He looked like a djinn from a lamp that had been fashioned in a dark corner of hell.

  Tristan looked around for help, or a way out. Nothing. He'd even welcome a visit from Flagge Security about now.

  "Mimes—ready for battle!" Callin yelled.

  Dr. Dee raised a single arm in the air and bellowed, "Proteus!"

  The word was almost unintelligible...

  Elocution wasn't the good doctor's strong point.

  "This isn't fair!" someone said.

  Tristan looked and saw Eel—still in his lizard-man masque, his arm still heavily bandaged—pushing into the circle.

  Callin said, "You've got no say here, Eel. You've been a member for less than a day."

  "Well, I'm going to speak anyway. You and I know that Krek promised Okasan that we wouldn’t kill this mime."

  "True," Callin said, unfazed. "And we'll honor that. But Krek's not here right now, and nothing was said about not making this mime-killer want to wish he was dead."

  "At least let him flux into something that will give him a chance," Eel said.

  Callin spoke through his teeth. "He gets as much chance as he gave the brothers in Kaze. Now back off, Eel."

  The other mimes pulled Eel away and pushed him outside the circle. He looked at Tristan and shrugged as he pointed to his wounded arm, as if to say, I'd side with you but I wouldn't be much help.

  Tristan nodded his gratitude. At least he'd tried.

  "Begin," Callin shouted. "Combat!"

  Dr. Dee wasted no time. His first move was as fast as it was unexpected. He did a high kick that sent a giant foot crashing against the side of Tristan's head. Tristan's vision filled with bright flashes as he went flying to the side.

  The mimes cheered—and Tristan flashed on something. This is just like the Arena. The only difference is that here the mimes are the ones screaming for blood.

  He rolled to a standing position.

  "You like this?" he said to Callin. "Mimes fighting mimes? No different than—"

  But Dr. Dee didn't wait to listen. This time he sent both massive fists out like pincers of a giant clamp, trying to trap Tristan's head in between them.

  Tristan fell to his knees just in time, and the twin fists crashed into each other—causing little or no pain to the "doctor," he was sure—centimeters above his head. Tristan came up, smashing Dr. Dee in the midsection, a solid blow that elicited a grunt from the mime giant, but didn't faze him. He bulled forward, forcing Tristan to backpedal until he was stopped by a wall.

  Nowhere to hide, nowhere to run. The mime gladiator grinned.

  And then a high-pitched voice rang out, somehow heard above the din.

  "Stop! Hold on! Stop this!"

  Dr. Dee cocked his head. He glanced at Callin who was looking toward the back of the giant room. Hard to believe that these hardened fighters would stop for that voice.

  Tristan turned to look with everyone else...seeing first a small creature running ahead, a pygmy triceratops galloping into the room, followed by a round figure in flowing robes—Mung.

  Why was Mung here? He was supposed to be meeting Okasan and Lani. Tristan saw Krek enter behind him. And from their grim expressions, he knew something was terribly wrong.

  "They've got Okasan!" Mung cried.

  "Who?" Callin said.

  "Flagge Security. Three or four cruisers intercepted her on the way to meet me."

  "Oh, no!" Tristan said.

  He thought he'd been afraid before, but now he knew a deeper terror. He pushed past Dr. Dee, dodging the huge hand that tried to grab him, and hurried up to Mung.

  "What about Lani?"

  "They've got her too. Took both women with them. But they killed Charl. Just...murdered him."

  "Another mime dead!" Krek said, jabbing a finger at Tristan's face. "If this is your doing—"

  "Don't be an idiot," Tristan snapped. Krek didn't frighten him now. Not even Dr. Dee. Only what might be happening to Lani. He turned to Mung. "Any idea where they were taken?"

  "Yes. And this is strange. Witnesses I spoke to said Okasan was taken prisoner by Flagge Security, but when I activated her tracer—"

  "Tracer?"

  "Yes. Okasan has a tracer implant. When she was late for our meeting, I activated it and saw that she wasn't in the freezone anymore. She was in Flagge quarter. And as I watched, her tracer signal disappeared."

