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Andrews UK - Berry Ian

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114 pages

English

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The Saskias, Saskia Chandler and Saskia Hunt, lead double lives. Quite apart from being ordinary young girls holding down ordinary jobs, they are also the super-powerful SuperTwins, and the jobs they manage to hold down while being the twins are decidedly not ordinary. Impossible things for the Air Force and fixing problems with tangled timelines in the past are all in a days work for Kyra and Katya. This ability to travel in time, with a little help from Voice, their disembodied guide and mentor, comes in useful when they become involved with the security services and an assassination attempt. Throughout all this, they attempt to lead normal lives, although Saskia Chandler is decidedly not a normal girl. The girls eventually come to the conclusion that far from being Richie, as she began her life, she's always been Saskia, which appears a little odd, but makes perfect sense to them.

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Publié par	Andrews UK
Date de parution	17 juin 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781783334834
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0100€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Title Page
THE TWINS

by
Ian Berry

Publisher Information
The Twins Published in 2013 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
The right of Ian Berry to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998
Copyright © 2013 Ian Berry
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any person who does so may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

One
The phone was ringing. Not any old ordinary phone - the one we called the MI5 phone, the one we kept in the cosmic cupboard along with anything else we’d changed not be holding or wearing or whatever. For some reason we could ‘hear’ it even though it wasn’t physically present. Saskia was driving the mini so I changed myself to be holding the phone and answered it when it began to ring normally.
“Hello, this is Kyra, what can I do for you?”
“MI5 Ops. We wondered if you could do a job for us over the next week or so.”
“You have a job that can wait a week and you’re ringing us at midnight ?”
“Ah, er, yes, sorry. Didn’t think. Sorry.”
“You might ring your normal operatives at all the hours of day or night but I think we deserve a little more consideration. Anyway, what do you need us to do?”
Saskia had been nodding as I complained bitterly, she was obviously listening in with her super hearing, being a super girl with super powers has some advantages. However, there are disadvantages as well - like MI5 ringing us in the middle of the night to get us to do stuff for them.
“Usual arrangement I’m afraid. Can you come down to Ops? Tomorrow will do.”
“I shan’t mention that tomorrow is actually a Sunday. We’ll be there.”
“Thank you. We’ll see you tomorrow.”
I rang off and made the phone disappear again.
“The cheek of them,” said Saskia. “Got a good mind to tell them to go and...”
“But we won’t will we,” I said. “Might be lives at stake. You know they ask us to do stuff for them that might get their normal people killed or injured.”
“Yeah, sorry. Just growling generally. But midnight!”
“Don’t suppose the Ops room actually closes. They probably just didn’t think.”
“Anyway, here we are at home. Let’s go and see if Dad’s still up and about.”
Saskia’s dad had gone to bed. Saskia and I lived together as sister and sister although we weren’t related. Just as well really, we were both called Saskia - who would give two sisters the same name. Anyway, not only were we not sisters, I wasn’t even actually a girl - although these days that fact was getting less and less important as time went on. My former life as Richie, a thirty-something bloke, was becoming unreal, as if it had happened to somebody else entirely. Both Saskia and I had decided that I’d more or less always been a girl really - a bit odd perhaps but it made sense to us.
With Rob asleep in bed, Saskia and I made our way to our own bedroom as silently as possible. This included flying up the stairs - more super powers - and whispering to each other so quietly we needed super hearing to hear each other. This is a trick we use a lot, means we can have a private conversation even with other people around us.
“Have to wait ‘til tomorrow to tell Dad about James’ party,” whispered Saskia.
“We can tell him at breakfast.”
“Got to think where we might be going tomorrow while we nip down to London.”
“Got any thoughts?”
“Can’t go to see James, only just left there. Christmas shopping with Ellie?”
“Ok. When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.”
“Sounds like a plan. G’night, Saskia.”
“’Night.”
Using our ability to change ourselves had meant we’d just changed to be wearing the T shirt and shorts jim-jams we favoured. We’d been in bed in seconds.
Sunday. I heard Rob, Saskia’s dad, rumbling about downstairs. So had Saskia apparently as she was awake as well. I got out of bed and stretched.
“What d’you want us to wear today?” I asked her.
“Not bothered. You can be in charge for a change.”
