Gabi exited right after him. He was also dressed in that amazing, black bouncer uniform and was carrying more metallic poles and red ropes so that customers could form an orderly queue. He almost bumped into Siegfried's frozen body.

"Sigi, dude. Move!" Gabi exclaimed while standing right beside Siegfried. When he realised why his friend was stupefied, he took a good look at me and whistled. "Damn, Daphne! Dios mío! What a look!"

I guessed my mother's dress made me look lean. Not as stylish as those clones around me, but I liked that simpler look.

Then, Siegfried mildly shook his head. He then approached me and grabbed me by the wrist. Momo and Vera were about to complain, but he ignored them. Not saying a single word, he pulled me inside Amanita.

"Thanks," I told him when we were crossing the main area of the club. "If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't have been able to come in. Momo and Vera didn't want to let me in. They don't like me. It's not like I care much, honestly, but..."

I stopped wasting words. He was so silent that I started to worry. Why was he acting like a sleepwalker?

He stopped a few feet away from the stairs that went down to Agape's office. The rest of the team was busy behind the bar and hadn't noticed our presence.

He turned to me. His eyes were heavily fixed on mine.

"Say something. Like 'hello', you know."

He seemed completely absorbed by some distant thought as he stared at me.

"Earth to Siegfried. Hello there!" I said, raising my free hand open and flat, and running it in front of his face a couple of times. Nothing. "You're starting to scare me. Are you okay?"

"Yes, yes... Alles in Ordnung," he said as if he was suddenly waking up. Wow, he had switched to German. He was still holding my wrist firmly. "I mean, I'm fine."

"Agape must be downstairs, in her office, right?" I asked him. "I came to talk to her, remember?"

"Yes. Come," he answered flatly.

"It's not necessary. I can go on my own if you've got work to do."

However, he wanted to come with me, or rather, he dragged me by the wrist a few more feet and down the stairs.

As we made our way to the basement, we passed by the other guys in the group, the ones I had already seen the last time I had been there and to whom Siegfried had promised to introduce me. I just waved as we walked past them, but they were busy carrying boxes full of bottles, and they stared at me with long faces.

When we were already downstairs, in front of the door of Agape's office, I knocked.

"Come in!" Agape welcomed us. We entered.

"Agape, hello," I said. "I know you've got a lot of work to do, so I'll be short. I don't want to waste your time, so..."

"Not so fast, Daphne." The serious but stunned look on her face made me freeze.

"What?!" I exclaimed.

"I need a volunteer for an espionage mission, but forget it," Agape replied in a jolly good mood. "Dressed like this, I prefer you to stay working here from now on, pole-dancing with K8."

"No! Don't even think about it!" Siegfried exclaimed, pissed off and blushing.

"About spying or pole dancing?" Agape asked back with a playful smirk. She giggled. "Calm down, Sigi. It won't happen... unless she wants to, of course," she added while looking at me.

"I'd rather not do any pole dancing, honestly," I replied calmly.

"Fair enough. Too bad, though." She sighed. "Well, tell me. What is it that you needed to tell me?"

"Your proposal about murdering the President myself or having him murdered for me. I don't think that I can kill a person, or be the one to give the order, even though I hate his guts. I don't believe murder is the solution. I'm sorry."

"Don't be," she added showing no surprise at all. "I had thought as much. As Sigi said the first day, you don't fit in our group. I would be astonished if you agreed. But he's gonna die sooner or later anyway."

Her words hit me as if I was crashing my car at full speed against a concrete wall.

"I won't hold it against you," Agape added calmly, but my heart wasn't calm. "It's no big deal. Your wish not to be involved in his murder. And your pacifism. Don't worry."

"Our teammates already do," Siegfried said, startling me.

"They know about...?" I started to ask. "How I think? How I feel about this?"

"Of course, they do. They heard what you told me in that rubbish bin."

"Tell me one thing, Daphne," Agape went on with curiosity. "If you accidentally found the President –or any clone threatening you– in a dead-end street, if you were alone, without any nanochips sending any information (neither yours nor his), and if you had a gun in your hands, but he had none, and if you could get out of there knowing you would never pay any consequences, what would you do? Knowing everything you know now, about us and them, the clones,... would you kill the President?"

I tried to imagine Agape's hypothesis.

In my mind's eye, I could see a dark alley and both of us in it, all alone. A clone, maybe the President. Why not? And me.

