Modern Day Miracle

by Maeryn Lamonte Copyright © 2026

Introduction

This story is a piece of fan fiction based loosely on the Miracleman (originally Marvel Man) comics originally published in the 1960s. If you need a refresher, you can find it at the marvel.com website. Go to characters and search for Miracleman (Michael "Mike" Moran) (or just click on the name)

This story begins in the early 1990s (10 years later than in the original) on an alternate Earth where the Miracleman family was presumed destroyed by an atomic explosion in 1963. Mike Moran has no memory of his life before his twenties. For various reasons he is depressed and struggling with life.

It then continues on a slightly different alternate Earth where the changes might just be enough to offer a brighter future.

Assignment

"Micky, you're going to be late."

She was right, and I hated that she was right. I pushed back the bedclothes and stared up at the cracked plaster ceiling. Just another thing I hated about my life and heaven knew there were enough of them.

It was a grotty flat, but as much as we could afford. Perhaps not even that if I didn't make an effort to earn an income. The worst of being freelance. Don't work, don't eat.

I looked at the bedside clock and swore. No time for a shower.

"Micky!"

God, she could be shrill when she had a mind.

"I'm up," I yelled back. A quick spray of deodorant would have to do. Liz would notice and wouldn't approve, but that was her problem. Mine was getting dressed in time to catch the bus.

Trousers not too crumpled, shirt clean if a little threadbare, jacket... it'd do. Tie in pocket to sort later. I ran downstairs and jammed my feet into my shoes. The backs had collapsed from months of similar abuse. I slid a finger between heel and leather each side to ease them on properly and made it to the kitchen where Liz waited with a slice of toast and a mugful of tepid coffee.

There might have been a kiss too, only she sniffed and grimaced and turned away.

Her choice; I couldn't find the wherewithal to care much. I downed most of the coffee in one gulp, grabbed the slice of toast and ran out the door.

The bus was a couple of minutes late as usual so I caught it without difficulty. It did make me late at the other end though, so I was out of breath by the time I made it to the Bugle. I found Avril leaning against her car, sucking on a cancer stick.

"You're late," she said. "Honestly, I'd have thought you'd take this more seriously. It's not often opportunities like this come up for guys like you."

"It's not my fault if the buses run late," I grumbled, then when she scowled at me, "Look, I'm sorry, okay?"

"Get in, we've got a way to go." She threw the cigarette in the street and climbed behind the wheel.

I strapped myself into the passenger's seat and prepared myself for a couple of hours of terror and discomfort. Avril might have thought she was a good driver, but she did a good job of hiding it whenever I was in a car with her. I don't think I've ever driven anywhere with her and reached the destination with my buttocks unclenched. Thank God for the seatbelt laws. Compulsory in the front since the early eighties and as of last year, in the back as well.

"Are you ready for today?" she asked, giving me about as much attention as I wished she'd offer to the road.

Yeah, my big break. I'd been working at the Bugle since before I could remember – quite literally – starting off as a copy boy and graduating to freelance reporter when it became evident our illustrious editor in chief wasn't going to give me a regular column. Since then I'd only been offered fluff pieces – slow news day rubbish that didn't always make it into the rag. To be honest I'd been more fortunate than I deserved that my stuff made it in at all, but then we'd been a bit starved of news since Miracleman and his sidekicks had vanished presumed dead back in the sixties.

It had actually been in relation to that incident that my current opportunity had arisen. But to explain about that, I'd have to share some bits from my past, and I'm not sure I'm ready to do that just yet.

"Yeah I'm ready. Now will you keep your eyes on where we're going?"

"Boss man wants us to do this as a sort of interview. You know, you're about the only person outside of Asia who's survived an atomic explosion, so how do you feel about nuclear energy being generated on our doorstep?That sort of thing."

Of course he would, which meant I'd most likely be sharing that bit of my past sooner than I'd hoped.

"It's not the same. To make a bomb you need ninety percent enriched uranium two three five. To make a nuclear reactor you don't need it to be more than five percent enriched."

"And you wonder why he doesn't want you writing serious stuff. Our readers don't need a science lesson, they need..."

"What? A piece of sensationalist rubbish that'll scare the pants off them?"

"Whatever sells papers, Micky. I mean if you decide to be reassuring then I'm warning you, I'll bring up Chernobyl."

"Which went wrong because of a fundamental design flaw in the reactor. A flaw which was made public and all reactors with that same design have been fixed so it won't happen again."

"Yeah, right! So what's the harm in spicing it up a bit. Micky, you're going to blow this for both of us."

"Whatever. Who cares, right?"

I really didn't care. Life's long succession of disappointments had sucked out all my will to fight – probably the reason I was still struggling to make something of myself.

We turned off the motorway and onto progressively narrower roads. I don't know why the authorities insisted on hiding their nuclear power stations in the back of beyond, but I was grateful because at least Avril had to concentrate on her driving for once, which meant I was spared the Spanish Inquisition.

We eventually pulled into a large carpark beside some impressive concrete structures, most of which were windowless.

"Let's set up over here," Avril suggested, pointing at the guardhouse protecting the facility from the outside world.

"I thought we were writing this?"

"We are, but if we do the interview right, most of the copy will write itself. Trust me."

I don't know what it is about that sort of thing, but I've always had an immense amount of difficulty putting my faith in people who feel the need to tell me to trust them. Still, I'd known Avril a long time and she was good at her job, so I was prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt.

She pulled a Dictaphone from somewhere and started wielding it like a microphone.

"We join you today from the newest of Britain's nuclear reactors, just recently gone online." she said. "I'm Avril Lear, and joining me today is Michael Moran, the only Britain alive who has witnessed a nuclear explosion at close range and lived to tell about it. Tell me Micky, what was that like?"

I wasn't quite ready to sell my soul to the great god of tabloid sensationalism. The truth still meant something to me, dull and uninteresting as it was.

"I don't really remember a lot, Avril. Mostly it was waking up in hospital with third degree burns over half my body and no memories at all of my life before then."

"But you must know something, Micky."

"Only what I was told. Apparently, someone had arranged for me and a couple of my friends to take a short holiday on this place called Christmas Island, somewhere in the Pacific. Only there was some almighty screw up; the people who took us out there had no idea the place was due to be used for an atom bomb test.

"As I understand it, we were a couple of miles from the drop zone when the bomb went off. No-one knows how I survived. They never found any sign of my friends."

"This would have been about thirty years ago in nineteen sixty-three, so you'd have been what, in your twenties? So how was it that you and your friends ended up visiting a remote island in the Pacific?"

"The three of us were orphaned during the war. Our mothers died in the London bombing and our fathers were RAF pilots who were shot down. I don't know, I suppose the RAF looks out for its own. They must have smuggled us onto a flight heading out there or something. Probably why no-one knew we were there when they dropped the bomb."

"So how does it make you feel having a brand new nuclear power station in your back garden?"

"Honestly, it doesn't bother me much. The uranium they use in bombs has to be much purer than the stuff they use here. You couldn't get this lot to explode no matter how hard you tried."

"No? Then what happened in Chernobyl?"

"The Chernobyl reactor was cheaply built. The accident happened because of a flaw in its construction. A flaw which, I might add, has been fixed in the other fifteen reactors built to the same design.

"At Chernobyl mistakes were made and the entire core melted out of control through the floor of the reactor building. It hit a patch of underground water which vaporised instantly, causing something like a conventional explosion that blew the roof off and spread nuclear material across Europe. It wasn't a nuclear explosion."

"Still pretty devastating though. And isn't it at all possible that something similar could happen here?"

That was supposed to be my cue to go all doom and gloom, but I couldn't do it. I made a minor concession but nothing worth an eternal lien on my soul.

"Theoretically I suppose so, although the safety measures incorporated into modern reactors like this one have massively improved over the past few decades. "

"Thank you Micky Moran, that's all we have time for."

She gave me an exasperated look and put away her dictaphone. While we'd been recording a steady stream of cars had come into the carpark, disgorging their occupants who were gravitating into a loose group and heading our way. From the look of them, they were a bunch of rival journalists who'd come for the same reason we had. Their arrival triggered a response from within the guardhouse, and we were invited in.

Attack

The tour of the reactor was almost interesting enough to lift me out of my fug. I asked questions and made copious notes on reactor safety, despite the fact that none of it would make it to print, because who were we at the Bugle to commit to responsible news broadcasting when a little sensationalism was more likely to sell the paper? I also asked and wrote as much as I could about the benefits of the station, how it made us less reliant on oil and coal, how it created jobs for locals, that sort of thing.

Avril rolled her eyes at me and did her best to find things to criticise, to raise the alarm about. There wasn't much, but she wasn't to be deterred.

Lunchtime loomed and we were invited to eat in the power station's cafeteria. Avril made stupid jokes about how many heads the chicken in her sandwich had, and why the lettuce glowed green. I gave her a weak grin in acknowledgement which was more than the jokes deserved. Nobody else thought they were particularly funny either.

Once we'd finished eating, we were taken over to the administrative block where we were joined by two latecomers. Both dusky of complexion and taciturn in the extreme. Not that I made any effort to talk to them, but a couple of our group tried and received blank expressions and silence for their efforts.

Maybe that should have set off alarm bells, except I'd met assholes before without thinking they were anything worse than just assholes.

I'm not sure what the station management expected to demonstrate by showing us around the admin block. Maybe that it was just another normal business and nothing special, in which case they succeeded to an exceptional degree. An hour of walking past nondescript offices and cube farms numbed my brain to the point where I almost missed our arrival at the security control centre.

This was another area of interest, being able to report on just how safe the place was, except I'd drifted into such a listless state, it took me a moment to react when everything went pear shaped.

The two newcomers, acting in perfect synchronisation, stepped up to the two armed guards at the entrance and stabbed them in their throats. No questions asked, no 'surrender or die' ultimatum, just carotid arteries sliced and blood everywhere.

How they'd managed to get the blades past the metal detectors I didn't know, unless maybe they were some kind of high tech plastic maybe?

It didn't make any difference though. The guards went down like puppets with their strings cut. Their weapons were claimed by their assailants, and a couple of shots fired into the air very abruptly had everyone's attention. Even mine; listlessness very much gone.

We were herded into the office next door – the atomic research division according to the signage on the glass panel door – and locked in.

