The key rattled in the lock of Jason’s front door and eventually, as if deciding at length whether or not to do its job, clicked. Home again, home again, she thought. The ugly ivy-patterned wallpaper was always here for her. She went to the kitchen and made a cup of tea quickly, not leaving it enough time to brew, and went upstairs with the mug of hot leaf water clamped between her chilly hands.
She briefly thought of lighting the fire, but decided against it and rolled herself up in a blanket instead. The radiators never even entered into her mind. With oil the price it was?
She looked at the mirror in her bedroom, on the wall perpendicular to the comfortable armchair she had established herself in. There are so many mirrors in this house, she thought idly (five in total: two bathroom, one bedroom, one hallway, and a small one in the kitchen). A lot for one person, anyway.

A hand clamped itself across her mouth. Jason suddenly became unasleep all at once as the band of black-clad strangers put their arms under her armpits and marched her out of the room silently. It was so sudden, so surreal, that she found that she went straight through afraid and into furious.
“Just what the hell do you think-” she got out before a gag was tied into her mouth again. One of the black-clads pulled a walkie off his shoulder and said in a resonant voice:
“We’ve got her.” Then he slotted the walkie back into its shoulder pocket and gestured to the wall, where Jason saw that four spikes had been driven into the partition in the shape of a door.
“You bastards,” she tried to say, although it came out as “‘oo ’ar’er’” through the gag. The leader snapped his fingers at the wall, and suddenly it became an opening that led somewhere that was decidedly not Jason’s airing cupboard.

The room was all in white, with a mirror on one wall that screamed “one-way glass” to her. Or was it two-way? The one from police shows. She groaned as the black clad guards forced her down into the steel chair and pulled the gag away.
When she turned around they were gone. There was no door in the room.
“Oh, very funny,” she said. “So somebody figured it out ahead of us.” She stood up and went to the mirror, trying to catch a glimpse of movement on the other side. “Niko? Is that you? I bet you’re around here somewhere. Well then you know you can’t keep me locked up like this. I promise I don’t know anything useful to you.”
“Are you sure?” said a voice that crackled out of a speaker below the mirror that she hadn’t noticed. It was a hauntingly familiar voice. “If you don’t know anything…” she said, letting the implied threat hang. The voice, of course, was her own.
“You don’t want me. Niko’s the real genius of the department,” she said.
“Nikos don’t play well with others. Especially not other Nikos,” said the voice.
“Others?” said Jason. Of course. They’d done it more than once, then. She looked into her own eyes in the mirror. If they were her own, and not some other version of her from another layer.
As if she’d had the same thought, the Jason in the mirror raised her arms. “Boo!” she said to herself. On the right side of the mirror, she put her arms back to her sides and studied the other face. Inconclusive. She turned away from the mirror. Not going to bother worrying about it. If there was another Jason on the other side of the mirror it wasn’t her damn problem. She had plenty of her own damn problems to be getting along with.
“If you don’t put me back, there’s going to be trouble,” she said.
“Really? That’s interesting. For who?” said the speaker. “I have the full backing of this layer’s government, you know.”
“The government?” said Jason. “Just how different is this layer?”

Jason was shepherded into the accommodation wing by more black-clad guards. Accommodation wing! More like a cell block. Institutional green walls and doors with the locks on the outside.
“Welcome to your new home,” said one of the black-clads in a familiar voice.
“Oh no, don’t tell me…”
The black-clad reached up to her helmet and pulled the black mask off her face.
“Just how many of me are there?” said Jason incredulously. She looked at the face. A scar twisted one cheek, and it was an older face, but it was unmistakable.
“If you’ll care to step into the apartment, please,” said one of the other black-clads, pulling off her facemask. This one was younger.
“Are there any other people around here?” Jason said desperately. The door opened, and two firm hands were placed on her shoulders.

She was caught as she stumbled back by another of her.
“Oh, for crying out loud,” she said. “No offence.”
“None taken,” said the other Jason. “I know this must be hard for you to get your head around. I’m Jason.” She offered a hand for Jason to shake.
“Pleased to meet you, Jason,” said Jason. She furrowed her brow. “This is going to get too confusing.” The other Jason nodded. “We’re going to need some sort of system.”
“We have one,” said Jason. The other Jason, that is. “Call me Cass. You’ll figure out your name soon enough. We’ve got Cassies, J.C.’s, Jaces, Tinas… We’ll get you sorted out.”
“Alright… Cass…” said Jason. Cass nodded.
“It gets a lot less confusing eventually,” she said.
“Does it?”
“Not really, but that’s what they said to me when I got here. It’s sort of traditional.”
“That’s reassuring. Wait. How long have you been here?”
“Give or take three years.”
“Well, which is it? Give or take?”
Cass laughed. “If you keep our sense of humour like that, you just might make it after all.” Jason didn’t want to ask what ‘it’ there was to make.

Presently, a guard-Jason, not in the black flak jacket uniform of the thugs who had brought her here but in a loose-fitting blue jumpsuit, rattled a trolley down the middle of the hallway outside and came to a stop at their door. She dipped a ladle into the tray on the trolley and glopped a fist-sized heap of brown onto a metal dish.
“Welcome to the Complex,” she said with a surly expression. “Enjoy.” She handed the dish to Cass through a slot in the door.
Cass nudged Jason awake, offering the dish of stale-smelling stuff. Jason wrinkled her nose and said “what”, screwing up her eyes at the heat and atmosphere radiating off the foodstuff.
“You missed dinner, so they’ve brought you something to eat,” said Cass.
“What is it?”
Cass repeated “Something to eat,” in a tone that suggested that further inquiry would be at best unhelpful. Reluctantly, Jason ate.

“Have you ever heard the expression: ‘All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun?’” said the woman behind the desk on the tv screen who was, yes, yet another of her. Jason shook her head. She was in what Cass had called “re-orientation”, a sort of untraining course where the only lesson was to sit still and listen. “Well. You are the girl, and I have the gun. Do I make myself clear?”
“Is this some kind of joke?” said Jason. A red octagon appeared in the corner of the screen and a horn sounded.
“Oh, dear!” said the other woman. “Do be careful. You don’t want to get any more of those if you can help it.”
The door opened. On the other side, the blue guard loomed. She was taller than Jason, an effect which she would eventually realise was acheived with the aid of tall-heeled boots and lifts.
“Time to get moving,” she said. “We’ve got some ground to cover.” She helped Jason to her feet and led her out into the hallways, all alike.
“Do you like this colour?” said Jason when they had been walking a while. The guard shook her head. Jason waited a bit more for her to elaborate, but none was forthcoming. “Listen, I was supposed to be being ‘re-oriented’ in there, but all I got were threats and mixed metaphors. Nobody has explained anything to me since I got here, and I’m getting damn tired of it! Why is that woman collecting copies of herself?”
“You’ll see,” said the guard. “I’m taking you to the work floor.”
“The work floor?” said Jason. “What is this, some kind of factory?”
The guard shrugged and opened a door onto a large, open space, like an aircraft hangar. Exactly like an aircraft hangar, in fact. Like ants, Jasons of all disciplines scrabbled around the base of a gigantic aircraft that teemed with technological implements. Suddenly, Jason realised what they were.
She had seen technology like that only one other place: in the basement of the Bluebottle. The other Jason was building an interdimensional invasion force.