Wilt

‘Joe, this isn't helping. What are we going to do?’

Kim watched her husband struggle to suppress his anger and focus.

He scrubbed at his face. ‘I don't know, this sort of thing doesn't happen where I work.’ He turned in his seat to face their passengers. ‘Have any of you got a plan?’

Again, that huddle of heads and again, it was Alain who spoke.

‘We have limited options. We-’

‘We have options?’ interrupted Joe, who hadn't been able to think of any.

Kim put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Shh. Give him a chance. Go on Alain.’

‘We can try to find Xavier and - how can I put this delicately? - neutralise him. Whilst we believe he has some additional programming, which gives him an advantage, there are seven of us. We would have to close down some of our shared hive intellect, in case he's monitoring that and plan on a separate level. It's a pity we haven't learned to write yet, we could have worked together offline like that.’

‘Do that. The turning off the shared hive thing. Now. Just in case,’ said Joe.

The young people touched heads again and when they separated, each seemed to have wilted somehow.

‘This feels very strange,’ said Brontë. ‘I feel isolated with only my own thoughts racing in my head all the time. How do you bear it?’ she asked Joe.

Joe's look of confusion would have been comical if the situation had not been so dire, Kim reflected.

‘Thoughts? Racing? All the time? Well I don't have that, not normally-’

‘Anyway,’ said Kim, ‘moving on. Diagrams might work. You don't need to be able to write to make lines and arrows and things. I've got paper and a pen in here somewhere.’ She rummaged in her bag while Alain went on.

‘Some of us could try to negotiate with them,’ he gestured in the direction of the complex. ‘Explain what we think is going on with Xavier and whoever he is working for. That must be the bigger threat. But not all of us. If they think there are more of us, not in their power, we could imply we could still cause them some trouble, if they harmed our negotiators.’

‘I think I prefer Plan A, to be honest. One thing at a time.’ Joe wasn't proud of the fact that he was more worried about what Xavier might do to him and Kim, than he was about what the management of the project might do to the clones, but there it was.