"What the hell!" Avril demanded once the attackers had left us, after all it's a lot easier to be brave when there isn't a gun in your face. The blood spatter that covered those of us who'd been closest to the guards spoke volumes about how little value these assholes placed on human lives.

I wandered over to the window which looked down at the entrance to the carpark. The gate was opening and a flatbed lorry waiting to drive in. It carried something the size of a shopping trolley hidden under a tarpaulin, except that one guy – also middle eastern in appearance – was taking advantage of the delay to climb on the back, strip off the tarpaulin and start tinkering with what was underneath.

Would you recognise an atom bomb if you saw one? There were clues like the trefoil warning symbol attached to a container in the mess of wires and panels. You know the one, looks like three pieces of cake arranged evenly around a plate. Then there was the timer – a large digital display showing way too many leading zeros. It looked like these guys might be ready to claim their seventy two virgins.

"Is that...?" Avril said from close behind me.

I shrugged. "I can't think why else they'd have a radiation warning symbol on it. Something tells me even I'm not going to survive this one."

"It looks like they only have five minutes on the counter."

"Long enough to drive it right up next to the reactor building before it goes off. Added fallout from the core, you know."

"But they won't be able to get clear."

"I don't think they plan to. Martyrdom has its perks in some religions."

I turned my back to the window and thought about what I'd be leaving behind. Liz would mourn me for a while, then realise she'd be better off without me. I hadn't been a great husband to her despite all she done for me. She'd been the one constant in my life after the Christmas Island incident, and I hadn't paid her back with much kindness.

She'd helped to fill in a lot of my missing life, albeit only with second hand accounts. My own memories remained stubbornly locked away with only a few disturbing dreams to hint at what my reality had been.

We were colleagues at the Bugle, me trying to make it as a journalist and her as an illustrator. It wasn't a lot, but she stuck by me and in time she became all my world. It was only natural that we should end up getting married.

Memories or no, it wasn't long after our wedding that a deeply hidden part of my nature rose to the surface, but by then it was too late to do much about it. I couldn't face up to it, definitely couldn't talk to her about it. It put a strain on our relationship, but I felt too ashamed. Instead, I'd rented a storage unit and turned it into my little safety valve. Every time the feelings rose up in me and I had to let off some stress, I'd head down there for a few hours. She'd find out about it after I was gone and, when she saw what was in it, she'd realise she was better off without me. The wardrobe full of dresses, the lingerie, the shoes, the makeup, the perfume I'd bought but never dared try because I knew she'd smell it on me. When she knew what I was really like underneath, she'd understand why I'd been so depressed, why she couldn't get me to open up. She'd be disgusted, she'd hate me for the deception and she'd move on.

For the best maybe.

With my mind spiralling into its habitual depression, my subconscious stared at the glass pane in the door and its backwards lettering. There was something oddly familiar about that first word. Not really a word; more a sort of phonetic pattern. I rolled it around in my mind a few times then delivered it to my mouth.

"Kimota," I said and the world turned white.

Awakening

Everything felt strange. Utterly different but not my first concern. I lay on my back, surrounded by conifers and staring up at a filthy black mushroom cloud spreading across the sky. I'd no idea how I'd got here, except the cloud held a pretty significant clue.

I sat up and several things became very apparent. Firstly, was the added weight on my chest. I looked down at my near naked body, only a few tattered shreds of whatever I'd been wearing hanging off me, and the two perfect globes of flesh now an integral part of me. I reached up to take them in hand with elegantly slender fingers and gasped at the sensitivity in my skin. A golden curl fell into my field of view bringing an awareness of the weight of hair hanging down my back. I reached over my shoulders and brought forward enough length of the stuff to cover my modesty, at least insofar as my – yes, somewhat incongruously my – breasts were concerned. If I'd still possessed a certain part of my former self it would have been standing rigidly to attention now, but it wasn't there. I stood all the way up and what little of my clothes had survived the... whatever had just happened... fell away. My hips felt a mile further apart than I was used to, and what I had between my legs was so different – so much neater.

My legs seemed to extend way further than they should, smooth and exquisitely shaped, ending in a pair of dainty feet now emerging from the crumbling remains of a pair of boots. Despite the shock and horror of what was going on overhead, I could feel a burden I'd been carrying for three decades slip away. I won't describe it as euphoria – nothing so crass would have been possible in the shadow of such a massive disaster – but my mind felt as though it had been unshackled from an immense weight, reality shifting in my favour somehow.

I could feel the rough ground beneath my feet, sharp sticks and stones pressing against my soles. There was no pain though, just an awareness that they were there, trying but failing to cut through my skin.

I looked around for anything that could cover my nakedness but, apart from a few broken branches there wasn't much. No sense in timidly attempting to hide behind something that was hopelessly inadequate, and not as if my body – my new and astonishing body – was anything to be ashamed of. The air about me was cold, but not uncomfortably so, which meant there was no urgency to find clothing. I'd just have to make do until a solution suggested itself.

Ordinarily I wouldn't have considered a nuclear explosion to be something a sane person would walk towards, but this was the second one I'd survived – considerably more intact this time – and I figured I'd be more likely to find answers that way. I oriented myself on the centre of the spreading cloud overhead, found myself facing a line of damage through the canopy of trees, which may or may not have suggested my manner of arrival, and started walking. It was one of those artificially planted forests with trees standing in regimented lines. A few minutes picking my way across pine needle carpeted ground, following a natural corridor through the trees, led me to a narrow road, and a minute later a rapidly moving police car barely missed me, then screeched to a halt a couple of hundred feet further down the road.

A uniformed policeman leapt from the driver's side of the car. "Miraclewoman, are you alright?" he said, his eyes unsurprisingly focussed a foot or so below mine.

"I'm fine," I said, my voice emerging as an attractive contralto. "At least, I could do with some clothes if you have anything."

"Of course. He took off his jacket and handed it across. It was one of those short ones designed to come down to his belt, but since he was about a head taller than me, and my new body was more legs and less torso, it covered all the important bits. I zipped it closed and checked myself out. As long as I didn't bend over, I figured I'd be decent enough. The texture was rough and it weighed a bit but beggers can't be choosers..

"What happened?" He addressed my face. My legs still offered a considerable temptation, but with all else covered he was acting more or less professionally now.

"Atom bomb," I said distractedly and, I felt, a little obviously. I was musing over what he'd called me. Everyone had heard of Miracleman, of course, but he'd been missing from our skies for over thirty years. He'd been a thing back before I'd lost my memory, but these days, more than a generation later, most youngsters thought of him as a fictional character, a comic book superhero. As for Miraclewoman? "Middle Eastern terrorists," I added. "Blew it up right next to the reactor building so I imagine there'll be a ton of fallout heading downwind.

"Also, I wouldn't get any closer. The radiation from the blast has gone, but I'm pretty sure what's left of the site will be deadly to anyone going near it without proper protection. In fact, you'd better stay clear of me as well. There's no guarantee that I'm not covered in radioactive dust."

"What should we do?" The we included a younger and somewhat dumbstruck policewoman who'd emerged from the other side of the car.

"Call it in," I said, removing the radio and a few other potentially useful pieces of equipment from the pockets of my borrowed jacket and handing them back. "Set up a roadblock here and arrange for all other roads into the site to be blocked. Call the MOD and tell them they have a nuclear disaster to deal with. I don't suppose you have a Geiger counter in your vehicle?"

He shook his head.

"Then just make the calls."

"What about survivors?"

Seriously? What did he expect?

"I doubt anyone survived, but I'll go and check." I figured I was either dead from the exposure I'd already received, or I was immune. I mean Miraclewoman? More likely I was hallucinating, but I'd go along with the illusion for now. I made to carry on walking towards the power station, or what little might be left of it.

"Er, Miraclewoman?"

I turned back and arched an eyebrow. I'd have liked to put my hands on my hips too, but that might have had the same effect as bending over.

"Can't you, erm, you know..." he whooshed a hand towards the sky.

Miracleman had been able to fly, but how? I focused my mind and felt my feet leave the ground. As much to cover my embarrassment as not to give him too tempting a view up my borrowed clothing, I concentrated again and shot skyward fast enough to leave a sonic boom behind me.

Aftermath

There wasn't anything left of the nuclear power station. All the support buildings, the carpark and even the reactor building itself had vanished into a deep crater, along with every living person they'd contained – excepting myself that is. Over a hundred souls including the terrorists and visiting reporters. I allowed myself a moment to mourn Avril. She'd been a pain in the posterior, but she hadn't deserved to go out like this.

There was no sense in getting closer, so I widened my search radius by two and then three miles. The surrounding forest had been either vaporised or flattened to a distance of just over a mile. Beyond that, there were a few remote farmhouses, the nearer ones having collapsed entirely. I paused at each, either to confirm additional casualties – mainly from flying shards of glass – or to help survivors escape the rubble. A little further out, the buildings still stood, although also windowless with their occupants slashed and bleeding. I did what I could for the survivors and headed back to my original police contacts. All in all, it took me half an hour, which, it turned out, was enough time for a Ministry of Defence nuclear emergency response vehicle to have made it to the site.

"I was there for the initial blast," I said once I landed, "and I've been back to check the place out. You may want to..."

They were already sweeping their Geiger counters over me and ushering me to the back of their vehicle where a hastily erected camp shower awaited me. The water was cold and I didn't care much for the long handled scrubbing brushes they used on me, but fifteen minutes' attention, including me furiously washing my hair after it refused to succumb to their clippers, left them satisfied that I offered no more threat than a crate of bananas.

You did know bananas were radioactive, right? They contain potassium including one part in eight thousand potassium forty. Which is radioactive but not very much. So the point is I was too, but also, not very much.

They gave me some disposable overalls to wear and consigned the policeman's jacket to be incinerated. It wasn't the worst casualty of the day and he'd likely replace it easily enough. I went in search of the guy in charge of the MOD response and found him poring over a map of the area.

"Perhaps I could offer some insight?" I asked.

"Miraclewoman, of course. I didn't expect... I mean... It's just that no-one's seen you for so long."

So, like Miracleman too, except I'd still never heard of Miraclewoman. Not that I was complaining. I mean, just being a woman was miracle enough.

"The bomb went off here." I pointed at the place next to the reactor building where I'd seen the lorry stop. "It was on the back of a flatbed and about this big." I gestured with my hands. "All that's there now is a crater, not even the reactor building survived."

