She was inside. Her twin. Torn from her family and perverted into something warped and mentally misshapen.

River stared at the door a moment longer, then slowly took off one of the belts crossed over her chest. She laid it on the ground, leaning her rifle against the wall. No sense in asking for trouble, she told herself, nor handing Mara weapons that might be turned against her. She’d keep one gun, though. Just in case.

The lock on the door was another keypad, and for a second she considered just shooting it, but then the code was in her mind, placed there with a delicacy she had to admire. Touching the numbers, the door slid open and she stepped inside.

The room was just four bare grey walls, but the cot that served as a bed was full of toys, all sitting facing her expectantly. As was the young woman in the absolute centre of the floor.

“I've been waiting,” Mara Tam said. “I knew you’d come.”

“It was inevitable.”

“Yes.”

River took a moment to study her genetic sister and realised she’d been right. A mirror image but distorted, twisted beyond normal reality. Mara may have been technically a year or so younger, but physically they were twins. Her hair was longer, reaching almost to the small of her back in lank tendrils, and she didn’t have the overlay of delicate muscles River had. But it was the eyes, the window to the soul as one Earth-that-was philosopher had once put it … they were the immediate giveaway.

Mara’s eyes were insane. The pupils were almost the entire size of the iris, black and unforgiving, radiating fury. And they made the mental contact even stronger as the dark twin attacked her mind.

Even in her most terrible moments, when she took out the Maidenhead on Beaumonde, or sliced a room full of Reavers into cat food, River had never felt rage like this. It battered at her defences, trying to find a crack, to force through and take her down with it. It scared her, but the adrenaline rush that pulsed through her body allowed her to push back on the mental