She gaped at me, and the head that was turning into a horror. She looked down at her Band at my glare, swiped down for the read on his Band, and got the table. “Table 4-C, party of six, five are here!”

I looked at the layout of the place, and Skated away faster than the alarm was shouted. People were already trying to upload the news and stuff, chatchatchatchat, but the Boole was locked down and nothing could be sent out, dropping into a void of non-transferral. In addition, I noted My Queen was faking an active signal from the dead dop’s Band, so if anyone was looking, they wouldn’t see it disappear if something happened. Tracker apps were very common, after all, and dops alerted one another if they were found out, and could literally disappear in no time at all, adopting a fake face and then heading for a new victim identified previously for just such situations.

I Skated away casually, Chalice stowed inside my arm but ready. Architecture had cut off her previous scans, but now that she knew the direction, she could concentrate on them.

Four people at a round table, two men, two women, looking like couples from various walks of life, just here to meet up and chat. Three were not-human, and one had a minor Ward on that was blocking any result, but tripping her Detect Psi by its existence.

I looked past them as I glided up, feeling the surface scan of ESP coming out and past me, very subtly, wondering what I was focused on, them reading each other’s minds and with proper paranoia wondering what had happened down there in the direction their friend had visited. They didn’t look like it, but they were all ready to bolt and shift instantly.

Prep and strike.

Chalice came out with a prepared action. I dumped a Sun Strike that blew banefire, Nimbus, and Corona down into the Warded man’s torso... oh, yeah, he wasn’t human, and that Amulet was just there to make sure a Psi couldn’t tell.

Dead. Cleave. Prepared action to focus Nimbus. Strike the woman across from him. Double Sun Strike, head off her shoulders, the shock ravaging down into her torso.

Move action, refocus Nimbus. Slide onto the table, scattering drinks. The second man was starting to lean away, chest elongating and neck starting to twist unnaturally as I carved down into him and turned his chest into puree with the third Sun Strike.

Grim pulsed, and my Nimbus reformed as the one he kept in reserve for me was put into play, and my Cleave ripped down into the last woman’s neck as she started to writhe and try to move. The fourth Sun Strike sent her convulsing in death throes, jolting from her chair, her face already half-changed into someone else’s, and then sloughing off as her mutated cells relaxed to their basic, nigh-faceless form.

I waved my Band over all their arms, ID’s dumped down into mine, and My Queen took hold of them. “There’s a sixth one coming. Where?” I asked calmly, while the people around were all frozen with shock at a bladebelle waving a golden mindblade around and slaughtering four people, just like that!

“Just outside.” My Queen was zinging through their contact files for talk about the reservation there. “She’s texting.”

Dops had issues with cybering, as they couldn’t morph implants, and the implants wouldn’t adjust easily to changed body states. So, texting was a known thing they did.

She’d probably pscanned some alarm from the customers coming out and was texting to see if everything was okay.

I skated very quickly towards the main door, watching the window. There she was, about thirty yards from the door, stopping against the railing... and her blonde hair was already starting to turn brown, her green and brown ensemble heading towards black as I came out the doors, looking left and then turning right as her head snapped to watch me glide and turn away while still moving in her direction... and then Chalice snapped on, Flared, and I detached the blade like a meter-long throwing light-knife to impale the dop right through the chest. The Sun Strike released, her abdomen flared with light as the nice blouse turning into a tattered t-shirt began to revert, and she convulsed and died as people screamed around me.

“Well, I’m done eating,” I mused to no one in particular. I glided over to the dead dop, which was attracting a lot of attention and photos, all of which couldn’t be uploaded right now because they might alarm more dop connections. The Dop Squad had to work very quick, or they would simply lose their potential targets... and they couldn’t even know if they were a dop without getting in close or having a Psi to verify it, which they most definitely would have along for a job like this.

“How did you know they were a dop.” My Queen was as monotonous as always.

“My Sword Focus has a function where it detects what it is Bane to. It happens to be both Psi-bane and Human Bane, and he didn’t detect as Human.”

But now I’d blooded her, and Chalice could add Shapechanger to that list, which could get pretty interesting come Renewal when it finalized. I’d already proc’d Vermin to the list, although the spideroids hadn’t really been important.

I hadn’t expected such excitement coming up here to eat too many burgers. But Nulls kind of mess up the plans of greater powers that way, butting in where they aren’t visible.

A couple Mall Cops ran up, their guns out and pointed at me, swearing as the crowd cleared and the grey-white featureless corpse of the dop became visible. “Holy shit!” one of them called out as they got closer, attention shifting from me standing over it, to what I was standing over. Still didn’t put their guns away. “What the hell is that?”

I eyed them as they moved closer. “A doppelganger, of course.” I almost sniffed. “You do know Midmall Security carries the Grolhom Disruptor II-A, not a Penson Industries Mark 49 Laser, right?”

They both blinked at me, and I slid past them. Slash, Flare, Cleave, Flare, Double Sun Strike, shearing through the fake body armor and not-flesh below, detonating the Sun Strikes and giving them a really bad day.

The crowd screamed and retreated as I shook my head, Chalice back out and scanning, and I overlaid what she was telling me with those around me.

“The fuck!” I slashed back without looking. The golden blade detached, blazing with energy, spun over an office worker’s shoulder, and buried itself in the throat of a florid, portly fellow behind him looking on in interest, Flaring and taking him down as it tore out important neural connections. The clerk gawked at the singed hairs on his cheap suitcoat, but his shoulder was fine. “What is this, a dop convention?”