His immediate response was unprintable.

"Trees flattened out to a distance of about a mile." I swept out a circle on the map. "Farm buildings flattened here, here and here. Survivors here, here, here, here and here."

He was only half listening. "A mile of forest. A ground blast like that would be about twenty-five kilotons, then all the fuel in the reactor would go up in the mushroom cloud. Thank God for this high pressure system. Almost no wind and what there is is coming from the east, but that means the Isle of Man. They're right in its path. Then Northern Ireland."

The mushroom cloud had transformed. The dark, ugly bruise that had launched upwards from the initial explosion had spread in all directions. Dust was already falling although none nearby. Oddly ironic that being this close to ground zero meant we were relatively safe.

Well, as Miraclewoman I was probably safe in any case.

But that cloud of deadly filth was drifting out to sea even as it spread miles in all directions. We wouldn't be safe for long.

"What about the villages around here?" One of the first responders asked.

"Nothing we can do for them. They'll already have had a lethal dose. We need to get out of here soon ourselves, and get word to the Isle of Man, and Dublin."

"Won't they already know about it?"

"Oh yeah, they'll have seen the flare and the cloud, but they won't know what's coming. With light winds like we have today they'll have five, maybe six hours before the fallout reaches them in Douglas, maybe twelve in Dublin."

"I'll head to the Isle of Man," I said, "do what I can to help."

"If they can get out to sea, they should head north or south as quickly as possible. They should aim to be at least twenty miles away before the cloud gets to them in maybe five hours. Anyone who can't escape the island, should go inside, seal their doors and windows and fill up every container they can find with water. Go in, stay in, tune in. We'll get help to them as soon as possible."

I nodded and took to the skies.

Sellafield to Douglas at supersonic speeds took less than ten minutes. They were already implementing their emergency protocols when I arrived, which meant a buzz of urgent and organised activity. They were a little slower to recognise me – lack of costume and apparent prolonged absence from the skies perhaps, but I mean honestly, just how many people do you know who can fly? When they did, they became more inclined to listen to me, and when they heard what I had to tell them, they went full tilt into emergency evacuation mode. Small ships protocol; any vessel capable of maintaining four knots to take as many passengers as it could safely manage and head due south for five hours. Women and children first, obviously.

The Royal Navy had been alerted, and any ship close enough to respond in time was heading towards the nearest port on the island. Those very few individuals who couldn't fit on the boats would shelter as instructed and await rescue, keeping to the south since the cloud of fallout seemed to be crossing to the north.

With my message delivered, I occupied myself with flying to more remote parts of the island, in search of hikers with no means of reaching the ports in time.

After that, there wasn't much more I could do for the island, so I turned back to the mainland. There were still the surviving farmers I'd helped near to the blast. I figured the response team would be too busy looking at the big picture and the depressing triage of the thousands of victims in the coastal villages to bother with a few remote farms, so I flew into each location where I'd left survivors and evacuated them in twos and threes, as fast as they could endure, to the nearest safe hospital, returning at supersonic speed each time.

When I was done, I sought out the response team leader once more and asked what further help I could give.

He sent me across to Belfast to help with the evacuation there. Projections put the radioactive cloud sweeping a band across Northern Ireland all the way from Belfast to the border.

Organising the evacuation in Ireland was easier given that it was overland but threatened to overwhelm the available roads. I spent hours chasing across the sky, moving breakdowns off the road and keeping things moving as best I could until, with the sun long below the horizon and the spreading cloud of deadly dust obscuring stars as it approached, the last of the traffic finally moved on and the affected area was as clear of people as it could be.

Remarkable as my new body was, I could feel fatigue setting in. I turned my head towards home, and the fresh challenge that faced me there.

Adjustment

First stop would be my lockup. Liz would likely freak out when she saw me like this, but all the more if all I was wearing was disposable overalls now suffering from a day of flying at speeds they'd never been intended to handle. They were torn in so many places they were almost as indecent as if I'd gone without. The dresses in my lockup were designed for the larger masculine frame I'd possessed up until that morning, but you could do something with a dress that was too big, and I'd at least look presentable.

I hadn't given much thought to my transformation all day. I supposed having a crisis to deal with had taken precedence, but even so, turning into a woman deserved some consideration. I eased off on the speed heading home and gave it some thought.

The struggle I'd faced as Mike had been largely to do with the whole man woman thing. You heard about it sometimes on the news, but most people agreed the guys who subjected themselves to surgery to make themselves appear more like women were freaks. You saw guys dressing as women on TV for a laugh – Dick Emery, Stanley Baxter, the Two Ronnies – but the point they all seemed to be making was a man dressed as a woman was something to laugh at. Then there had been Freddie Mercury with his 'I Want to Break Free' and Kenny Everett's 'All Done in the Best Possible Taste', blurring the edges. Everyone knew them to be openly homosexuals in an age where they were fighting for acceptance, so were they saying that men in dresses might have some latent homosexuality to them, or were they just looking for another way of shocking the world into acknowledging them?

Certainly, I'd never felt any attraction towards men, not before and not even now. In which case, where did that put me? I knew I wasn't gay, except now I was a woman and thinking of Liz brought a smile to my lips, as well as a tinge of worry that she wouldn't see me the same way now. So, was I now gay?

On the matter of my own gender confusion there was no doubt. Even the loss of memory after the bomb didn't change it. It had taken a while to rise back to the surface, but it ran through me like the words in a Blackpool stick of rock (Google it if you don't know what that means). Once the feelings had risen back to the surface there was no way to deny them, or that they'd been there all along. As I've said, I felt deeply ashamed of them and did everything I could to keep them hidden, but I'd wondered often enough how much less complicated, less angst driven, my life would have been if I'd been born a woman.

And now there had been a second atom bomb and I'd actually turned into one. So maybe this was the afterlife, and my reward was to be what I'd always dreamed of being. Except nuclear disasters weren't supposed to feature in life after death.

And there was that weird nonsense word. What was it?

"Kimota."

I wasn't flying anymore. I was falling and unlike Douglas Adams's sperm whale I had no doubts about whether the ground wanted to be friends with me.

"What the faaa..." I sounded like my old self, only terrified. Fortunately, thought travelled faster than the rate I was falling. "Kimota!" I yelled a second time and pulled out of the dive almost within reach of the roof tops. I Climbed up to a comfortable altitude and settled into a more relaxed flight, heart pounding beneath my breasts.

"Let's not try that again," I said, gratified to discover my voice had returned to its sexy contralto.

Sexy? Sure. You listen to any girl speaking in a lower register and tell me it's not sexy. She could be reading her shopping list, and you'd still want to take her to bed.

Yeah, that was an experience I had ahead of me. The thought of it both scared and excited me. Sex as a bloke had always been something of an anti-climax. Even after you learned to stretch it out, it still felt like it was over too soon. I didn't know how I felt about having someone else inside me. Maybe not so worried if it was someone I cared about, but I hadn't really thought about how it might work between women.

I didn't give much thought to it then, either. Familiar streets appeared beneath me and I steered towards my lockup.

Combination locks of course. No mysterious key to pique the curiosity of my nearest and dearest, and no likelihood of turning up for a fix and finding that I had no way in. One one two six three. The date of my accident. The date I took for my birthday. Easy guess for anyone who knew me, but no-one was going to find this place until after I was dead, by which time they deserved the truths it would tell them.

"What the..." it didn't feel right completing the vulgarity in my new voice, but this wasn't my unit.

I mean it was the right number and in the right place and the lock opened to my combination, but where was the wardrobe full of dresses? The shoes? The underwear? The dressing table with its illuminated mirror and makeup? The couch in the small area in the far corner decorated to bring a little comfort to the place? It was all gone and, in its place, stood a single standalone rack with a collection of identical Miraclewoman outfits along with a rack of boots.

I took off the remains of my overalls and stepped into the nearest outfit. It fit like a glove. Short skirt with shorts incorporated, tight top with scooped neckline, the W and M suitably curved and encircling my generous breasts. I could only wonder at what horny teenager had designed this getup.

The boots came all the way up to mid-thigh. They had a significant amount of heel that promised to make combat both precarious and potentially deadly. It wouldn't take much effort with my enhanced strength to stab someone with one of the sharp heels. Wedges would work better all round; easier to stand, harder to kill. I made a mental note to fix the issue – as soon as I had time.

The only other departure from the sparsity of the place was a full-length freestanding mirror. I stepped in front of it and took a moment to enjoy the me in the reflection. I could see hints of my old self in my face, but it was Micky if he'd started off as a girl and developed in all the right ways. High cheekbones, large, ice blue eyes, button nose and Cupid's bow lips. Maybe a bit generic but I couldn't think of a full-blooded male who wouldn't be howling at the moon on first sight of me.

"Kimota," I said.

And there was Micky in his not too crumpled trousers, his threadbare shirt and his 'it'll do' jacket. The tie was still in my jacket pocket where I had entirely forgotten about it.

Okay, so this would be a different conversation with Liz, along with what on earth had happened to the contents of my lockup.

I locked it up – as you do – then headed for the bus stop. It'd take twenty minutes by bus, assuming I didn't have to wait long.

Or five minutes flying.

That would be preferable.

I steered towards a nearby dark alley to change.

Arrival

"Give us yer wallet."

Yeah. Dark alley. Not surprising to find someone waiting there with mayhem in mind. Not today though.

"Kimota."

"Wha'?"

I spun on the spot and landed an uppercut to his jaw. He flew through the air and finished his trajectory in a pile of rubbish. I approached close enough to retrieve the knife he'd been brandishing and bent the blade back on itself.

He wasn't conscious so I was spared having to think of some corny witticism. He was also still breathing which was a relief. I left him to his rest and took to the skies, landing a very short while later in a dark corner of my neighbourhood.

My superpowers included enhanced vision so I could see there were no observers other than Mrs Henderson's cat. I swore it to secrecy and kimotaed myself back to my ordinary self.

My keys fit the lock – I never doubted they would – and I let myself in.

A bundle of arms and legs leapt at me out of the darkness and wrapped itself around me.

"Ow," I said.

She let go of me and backed off. "Who the hell are you?"

"It's Micky," I said. "Hi Liz. Haven't had that sort of greeting in a while."

"Micky who?" She picked up a knife from the kitchen workshop. Unfortunately one of the larger and sharper ones.

