Sorry for the late update, I haven't had any internet for a while - which has been really nice! But here's a short yet revealing chapter.
Let me know what you think!
Kira's barely touched PB&J sat on the plate, as she picked around the crust, rolling the crumbs into little balls before neatly placing them back on the plate's surface.
"No you're not. What's wrong, Kira?" The teen probed further, sitting up to face the little one. Kira's barely touched PB&J sat on the plate, as she picked around the crust, rolling the crumbs into little balls before neatly placing them back on the plate's surface.
"No you're not. What's wrong, Kira?" The teen probed further, sitting up to face the little one.
"You okay, Monkey?" Kira was too quiet as she curled into the side of Em, nodding her head.
After a few moments of hesitation, Kira looked up at the older girl, "I don't want to go to school tomorrow."
"Oh, monkey, was it because of what I said the other day? Don't listen to me – school at your age is really fun!"
"No, I like school."
"Oh, okay. Then what's the problem… is that boy still being nasty to you?"
Kira nodded, "His friends were laughing at me today, too."
Emma shook her head angrily, pulling the girl off her lap and setting her down beside her, "Don't listen to them, Kira. Okay? You know what?"
"What?" Kira questioned, quietly.
"Well most people would probably tell you to ignore him. Just go about the rest of the day pretending he doesn't exist. Pretend that what he says doesn't bother - even if it really does. Hopefully, he'll get bored and leave you alone if you 'rise above his behaviour'." Emma put on a breathy patronising voice, imitating the teachers who tried to give her the exact same lecture. She took a juice box out of the fridge, slamming the door shut as she made her way back over to the girl, handing over the drink.
"Does it work for you?" Kira asked.
"Well, most of the time it should work, but, I guess... not always." Em thinks back to her recent encounters with Vic, hoping that he will leave her alone for good.
Sitting back down, Emma pulled Kira back on her lap, dragging the blanket over them.
"What if he still laughs at me?"
"Well, I probably shouldn't tell you this yet. But it is a family secret,"
Kira's wonderful orbs began to glow as she sat up, listening intently to the older girl.
"You know what us Manning girls do if anyone tries to cross us, yeah?" Emma smirked down at the little girl and made a fist. "Sock 'em 'til they take it back."
Scrunching up her face into a scowl, Kira curled her little fist into a ball and swung her arm into a punch in the air.
Emma smiled, "That's it. Just like that, Monkey. They won't mess with you again."
Em switched on the TV and wrapped her arm around the little girl. "If they do, you just send them to me and I'll sort them out." Both girls erupted into a fit of giggles.
"Just sock 'em 'til they take it back..." Kira quietly repeated her aunt's words.
Em smiled, until she was reminded of her bully. Sarah's bully. Vic the Dick. Why was he so convinced Sarah was dead?
She knew there was something going on and Felix was the only one she could get it out of.
Felix looked around in disbelief at the set up in his apartment. Sat around his coffee table were three clones. His sister had bloody clones! Was he still high from this morning?
Sauntering over to Sarah, he handed her a glass of Bourbon as his phone began to ring. Glancing away from the identicals, Em's smiling face lit up his screen. "Shit."
Putting on a cheery voice, he answered, "Hey, Em! I meant to call you earlier, we were worried about you when you left yesterday. Was S mad?"
"Cut the bullshit, Fe and tell me what the bloody hell's going on." Emma's voice was hushed but sharp.
"Uh, what do you mean?"
"Vic found me after school. He said that Sarah threw herself in front of a train, last week. What the hell, Fe?"
Felix mouthed "shit" at Sarah who gave him a confused look, standing up from her place on the couch to follow him into the kitchen area.
"Fe? Felix! Answer me, what've you done?!" Em voice crackled through the phone.
"Yeah, err? What? Em, why are you whispering?"
"Kira's asleep on top of me."
"Oh. It's nothing, Em, don't worry about it."
"No it's bloody not! Tell me what happened, Felix!"
"Uh, he'd probably drank himself to oblivion. What else did he say?"
"He said he saw her body in a morgue…"
"He was off his head, Em. Don't listen to him."
"Oh this is ridiculous, you need to tell me what's bloody going on. I'm coming over."
