"Morning, Professor!" I declare cheerfully as I stroll into the older man's office, grinning like an idiot.

"Mister Stoppable, you're not due to be here for another hour. and where is Miss Possible?" asks the salt and pepper academic, taking of his glasses and locking me with a 'get out' look.

"I'll play that game when it's time, Hurlbetter, but I'm intrigued as to what you think about this; I may be completely insane, which is the vibe I get from you every time I come to see you, but many of the students here aren't human and when one of them discovered this, she went into shock. Another one went on a rampage attacking her philandering paraplegic boyfriend and beating him into a daze when she found out about his chocolate passion. I'd like to know what that indicates."

"Well, Mister Stoppable, I'd have to know the circumstances of the discoveries and the emotional states of both of these 'synthetics' as you call them before making a judgement," he replies, taking out that tape recorder of his once again.

Its at that moment that I realise what's bothering me about that tape recorder; what's been bothering me about it these last few days. The wheels don't turn when it's turned on.

I reach for the thing, picking it up. Hurlbetter looks somewhat put out by this behaviour.

"Mister Stoppable, what are you doing?"

"Well, Doc, here's the thing. You've been pulling this thing out and making sure its within easy reach each time I've come to see you. The trouble is, this isn't a tape recorder," I say as I grab onto the angled portion of the plastic moulding, pulling it down and out. The whole thing snaps open, forming the body of a heavy neural disruptor.

"Now, thinking about this, Doc, if you're a human, you'll be unconscious for a while and crap yourself. If you're a synthetic, you're about to explode across the room. Now, I want to know what's going on before I find out."

"No dice, young man." These are his last words. He detonates like an overstuffed water balloon as I fire the weapon at him.

No wonder Brockmeir's not been outed.

I wander out onto the campus, wondering what the legal status of a synthetic is in this world. If they're normal citizens, I've just committed murder. The thing here is that I'm sure that Hurlbetter knew what he was. It's easy to have sympathy for Monique; she didn't know. Brockmeir and Hurlbetter knew and spent time trying to convince me that I'm mad.

"Ron, where are you going?" asked Kim coming towards me, "we're due to see the Professor in a little while."

"Not unless you want me to commit a séance," I reply flatly. I hold up the tape recorder pistol for her to see, "Neural Disruptor."

"You murdered him?"

"I'd call it clone-slaughter at most. These weapons are non-lethal to humans. Synthetics explode violently for reasons we never really worked out," her face is a mask of horror, "not that these weapons even exist in this world according to your internet. Funny that."

"You shot him with that thing?"

"Yup, he exploded like a good little synthetic."

"How am I supposed to know that he wasn't human and that's just a normal gun?"

"Well, one, he was full of green stuff. Go look for yourself. If that isn't enough, I'll shoot myself in the head with it, but only in the comfort of our bathroom."

"Huh?"

"They cause you to soil yourself," I finish flatly.

She's nearly panicking so I show her up to the office and show her the mess that her teacher has become. I've destroyed enough synthetics over the years that the sight doesn't bother me any more but the spray of green slime and the shocked, shrivelled face of the older man is a shaking thing to see if you look upon it too hard. I try to be gentle, to do everything that my mother raised me to do and I'm trying to obey all the impulses that my body is giving me. Trying to reconcile two different sets of training that tell you two completely different things is never easy, especially when the one you know won't actually help you is the one that's deeper ingrained.

She tries to bury her head in my shoulder but keeps away because I've done something so horrible. We must be an odd sight to see, me with my shoulders slumped, her with her head down, facing me but not looking at me and Hurlbetter slumped in his chair, evacuated backwards with his materials spread over the surrounding area.

"He was a syntho-clone?" she asks eventually.

"We usually call them Synthetics. He was a basic copy with no internal skeleton. I'm not sure if there ever was a real Hurlbetter; he seems like a fairly generic entity."

"You mean that there probably never was a Professor Hurlbetter?"

"Off hand, I'd say that this was a reproduction of a real human with a modified personality. It's likely there was a real," I pause, looking at the desk, "Rodney Hurlbetter but you've likely never met him," I said placidly.

"And Monique's not real?"

"No, Monique just isn't original. Her personality is still as real as yours or mine and she's the one that you made friends with, not the human she's a copy of. Right now, she needs your friendship, your love. I just hope you're willing to be strong enough to put your fear aside for her sake."

"You're the one who condemned her for being a synthetic!"

"Actually, I condemned Belinda for knowing that she was and pretending. Monique simply didn't know. She needs you now. Go to her. She's in Felix's hospital room. I know that you can put aside the feeling of betrayal because you were both betrayed by the same thing and she really needs you right now."

I let her go, watching her back as she retreats across the quad. I'm not entirely sure why I feel sorry for the synthetics here but some of them are so innocent, Monique especially. Her disgust when she found out that she was not human was one of the hardest things I've ever had to watch and that's saying something.

I contemplate my next move for a few moments, then sense movement behind me. I half turn as the first bullet passes through my arm. Collapsing slightly, I sag to my knee as I keep twisting to see my attacker. Thousands of hours of training is screaming for me to react but somehow I feel like I deserve this. A tall brunette's dark eyes flare with each additional muzzle flash from the small pistol in her hand. I feel more of the nine millimetre projectiles cutting into my flesh.

She's a synthetic, so why is she missing? She's managed to find a whole collection of muscle and one organ that isn't really essential. I should have a collapsed lung and probably a perforated spleen. I'm bleeding internally but I'm not dying and she's running out of bullets.

"You've ruined my life, Stoppable!" she cries through incoherent tears.

"Make me one promise, Belinda…make sure that no-one notices when you swap me back to whatever Kim actually knows and loves…I don't want her knowing that I'm dead."

"Selflessness now?!" she screams, "Where was that selflessness when I needed it? You knew that he was cheating on me but you didn't say anything because I didn't matter! I'm just a synthetic!"

"You were lying to me and to Kim. You were watching us."

"How do you know that?"

"I listened! Same way I knew that Monique and Felix were together. You were furtive the whole time you were with us," I grit my teeth, each breath painful.

She steadies the pistol, sagging into a movie standard unsure female gunman pose, her shoulders pulled in and her elbows at her side. The Beretta starts to shake in her hands.

"You didn't know why you were doing it did you?" I say at last through the blur of pain.

"No!" she shakes violently with sobs, "why am I doing things like this? Why am I so angry?"

"You're false personality is conflicting with your core programming. You're going to suffer a collapse in a few moments. I'm sorry."

"What?"

A final hollow crack shakes through the air and a final bullet passes through my chest. This one clipped the edge of my right ventricle and collapsed my lung. As the world goes white, I feel a tiny tear of pity cut down the sweat of my face and watch her collapse into a pile by my feet.

Awareness is a strange thing. You'd expect death to sound like silence or like the sound of heaven, whatever that is. As it stands, it sounds like white noise.

Dying sounds like white noise.

Noise.

Silence.

Author's Notes: I honestly can't remember a passage that I enjoyed writing as much as this last section. Don't know if you guys agree but I think it's a hell of a moment.