"Micky Moran, your husband."

"I'm married to Michelle Moran. She never mentioned she had a brother."

"Michelle?" Thought travelling at the speed of soup. "Who the hell is Michelle? I don't have a sister." But getting there eventually. "Oh. Ah, kimota."

Liz screamed and dropped the knife. "What the hell! You're Miraclewoman?"

"You didn't know that either, oh shee...oe polish."

"Oh my God, but it is you! Only my Shelly would turn a word like that into shoe polish.

She was back in my arms, squishing her breasts against mine, getting her perfume in my nose and her lips all over mine. It gave me my first inclination of what it meant to be aroused as a woman, and I very nearly gave into it.

I took hold of her hands and held them between us.

"Liz, something weird is going on today..."

"You're telling me! You stay out half the night and then this?" She waved at my costume.

"Yeah, this, but I'm not sure in the way you're thinking. Look, I don't want to get your hopes up before we figure out exactly what's happened. We need to talk."

"Well three o'clock in the morning is not the time. It's way late. So late it's actually early. You need to get some sleep. We both do. Whatever you've been up to, the paper can wait."

I groaned. The paper could never wait. Whatever news I'd gleaned from the day had to be in the office right now if it were to have a chance of getting ahead of the presses. That and if I let the day slide by without putting my scoop in, I'd never work as a journalist again.

"Give me ten minutes and my computer," I said.

She scowled, but relented. You don't stay married to a reporter for long without learning to accept their priorities.

"Ten minutes then, no more, then you're done."

It took five, then another three for the modem to dial up, handshake and send. It wasn't the most scintillating piece of writing, but probably better than anything Micky could have written, and it covered all the salient details. Arabic terrorists, bomb, mushroom cloud, deadly cloud of fallout, evacuation of Isle of Man and Northern Ireland. Isle of Man like a re-enactment of Dunkirk, Northern Ireland, an image of hope for the divided country as southerners welcomed the refugees from the north with open arms.

I sent it off with an addendum that I probably wouldn't be in till the afternoon and shut down the computer to the sound of Liz's tapping foot. She had her arms crossed too and was sucking her teeth in a familiar look of disapproval. So, not so different from the Liz I knew after all.

I stripped out of my costume and into the flowing cotton nightdress waiting on my side of the bed.

"You look younger," she said and planted another knee wobbling kiss on my lips.

"You look as lovely as when we first met," I replied. A bit lame, I thought, but it earned me another kiss and a snuggle that didn't seem like it was going to end any time soon, so I closed my eyes and let exhaustion take me.

Acquaintance

"Good morning Leibschen," an eerily familiar voice reached me in my dream.

"Who is this?" I asked.

"Don't tell me you do not recall Dr Emil Gargunza, Leibschen? I did create you after all."

"Your voice sounds familiar, but..."

"Let me remind you, meine Schatz. Some memories from your childhood."

An officer in RAF uniform standing at the door. It jump started a memory of Micky's, one that had been lost in the murky depths of my forgotten youth. Same officer, same uniform, same sunny day, same powder blue door, only in this memory I was wearing a cotton dress and my hair was in pigtails.

"Such a pretty thing you were, Leibling, with your hair arranged like that. And so brave as you were told of your father's heroism. You wanted to know what would become of you, and the man told you how we would take care of you. The housekeeper who looked after you when your father was away on a mission packed a small suitcase of your things – nobody had much in those days if you recall – and you followed the man into his vehicle and he drove you away."

The memories flooded back, an overlapping of Micky's and Shelly's, almost identical except for the person at the centre of them all.

We drove through the night to a remote place amidst acres of rolling green fields and a camp surrounded by barbed wire. A sign just inside the gate and only visible to those who'd already entered read...

"Spookshow?"

"Yes indeed, you remember now. This was my home, and it was to become yours too. So many prehistoric monuments in the area. Stonehenge, Avebury Henge, Tilbury Hill, West Kennet Long Barrow. Many people believe these were the sites where aliens first visited us. I am not so sure, but we did discover a crash site here and a source of such technology as we could not even begin to dream. I was given charge of a portion of what we discovered – you understand, the officers in charge of it all permitted experimentation only by those who showed an aptitude for a part of the technology, and I found I had a natural affinity for the machinery they used for surviving travel through space. And so, I created Project Zarathustra. Not after the Iranian prophet you realise, but Nietzche's creation. The mouthpiece of his ideas and values."

"I'm not familiar with them."

"Not to worry. You were a product of his beliefs and my genius, along with your friends."

Dicky Dauntless and Johnny Bates, Micky recalled. Diana and Joanne from Shelly's memory.

"The alien devices placed the traveller in a pocket of space they called infraspace during the journey between solar systems. The machinery could survive extreme acceleration, radiation, high and low temperatures and all manner of conditions, while whoever was locked away in quantum space remained safe and unaware and ageless.

I discovered how to bring back the travellers – Qys their race is called. I did so to one at a time and I interrogated them for the knowledge I needed. Before each of them died, they taught me how to enhance the human genome and so I was able to create clones of each of you. These I placed into the quantum shells and tethered to you so that by the simple utterance of a certain word you would exchange places with your enhanced alter ego, and so Miraclewoman was created along with Young Miraclewoman and Kid Miraclewoman."

"You weren't much for names, were you?"

"The importance was that you should exist at all. It was intended that you should become an alternative to atomic weapons and a deterrent to anyone intending to build them.

"Only after I demonstrated all you were capable of, Spookshow decided you were too dangerous. You were instructed to assemble at Christmas Island for a mission briefing, only your intuition told you something was wrong. You used my laboratory to create empty clones of yourself and your companions with barely the intelligence to follow simple instructions. They flew to Christmas Island in your stead and were destroyed by the atomic bomb dropped to eliminate you."

So not quite like Miracleman who hadn't shared the same intuition and had led his younger friends to their deaths, who had nearly paid with his own life.

"I imagine you told your friends they should never revert to their augmented selves again. As long as you were only your ordinary selves you would be no threat, and so it has been for thirty long years. In your mundane form even I cannot trace you, but now you have returned to me Leibschen, and now I will bend you to my will."

"What do you mean?"

"Do you think I am a fool, to create beings of such awe-inspiring strength, a true Aryan race to lead the fourth Reich, and leave you to command your own destiny? Well, I am not such a fool. In the same way there is a hidden word to transform you between the ordinary and the extraordinary, so there is one to give me control over you."

"So why all the blather if all you're going to do is use it on me?" There wasn't a lot I could do if he chose to, so might as well get past the tedious monologuing and get on with it.

"Ah, but you are my child, Leibschen, and I would have you choose to stand by my side. With your great power and my matchless intellect, we can rule the world together. We can make it ours with so much less bloodshed than the Fuhrer accomplished. What do you say, daughter? Will you stand by my side and bring your sister's along so we might introduce a new world order?"

"I think you're nuttier than squirrel droppings, and all the more so if you think I'd willingly help you with your plans."

"A shame, Leibling. 'Tupak.'"

Accosted

I felt my consciousness recede, like falling down an infinitely deep well. I'll admit I screamed a lot of the way, but eventually when it seemed I couldn't possibly fall any further, I convinced myself I was merely floating, weightless. No longer filled with the immediate terror of crashing into something hard enough to do even my enhanced body harm, I could extend my senses outwards and feel what my body was feeling. I could sense the air whipping past as I flew through the night. I was wearing something unfamiliar; a pencil skirt and silk blouse. Nothing on my feet except a pair of tights. My eyes could see far enough into the darkness to pick out streetlights and headlights on the roads. There was an echo of familiarity to my surroundings, my subconscious supplying pointers gleaned from deep in my memory until the rusting remnants of an old military base appeared on the other side of a low hill.

My autopilot brought me in for a faultless landing after which I stood still and waited.

I wasn't sure I could do anything else, but wait and see for now. I could feel another part of my consciousness holding my body still. I didn't know if I could take back control from it, but no sense in showing my hand too soon. Otherwise he'd most likely come up with something else. Wait and see.

I stood out in the cold for nearly an hour – fortunately with a body well able to endure it – before a pair of headlights finally approached the gate I felt no relief or any other emotion.

A frail old man stepped out of the car, physically weak and wizened and smaller even than my new body. He offered me a smug smile which brought distant memories rushing to the surface. A face to go with the name: Dr Gargunza.

"Enjoying your adventure, Leibling?" he said then walked on past. Paused and added, "Folgen Sie mir," before heading into one of the camp buildings with me close on his tail.

The place was kitted out as a high-tech laboratory equipped with some fairly advanced looking gizmos, all in pristine condition.

"Here is the machine I used to imprint your minds on those of the clones. The machinery that makes the clones was damaged when you used it to make your duplicates thirty years ago and I haven't been able to repair it yet, so I cannot make any fresh ones at present. This is unfortunate because I am getting old and would like to live a little longer. It is not my choice to do so as a woman, but I will make do until I am able to repair the damage you caused. Of course I could use your body, but Joanne's showed remarkable promise of possessing psychic abilities, and I would like to explore those before building a clone of my own. So perhaps you would be so kind as to contact your sister or at least show me how to do so in your dream."

He flipped a few switches and the world as Miraclewoman saw it appeared on a nearby screen. Liz was there, sharing breakfast with Shelley, both in their nightclothes. It was weirdly me and not me at the same time.

Shelley was describing her experiences at Sellafield while Liz made all the dutifully sympathetic noises expected of a spouse. They turned on the television to find it filled with news coverage of the disaster, and the heroic efforts made to save lives.

"This is genius, do you not think Leibschen. You think all this is real, but it is an illusion created by your mind from the instant you woke this body. The real Liz you spoke to last night knows nothing of bombs and exploding nuclear power stations. This Elisabeth in your dreams, she experiences everything you do, but she is no more real than the events of yesterday.

"In the real world, your Liz is waking to an empty bed, wondering where you are, while the Elizabeth of your dreams is here sharing breakfast with you and listening to a news report on the television about something that never happened."

That didn't make sense. If there hadn't been a nuclear explosion, then what had pushed me into this reality? Could it have happened in my time line but not this one?

"But now comes the real genius. Watch this."

The news report paused, the reporter holding a finger to his ear and listening.

