Thank you so much for all of the nice comments, cosmogyralthoughts_!!

*

The blade is heavy and comforting in my hand. If I wanted to, I could sever all of their heads, both the originals' and the clones', from their bodies before they even thought about moving.

But I don't like doing that sort of thing - the Voice does. And she is being uncharacteristically silent for once.

I know that her advice would be to kill them all, so I've got no one to rely on but myself. Come on Sage, think...

How can I tell the original teenagers and their copies apart?

We all hold weapons. Besides the Xaviers, I and my clones are the only people holding our swords the correct way. My clones and I are also the only people who have katanas. The Jakes have falchions. The Nicoles are letting their scimitars drag on the ground. The Xaviers are clutching Viking swords. The Deirdres are tapping their rapiers against the ground slowly.

Nicole - or one of her copies - moves first. She bares her teeth and hisses.

It doesn't seem like a Nicole move, since I've only seen her flaunt her teeth when she's angry or otherwise emotionally unstable. There's no reason for her to be baring her teeth now. But then again, stressful situations such as this could be drawing out her vampiristic habits. Regardless, I don't feel safe killing her.

While I am more than willing to stick a sword in Nicole's gut, I don't think that's the purpose of this Trial. I would guess that this calls for a mixture of both intelligence and battle skills.

I look to both sides, at my copies. It is so odd, seeing me...and me...and me.

And then I understand what I can do.

Raising my blade, I gently make a very thin cut on my cheek. "Prepare yourselves!" I sing out joyfully, slightly bloodied blade at the ready.

And then I stab the Sage copy to my right in her chest.

She gasps, chokes as one of her lungs is punctured. I withdraw my blade from between her ribs and she collapses, a pool of blood growing underneath her as the last of her life empties out of her through the wound.

The other copies of Sage immediately fly into action, one heading for each of my friends. Since there aren't quite enough to go around, one takes on Xavier and Nicole both, sensing that they are the smallest in the group and possibly assuming they are weaker. It is proven wrong when what I hope is the original Xavier decapitates it.

Every other teenager flies into battle, myself included. I try to target my copies since I obviously know they are fakes, but they are quickly and easily cut down. Now, I don't know who to kill. None of the originals have adopted my tactic and I doubt the clones are smart enough to.

A sword stops mere inches from my face and I follow the blade up to a thick, tree-trunk-like arm. Jake. He is staring at the cut on my face with realization, breathing heavily.

I smile, tapping the cut on my cheek, and he grins understandingly, raising his sword to do the same to his face. The others must have seen us because soon, the real children sport cuts on their cheeks as the fakes fly at us in cold fury.

Jake's copies are the hardest to defeat. However, it is much easier to slice through their necks then it likely would be with the real Jake, and he dispatches most of them.

Soon, us originals are standing with our backs in a circle, gasping for air. The floor and we are slicked with blood from our clones' corpses. I stare at one of my copies, blond hair dyed red with her and her fallen comrades' blood.

"That was a really smart move," Jake murmurs to me. I grin up at him.

"I'm not just crazy. I'm a mad genius!"

An invisible door in the wall opposite me opens and Maggie walks out, her shoes making quiet sloshing sounds as she steps in the expanding pools of blood. "Very well done," she congratulates us as we all turn to face her.

I am about to ask who won when I realize I am being foolish. Of course, I will be the victor. I was the one who figured out how to find the copies and killed many of them in doing so, after all. I am the reason all of the originals are still alive.

If I am not the victor of this Trial, I have sorely misunderstood the purpose of the game.

Maggie beckons to us to follow her as she turns and exits through the same door. The blood on her shoes makes scarlet red footprints on the spaceship's pristine white floor, and I think how odd it is that they chose white to represent order and perfection when they don't mind tracking blood all over the place.

And then what just happened finally hits me.

I have killed again.

I start to shake. The Voice let me handle this alone and instead of trying to use my pure intelligence to outsmart the clones, my mind immediately turned to the most violent, the most bloodthirsty option. Although they weren't real, those copies looked, sounded like, and died like real people. And I killed them without a single push from the Voice.

I have killed again.

I sway slightly and then fall. The crimson floor rises up to meet me and the world goes black.

*

I am lying in my bed. The first thing I notice are the bloodstained sheets. Am I bleeding? As I sit bolt upright, my head pounds with a migraine. I groan, leaning back against the pillow.

Jake is sitting at the desk. The chair creaks complainingly as he rises to hand me a bottle of water. I gulp it greedily within seconds and go to wipe my mouth with the back of my left hand when I see that it, too, is covered in blood.

"You...fell right in the blood back in the Trial room," Jake explained hesitantly in answer to my confused stare.

I can't remember what I got so upset about, so upset that I fainted into the pools of blood. Oh, yes. I regretted killing those fake people. Why would I care about them? They're merely meaningless pawns, and I plan to be the queen of the board.

I shake my head, clearing it of these thoughts. The Voice is back. It must have killed her to sit so still through the first Trial. Or not. I did almost exactly what she would have done, after all.

The thought should sicken me. But, like I said, the Voice is back.

Jake is watching me carefully. "Are you okay to get washed up?" he asks gently.

"Sure," I say, migraine slowly retreating. I stand shakily, leaning heavily on my bed and, when Jake stands, folding against him. He helps me out of the door and down the hall.

We stop in the middle of the hall. "Maggie!" Jake shouts. "Ma-gie!"

A door opens next to us, making Jake step back in surprise. Maggie steps out. "Yes?"

"How do you Albinos get clean? How have we stayed so clean?"

"Oh, it's an ingenious little device. Did either of you play a handheld musical instrument back on Earth, either brass or woodwind?"

We both shake our heads, confused. I scrunch my face up thoughtfully. Maybe I did. The Voice doesn't like me remembering much of my life before she lived in my head.

"Well, one common method of cleaning musical instruments that you humans use is to utilize ultrasonic cleaning - it essentially uses high-frequency pressure waves to knock the dirt and whatever other unsavory objects that have stuck to your instrument, off. We have perfected it. While you sleep, we just point the device at you and it breaks the filth into molecules too small to be bothered with."

I think of Maggie hovering creepily over me while I'm fast asleep, but feel nothing. I'm not sure if that's because of the Voice or the fact that the other teenagers seem to already be fans of gathering in my room while I'm unconscious. Jake, however, cringes slightly.

"Why didn't you do that for me when I fainted just now?" I ask.

"We're unsure of its effects on an unconscious person versus someone merely sleeping. Also, Jake was with you the entire time."

Jake gestures to a blood stain on his shirt and I make a small, surprised noise in the back of my throat, realizing that he was kind enough to carry me to my room. "So, can you do that weird sonic-y thing now?"

"Yes; we'll get you a new skinsuit as well."

I glance down at myself; I am still wearing the skinsuit - it's more brown than black, though, now that so much blood has dried on it.

"Follow me," Maggie says, leading me down the hallway. As Jake starts to follow, she holds up a hand. "Sage only, please."

I watch Jake's face, looking slightly lost, disappear behind the automatic doors.