"No! No, don't come over, Emma. This is none of your concern. Stay with Kira and just mind your own bloody business." His tone was icy.
After a few moments of silence, Emma spoke very quietly, her voice trembling with anger, "Okay. Fe, if you say so."
Felix hung up and took a swig of his drink, before turning to Sarah with a guilty look. "Shit. I'm an awful brother but Vic was outside her school, told her you had topped yourself and she was freaking out."
"Shite. Bloody Vic..." Sarah shook her head, frustrated.
Felix exhaled loudly, bringing them both back to the reality and picked up the glasses of wine he had filled for Alison and Cosima.
They thanked him and Cosima noticed his pale face, "Don't worry, you get used to it."
"To clones? Right." Sarah scoffed.
"Was that you're sister?" Alison asked.
"Yeah."
"How old is she?" Alison scoffed and sipped at her wine, holding up a photo frame of the three siblings sat together by the lake.
"Why does it matter?" Sarah glared at the soccer bitch.
"I think Alison's just wondering how your sister is involved in all of this." Cosima tried to ease the tension.
It was Felix's turn to get annoyed now, "What? No, she's not involved in this. Right, Sarah?" He turned to Sarah for help but she seemed just as irritated at the idea of her sister being tied into this whole thing too.
"Cosima, you can't really believe that she has a biological sister!" Alison raised her voice and gestured to Sarah. "We're clones! It's impossible, right?"
"That is true. It's highly doubtful that we would have biological siblings. She does look pretty similar to us, though. I mean, maybe if she was a twin?"
Sarah shook her head, "She's seventeen."
"Okay, great, then it's settled. Sarah is the only clone in the family." Felix mumbled into his glass, drunk on the chaos of this whole situation.
"Well, if she is in fact related to Sarah, then she shares some of our genetic material, right? So, she would have to be part of an experiment too because our genetic material is synthetic."
"Bloody hell. Can we talk about the dead clones instead, this is hurting my brain." Felix walked over to the kitchen as Sarah shook her head in disbelief.
"But she can't be. That would be impossible." Alison mumbled, waving her hand in the air as if to dissipate the idea with her fingertips.
"Just wait till you meet her. To think that I thought she could have been Sarah's clone for all those years." Felix laughed to himself.
"They're not going to meet her, Felix. Em stays out of this. End of."
The stern tone of the Brit was enough to silence the room, although the buzzing of unvoiced questions rang across the room.
Sarah turned to Alison, "You said someone was hunting us. Why? How many of us?"
Alison looked towards the scientist and gulped at her drink.
Cosima adjusted her glasses and leant forward, using her hands as if she were drawing a picture to illustrate her words, "Six months ago, Katja-."
"Katja Obinger? The German?" Sarah remembered from the passports.
"Right. Katja contacted Beth with this crazy story about her genetic identicals being hunted in Europe."
"Brilliant." Sarah sighed and took a sip of her drink.
"Yeah." Cosima looked sheepish but carried on, "So, Beth used facial recognition software to find driver's licenses in North America. Two matches."
"Yours and Alison's."
"Yeah but who is the original? Who's created us?"
"Who's killing us?" Alison chimed in rhetorically, her index finger and thumb cradling the bridge of her nose.
"So what happened to the German?" Sarah asked, although she was pretty sure she already knew the answer.
A gloomy, knowing expression painted the scientist's countenance and Sarah sighed, her eyes closed, "Jesus Christ."
Cosima looked back at Sarah, "We need to know who's killing us but we lost our cop, so…however you got into her shoes, we really need you to stay there."
"Stay a cop to help you?"
"To help us. Help us find out who's killing us." Alison voice was serious.
"How?!" Sarah turned to Alison, "I'm not a cop! Beth's partner's going to figure that out. Being Beth's what got me into this mess in the first place."
"Well you should have thought about that before you stole Beth's life!"
"Alison!" Cosima warned. "Look, Sarah. We are your biological imperative now."
"You can't run away from this now. For the sake of your family and ours." Alison was the most reasonable at this moment than she had been all night.
After a few moments of pleading stares, Sarah knew the women were right. This is really happening and she had to face up to something for once in her life. "Okay, fine. Alright. I'll be Beth."
Cosima smiled gently, "Can I have the briefcase, please?" She asked after a few moments.