"This just in," he said, turning to the camera. "Following up on intelligence supplied by Miraclewoman herself, arrests have been made of suspected spies in the Iranian Embassy. It is feared that further attacks of a similar nature are expected and we need to know what the prisoners know now. Miraclewoman, if there is any way Kid Miraclewoman could be persuaded to come forward, we feel that her psychic powers are the only way to prevent further disasters in Britain and Europe. We respect your right to privacy, Miraclewomen, but since one of you has come out of hiding at our time of need, could we not call upon all of you?"

I could feel the Shelly within the simulation respond. She reached for the phone on the kitchen wall.

This was my time to act.

"Putak," I said as loud as I could from where I was lost inside.

"Ah, very good. Most impressive that you retain enough presence in all this to fight back, but I would be an idiot indeed to create a control word that could be undone simply by repeating the same word. Nice try, but it does not work."

"Kimota," I shouted. My last chance.

Shelley disappeared from the simulation and from where she stood in the lab. In her stead my male self appeared, complete with rumpled suit.

"Ah yes, this was a surprise within the simulation. You are somehow not familiar, and yet it is your mind that controls all. I do not know how this should b...."

I smashed him in the face with a punch of some sort. I've never been much of a fighter, but I would be sadly disappointed in myself if I couldn't lay out an octogenarian with a single tap to the head.

I found a few bits of loose cable and tied him up, checking through his pockets to see if he had any nasty surprises hidden about him. There were a few likely objects which I put in my own pockets. I was about ready to stand back and try to figure out my next step when I heard a gun cocking behind me.

Assassin

"Stand back. He needs to die." The voice was just as sultry as my own had been as Miraclewoman. I turned to find an auburn haired beauty in a trench coat levelling a revolver at my stomach, or possibly at Gargunza behind me.

"Er, and who might you be?" Lacking originality perhaps, but you have to start somewhere.

"Evelyn Cream," she said, her voice very much her namesake. "Spookshow have been worried about this guy for a while, and now they've told me he has to die?"

"They're the ones who killed the Miraclewomen, aren't they?"

"They tried, but I heard and understood enough of what he told you. They failed."

"So will you be going after them when you're done with him?"

"Maybe. With him gone there won't be anyone able to control them."

"Unless they learn the control words."

"Yeah, there is that. Okay, so who are you and why are you still standing in my way."

"Well, longish story, but I'm sort of er, Miraclewoman."

She stared at me for a long second then let the barrel of her gun drop. "Well that's annoying. I just have to hear that story."

"The short version, as far as I understand it, is I come from a parallel universe where apparently I'm Miracleman's alter ego. A terrorist nuclear warhead blew me across to this one, linked me to Miraclewoman's clone, so I'm either this or her."

"And the reason you're not her at the moment is because she's lost in an artificial world created by this putz."

"Correct."

"And that explains why you don't want me to kill him at present, because he has your other self under his thrall?"

"And the only way to snap her out of it is a control word only he knows. Without it she's stuck like this for life, fighting imaginary battles forever. Or at least that's true any time she's not me.

"I suppose I could just go back to being this version of me, but now that I've had a taste for being her, I'm not sure I could do that."

"He's hardly likely to give up control willingly."

"No, but he was talking about making use of Kid Miraclewoman's psychic abilities. I figure if we can persuade her to come here, she'll be able to ferret the command words out of his head. When we know them you can do what you like to him."

"And to you?"

"You're going to need something special to take out three Miraclewomen."

"Like an atom bomb?"

"I can't imagine even Spookshow would get away with letting one of them off in the heart of one of England's most beautiful counties. Anyway, as unofficial spokesperson for all us Miraclewomen, I'd say we're open to discussion and will remain so as long as we believe you're not trying to kill us."

"Fair enough. How do you plan to contact Kid Miraclewoman. God who came up with that name?"

"He did, and for that alone I'm happy for you to shoot him when we're done. As for the other, my alter ego was about to call her in the simulation. If I transform back into her long enough to get the contact details, I need to be able to trust you won't do anything to him while I'm gone."

"Alright, I won't."

"That's it? No cross my heart and hope to die?"

"Would it help if I said you could trust me?"

"No, you're right it wouldn't. Alright, trusting you anyway. Kimota."

I was back to floating with Shelley in the simulation. She dialled and I made a mental note of the numbers.

"Kimota."

"That didn't take long. Get what you want?"

"Pretty much. All I need now is a phone."

She pulled something chunky out of her pocket and tossed it over.

"I've heard about these. Do you think they'll catch on?"

"They need to improve them a bit first – make them smaller for one thing – but they're handy. Battery's pretty pathetic so keep your call short."

I dialled the number and put the phone to my ear.

"Hello?"

"Joanne?"

"Who is this?"

I hadn't thought this through. "Kind of Michelle Moran from a parallel universe? I know who you are and I know what Shelley did to keep you and your sister safe. We, that is she more than anything, need your help."

After a long pause, "You're asking a lot."

"I know. We have Gargunza, but we need you to dig about in his mind."

"Where are you?"

"Where this all started, in Wiltshire."

"Spookshow?"

"What's left of it. It's just rusty fences and largely abandoned buildings now."

"I'll be with you soon."

"Yeah, just... if you try changing there's a chance you'll end up in a sort of fugue state, living out a simulated life Gargunza created for you."

"I'm going to need to change if I'm going to poke around in his head."

"Yeah, I figured that, but maybe wait till you get here before switching. I don't know how much we'll be able to help, but I found my way out of the simulation he put me in, and I'm hoping I'll be able to do the same for you."

"Pinning a lot on hope."

"Didn't we always?"

"I guess so. Okay, I'll drive down, but it'll take me a couple of hours."

"We'll be waiting."

"Two hours sitting around doing nothing," Evelyn said as I passed her phone back. "Good job I don't have anything planned for tonight. Hey, where did that dog come from?"

The dog in question was a scrawny little Yorkshire Terrier that was busily licking Gargunza's face. He gave up pretending he was unconscious and twisted away from the animal's overactive tongue.

"This," he said once he'd accepted he was no longer fooling anyone, "is my latest creation. I call him Miracledog. Not quite a clone since the cloning machine is damaged, but an interesting creature nonetheless. Would you like to see? Since you have arranged for Joanne to come here, it seems I have no use for either of you. Nrekmota."

Animal

The transformation was instantaneous. One moment pathetic little scrap of fur, next moment something the size of a wolf with glowing green eyes.

Evelyn brought her gun to bear and fired round after round into it. One went in an eye and two into the mouth, yet it seemed unphased. It leapt at her and tore her throat open with a single shake of its head.

"Nerkmota," I yelled. I knew it was wrong the moment I said it. The creature snarled at me. I don't know if it sensed a threat, or if it was just moving onto its next target.

Come on, work the problem. Backwards words, he likes backwards words. The mota bit was atom like in my key word but what about the rest? Begins with k. Atom... Kern? Like kernel meaning the seed of a plant or the core of a computer. Atomkern had to be German for an atomic nucleus, so backwards it would be...

The dog thing was on me. I put up a hand to defend myself.

"Nrekmota."

The dog shrank down to its diminutive version, still with two of my fingers clenched in its teeth. I hated to hurt the pathetic little creature, but all it would take was a word from Gargunza and I'd be up to my eyes in teeth and toxic drool again. I smashed the animal down hard on its head. Bones cracked and it lay still.

Even so, it took chunks of my two smaller fingers with it.

I checked Evelyn who most assuredly was dead. One pocket of her trench coat held a silken scarf which would serve to staunch my bleeding hand. Another held a box of bullets some of which I transferred into the revolver, once I'd figured out how to open it and empty the spent cartridges.

Next, check on Gargunza who still had that supercilious grin on his face, as though he were actually winning.

I jammed the barrel of the gun up against the side of his jaw.

"I don't need you to talk anymore, do I? Not when Joanne's coming to read your mind. In fact, it would be better if I made sure you couldn't say anything, so why don't I shoot your jaw off?"

"An old man like me? The shock would almost certainly kill me. Besides, when Joanne gets here and becomes trapped in the simulation, you'll need me to speak the word to bring her out. You can't afford to harm me."

I hated that he was right. I hated that I didn't even dare knock him out again. I hunted around the lab for something I could use to gag him and found a trackball attached to one of the computers. Just the right size to fit in his mouth. The belt from Evelyn's trench coat served to hold it in place. He didn't have the strength to fight me off, so he ended up properly gagged and unable even to smile.

"Comfortable?" I asked.

The response was too garbled to understand but I suspected contained a significant proportion of his vocabulary of German profanities.

There wasn't much else to do. My fingers hurt like crazy, so I hunted for and found a first aid kit. It was out of date, but I figured sterilised bandages and saline wash weren't going to degrade much. I cleaned what was left of my mangled hand and wrapped it in gauze.

I wouldn't have minded looking through the lab computers, but they were password protected. The military were pretty tight on security so I wasn't likely to guess anything, and I suspected my prisoner wouldn't be inclined to help, so I just waited. I even nodded off for a while, waking to the sound of Gargunza struggling – ineffectually as it happened – with his bonds.

My turn to smirk at him. He didn't appreciate it.

Dawn's light showed through the lab windows, so I stepped outside to enjoy the freshness of the new day. Shelley's senses would have made the experience so much more enjoyable, but there would be opportunity enough to take advantage of that in the future, or so I hoped.

The sound of an approaching car faded in and out of hearing as it negotiated the local geography. I opened the gate and a few minutes later a small Japanese runabout came through into the courtyard.

No, I don't know what make. They all look the same. This one was blue.

I didn't wait for her to get out but headed back into the lab... where Gargunza had been trying to escape again. I checked his bonds and tightened them out of spite as much as anything.

"What happened to your hand," Joanne said looking at the bandage.

"Dog bit it."

She looked across at what remained of the little terrier and raised an eyebrow.

"It was bigger at the time."

She let it slide.

"So, are we going to do this?"

"Quick reality check first. Did terrorists explode a nuclear bomb at Sellafield yesterday?"

"No. I think I'd have heard about something like that."

"Okay, that pretty much settles that. When I switched bodies yesterday, I fell straight into this simulation thing Gargunza's set up. I don't know how it works for sure, only it's indistinguishable from real life."

"So, what makes you so sure this is reality?"

"Well, since you put it like that, I suppose I can't really be certain, but things changed when Gargunza came to me in my dream, and they haven't exactly gone his way since."

