"Hey, Mole-face," Rebecca called down. "I'm waiting for your answer."
"Elliott!" Will hissed urgently. "What do I do?"
"Buy some time. Talk to her," Elliott snapped, not looking up as she began to play out a length of rope.
Encouraged that Elliott seemed to have settled on a course of action, Will took several deep breaths and poked his head around the edge of the menhir. "Yes! OK!" he yelled back to Rebecca.
"That's my boy!" Rebecca answered cheerfully. "I knew you'd be up for it."
In the ensuing seconds they heard nothing more from Rebecca. Elliott and Chester each tied the rope around themselves, then Chester slung the other end of it across to Will as Elliott crouched down behind her rifle.
Will shrugged at Chester, who just shrugged back. Will could only think that, as a last resort, Elliott had decided they were going to attempt to climb down the Pore. He couldn't see any other way out. He turned to Cal. His brother was whimpering quietly to himself, his face nestled in Bartleby's neck as he clasped the agitated animal to his chest. Cal had lost it, and Will couldn't blame him. Will secured the rope around himself, then knotted it around Cal's waist. His brother passively allowed him to do so, without questioning why.
Will glanced back at the Pore. It was their only way out. But was it much of a solution? What was Elliott thinking? Will had seen for himself that the hole consisted of a sheer rock face, with nothing to cling to. It looked pretty grim for them all.
Will heard Rebecca whistling in the darkness as she approached.
"You are my sunshine," he murmured, recognizing the tune. "I really hate that song."
When she spoke again, she was much closer.
"Right, this is as far as I'm coming.
Massive searchlights blasted on from farther up the slope.
"Whiteout!" Elliott exclaimed, raising her head from her rifle as the blazing light hit the scope. She squeezed her eye shut several times, recovering from the glare. "That's just freakin' great!" she fumed. "I can't get a fix on anything now!"
Dazzling beams of light swept back and forth over the area where Will and the others were hiding, sending solid black shadows slashing across the ground.
Will stuck his head a little farther around the edge of the boulder. He'd had to turn off the headset to protect it, and the blinding intensity of the lights made it difficult to see, but he could make out someone — it certainly looked like Rebecca. She was standing in the open ground between two menhirs. He pulled back and glanced at Elliott, who was still lying prone, an array of explosives and stove guns within easy reach on the ground. She adjusted the position of her arms, ready to fire on the figure, even without the use of the scope.
"Don't! Don't shoot her," Will begged in a whisper. "The stalkers!"
Elliott didn't reply, her focus fixed on her target.
"Will! Got a little surprise for you!" Rebecca called out. Before she'd finished speaking, her voice came again, like some ventriloquist's trick. "Quite a surprise!"
Will frowned, and couldn't stop himself from taking another look.
"Meet my twin sister," Rebecca's voice announced. Or, rather, two voices announced, in unison.
"Careful!" Elliott warned as Will got to his feet and stuck his head even farther around the side of the menhir.
As he watched, the solitary figure appeared to split into two, revealing that a second girl had been standing immediately behind the first. The two turned to face each other, and Will saw identical profiles. They were mirror images.
"No!" he choked in disbelief, pulling back a little, then leaning out again.
"How's that for a bombshell, bro?" the Rebecca on the left shouted.
"All the time, there's been two of us, completely interchangeable," the Rebecca on the right cackled.
His eyes weren't deceiving him.
There were two Rebeccas, side by side.
It had to be a trick — an illusion of some kind, or maybe a second person wearing a mask. But no. As the twins moved, as the twins talked, it seemed as though they were absolutely identical.
They continued to chatter in such a quick-fire way that he couldn't tell which of them was saying what.
"Your worst nightmare — two irksome little skin and blisters, two little sisters!"
"How else do you think we worked it when one of us had to be Topsoil at all times?"
"We took turns babysitting you a the Highfield home."
"One on, one off, one up, one down, doing tours of duty for all those years."
"We both know you so well…"
"We've both cooked your lousy food…"
"…picked up your filthy clothes…"
"…washed your soiled, stinking underpants…"
"You dirty dog!" one sneered in disgust.
"…and listened to you blubber in your sleep, crying out for Mammy…"
"…but Mammy don't care…"
Despite the dire situation he found himself in, Will squirmed with acute embarrassment. It would have been bad enough if there was only a single Rebecca saying all this, but two of them, knowing every little intimate detail there was to know about him — and discussing it between them! It was more than he could bear.
"Shut up, you foul cow!" he screamed.
"Oooh, touchy, touchy," one of the twins cooed mockingly.
Temporarily oblivious to the legion of Limiters surrounding him, Will was suddenly transported back to his home in Highfield, to how it had been for all those years before his father went missing. He and his sister continually clashing over the most trivial of things. This felt exactly like another of their outrageous spats when she would wind him up with her interminable needling and well-aimed taunts. The outcome was always the same — he would eventually blow his top, and she would stand back to gloat, a smug smirk on her face.
"And I think you mean foul cows," the Rebecca on the right suggested with a sibilant "s," while the other continued to harangue him.
"But Mammy didn't have time for her little Will… he wasn't in the program guide…"
"… he wasn't Must-See TV."
Two belly laughs.
"What a sad, sad boy," a twin cawed.
"Joe Nobody digging his stupid holes, all on his lonesome."
"Digging for Daddy's love," sneered the other, and they both cackled uproariously.
Will closed his eyes — it was as if they were poking around inside his head, picking out and cruelly exposing his innermost fears and secrets. Nothing was inviolate — the twins were putting everything on show for all to see.
Then the twin on the left spoke out, her voice deadly serious.
"What we wanted to tell you, Will, and that lumbering oaf Chester, is that very soon now there won't be any home to go back to."
"No more Topsoilers," the second twin warbled gleefully.
"Well, not quite so many," the first corrected her in a sing-song voice.
"What are they saying?" Chester demanded. He was sweating profusely, his face an ashen white under the patches of dirt.
Will had had enough.
"Lies! It's all a load of lies!" he shouted, his whole body shaking with terror and anger.
"You saw for yourself, we've been busy bees in the Eternal City," a twin said. "We've had the Division prospecting there for years."
"And they finally isolated the very bug we were looking for. Our scientists did some work on it, and her are the fruits of their labors."