I thought about this. So close to Christmas, the weather was quite cold. It didn’t bother either of us, as super girls we could work at the North Pole wearing almost nothing, we had done not long ago, but we did have to think of the effect this would have on others. I thought carefully about nice warm clothes and how many layers.
“Ok. Trousers, so I don’t have to wear tights, and a blouse and nice cardigan. I think the angora one.” I changed to be wearing the outfit as described. The process included arranging to be nice and clean with shiny brushed hair. I’d gone from jim-jams to being ready to go in less than a second.
Much as usual, Saskia chose to dress almost exactly the same, her pants were a different shade of brown and the blouse was a slightly different colour but that was all. She’d got out of bed and taken four steps from there to where I was standing. Between the second and third steps she changed from jim-jams to normal clothes with brushed hair like mine.
The reason for the four steps was to have her standing close enough to me to give me a hug and a kiss. I hugged and kissed back. She and I loved each other intensely - but not like that! What we felt for each other was what two twins would feel but multiplied several times over. We couldn’t bear to be apart from each other. Quite what Rob felt about all this we could never be certain about, but he treated me the same way he treats Saskia, like a second daughter. I’d found that I liked that. It filled a huge void in my life, I’d never been loved and appreciated as a child. Rob was making up for that lack.
“Hello, party-goers. What time did you two stop-outs roll in then?”
“Not late, Dad. Just after midnight actually.”
“Looking nice today. What are you going to do?”
“Thank you, Rob,” I said. “Possibly shopping with Ellie. There was muttering about last minute stuff.”
“Didn’t think Ellie needed help and guidance these days.”
“No, Dad. Not help and guidance, just companionship. Just somebody to ask for opinions. Big part of shopping - if you’re a girl.”
“I’ll take your word for that. Want some breakfast?”
“We’ll do it, Dad. Put feet up. Another cup of tea shortly.”
In short order Saskia rustled up bacon and eggs, hot chocolate for us and more tea for her dad.
“Going to the garage today, Dad?”
“Mm. You know Sunday is quite busy these days, especially now Rio’s taken over the pictures for the website.”
“See what you mean. Yesterdays pictures will have stirred up the buying public, at least you hope they will.”
“Certainly seem to. Sales are up. Best thing you did, involving that Rio.”
“ We didn’t involve her, Dad. You asked her.”
“Whatever. It works.”
Rob finished his tea and set off for the garage while Saskia and I cleared away the breakfast stuff. “Suppose we’d better go and see what Five want.”
“You might get shot at,” I grinned.
“There is that. Come on, quick.”
“Slow down, girl. There didn’t seem to be a rush.”
“Don’t care. You know I like being shot at.”
“I had noticed. Back garden?”
“Hm. No. Better take the mini somewhere just in case Dad comes home.”
“Good thinking, Supergirl.”
Saskia drove the mini to a handy pub car park. I had a thought.
“You know how people know who drives the white mini, the Saskiamobile,” I grinned, “If we keep leaving it in pub car parks, word’s going to get around that we’re a couple of boozers.”
“Got to be more than one white mini in the town. Point is taken, however. Might need to re-evaluate future parking arrangements.”
Saskia locked the mini and we slipped behind some handy bushes. She grinned as she changed to be Katya SuperTwin in her little super costume. I did likewise and we both took off vertically into the air.
We have to go high enough so that flying above the speed of sound doesn’t take out half the windows in the county. Using this arrangement meant we could be outside MI5 in less than half an hour.
“Front door?”
“Why not. It’s Christmas.”
We landed in the courtyard outside the main entrance. Without bothering to check if anybody was watching we changed from our little super costumes to our black shirts and pants, what we call our ‘civilian clothes’ while we’re Kyra and Katya. We’d discovered early on that it’s not always appropriate to appear in a little crop top and very short miniskirt.
The guards on the door knew who we were by now but still made us show our badges. They didn’t bother quite so much these days when we just changed to be holding them. The effect of this was to make them just appear in our hands, one second empty hands, the next instant holding badges.
“Thank you, girls. Going up to Ops?”
“Yeah. They want us to do something as usual.”
Up in the Operations Centre, Saskia decided to be a bit indignant. “And just whose idea was it to call us at midnight with what seems to be a non-urgent job?”
“Thankfully not mine,” said the poor man. “I only started the shift at seven this morning.”
“Alright, alright. We forgive you. What do you need us to do?”
“Ah. Right. Do you remember rescuing one of our operatives, a girl, from the Somali pirates a little while ago?”
We said yes, nice girl, did she get home ok?
“Yes. She had intelligence about a middle eastern country apparently making nuclear warheads.”
“We didn’t know that at the time. Sure we should know now?”