-You are definitely exciting to be around,- Chalice /mused, still looking. I was 100% sure that somewhere among the people walking away was at least one more dop, because that would only be fair. They’d probably catch them on camera on review, tracking a facechanger, but keeping track of them would be somewhat harder. Overlay of her Detect and my vision matched up for the immediate area.

I really needed to up her range...

“Yeah, not refuting that.” Real Midmall Security was on the way, with their variable stun to brainmelt disruptors in hand, pointing first at me, and then the twitching corpses turning into alien grey-white creatures. “Nice catch for your first day!”

-I die to please,- Chalice /sniffed proudly. -Warped bastards deserve it all.-

“Track that Naming Karma. Slow but sure,” I replied to her, sounding like I was talking to myself, then smiled for the Mallcops. “Hi there, Sama Rantha executing a standard Execute on Sight termination for doppelgangers.” My Band winked up with my identification, as if anyone who had a lick of fashion sense would dare to wear Termite merch. It went out of style thousands of years ago, and it had never come back.

I think. People are strange.

-----------

Video backing me up, I was actually released within minutes, while a total lockdown on uploads concerning this froze the area. It wouldn’t last more than twenty minutes before someone dying to be the first told someone else, the computers crunched it, algorithms looking for hot news began sending it to people via alternate channels, and overwhelmed the firewalls trying to limit the news.

Dops were quite smart and naturally looked for any and all news concerning their own kind. More than a few would be dropping out of existence, and only the mysterious disappearances of some people for no reason would give any indication of why. Others... the Dop Squad and their psions would be watching and marking some, expediently shooting others, and generally interesting times would be resulting.

Would they be coming after me? At ten thousand credits a pop and more merits for opening up a contact ring for the Dop Squad, I certainly hoped so. Juris didn’t much like dops...

Still, I had made another nice bonus, and had definitely annoyed a whole bunch of dops. We’d see if they’d want revenge, and being properly paranoid that I was, I’d go looking for people who chose to make trouble for me.

Now, just had to find a tat parlor, heya Boole Maps, buy some basic psi-active Ink, and I could make back what I spent eating today.

-----------

I met her in a reservation room in the back of the Middle Ground, shut off from the crowd and people disturbing us, but close enough for her to scream. Her dark eyes had definite respect in them as she sat down across from me, and I opened up the case of Inks. The manager of the parlor had made a nice profit passing them on, since he wasn’t going to work on me, and I’d let him take a close look at my Brand... whereupon he declared he didn’t want to mess with it, as it gave him the heebie-jeebies. Had good sense, he did.

“That was very impressive, what you did today.” Her name was Trindi, she came from a nice Midspire family, not rich, but at least living safe and secure. Her future prospects weren’t that great, as connections were everything on the road to greatness, and she didn’t have the ruthlessness to tear down those above her to get ahead. Ergo, into the service industries to make some extra money as she finished her state-mandated education and tried to compete with everyone else having the same training, meaning going into and likely staying in entry-level drone work for some corp for the rest of her life.

“Nah. Just part of the job.” I brushed it off. “Got ‘em by surprise. The fuckers are tough, elusive, and love to run in normal circumstances. A straight-up fight would have been even more interesting, and probably killed a few of the patrons.”

“But you pulled off a Quadruple Sun Strike! Everybody is talking about it!”

I tilted my head. “Well, like I said, surprise. Setting up one of those things is really difficult. Ya can’t pull one out in a duel without some unwitting help from the other party.” My Claw flicked up, and I dipped it in the Ink. “I’ll put it on your wrist, for starters, but it’s psi-active, so you’ll be able to move it around.”

“Oh! Is this how you Open someone?” She held out her arm, and I put it on the table between us as she stared at the black coating the gold over my fingers.

“Yes and no. Part of the process.” The tips of my fingers bit into her skin, cells began to get stained, and I danced my Vajra over her skin as she tensed at the prickles and tried to relax.

“I was kind of expecting finger-waving over my head or something. Why do I need a Tat?”

“Nulls like us don’t respond well to psychic surgery, like you are expecting. That’s the equivalent of trying to carve into the center of a hard rock while keeping the rock intact. Guess what usually happens?”

She swallowed. “The, uh, rock breaks?” she ventured hesitantly.

“Exactly like you’d expect of a psion trying to Open a non-psi.” I was working more by touch than anything, letting my Vajra do the sensing for the job. Scribing a basic Mark wasn’t a huge thing. “Buuuut, if you handle it right, some very delicate carving on that very hard rock can do what trying to ram a hammer into the core of it can’t do.

“Psions and that ilk are what they are because they have flexible souls. Doing psychic surgery on them is easy, because their minds and souls just wrap around the intrusion.

“Nulls like us, not so much. Hard souls resist that shit, or they break. We can’t use psi, anyways, so trying to Open us as a Psion is stooopid. Work with the material, use the method for the material.”

“So... could you open a psi-positive?” she asked, since I didn’t seem to be distracted by her chatter. She watched the black rune symbol, which not at all coincidentally matched one around my waist, taking form with marvelous speed as I basically continuously tapped her forearm with the sharper-than-needles points of my Claw.

“Not with psychic surgery. This method would work on them, too, ‘cause they have more options than us, but they generally get a bit antsy about someone putting a telepathic access point into their heads.”

“Wait, what?” she gasped, and would have withdrawn her arm if I hadn’t clamped down and kept working.