Ball stands up and studies the mirror before him, his uniform is slightly ruffled. His holster for hand staser is empty, no surprise there. His watch has been taken off. They have removed his contact lenses so that his eyes stare whiteness back at him. Perhaps to push a point- they know who he actually is.

The feeling of being alone sweeps over him. Ball blocks it out of his mind, no point in being worn down. If they are to kill him then it will be bad but he has always appreciated how much life (extended) he has enjoyed. The council will miss his rational, steady, input. It will go down the tubes no doubt. This amuses him and brings a wry smile to his face.

"Good evening Mr. Ball."

The voice returns. He sits back down on his bed, lying down and pretending to ignore it.

"Or should I say good morning?"

Whoever it is takes a great deal of pleasure in taunting, teasing. It is someone who has a sadistic streak, tempered with patience.

"Maybe good afternoon?" A loud distorted cackle breaks over the room like a piece of dropped steel.

"Come now Mr. Ball...aren't you going to speak to me?" The voice finally stops his or her laughing, sounding hurt under the vocal disguise.

The immortal isn't going to talk to him or her. Ball wishes to find out if they have some pain inflicting instrument in the room. Not to talk is an excellent way to find out.

"Now that isn't very nice at all is it..? Corporal. Ball?"
*
They observe the view of Earth spinning before them.

"MESSAGE SENT FROM COORDINATES GIVEN."

The team fall silent. All of them are at their posts on the bridge. The message is played: "Welcome Captain Walker. I do hope your trip was pleasant. To business, I bet you are wondering why I would drag you halfway across the back of beyond to this little shit hole known as Earth? I apologize to you Walker but I know that it is your birth place, but really, it is awful. Where was I?"

"This guy really is some arsehole!" Wheeler jibes.

"That's exactly what he wants us to think," Dobrovowski adds.

The grated voice chirps on, "I desire to have access and ownership of your splendid vessel. I believe that it isn't that easy to exchange owners but if you don't then I'm afraid the budgie gets it!

"Also, I would like the mandatory accumulation of wealth and riches that comes on these occasions, I know you're not short of a credit or two. Cheerio."

Walker addresses the computer, "well?"

"DEEP SPACE PROBE 20 FT DOWN INTO POLAR CAP REGION. PARTICLES TRACEABLE TO SECTOR AS BEFORE."

"Same probe then," Reed suggests.

"Exactly," Cutter admits, "run usual tests computer..I presume that is what our friend wants us to do."
*
Ball hears the door go. It is to the right of mirror. It opens slowly. He gets up quickly. Getting ready. Through the door he can see a an arched entrance, an area designed so that only one person can fit through.

A tall woman enters. She has a head bandage on misplacing her hair slightly. 'What's this?' Thinks Ball.

"My God.." he cottons on to who it is, "Seera!"
*
"EDINBURGH. SECTOR 12, WEST STREET 19, TRADE BUILDING 14."

"Right.. " Walker' s mind flashes tenfold, "I want everyone kitted and ready to go. Reed take the bridge, Dobrovowski and Chee come with me. Computer I hand second control over to Reed...that is a direct command."

The computer remains silent. Reed sighs sadly at Walker.

"COMPUTER!! This is Alan Walker commanding you to hand over second control to A. Reed...NOW!!"

"CONFIRMED."
*
"Long time no see, old.....friend," Seera sits on a chair. She takes out silver cigarette case. From it she produces an old Earth custom. Ball watches fascinated. She lights it watching him, snapping the lighter shut. Still eyeing him she sits comfortable, smiling at the chief of police who looks perfectly ridiculous.

She takes off her bandage, regarding the blood stain on it, Seera feels the wound at the back of her head. It is healing good. Very good. She tosses the mucky bandage on the floor with an elegant flick of her wrist.

"Long time no see Mr. Ball," she says sardonically.

"I think you may have heard from some of the old gang though," he points to the bandage.

He looks directly into her eyes. They betray emotion that is immediately penetrated by him. He had of course guessed at the assumption that she may have contacted the others. The gamble had proved good. She could kick herself for letting her guard down, now he has information; she'd forgotten how good he was.

"Very good David, excellent in fact. You have survived my drug well."

"So you are behind all of this fiasco," Ball says it with venom controlled.

"Not so much fiasco, a well thought out procedure, that has taken many years to build. Executed David, over the last few months."

"Yes I had noticed members of that crew I used to belong to, had begun to mysteriously…become active again, expire. I'd received the reports rather late," he almost jokes with the woman, "it is somewhat suspicious when an immortal dies like that."

"You are perceptive Ball but you lack invention," Seera inhales on her cigarette, enjoying the once-a-year nicotine high which she saves for such occasions.