  "Does that mean she's dead?" Tristan asked, his heart hammering.

  "No. It only means she entered a shielded building."

  "Flagge Security HQ," Krek said. "No surprise that's shielded."

  "But that's the strange part. She wasn't taken to Security HQ. She was taken to the FCI building."

  "Central Intelligence!" Tristan said. "But didn't you say—?"

  "Yes. Arrested by Security but taken to the FCI. And that must mean that Flagge Central Intelligence has been behind this sick plot to get the G-strain virus into Kaze Glom."

  "But what would those trisomies want with Okasan?" Krek said.

  "FCI has been on her trail for decades, probably since before some of you were deincubated. And now they've got her."

  "A damn shame," Krek said, shaking his head. "She's a fine woman, the finest realperson we've ever known."

  "And ever will know!" Mung said. "You've got to free her!"

  "Now wait a minute, Mung. We love her and revere her, and many of us owe our lives to her, but even if we hadn't lost all our Kaze-origin members"—Tristan winced at the glare Krek shot him here—"we still couldn't mount a successful raid on the FCI building. We—"

  "But she's not there anymore!" Mung cried. "They've taken her to the Citadel!"

  Krek barked a humorless laugh. "Oh, bloaty! That's a different story! We'll just waltz right into Flagge Citadel and march Okasan out the front entrance."

  "You don't understand," Mung said, and Tristan thought for a moment the ex-mime was going to burst into tears. "FCI's been after her all these years not because she's Okasan, but because of a gene she developed many years ago."

  "A gene?" Tristan said. "She's was a splicer?"

  "Not 'a' splicer—the splicer. You see, Okasan herself was once a tool of the gloms—all the gloms. She gladly worked for the highest bidder as a freelancer—you could do that back then. She never gave much thought to how her work was being used—it was the work itself that mattered. The work was all she cared about.

  "But then came the day she located a gene common to people who make the best soldiers, the best corporate employees, the best team players. She took that gene and modified it, then spliced it into a few templates and tested it on some mimes. The results were astounding. The test mimes were blindly loyal to her, would do anything—even die for her. The loyalty gene, or compliance gene, or whatever you want to call it—she labeled it 662RHC—worked.

  "And that frightened her. Especially when she looked around and saw how the other gene technologies she'd originated were being corrupted by the gloms. Her eyes were wide open now. The work she did, the genes she'd created, were having vast consequences beyond her lab. And the consequences of this new gene would be the most devastating. So she destroyed all her new research—including the 662RHC templates and all references to them.

  "And then she did the unthinkable: She went to court to challenge the gloms' misuse of some of her earlier innovations. The gloms didn't completely own the courts back then, so they sent hit squads after her. She faked her death but they found evidence that she'd perfected a loyalty gene. They didn't buy her death completely, so they've been looking for her ever since. And now they've found her."

  Mung paused for a breath.

  "That's why they took her to the Citadel. They'll probe her memory—she won't be able to stop them. And they'll have the loyalty gene by the end of the day."

  He bit back a sob and looked around.

  "And then the horror will begin: they'll splice it into every mime and every template, but they won't stop there. Next they'll see to it that every Flagge citizen carries it. And since they're soon to be the most powerful glom, it won't be long before they start splicing it into everybody. Imagine: Every being on earth, loyal to Flagge—to the death!"

  The Proteans were silent around him as the horrific scenario played out in Tristan's head. But something else about Okasan was nudging at his brain. She's old...a ground-breaking geneticist...who faked her death...

  Then Krek spoke and interrupted his train of thought.

  "Aw, that's just stories. People been talking about a loyalty gene for ages. Billions have been spent and no one's ever come up with one. Besides, Okasan may be a wonderful person and all, but I can't believe that kindly old wrinkle could come up with something that all these other brilliants can't."

  "You plasmids!" Mung said angrily. "Are you all that dense? Okasan isn't just any old woman! She's Teresa Goleman! She invented mDNA. Flagge has kidnapped the only woman any of you will ever be able to call 'mother.'"

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  "Imagine," Tristan said softly. "Teresa Goleman...still alive."

  "And you met her," Eel said.