"Unless this is a different simulation."

"Possible but unlikely. Too elaborate. One simulation for Shell and another totally different one for me. He'd have to have a seriously twisted mind to come up with something like that."

"Occam's razor?"

"Whatever that is."

"You told me about it. The solution that makes the fewest assumptions is more likely to be correct."

"Shelly may have told you, but I've never heard of it. Still, it sounds about right."

"So how does all that help me? I mean, I'm not like you."

"No, but you have this psychic thing going on."

"Yeah, I mean that's the whole reason you wanted me to come, isn't it?"

"Yes. His idea originally, since he wanted to put his mind into your body..."

"He what now?"

I sighed, but then if I'd been so keen on keeping explanations short, I should have avoided the details. "We, or you – I mean Shelley, you and Diana – messed up the clone machine when we... you made those dummies back in the sixties, so he can't make a new body for himself, so he was planning on taking over yours..."

"And you're just telling me this now?"

"Because he's tied up and helpless. He can't do it. The reason why he wanted you instead of me was your psychic abilities. He wanted to try them out for himself, see if he could figure out how they worked and include them in his clone when he finally fixed it."

"And then what was he going to do with me?"

I shrugged. "He sees us as disposable. Lab rats. I mean he wouldn't have agreed to nuke us thirty years ago otherwise, would he?"

"That's sick."

"It is, but the point is, he doesn't know anything about your mental ability other than that you have it, does he?"

"No. Shelly had us all switch to our ordinary selves around the same time the ability started to emerge. I never had a chance to figure out what it was about myself."

"That must have been hard, keeping in this form when you had a new and exciting ability to explore."

"Not really. Imagine whenever you go into a room full of people, it's like everyone's shouting at the top of their lungs, and all sorts of uninteresting rubbish. That's what it was like. What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking since Gargunza hasn't had a chance to study it, odds a pretty good he hasn't been able to adapt his simulation thing to override the ability."

Awakening again

"Okay, assuming you're right, how does that help us?"

"Well, if your experience matches mine, your simulation will blend seamlessly with reality, so the first thing you'll see after you change is this lab just as it appears now. Me standing in front of you, Gargunza tied up over there, dead assassin, dead dog. Everything as it is right now. There won't be any clue that you're in a virtual world."

"Not hearing any solutions yet."

"The reason you've come is to use your psychic powers. Now if I'm wrong and Gargunza can trick you into believing you're reading minds when you're not, he'll get you to read a bogus escape word from his mind and you'll think you've broken out of the simulation while he still has you stuck in it."

"Still not hearing anything encouraging."

"So, scan my mind first; I'll be thinking something unique."

"Like what?"

"If I tell you, you'll know what to expect and your subconscious will most likely factor it into your delusion."

"So how will I know?"

"Because it'll be unique. As long as it's something you'd never think of yourself, it's not going to feature in whatever your brain comes up with for your simulation."

"So what do I do when I pick up on your 'unique' message?"

"The virtual world has only one purpose, to keep you distracted. It throws one challenge after another at you, and as long as you continue responding to them you're stuck in the sim. Once you realise it's not real, you can make a conscious decision not to respond to the challenges."

"So, it's like a lucid dream, sort of?"

"A what?"

"Something I read about. You normally don't have control over your dreams, but if you can prompt yourself to wake up inside them, then you get to decide what happens in them, even to the point of choosing when you want to wake up."

"Sounds about right. So, after you change, try to read my mind. When what you see there convinces you you're in a dream, take control of it. Don't react to the challenges it sends your way and try to wake up."

"How will I know I've succeeded?"

I shrugged. "Talk to me about my unique thought. I doubt the simulated me will be able to give you any consistent background on it."

She sighed. "I guess we've acted on flimsier plans. Okay, here we go. Raelcun."

The change was instantaneous. One minute she was middle aged and hiding her slight excess weight under an oversized sweatshirt ang yoga pants, the next she was barely twenty years old, stunningly beautiful and hiding nothing under her skin-tight superhero costume. She was also staring into space, her eyes completely unfocused.

Time to do my bit. I concentrated on the most ludicrous piece of recent current affairs I could think of. Whether or not it had made it into the press as much in this version of reality – or even at all – I had no idea of knowing.

The screen which had shown Gargunza's view of Michelle's and my simulated reality latched onto Joanne's. The screen showed the lab exactly as it appeared in real life with one exception. The little scrap of fur that was Gargunza's miracle dog showed signs of life.

The Joanne in the sim turned my way and focused her mind.

"What the heck," she said. "Why would you be thinking that?"

"Thinking what?" the me in the simulation asked.

"Don't you know?"

'Ask the question with your mind,' I projected at her.

It made it through to her.

'Donald Trump for president?' she asked with her mind.

'It's about as ludicrous a thing as I could think of. Try and wake up then ask me why.'

'How do I....?'

'Click your heels together and say, "There's no place like home." I don't know. It's your dream and you're in control. You said it was up to you to decide when and how to wake up. Just do it before that dog starts distracting you. '

Miracle dog was on its feet and shaking its head dazedly. Gargunza said, "Nrekmota." The alien wolf creature was back.

"Oh sh..." Joanne began.

'Say Nrekmota,' I projected with all the force my mind could muster, concentrating on the correct pronunciation.

"Nrekmota?" Joanne said and the bloody dazed scrap of Yorkshire Terrier was back.

'Now wake up!' I don't know if it's possible to yell with your mind, but something made it through to Joanne. I saw the glaze leaving her eyes. She needed something more. I reached forward and kissed her.

She pushed me away with enough force to put me on my backside. "What on Earth...?"

"I saw an interview recently where Donald Trump was talking about maybe running for president someday," I said. "I couldn't think of a less likely candidate. I mean he lost three billion dollars, declared bankruptcy then finagled the banks into bailing him out. Then he cheated on his wife and ended up in a messy divorce. I mean you expect a certain amount of moral integrity in the leader of the free world, so 'Donald Trump for president' was about the most ludicrous thing I could think of. I mean nothing that happens this side of the Atlantic even comes close."

"Well, I suppose that means I'm back in the real world. Just don't try and kiss me again. I am married you know?"

"And you're my sister, sort of. Sorry, it was either kiss you or slap you, and I wasn't sure if a slap would reach you."

"I don't know how long I can stay awake though. I can feel that alternate reality trying to pull me back. Where is he?"

I waved over to where Gargunza sat bound and gagged. He writhed and made muffled noises that might have been screams had it not been for the ball blocking his mouth.

"Got it. Murberess."

Life returned fully to her eyes. I looked at her impatiently for a moment.

"Oh, sorry," she said. "He got lazy with this one. It's the same word for all of us. Same word to put us under, same word to bring us out."

"Kimota," I said and fell back into that nowhere place, watching Shelly having breakfast with Liz.

"Murberess," I yelled into the dark, and felt myself waking up. I was myself again, as Michelle.

I looked quizzically at Joanne, who smiled ruefully and said, "Donald Trump for president?"

"Let's make sure that never actually happens."

"Fine by me. It's good to have you back, Shell."

"You know it's still me, right? I mean I'm the same person who spoke to you as that grubby old man a few minutes ago."

"If you say. It's just good to have you back like this." She looked over at the remains of Miracledog, eyeing it warily.

"Told you it was bigger," I said.

She shuddered and looked away.

"Okay, now the excitements over, perhaps you could explain to me exactly what's going on."

Aside

She'd earned it.

"It's like I said. As far as I can tell, I'm from an alternate reality where there were three Miraclemen instead of Miraclewomen."

"Okay."

"Things seemed to run pretty much parallel – apart from the gender swap thing – for both our timelines, right up until Spookshow decided to do away with the three of us. Michelle had her kind of sixth sense, women's intuition thing about it and... well, you know what happened."

"Sure."

"It didn't go quite the same way in my world. If I had any misgivings, I didn't do anything about them, So the three of us went to Christmas Island and they dropped the bomb on us.

"I woke up in a hospital some weeks later in my ordinary body and with no memories. Everyone assumed – including myself, because I had no idea who I was – that the Miraclemen had all been killed in the explosion."

"So, your Young and Kid Miraclemen didn't survive?"

"I don't think so. As far as I know, I was the only one they managed to rescue."

"Then Liz started visiting me in hospital. We'd been kind of colleagues before, so she filled me in on a lot of the bits I was missing and in time we sort of got married."

"She never questioned you about how you survived, or what you were doing on Christmas Island in the first place? I mean it's not the sort of thing that happens, living through an atomic explosion, is it?"

I shrugged. "Pretty much the only useful thing about losing your memory. Whenever there's an awkward question, the go to answer is always the same. 'I don't remember.'

"Although I did have a visit from some high ranker from the RAF, an air marshal or something. He wanted to know what I remembered, which was quick and easy enough to do, then he filled me in on a little bit of background, about my dad being a pilot who died in the war and how some of his old mates had arranged for me to ride out to the tropics as a kind of treat."

"You think he was Spookshow?"

"At the time I had no clue, but in retrospect, I think so.

"As for the rest, people beat incredible odds all the time. Did you know there was a guy in Japan who was unlucky enough to be present in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki when the bombs fell? Less than two miles from ground zero for the first one. He's still alive."

"For real?"

"Yeah, in my world at least, but don't ask me why trivia like that sticks in my mind. I always figured I had a gaping hole where my memories used to be, so it fills up with that sort of rubbish."

"I take it Liz isn't a lesbian in your world?"

"You're kidding? I mean no, she can't be. She was the one who spent all that time with me, and it was kind of her idea to get married. Mind you, it might have made it easier if she had been."

"I'm er, what's the word? Transgender. You know, girl stuck in a guy's body sort of thing? It was never something I could talk about as Mike, so I just muddled through as best I could. Then the terrorist attack on Sellafield's new reactor happened – in my world for real – and I woke up as Michelle. I kind of fit better in this world.

"I spent all of the last thirty years with no idea that I was Miracleman, then yesterday my best guess is I said my transformation word at pretty much the exact time they set off their bomb."

"But if you didn't know you were Miracleman, how did you know the word?"

"We were locked in the Atomic Research Department office. They had the name painted on the glass panel on the door and when I read it backwards something clicked.

"I'm guessing again, but I suspect the detonation did something weird to our links to the infraspace bubbles, sort of switched mine with Shelley's, so I went into her bubble and came out as Miraclewoman in your universe, and I have to assume the reverse happened to her in my universe.