"Is this going to be a show down? A final slagging match, where you will show me how inferior I am and how superior you are? You will point out how great the plan is and how even now, the unstoppable wheels of your power are rolling onward. Nothing can cease the inevitable motion of your plans to usurp the Universal Council, and I am a pawn in the game, which can be moved, as long as I am here. Right so far?"
Seera nods.

"Do you know how tiring this is Seera? It's been done before, by you for a start. You can't rule the sectors and planets like you used to- the power is distributed evenly between fifty races; after all, it was the Allied planets that started it. The rest are merely members (not founders) but still under the flag of the Universal Council. As soon as you attack them, it is over."

Seera is no longer there. Sat in the chair, puffing on a cigarette is an exact replica of Ball.

He stares at himself, taking a sharp breath in.

She even talks with his voice, "you see David, every detail is so finely tuned, that I knew you would receive a demand from the Velex government after that rather botched drugs bust. It was on the way to your craft, for that meeting, you were picked up," she laughs, changing herself to the form of Walker, then Wheeler, then Dobrovowski, Lee, getting up and walking about; smoking intensely, changing to Ball's wife, to his first child, then second, to Chee, to his secretary.

The commissioner is taken aback, whatever the Univarians did to her, it's evidently far more reaching than anything that he (or the others) has.

He gets up off the bed and slowly reaches out to her.

Seera, back to herself, "it was much easier to escape from your last ditch attempt to crush me entirely. 'Phase Four' I believe is what Cutter referred to it. He was a most compliant prisoner, I hope you well be the same?"

He smells that perfume she always wears, some ancient Twentieth Century simulated product. Ball pulls his hand back. He knows that Seera would never allow herself to be put in a position where she could possibly lose at all. To kill her would be suicide- though that would allow him to leave his mortal wife and children, in death. He has only a decade or two more anyway, before everyone starts to notice his forever youthful looks, having to move on again.

"You will not stop me Ball. I'm afraid you must die like the others, as for your offspring and dutiful, unsuspecting wife...?"

He would ask her if she would be that sick but it would be in her nature to do that. He has come to know her. She would it is in every egomaniac's prerogative to be crackers to kill everything they feel is a threat. The commissioner finds himself more injured by her comment then he realized.

"When is my death?" Ball asks, hiding his anger.

"When the others are here," Seera says with an air of kindness.

She gets up from her chair and pats him on the back, drawing down the last half of the cigarette, "chin up old chap! Not long now."

"My wife and children? They are just mortals."

Seera leaves the room without answering, the stink of tobacco burnt and perfume bearing the mark that she was once there.
*
The whole floor is deserted. There is no power to the floor that overlooks the restored buildings. Much of the ancient architecture of a city kept permanently in a preservation dome, even the United Forces didn't destroy cultural heritage.

Walker spreads through and past many pillars, since he picked up a signal of three individuals toward left corner of whole floor.

Dobrovowski is positioned on roof and is descending down building, cloaked.

Chee has moved left of Walker, both cloaked. No communications.

Scanners show three: two infants and one adult.

Through battle experience, sixth sense, Cutter and Chee know there are more there.

"Do come and join us Mr. Walker," the voice comes from where the scanner has shown.

Chee is still cloaked as Walker removes invisibility shield, he knows that if there is more enemy here, they are waiting for him to show. Two kids doesn't allow them time.

He stops in his tracks- a clone of himself stares backs grinning inanely, two large stasers pointed at each child's head.

Walker slowly approaches the kidnapper. It is all beginning to fit for Alan- Seera took his D.N.A to produce this representation of himself; the thought is shocking, he must be the voice on the probes that has led them here.

They are only a few feet from each other. Walker still holds his weapon, safety off.

"Now I thought you were better than that dad?! "The clone laughs at Cutter in the same cackling way the message voice laughed.

"Better than what?" Walker asks calmly.

"You know..in and out before...ahhh…here we are..the family 's all here" as the first close speaks, several more come from behind pillars, some from ceiling: decloaking. Like a stream of bugs they scuttle from everywhere. All are an exact copy of Walker.

'This is Seera's ultimate plan. And she isn't even here to see it,' Alan thinks to himself, not sensing her presence. Ironic that he will be killed by himself, a Seera touch.

"And where are the others? I presume you didn't come here without any mates?" The first clone pulls the children tighter to the weapon barrels. They scream.

"There are no others. I am alone."

"CUT THE CRAP!!" The first clone shakes the older child, "tell him who you are lad, like we said we would."

The child is too frightened to speak. He looks up fearfully at the unscarred copy of Walker. He is trying to mouth the words but they are simply not coming out.