  The two of them sat off to the side, stoking on concentrate as the members of Proteus bustled about the central chamber of their lair. Eel had returned to his Dohan Lee masque; his bandaged shoulder was hidden under a frayed jump.

  "Yes. Okasan and Teresa Goleman...one and the same. No wonder she's taken such an interest in mimes. She's our mother."

  "That's carrying it a bit too far, don't you think?" Eel said. "We're clones. We have no mother—or father, for that matter."

  "But she's more than just a spiritual mother," Tristan said. "Every one of our cells carries genetic material from her—the Goleman chromosome. I think that makes her our genetic mother as well. And if that's the case..."

  " Bloaty—then all mimes are brothers," Eel said. "Just like Krek's been saying."

  Tristan nodded as the wonder of it finally struck home. "Yes. We're all brothers, all members of the same family."

  Family…he had seen all those families on the old vids, and sometimes he watched people come together, people who loved each other…turning themselves into family.

  Just like this.

  This feeling of belonging was strange and new, but Tristan liked the idea...and embraced it.

  He looked at Eel. "Sort of changes everything, doesn't it."

  "That it does," Eel said softly, looking around him. "That it does."

  *

  It hadn’t taken Proteus long to decide to invade Flagge. Their fighting blood was already up when Mung interrupted Dr. Dee's dismantling of Tristan, and the word "mother"—coupled with the fact that the woman who filled that role needed their help—shifted the focus of their rage from Tristan to the glom that had developed the G-strain virus.

  A few mimes held back, unconvinced that this was a good idea. Eel was one of them.

  "Attacking the Citadel," he said, shaking his head as he watched the furious activity of Proteus girding for war. "I don’t know…it's crazy. The Citadel is so well guarded—the best-protected location in all of Flagge Quarter."

  "But look at it from their angle," Tristan said. "Proteus exists as a refuge for runaway mimes, as a focus from which sympathetic realfolk can agitate for mime rights. But if Flagge gets hold of the loyalty gene and splices it into its mimes, there'll be no more mime runaways, no new recruits for Proteus. And after Flagge starts splicing the gene into its realfolk, the idea of mime rights will die too.

  "But this is a suicide mission."

  "Maybe. Maybe not." Tristan finished his second concentrate packet and reached for a third. "But I can see Krek's point. This is a do-or-die mission for Proteus: rescue Okasan—I mean, Doctor Goleman—before Flagge extracts the 662RHC code from her, and do some damage to Flagge's Datacenter in the process, or Proteus's days are numbered. And any dreams that any of us ever had of Selfhood or freedom or even free will are gone."

  "But the Citadel is crawling with Security," Eel said. "Their best goons."

  "Doesn't matter how good they are if we attack from a direction they won't expect and won't be prepared for—from below."

  "But when the alarm sounds, reinforcements will be rushed in immediately."

  "That's why it's got to be a quick in-and-out operation. Surgical precision. Once we're inside we can use Okasan's tracer to find her. We'll free her, and get out."

  And hopefully Lani will be with her, Tristan thought...prayed.

  If not, he might have to break from the others and look for her.

  "So what do you say, Brother Eel? Going to come along?"

  Eel didn't respond. He sat next to Tristan, staring straight ahead, but didn't appear to be seeing anything. His mind seemed light years away.

  Finally he appeared to come to a decision. He blinked and straightened and looked at Tristan.

  "All right. But I'll need a peek at that universal key these fellows say they've got."

  "Flagge gave you that luxury apartment but not free roam?"

  "Almost free—free to wander the freezone and almost all of Flagge Quarter, but I'm blocked from the Citadel area. No reason for me ever to go there, I was told. And they were right. Until now." He stood and looked around. "Where's Krek?"

  Tristan had been keeping an eye on the Proteus leader since the decision to attack. "Over there."

  Eel nodded and started in that direction, but after a few steps, stopped and turned back. He fished something out of his pocket and extended his hand to Tristan.

  "Here. I want you to have this."

  Tristan took the object: a template. He looked up at Eel.

  "Who's this?"

