I mean, what can she really do to help us?"

"Go back to work," he replied as if he didn't care.

"You're such a conceited idiot, Sigi!" she shouted back at him, clenching her teeth right afterwards. "Agape's gonna tell you off like never before!"

"Shut up, stupid brat." His harsh reply left me speechless. Weren't they meant to be teammates?

Siegfried (or Sigi, as Momo had called him) led me downstairs to the basement. We went down some stairs, only guided by the dim green glow of some emergency lights high above our heads.

"Will you be told off?" I dared to ask, but feebly.

"Yes," he replied darkly. His frown wasn't good news either.

There was a small corridor with five doors. The one at the far end had a sign indicating it was a storeroom. The penultimate one was a restroom. The others had no sign.

He knocked on the first door.

"Come in," a powerful feminine voice shouted from the inside.

Siegfried opened the door.

The room was a large office full of computer stuff, both new and used, ranging from several screens, hard drives, keyboards, a mouse, USB devices, and tablets, among other objects that had been disassembled and worked on.

Sitting on an office chair with tiny wheels was a thirty-something, blond woman. When she turned to us, standing by the door, I realised she was slim and gorgeous, but I couldn't see her eyes because she was wearing special mirror-like sunglasses. The only feature that marred the whole picture was a scary, wide scar on the left side of her chin. It had healed a long time ago, but that type of scar would never fade away. She wore her hair in a loose bun held by a pencil. She wore a deep red blouse with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows, perfectly white trousers, and stunning black stilettos.

"Hello, Agape," he greeted her with dread as if he wasn't feeling up to the task of talking to her.

"Siegfried Thor! What's this crappy job you've done!" Agape was an earthquake reaching a magnitude of nine on Richter's scale. I felt lucky I couldn't see her eyes due to her sunglasses. "I was expecting a much better job than this shit! FUCK!"

"It's complicated," Siegfried tried to explain. She was too pissed off.

"Oh, really?!" she replied with aggressive sarcasm. Her facial expression was hard on him. "Do you think I'm an idiot?!"

Her thundering voice hammered my ears and my brain ruthlessly. I suspected the building was fully soundproof.

"Complicated?! I can see that! You're supposed to be the greatest asset I've ever had! And yet look at you! I didn't get you enrolled for such a blunder!"

She was referring to what had happened that afternoon, what Siegfried said he'd failed to prevent, I assumed.

"What's the name of this 'complication'?" she asked looking straight at me.

"Daphne," he rushed to reply before I could say anything. "And it's not her fault."

"It's not her fault, you say?!" she yelled at him in fury. "How dare you?! Do you think I was born yesterday?! I've seen it all! You know it! Don't you dare lie to me! You've got no idea how much extra work you've just given me. You're a fucking idiot!"

She spoke so fast and so angrily that she looked like a tornado.

"I can't afford to protect more users!" she went on with a worried attitude, but she was still angry. "I haven't got the resources I need to do that! I wish I could, but I can't. My alternative network won't hold on for much longer if you act like this one more time! I forbid you to hack another chip! You've failed today's mission and you bring me a useless civilian! Things today have gone wrong far enough to my liking! FUCK!"

I guessed nothing had gone the way she had intended to, and that was the source of her current anger.

"I'm sorry, Agape. I..." he apologised with genuine remorse, yet hesitating. If such an imposing guy was apologising to her... Oh my. I was in trouble.

"You're sorry?! HA! Your problem is that you were thinking with your dick!"

Hello, sugar cubes!

Agape is pissed off. What seems to be the problem? And why does Daphne need to meet her?

Stay tuned to know more! 😊

XOXO

MS

*Note: There are no "good" or "bad" characters in this book. Erase all notion of good or bad sides to a conflict from your mind when reading this novel.
People and sides are always part good and part bad, for better or worse. Mistakes and POVs from characters in this book might define them for good or for a short period of time; their opinions might shift or not; but rest assured that there is no pure white or pure black in moral terms.
So, please refrain from posting comments criticising characters for being good or bad at certain points of the story.