"From my perspective, I woke up as Michelle some distance from the bomb site with pretty much all my clothes burnt off and this dirty mushroom cloud billowing overhead.

"I'm guessing Gargunza's simulations feed off what's going on in our heads. I thought I'd been in an atomic blast, so it built on that. I don't know what my actual body was doing all the time I thought I was flying about rescuing people. I'm guessing standing about in a trance if what I saw of you and Shelly has anything to go by.

"Except I inadvertently said my transformation word while I was flying home and actually found myself falling out of the sky. Whether that was a part of the simulation too and I only thought I said the word, or my body in a trance took off to give me some realism, I don't really know.

"Anyway, after the simulation kept me busy for the rest of the day and most of the night, I decided I'd done enough and headed for home. First, I stopped at my lockup, which in my world contains the things I dress up in when I need to let the girl in me out for a bit, only in this reality or Gargunza's version of it, I'm really not sure, it's where your sister keeps her stash of costumes."

"I'm not sure that would make much sense in the real world. I mean Shelley's been living full time as her ordinary self for the last thirty years. Why would she want a secret lockup with her superhero costumes in it if she was never going to use them?"

"I don't know, maybe so she could play dress up and pretend?"

"No, she was too pragmatic. I think all that flight home and whatever you did in the lockup was part of the fantasy. So, what happened next?"

"Well, I went home, changed back into this version of me, let myself into the flat and scared the willies out of Liz."

"I imagine you did, looking like that. But is that all? I mean if you were in the simulation in the lockup, when exactly did you come out of it?"

"Well, after the lockup I decided to take the bus home as Mike, then figured why not just fly? It would save at least a quarter of an hour and I was dog tired. So, I found this quiet little alley where I could get changed, only it wasn't so quiet. Some guy tried to mug me, so I changed into Miraclewoman shoved him into a pile of bins and messed up his knife so he couldn't use it again. I did check to make sure he was still breathing, then headed straight home."

"And your encounter with Liz?"

"Well, after she freaked out about finding me like this I tried turning into my other self and she freaked out all over again."

"Makes sense. The two of you only really got together after we all went into hiding, so Liz never knew about your other self; none of our significant others did. Go on."

"Well she started getting all turned on, you know about being married to a superhero and everything."

"I bet she did. I mean you'd have been thirty years younger and everything."

"Yeah, she said something about that. She was all about going straight to bed, only, you know, I wasn't her Shelley and I needed her to know that before anything happened between us. I said we needed to talk about it, and she said sure, but it was way late and we should go to bed now and talk about it in the morning.

"She gave me this real knee wobbler if a kiss and kind of snuggled up to me. Next thing I knew, I was asleep and Gargunza was speaking to me in my dreams."

"Which is when you say everything changed."

"Yeah, he tried to persuade me to join his crackpot scheme to take over the world, and when I refused, he used that word on me to put me back in the simulation. My real body became a sort of an automaton he could command as he wanted, only this time my mind stayed separate. Kind of floating in space, not in the real world and not in the simulation this time. It's what gave me enough control to interfere."

"Why do you think that happened?"

"I don't know. I have a guess of sorts."

"Beter than nothing."

"I figure our minds have to be linked somehow. You know, whichever body happens to be stuck in infraspace doesn't age or anything, but when you switch from one to the other, the body that comes out automatically knows everything that's happened until then."

"I suppose so."

"Well think about it. There's no delay while your switched body catches up. It's like you're the same mind, but in a different body."

"It makes sense. Okay, but..."

"For me it's different, or at least it has been since the switch. This body has Michelle's memories and they were linked to her ordinary body. My Micky Moran body has its own memories which were linked to my Miracleman body. When the accident happened, I ended up with a break between what I know as Micky and what Michelle knew as herself.

"Whatever link exists between us is struggling to catch up – I mean I'm beginning to remember growing up as a little girl now, as well as growing up as a boy. I figure that when Garcunza put Michelle into that dreamscape, there wasn't a place for Micky me, so I kind of ended up floating in between."

"Why didn't it do the same thing when you first switched across?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. It wasn't Gargunza's trigger word maybe? Maybe there was no Michelle in that first simulation, just my mind in her body. I did say I as guessing."

"Well, your guesses have been pretty good so far."

"I couldn't guess gargunza's trigger words though. He used kaputt backwards to put us under. I mean that's German for bbroken..."

"Sure, if you spell it with a k and two t's, but if you spell it with a c and one t, then you have caput. Sounds exactly the same, but now it's Latin for head."

"So like my transformation word. Use a k rather than a c to make the pronunciation clear. That makes the other word... cerebrum backwards..."

"Which is Latin for brain. I've really missed this, working stuff out with you."

"I keep saying, I'm not the same person."

"Near enough, and getting nearer. You have Michelle's physical brain and, if what you're saying is true, you're getting her memories too. Maybe not quite the same person, but I doubt we'll be able to tell the difference soon."

"Maybe you're right. I feel like I'm becoming more like her with every passing moment. I kind of like it."

"Hopefully not all the way though."

"What do you mean?"

"She was trans too. Always felt she should have been a guy."

"Well, I hope she survived what happened in my world. I'd like to think of her finding the same level of contentment as being Shelly is giving me."

"Contentment? You've arrived in a world where the guys who made us want us dead. Not a lot of contentment to be had there."

"Not unless we do something about it. I mean, we have Gargunza and we have your abilities. What are the chances he knows who heads up Spookshow?"

"Are you suggesting I go looking inside his head? Because I'm all for that. You may not want to watch though, because I don't plan to be gentle."

"Oh no, I have every intention of watching. Only, hold on a minute."

Avenged

I retrieved Evelyn's phone and dialled another number from memory.

"Hey Diana, things are changing and we're not hiding any more. How quickly can you get to the Spookshow camp where we grew up?"

There was a sonic boom and another Miraclewoman costume walked in.

"You know, I've been waiting for that call for thirty years. Hey, how come you only call me after the fun's over?"

"Not quite over. We wanted you to share in the best bit."

Joanne linked minds with us and dived into Dr Gargunza's brain. We were intimately aware of everything she did their, which was excruciatingly painful for him and resulted in severe and permanent damage to his brain. By the time she was done he was leaking from all orifices. Blood from his eyes, cerebrospinal fluid from his ears, drool leaking past the ball gag in his mouth and less savoury smells emerging from further down.

"Did you have to be so... thorough?" Diana asked a little squeamishly.

It hadn't been pleasant, but I couldn't help feeling he deserved it. He certainly didn't have that smugness about him now.

"He had a lot of secrets he was trying to hide," Joanne said. "I couldn't dig them out without using that level of force. But we're done now. We now know everything he did. All the command words he put into us, a way to deprogram us from going into simulator zombie mode, passwords for the computers here, details of who's been running Spookshow all these years and, rather disturbingly, what he did to those aliens after he pulled them out of stasis. Gargunza isn't a threat anymore – no coming back from that – but we need to decide how to deal with the spooks."

"I vote conference call," Diana said. "There's a conference phone in the officer's hut – next one over."

"So there is," Joanne said. "Thank you Dr Gargunza's memories. It's a bit early yet though."

"I don't see why they should get to lie in while some of us have been up the best part of the night," I said.

"We should make copies of the computer files first," Joanne said. "I think I saw a zip drive on one of the terminals back here. It shouldn't take long."

The conference call went through at eight, to all the numbers Gargunza's mind had given us. They all accepted the call despite the early hour, suggesting this wasn't an unusual occurance.

"What's this about Gargunza? Couldn't it wait for a reasonable time?"

Diana and Joanne looked to me to respond. Which I suppose was right. After all, I was the eldest.

Gargunza's shared memory provided me with a name to go with the voice.

"Sorry to disappoint you, Mr Phillips. Dr Gargunza isn't in a state to come to the phone at present, nor do I suspect he will be ever again."

"Who the hell is this and how the hell did you get this number?"

"I the hell am Michelle Moran, and I'm here with my sisters..."

"Diana Dauntless..."

"...and Joanne Bates."

"In case you don't recognise the names, we're the three young women you tried to eradicate with an atom bomb around thirty years ago. As for how the hell we got your number – all of your numbers as it happens – we the hell dug them out of Dr Gargunza's brain.

"He didn't want us to do it, but Joanne can be quite insistent. Unfortunately, the more someone fights back, the less there is of them by the end of the process, so you can imagine Dr Gargunza's not feeling very well at present."

"What is it you want?" A new voice.

"Mr Martin, so good to hear from you. How are your wife and children? What we want, Mr Martin, is for you not to try and kill us anymore. I spoke with Evelyn Cream earlier this evening. She told me you'd sent her to kill Dr Gargunza, but she didn't rule out the possibility that we might end up on her list in the future.

"Incidentally, Evelyn is dead, courtesy of Dr Gargunza's mutant dog. It wasn't a particularly pleasant creature, so we had to put it down. Dr Gargunza isn't strictly speaking dead, but there's little enough going on in his brain that you can consider him as good as. Or you can send someone else to finish him off. He won't put up much of a fight now."

The silence on the other end stretched for a while. Eventually a third voice spoke up.

"So that's all? You just want us not to kill you?"

"Good heavens no, Mr Beardsley. We have a few more requests. Firstly, we'd like to see Spookshow disbanded, which means none of you is to attempt to contact any of the others again, ever. Since we know who and where you are, you can be assured we'll be watching so we'll know if you break this condition.

"Next, we'd like all the knowledge you gleaned from studying Qys technology posted to the public domain, specifically into the hands of people who can use it to make worthwhile contributions to the human condition."

I waited as the silence extended beyond what was reasonable.

"We'd also like to see you held accountable for your part in what happened to the Qys crew at Dr Gargunza's hand, but I suppose we could be content with a few positive gains and forego the negative ones."

"And suppose we refuse?"

"Then, Mr Bateman, you would be setting yourselves against us and we'd have no choice but to respond accordingly."

"Ah, so now we come to the threats."

"Mr Collins, how blinkered your view is of this whole situation. The Qys visited our planet once and most likely never heard from their scouts. Chances are fair to good that they will return within our lifetime. They will want to know what happened to their colleagues and I have no doubt they'll have methods of finding out for themselves. When they learn the truth, they will most likely desire a reckoning..."

