Tunnels 02, Deeper

searchlights blasted on from farther up the slope.
    "Whiteout!" Elliott exclaimed, raising her head from her rifle as the blazing light hit the scope. She squeezed her eye shut several times, recovering from the glare. "That's just freakin' great!" she fumed. "I can't get a fix on anything now!"
    Dazzling beams of light swept back and forth over the area where Will and the others were hiding, sending solid black shadows slashing across the ground.
    Will stuck his head a little farther around the edge of the boulder. He'd had to turn off the headset to protect it, and the blinding intensity of the lights made it difficult to see, but he could make out someone -- it certainly looked like Rebecca. She was standing in the open ground between two menhirs. He pulled back and glanced at Elliott, who was still lying prone, an array of explosives and stove guns within easy reach on the ground. She adjusted the position of her arms, ready to fire on the figure, even without the use of the scope.
    "Don't! Don't shoot her," Will begged in a whisper. "The stalkers!"
    Elliott didn't reply, her focus fixed on her target.
    "Will! Got a little surprise for you!" Rebecca called out. Before she'd finished speaking, her voice came again, like some ventriloquist's trick. "Quite a surprise!"
    Will frowned, and couldn't stop himself from taking another look.
    "Meet my twin sister," Rebecca's voice announced. Or, rather, two voices announced, in unison.
    "Careful!" Elliott warned as Will got to his feet and stuck his head even farther around the side of the menhir.
    As he watched, the solitary figure appeared to split into two, revealing that a second girl had been standing immediately behind the first. The two turned to face each other, and Will saw identical profiles. They were mirror images.
    "No!" he choked in disbelief, pulling back a little, then leaning out again.
    "How's that for a bombshell, bro?" the Rebecca on the left shouted.
    "All the time, there's been two of us, completely interchangeable," the Rebecca on the right cackled.
    His eyes weren't deceiving him.
    There were two Rebeccas, side by side.
    It had to be a trick -- an illusion of some kind, or maybe a second person wearing a mask. But no. As the twins moved, as the twins talked, it seemed as though they were absolutely identical.
    They continued to chatter in such a quick-fire way that he couldn't tell which of them was saying what.
    "Your worst nightmare -- two irksome little skin and blisters , two little sisters!"
    "How else do you think we worked it when one of us had to be Topsoil at all times?"
    "We took turns babysitting you a the Highfield home."
    "One on, one off, one up, one down, doing tours of duty for all those years."
    "We both know you so well..."
    "We've both cooked your lousy food..."
    "...picked up your filthy clothes..."
    "...washed your soiled, stinking underpants..."
    "You dirty dog!" one sneered in disgust.
    "...and listened to you blubber in your sleep, crying out for Mammy ..."
    "...but Mammy don't care..."
    Despite the dire situation he found himself in, Will squirmed with acute embarrassment. It would have been bad enough if there was only a single Rebecca saying all this, but two of them, knowing every little intimate detail there was to know about him -- and discussing it between them! It was more than he could bear.
    "Shut up, you foul cow!" he screamed.
    "Oooh, touchy, touchy," one of the twins cooed mockingly.
    Temporarily oblivious to the legion of Limiters surrounding him, Will was suddenly transported back to his home in Highfield, to how it had been for all those years before his father went missing. He and his sister continually clashing over the most trivial of things. This felt exactly like another of their outrageous spats when she would wind him up with her interminable needling and well-aimed taunts. The outcome was always the same -- he would eventually blow his top, and she would stand back to gloat, a smug smirk on her face.
    "And I think you mean foul cows," the Rebecca on the right suggested with a sibilant "s," while the other continued to harangue him.
    "But Mammy didn't have time for her little Will... he wasn't in the program guide..."
    "... he wasn't Must-See TV."
    Two belly laughs.
    "What a sad, sad boy," a twin cawed.
    "Joe Nobody digging his stupid holes, all on his lonesome."
    "Digging for Daddy's love," sneered the other, and they both cackled uproariously.
    Will closed his eyes -- it was as if they were poking