The rain would be pouring down on us, and I would have a loaded gun in my hand. He would be defenceless. I remembered that that evil beast was alive thanks to my brother. I would remember my father's face when that fat civil servant told him the actual truth about Daniel's death. The red roses. The golden plaque to commemorate his collaboration.

I could already feel my whole body tense, my teeth clenched, and a foul pressure deep within my chest.

An unfamiliar heat was igniting my body. Was I in my right mind to pass judgement on that bastard under the effects of rage? I was losing control of my body and, above all, my common sense. Because I wanted to pull the trigger... and I didn't want to at the same time.

Was I willing to taint myself with murder? Was I ready to kill someone for killing someone else? If so, I'd become the same kind of monster.

I shuddered in the presence of an expectant Agape and Siegfried.

"I don't know," I whispered, worried.

"Daphne, it's okay. We are the decisions we make. No one knows for sure what decisions we can make in extreme situations, when instinct kicks in," Agape replied calmly but firmly. "Considering that you are now one of us, I want you to realise that one day you might find yourself in a similar situation to what you have just imagined. You can't afford to think you'll forever remain on the sidelines. Ponder on who you want to be from now on: do you want to be the killer of a murderer, or do you want to be another victim on their long list of victims?"

Her question was valid, but I realised radically different questions had popped into my mind instead of that one. Her different opinion on the subject determined what questions she asked herself and why.

"It's still murder," I answered with determination. "A crime."

"A necessary crime to prevent others in the future," Siegfried suddenly added with those killer eyes that froze my soul.

"You're older and more experienced than I am, Agape," I said. "But I don't think that I'll ever be able to do what you've just made me imagine. Murder a clone."

"I see." She sighed. "The President's head was just an offer. And the question I've just asked you was only a surmise. No need to freak out. Relax will you?"

I realised then that I had been holding tension in my muscles all over my body. I let out a long breath to make it easier to let go of it all.

"Well, you want to legitimise murder and convince me to accept it even though I hate it. How am I supposed not to freak out?"

"You're a rebel now, like us. Murder is something we do. I won't command you to kill anybody. Yet. But you need to find a way to deal with stress and fear. You don't look like you can take it."

She was right. I hated it.

"Do you know what 'Amanita' means?"

"Yes, Siegfried mentioned something about it."

"It's the name of a family of mushrooms in which you can find both edible and poisonous specimens. It's the name I chose for this club, our cover. Amanita is where clones have fun... and where they spend their blood-stained money – and it's gonna end up killing them. I love this ironic, poetic beauty."

Her tone of voice was that of a vengeful god, and her eyes were burning with unmatched defiance and pride. She had 'revenge' engraved in every single cell in her body. Had those ugly burns and scars on her face anything to do with her speech besides the oppression we had been forced to endure for decades?

"Amanita is the right amount of poison to cure the world," she went on in the same fashion. "Now, your arse belongs to me, Amanita's founder and leader. You have become poison. I may sound harsh to you, and my views might sound unacceptable, but you have to understand that I've got every right to ask anything I might require from you regardless of your ethics. We're technically at war with those bastards. So, murdering clones is legitimate."

"I don't think murder is legitimate in any case," I replied, knowing that I might enjoy a free ride to the scaffold real soon because of it. Agape might not like my opposition. "I don't see myself holding a gun, even."

She sighed as if I was a lost cause.

"Guns are weapons, yes," she replied. "You love cars and hate guns, don't you? Only yesterday I heard on the radio that a drunk clone arsehole ran over a traditional human pedestrian with his car and killed him. My assets handle guns to murder that kind of arseholes... and worse. What is more dangerous and unethical, a car or a gun?" she asked me with a sly smile on her face. "Aren't both weapons?"

Touché. "Both can get people killed. But there are careful and responsible drivers. Don't you think that there are good clones out there?"

Agape let out a loud laugh that startled me.

"Weapons can be as dangerous as the people who use them, regardless of who they belong to, right?" I asked. I took a glimpse at Siegfried. He was raising an eyebrow at me.

"I..." he hesitated.

"It will be difficult for me to convince you, I see," she said with seriousness after a heartfelt sigh. "But in case of unexpected risk, you may act very differently than you expect. Imagine that you did something that you consider immoral, even if it was by accident. You have to understand that the worst could happen to you," she said, her face extremely sad then as if she felt a strong pain in her chest. "Something worse than death, even."