"And by God we'll be ready to give them one."

"Mr Benson, however much we may have gleaned from studying one small craft of theirs which crashed nearly fifty years ago, I think it quite likely they will prove to be our technological superiors.

"When that day comes, it will be very much in all the human race's best interest if we are able to show that what befell their comrades was an unfortunate occurrence brought about by a megalomaniacal minority of our population, and that we have since ensured that such power hungry, self-serving individuals have been limited in their influence, for their own safety as much as for everyone else's.

"To this end, we cannot permit individuals such as yourselves continued free rein to make use of technology acquired by questionable means and implemented in support of your own personal interest. Now you will either relinquish it willingly or you will be made to do so. Not for our sake, but for that of all humanity."

"I told you we should have destroyed them when we had the chance."

"But you did your best to do just that, Mr Spencer, and for the last thirty years you have believed that you succeeded. Now you should realise we are not so easily killed."

"Is that what you think?"

"Up, now, as fast as you can." something in his tone of voice had my intuition jangling like the end of the world was about to come. The three of us shot up through the roof of the cabin, crashing through the sound barrier within seconds and accelerating ever faster. Beneath us the morning flared brilliant white and a cloud boiled upwards into the atmosphere beneath us, never quite reaching us. We watched from the edge of space as it dissipated.

"Well, I suppose that's an answer of sorts," I said.

My voice was less than a whisper in the near non-existent atmosphere, but their ears were as good as mine. "The only question now is how do we deal with it?"

"It demands retaliation," Joanne replied in the quiet. "I say it's time they discover what it means to make us their enemy."

"I agree it demands a response, but we have to be careful. If we declare ourselves judge, jury and executioner, we risk becoming as bad as them."

"So, what do you suggest?" Diana asked.

"We divide the list between us, and we incarcerate them all, pending a public trial, which will also serve to get what these guys have been doing into public awareness."

"Isn't it protected by the Official Secrets Act?"

"I didn't sign. Did either of you?" They shook their heads. "So, publish and be damned. If anyone objects, we can challenge it as publicly as we can."

"What if they don't want to be arrested?"

"Don't give them an option. They can't hurt us with anything much short of an atom bomb, and after what they just did to one of England's areas of outstanding beauty without achieving their goal, I suspect they'll think twice before trying again"

"And if they take hostages?"

"Then prioritise the hostages."

"Okay. I'll take Spencer, Benson, Bateman and Collins," Joanne sped off before either Diana or I could say anything. We split the rest up into two groups by region and set about rounding them up.

Arrogance

Most of them came without a struggle. Some tried to run, but when your pursuer can fly faster than the speed of sound, the chase tends to be quite short regardless of how much of a head start you have.

Of all mine to collect, Peter Martin was the biggest challenge. He hid behind his wife and children, who tried to defend him. Superspeed and the ability to fly come in handy though. I was able to run around them all before they could begin to react, grab my quarry and disappear out through the open window.

My experience in the simulator rescuing survivors had taught me how to protect those I carried. Less than supersonic didn't matter so much, but when I was carrying them individually and at high speed, I had to support their heads and grip them tight around their chests to keep them safe.

Debbie and I delivered ours to Belmarsh prison. One of Debbie's pulled a gun on her. After the ricochets off her body came close to hitting the man's wife, she'd rushed forward and crushed the gun, unfortunately mangling the man's hand in the process. He went to the prison medical centre while the others were locked up in individual cells.

The guards weren't that happy since the prison was overcrowded already, but I reassured them it was only temporary until we could sort out something longer term.

Joanne didn't turn up until I sent out a mental call for her. She arrived with her four trussed up on the end of a rope. The journey would have been traumatic for them, except that there wasn't much left behind any of their eyes.

"What did you do to them?" I asked, as if I didn't know.

"Nothing less than they deserved," she said. "This one," she indicated Spencer, "detonated that bomb under us, but they were all involved in installing it under the base. So, they could dispose of the evidence if they needed to. Cover their butts."

"You should have left their conviction and their punishment to the law. It's like I said, if we set ourselves above the law, we become the monsters we're trying to eradicate. We have enough evidence to show their guilt."

"What evidence?" Joanne threw the bag of zip drives at my feet. "The EMP from that explosion will have wiped these. They're useless! The only evidence we have of what these guys did is in our heads, which makes it our word against theirs."

I picked up the disks. "We did keep ahead of the blast. Are you sure these are ruined?"

"I don't care! I know what they did and what they planned to do. You know what Gargunza had planned for me? These guys approved that. And not so he could be me. So, he could figure out how my abilities worked and build himself a new body to his specifications. Then he'd have thrown me away like last week's rubbish. And they're just as bad. They don't deserve to live!"

"I can see you're upset, Joanne, but this isn't the way."

"What are you going to do about it? You can't stop me. I'm as fast and strong as you are, and on top of that, I can do this!"

I felt the force of her mind boring into mine. It hurt like mad, but she wasn't getting in. I could feel how she was pushing, and I pushed back. However this was going to end, I couldn't let it happen in front of the whole world.

"Tupak."

Nothing around us seemed to change. The mental battle went on, but I could feel something of that separateness between Miraclewoman and Michael. No-one else was directing the simulation. I tried reaching out with my will.

The prison faded around us, as did the prisoners and guards. Everything except the three of us.

"You think this is going to achieve anything? All I have to say is..."

Joanne's words cut short as my will turned my hair to snakes, my eyes to something mythical and her body to stone.

'You'll need to be able to move your mouth to achieve that,' I projected into her mind. 'I mean you could try saying it mentally. Murberess. Ah, that doesn't seem to work. I'm sorry Joanne, but you're too dangerous to be let free in the world. You should watch though and see how justice is meant to work.'

A wave of my will and a screen appeared in front of her showing the real world with the three of us standing catatonic and the guards and warden looking confused.

I took Diana by the hand and led her out of Joanne's hearing, which meant flying up to where the air was thin again.

"Did you have to do that to her?" Diana's whisper quiet words reached me.

"I couldn't think of an alternative. Let me know if you come up with one and I'll take it. For now, let's get back to the business of justice. Murberess."

Diana and I were back in the real world. Joanne remained in a trance.

It took a while to organise, but we managed to assemble a roomful of high court judges. When we explained briefly that the dozen men we'd incarcerated were responsible for a number of atrocities, the most recent of which was the detonation of a nuclear warhead in the English countryside, they were prepared to hold them prisoner until we could present our evidence. They found a technician who examined the disks and declared the data safe and recoverable.

"EMPs destroy unshielded electronics," he said, "which fortunately zip drives don't have. Magnetically stored media is usually pretty much undamaged."

"Pretty much?"

"The image is a little faded, but I should be able to read it easily enough, as well as whatever might have been recorded on these previously up to maybe five or six recordings back."

"How does that work?"

"Well, when you overwrite a disk, the old data is erased first, but not entirely. There's typically a lower level image at about five percent of the original intensity in there. A normal reader will see it as background noise and ignore it, but I can set a filter to look for data images at the five percent mark, the quarter of a percent level, the eightieth of a percent level and so on. It's why, if you want to make sure a disk is properly scrubbed, you need to use a program that writes random noise onto it at least ten times. Eventually the data does fade to unreadable."

"Well, let me know as soon as you have the first layer off these," I said.

Then while the courts were arranging a venue for the hearing and deciding how to deal with the military using the Official Secrets Act to try and shut it all down, Diana and I supervised the construction of an appropriately secure prison for our captives.

It was essentially an immense steel box with nuclear powered heater, air scrubbers, water recyclers and a year's supply of food for them all. We did give them a window to look out of, but once we'd put it and them in orbit, all it showed them was how impossible it would be for them to escape.

The hearing was held behind closed doors, which satisfied the military, barely. When all the evidence had been heard, the verdict from the high court judges was unanimous. The members of Spookshow were to remain incarcerated for the remainder of their lives with no hope of parole. The orbital prison would serve, with a request made to us to extend it. We did so, creating a cluster of habitats separated from one another by the vacuum of space, intended for only the worst of the world's criminals. Diana and I did the ferrying of inmates up and down. Food and supplies went up by unmanned rockets and maintenance tasks then fell to those incarcerated.

Aliens

Life settled into a sort of normal with Diana and I – now referring to ourselves respectively as Miss Marvel and Miss Miracle – overseeing the proper use and development of Qys technology. I visited Joanne almost daily, creating a simulation within the simulation on which she could do anything except use the escape word. She remained angry, verging on unhinged, taking out her rage on a virtual humanity within her environment. It saddened me, but she seemed to have fallen over a precipice from which she couldn't return.

Her husband accompanied me into the simulation once, but when she turned her mental powers on him and nearly killed him, he accepted that there wasn't much he could do for her.

Liz decided she wanted a family, so Mick made a reappearance for long enough to provide us the means to impregnate her. IVF is not much fun, but Liz couldn't face doing things the normal way, even with a male version of her wife. In time we had a viable embryo, and nine months later, Winter came into our lives.

I couldn't have been happier, and we might have had our happily ever after, except for the day when the Qys mother ship arrived. Miles across and blotting out the sun across most of central London, hanging impossibly in the sky, unmoving a thousand feet above the ground. There was no doubt about its origins since in every way other than its immense size it was the same as the crashed scout ship.

I suspected it had detected Diana's and my presence because most of our days were spent in the capital. Joanne's too since the hospital that cared for her was part of the facility where we worked.

The craft remained where it had stopped for a day and a night without making any attempt to communicate.

Which left it to me to make the first move.

I'd been dreading this day since I found out what Gargunza had done to the Qys scouts. Would they be reasonable and willing to talk, or would they be enraged and demand retribution? Only one way to find out.

I flew up to what I assumed was the front – hard to tell with a massive disk shape, except it had been the leading edge of the craft when it arrived. I hovered at a distance of a quarter mile for nearly an hour, then somewhere to my right a doorway opened in the side of the craft, spilling out a brilliant white light.

I approached cautiously to find a figure standing in the doorway. Humanoid, female, more than twice my height. Face impassive, eyes glowing white and featureless.

I landed on the deck in front of her.

"On behalf of the people of Earth, may I express our profound regret for what became of your fellow travellers."

She shifted her penetrating gaze to me. My consciousness fled as the immensity of her mind entered my own.

To be continued?