  "My lizard 'plate—the one I wore when I caught you on the tube platform. I call it 'dragon mode.' You can use it on the raid. It's a superb fighting masque."

  "But what about you?"

  "I've got another. I want you to have this one. You many need it. But be careful. Very ferocious. It can be hard to control first time you use it."

  Tristan stared at the little disk. A significant gift, this. Eel was giving him one of his treasured gladiator templates. Tristan was touched.

  "Thank you. I'll remember that. And I'll use it well."

  Tristan watched him walk away and speak to Krek, saw Krek call over another mime and send Eel off with him.

  And then Krek was alone.

  Time for Tristan to make his pitch. Taking a deep breath, he walked over to where Krek was charging the pulsers.

  "I'm coming with you."

  Krek looked up and stared at him a moment. "I decide who's coming, and you're not."

  He'd been afraid of this. But he had to find a way to convince Krek. Tristan had to be in the raiding party. He might be Lani's only chance.

  "You need me. I'm the only one of us who's been in the Citadel. I—"

  "'Us'? Since when are you one of 'us'?"

  "Since I became a runaway."

  "No. Not good enough. You lied before, and that lie cost countless mime brothers their lives. You've got some muting nerve asking us to risk our lives by taking you along."

  "You must take him." It was Mung, waddling up and pointing a finger at Tristan. "He knows the layout of the Citadel's lower levels. He's done VR explorations of their Datacenter. Okasan will not give up the 662RHC sequence voluntarily, so Flagge will have to scour her brain for it. That's why they brought her to the Citadel. They'll probe her memory in their Datacenter. And Tristan has been there."

  "We don't care where he's been." A new voice now—Callin's. "We don't want a traitor—"

  "Mute!"

  Without warning—he surprised himself with the move—Tristan gave Callin a violent two-handed shove. The mime's eyes were wide with shock as he staggered back a couple of steps, then they narrowed with fighting rage. Tristan didn't care. He was fed up with being pushed around. He'd taken all the abuse—verbal and physical—he could stand.

  This was where it stopped.

  As Callin started toward him, Tristan grabbed the pulser Krek had just charged and pointed it at Callin's chest.

  "Don't even think about it."

  Callin stopped. "I knew it! I knew you were—"

  "Call me 'traitor' once more and I'll jelly your muting head!" Tristan raised his voice. He wanted all the Proteans to hear this. "I am not a traitor. You can call me a fool, a liar, a dupe, a double-trisomy idiot, but I am not a traitor. Yes, I carried the G-strain virus back to Kaze, but I didn't know what I was carrying. Yes, I accept responsibility for what I did—and believe me, I will be haunted the rest of my days by the sights and sounds of my fellow Kaze mines suffering the agonies of cellular dissolution—but I will kill the next mime who even hints that I did it intentionally. Is that clear?"

  They'd gathered around him now. He could see their hands opening and closing into fists. They couldn't wait to get at him.

  "Pulser or no pulser," Callin said, glaring at him, "you don't really think you're getting out of here alive, do you?"

  "Maybe I don't much muting care," Tristan said, lowering his voice. "I don't seem to have much to lose. My old glom has a price on my head, I'm sure. My fellow mimes—or should I say, brother mimes—call me a traitor. The one woman in all the world I can call 'Mother' has been arrested and is being held prisoner."

  Along with the woman I love, he silently added.

  "Then what's all this about, Tristan?" Mung said.

  "Yeah, mime," Krek said, pointing to the weapon in Tristan's hands. "What's this going to get you?"

  "Your attention. Listen to me. You all blame me for the mime slaughter, but ask yourself, Who do I blame? I blame the people who invented the G-strain and duped me into bringing it back home: The same people who've taken our 'Mother'"—and Lani—"captive."

  Tristan heard his voice began to shake as the rage built within him.

  "No one in this room—no one—wants to hurt Flagge Glom more than I do. I would raze the Citadel, the whole muting Flagge Quarter, if I could. So here I am, this fellow mime with a bigger grudge against Flagge than any of you, a mime agent trained in subterfuge, skilled in espionage, and the only one of you who's ever been inside the Citadel, and you won't use me!"