"What do you mean?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I had a young man working for me a few years ago. He was about your age." Her eyes got clouded by a regretful memory and stared at a distant point behind me with unfocused eyes. "He thought the way you do. He didn't like the idea of murdering anybody, but he killed a clone who had accidentally discovered him on an espionage mission. We covered it up, I had no trouble with that. No one ever suspected anything.

"But one day he told me he was having a really bad time coping with it. Guilt weighed too heavily on him. I told him that everything would be fine. We talked and talked, but..."

She fell silent and pressed her lips in a thin line. That was a bad omen.

"A few days later he committed suicide," she whispered.

An absolute silence ensued.

Siegfried didn't seem to know anything about that young man, because he was as surprised, tense, and sad as I was. His eyes were downcast; his lips pressed together.

Given the pale and sorrowful look on Siegfried's face, he didn't seem quite comfortable with death all of a sudden. I realised I might have misjudged him. There was something the matter with him.

Curiosity and morbidity were equally running wild inside me. I wanted to ask him whether his conscience had ever found a fault in Agape's twisted way of life ever since he joined the rebels. Had he always thought murder was desirable?

I had to admit I knew him very little. In contrast, I was an open book.

But one thing I knew for sure about him: he had spared me by hacking my chip even though he didn't know me. He had put his faith in me. Therefore, could I manage to trust him from that moment on as blindly as he had trusted me when we had met? I felt as if I owed him.

I couldn't ponder on the matter for long, though, because Agape interrupted my thoughts.

"That's why I was asking you to think about what might happen in an extreme case, Daphne," Agape added with a mournful voice. "I don't want this to happen to anyone again. In any mission that I command, or any that you might start on your own, there is always a risk, greater or lesser, but there is always some risk involved. And you must be very clear to yourself about who you want to be and why."

She was right.

"Think about it," she went on seriously. "You don't have to tell me. Just think about it. Visualise your life, and that of those you love, in the short and long run in case something like that ever happened to you. I will always be here to help you, no matter what. Don't let our disagreement on ethics make you feel as if you can't trust me or rely on me. I'm here for you. All of you. You can come and talk to me about anything if you need it. Here..."

She turned to her desk and rummaged in a drawer.

I found it noble that she cared so much for me in that way even though we had a moral disagreement. Despite having different views on ethics, I knew I could count on her.

"Here it is!" she exclaimed as she turned around. "For you. A hacked mobile phone. Just like ours. You can call me anytime."

Her smile was wide and charming as she handed me the device.

I felt she was two-sided, like a coin. One moment she was hot and vengeful, and the next she was compassionate and...

Dare I say it? Motherly.

She had told me she saw a mirror in me the last time we talked. I would never forget that. I needed to be careful. I didn't want her to change me, make me like her. But she was so nice and trustworthy...

Damn, her magnetism was unavoidable. She was an extraordinary woman who would surely have achieved many things if history had not condemned her to live that kind of dark life.

"Thank you," I whispered with an open heart.

"You're welcome," she said in a tired voice. "Anyway, as I was saying, I need a spy at the Sappho Residence."

"The Sappho Residence?!" Siegfried asked, bewildered.

"It's where Mrs Nevermore, the wife of the Secretary of State, lives," I replied casually. "She comes quite often to Replica Ltd. to get some youth-enhancing jobs done."

"Exactly," Agape added excitedly. "Thanks to the information you gave me, I was able to design a new plan. I've hacked into Replica's database and found out that they record and store every single conversation with their clients. Mrs Nevermore is a chatterbox. She's been indiscreet about her husband's affairs a couple of times. I believe that, in the Sappho Residence, there might be crucial information hidden in his home office. Some sensitive information I've been chasing for years on end, never getting any lead."

Her face was glowing with the anticipation to achieve something she had been longing for for some time.

"This is our chance," she went on. "With your ability to sneak in and steal information, I think you can get that information. I had always thought that the Secretary of State was a brainless pawn under the President's command, but now... The way Mrs Nevermore spoke in those videos... I think this is a solid lead."

"What's this information you covet so much?" I asked her with curiosity.

"I want you to find out where the clones store the remains of our departed loved ones."

Hello, my sugar cubes!

Will Agape's thirst for crucial information be sated? Will Daphne be able to find out the truth?

*Note on foreign words: 'Dios mío' means 'OMG' in Spanish.
'Alles in Ordnung' means 'everything's fine' in German.

XOXO

MS