"One of my targets is here?!" I asked with a shaky voice. My eyes went wide open.

"Eros Nevermore, obviously," Agape added with a smirk. "The son of the Secretary of State comes here to Amanita every weekend with his friends. I just saw him thanks to the security cams."

She pointed at the security screens hanging at the top of the wall in front of her. I turned my head to them. She zoomed in Eros' magnificent, drop-dead gorgeous face as he made his way into the crowd on the dancefloor.

"Hello," Siegfried said in a hurried voice as he opened the door without knocking. "I'm back. What did I miss?"

"Nothing. You weren't meant to come back at all, sweetheart," Agape replied with a smirk full of mischief. "Haven't you got work to do?"

With her arms crossed over her chest and a mocking aura, she stared at Siegfried, who was standing right beside me, just as before.

"It's nothing, really," I said before he had the chance to reply. "Just saying that one of my targets is here. That's all."

His eyes left mine to stare at the zooming images of Eros smiling and chatting with his friends.

"Agape, don't tell me you're sending her after this clone right now," he told her without hesitation before I could say anything. His fists were clenched. "She doesn't need to see what happens here when..."

"Stay out of this, Sigi," she cut his speech in a warning tone.

I sensed a huge amount of dread in his voice. It was obvious he didn't want me to witness something awful. I wondered what that was.

Then, Agape turned to me with an agreeable voice and said, "Pay attention, Daphne. This is Eros Nevermore, clone prodigy. The most expensive baby to be born in the BioBank. The best genetic fingerprint to be ever designed there. Straight As in all the subjects he's taken so far in the Business School of Thalis. He's recently taken an interest in Biology. On top of that, he's drop-dead gorgeous. I mean, look at these bright blue eyes and this light blond hair," she said with a velvety voice.

He was handsome indeed. But I knew he was not for me. Besides, he was a clone. Mixed couples weren't allowed, like many other prohibitions in my life. I could be a fling – tops. Therefore, I didn't know what was Agape's aim then.

"It might be interesting to meet him before you go to his home as a maid tomorrow," she added. "I want you to gain his trust. That way it'll be much easier to sneak into his father's home office to get the information I need. Are you up for this job or not?"

A few minutes later, I was already upstairs wandering in Amanita.

Siegfried was not amused by my decision to hunt my target on my own in the club while he had to stay out on the street, by the entrance, doing his job as a bouncer.

Amanita was amazing from the inside, so much mesmerising, wilder, and overwhelming than I had ever imagined.

The coloured lights, which bounced everywhere and filtered through the windows in the curvy ceiling, were blinding if you stared too directly at them. The main area had been designed as a round dance floor, and created for such a visual effect: it was as if the coloured lights got intertwined with each other as they were shot in different directions around the room until in the end they poured into the sky as if the mushroom-shaped roof were a strainer placed upside down, and an inverted gravity force pushed the lights up into the sky. The decoration was nature-related also, following a forest theme, with flowers, leaves, huge mushrooms, and even some artificial insects placed here and there as small statues.

On the walls were paintings of exotic landscapes, from jungles to deserts, from the great northern steppes to the indomitable Arctic landscape. And hanging from the walls were those fairy statues that I liked so much, and they were dressed according to the weather in their respective area, but they wore little clothing nonetheless.

The area of ​​the bar was set in the jungle, and the lights seemed to float as if they were small coloured fairies above the bar where the drinks were served.

The ceiling was full of crystal stalactites that shone with the light of the disco ball in the centre of the room, with spaces between them so that you could see the night sky through the round windows of that dome.

Until then, I had only seen it during the day. But at night, when it was at full capacity, with loud music playing and the people partying, it was something worth seeing.

There was also the DJ cage at one end, hanging from the wall, and it looked like a real birdcage, with wrought iron making a baroque filigree with floral motifs. It was empty then, but dance music was being played non-stop. An automatic playlist was being played at that moment since Agape was still busy in her office.

Naturally, there was a large central area designed as a dance floor, with a few podiums where anyone could climb and dance. Only one podium stood out as inaccessible, taller than the rest – and that was where K8 was dancing.

K8, the African-American-looking AI with pink irises and hair designed by Agape that I admired so much, had many other admirers besides me – but they saw her in a different light than me, to put it nicely.

Many clone guys and girls whistled hungrily at her while she pole-danced. I had to admit that the moves she was able to pull up there were flabbergasting. Not to mention inhuman. Human hips and legs could not do that kind of contortionism. The crowd was wild, cheering her every move – and she replied with a naughty smirk or blowing a kiss every once in a while.

After a few minutes, Agape had already checked my memories of those new chip-scanning devices and was playing her DJ role, as usual.

Meanwhile, from the bar counter, two boys and a girl were staring at me with murderous looks. The girl must've been Nemesis, the other girl I hadn't formally met yet. She was a beautiful, Asian-looking girl with black, straight, long hair. She wore a very flattering bartender uniform in purple and black – and white mascara on her eyes, like clone girls, Momo, and Vera. As regards the guys, one was Sven and the other was Ray, the Scandinavian and the Asian guy, respectively. And they all seemed to hate me.

They were serving drinks non-stop to the clones, who drank those fancy alcoholic cocktails as if they were shots. I was appalled to see so many young people in such an inebriated state. The clone youth was used to heavy drinking and partying.

Amanita was a palace dedicated to music, dancing, drinking, and fun.

I couldn't find Eros. The loud music and the huge crowd were starting to bother me.

K8 was absorbing my every thought. The loud music, her dance moves, and the way her pink curls swayed. I couldn't focus on locating my target anymore.

Her cheeky moves emulating sex acts were exactly what Agape had wanted me to do that night. Honestly, I couldn't dance like that. I hadn't got the skills nor the attitude.

She had an amazing body, like an actress or a model. She seemed to be the female version of Michelangelo's David. Besides that, her synthetic skin was strikingly realistic.

While bathing in the lights of the disco ball as she danced, I realised she was too beautiful. She was wearing three small pieces of golden armour which mimicked women's underwear, and she also wore two golden shoulder pads with engravings in the same style, also made of metal. Those gold items were tied with pink silk ribbons at strategic points around her shoulders, neck, and hips.

All of a sudden, she looked my way. Her eyes shone in electric pink hues. She smiled and winked at me with naughtiness.

Hello, my sugar cubes!

Did you enjoy this chapter? Do you like K8? I adore her design.

XOXO

MS