"DO IT!!!" The Clone screams, the others have drawn their stasers, half aim at the child, the other half to the original Walker.

"R-rr-rup- T-Treaves.." the child has tears running down his face, his younger sister screaming.

The clone throws down the little girl and is about to stomp down on her when he spots the real Walker pointing his staser directly at him, "don't son or it'll be the last thing you do."

The first clone looks surprised and dismayed, the others aim at Walker's act.

"You surprise me Cutter...didn't you kill children such as these on your campaigns? What's the difference?" The clone grabs the girl back up when she tries to squirm away.

"That was extremely cheap. It is obvious that your mother is involved in this operation, I believe her vessel is in some disrepair," Walker provokes, in his ear mike he gets the go ahead from Dobrovowski who is in position, the vessel prepares high in orbit.

"Is this some kind of movie in here?" The clone lacks something in the sanity department, "I kidnap your ex-colleagae..I steal his kids, I even have the decency to spare his wife; not harming her in anyway and YOU FUCKING STAND THERE.......mocking me??! This is my work!! My mother…who is here by the way, remember R.S.T.C? Why are you still pointing that gun at me?" The other twenty clones are wondering the same thing.

Suddenly the two children disappear from his grasp. He looks down where they used to be. The other clones are about to kick off when Walker beats them to it, having been counted down by Reed from the vessel.

The first clone rushes out through the window, in a rash of burnt flesh and explosion from Walker's staser. Alan cloaks and drops down, all the clones are too late firing at him.

In a flurry of staser fire, half are wounded or killed, as they shoot each other.

Walker rolls and fires, Chee comes behind group from the right. Dobrovowski crashes through window as most of the surviving are still trying to figure out how they shot each other. Chris' shoots three who hesitate. Forming a triangle formation, lying on floor, aiming upwards, they all whack weapons to full.

"FULL SET!!! GO!!" Cutter communicates.

On entering through window, Dobrovowski dropped gas grenades, now each surviving clone stumbling about with hearing, sight and balance impaired. A short eruption of chaos: burnt flesh, metal melted, concrete blown apart, clones killed, dominates the space. Within seconds it is over.

"CLEAR!" Walker swarms forward, as does Chee and Dobrovowski using the butt end of weapons to smash in skulls of clones.

The area is cleared.

"Walker to vessel over," he contacts Reed.

"Vessel receiving over."

"Objective achieved. Ball's kids?"

"O.k. In medi-lab, no sign of injury, just some shock. Next move?"

"Join you e.t.a. two minutes, over."

"Received, over and out."

All three men pull back from window area, which Dobrovowski crashed through. A huge crash of more broken glass and metal thunders as their light craft smashes into space, bringing most of ceiling down with it. The cruiser, projects a force field around them from falling debris. It decloaks, letting men on board.
*
"Well that was a quietly operated mission," Dobrovowski jokes.

Walker still wears kit. Dobrovowski stows weapon.

"I know that wasn't exactly covert but I did it for that exact reason," Cutter sits in bridge main chair.

"Why?" Dexter asks.

"To flush out Seera," he replies, "computer, keep scanning targeted area. Any unusual life forms, track them."

"What are you playing at? We could have accomplished that mission without even setting a foot in there," Reed shakes his head in dismay.

"We had to engage the enemy," he defends his decision, listening out for the computer. "It's all very well finding the children, they were given to us on a plate, Seera has something more, more than the esteemed Commissioner Treaves, Corporal Ball."

"We could have taken those men without a murmur. Why did you light the touch paper in there boss?" Dobrovowski asks.

"Seera will be in that police force or someone close to her is- that's how they kidnapped Ball. She will want to see my body, along with yours. In there I had to show her our fire power..those clones are half immortal, therefore able to stand more staser power than normal. I had to show her that we have increased our fire power, cunning, etc, a throwing down of the gauntlet, regaining the upper hand of the situ'," Walker rubs his eyes.

"Really?" Reed asks.

Walker smiles.

"What about Ball?" Dexter speaks out from the back of bridge, Irons turns to her with an air of sadness.

"Ms. Dexter," Walker turns his chair, "he isn't dead yet...she is waiting for all of us."

"What of his children?" The reporter persists.

"They are confined to quarters for the rnoment..it is best," he turns back to main viewer.

"They are frightened children that have gone through h-"

"THEN GO AND COMFORT THEM THEN!" Walker blares at her.

"Maybe I will," she storms off bridge.

"SEERA LOCATED IN TARGET AREA," the computer (as if on cue) speaks, "BALL'S SIGNAL RECEIVED. LOCATION: U.K, LONDON DOCKLANDS. 30 METRES BELOW FOUNDATION OF 87305 N/W DOCK 61."