"Why do you need it?"
Cosima shrugged and pointed at it, "The answers are in the briefcase."
Sarah sighs, "All right," She says, grabbing the briefcase, "Just answer me one thing."
"Anything. Yes." Cosima answered eagerly, leaning forward.
"If we're genetically identical, do you get that little patch of dry skin between your eyebrows?" Sarah smirks as Cosima lets out a little giggle.
"That's good. Try to keep your sense of humour; Beth couldn't." She sighed.
Em looked across from the kitchen over to where Kira was sleeping on the couch. She'd passed out a few minutes into the movie, which was when Emma decided to call Felix.
The teen was restless, ready to run - a trait which seemed common in her genes. It wasn't helping that everyone around her was acting so suspicious. She knew Felix was up to something with Sarah, and there's no way she'd get it out of her sister. But after her phone call to Felix she was now certain they were hiding something from her and she wished she didn't care so much about it.
She needed to go. She needed to pull a Manning classic and leave town for a few days maybe even weeks. But she was stuck. She was always stuck. She was always tethered to this house because her sister was always the one to run. She was stuck looking after the kid. Not that she didn't love Kira and love looking after her but she needed freedom and she didn't need to be looking after someone else's child.
Em was tired off S going off on her every second of the day. She just needed to get out. Get away and escape from everything for a while. And she knew just the place to go.
Gently and very carefully, so as to not wake the sleeping girl, Em lifted Kira from the couch, and climbed the stairs the girl's room.
Em quietly closed the door and headed to her room, grabbing a book and resting her head back onto the pillow. A few chapters in, Em heard the front door close and Siobhan's footsteps up the stairs. The older woman, hesitated outside the teen's room before the light in the hallway flickered and swallowed up the shadows.
Something had been up ever since Sarah came back. Felix and Sarah were onto something and it was only confirmed by the earlier phone call.
Once S was in her room, Em tiptoed across the floorboards and carefully opened the door, attempting to avoid any hinges from squeaking.
The hallway was dark and all the lights were off, only the soft, warm glow from Kira's night light gave illumination to the sleeping house. The place was silent and that meant Mrs S was asleep, hopefully.
Emma closed the door and crept over to her window, slowly opening it and grabbed her back as she swung over the window sill and steadied herself on the sloping roof.
She had stuffed a twig in place so she could creep back in through her window when she got back and with that, she tossed her bag into a bush down below and followed after it.
"Shit!" She hissed as she landed awkwardly but nevertheless started running towards her brother's loft.
Smiling she climbed up the stairs two at a time, congratulating herself for getting there in less than ten minutes.
With her hand resting against the handle on the door, she tried to steady her breathing and quieten the panting and that's when she heard low murmurs from inside. Her siblings had company. Maybe something to do with all their secrecy?
Tugging at the door, she felt a flicker of relief when it opened, fulfilling her motive to catch them by surprise, however, when she looked into the room she hadn't realised that she would, in fact, be the one in shock.
There were three of them.
Three Sarah's. They were different but they were Sarah. Em blinked a few times, thinking back to earlier on in the day when she might have taken something, a hallucinogen maybe? Nope, no Jax today.
"H-holy shit." She finally managed to croak out.
Both women looked like a deer caught in headlights but stared back at her with no wariness, almost familiarity.
Although they were Sarahs. They couldn't look more different from one another despite their impeccably identical features. One Sarah sported a hippie look. A long crushed raspberry skirt fell from her waist to the tops of her dark boots. Her unique look was finished off with glasses and dreadlocks tied up into a heavy bun.
The other Sarah was a suburban mum, wearing a pink and white argyle sweater and blue jeans, sat like she had a stick up her arse. "Oh my goodness!" She gasped upon looking at Emma.
Next, she turned to look at Sarah, and then back at the women to make sure her eyes weren't playing tricks on her.
"Shit." Sarah's voice wasn't as sure of itself as it usually sounded. She seemed just as shocked as her sister.
Em opened her mouth to ask what the bloody hell was going on, but no sound came out. Instead, a deep, churning feeling ripped through the pit of her stomach and travelled like pin pricks up through her throat. She ran out of the loft and back down the stairs towards the door leading outside, but not soon enough, as a pile of vomit hit the already filthy floor.