I am a Cylon.

Boomer repeated it to herself. I am a Cylon.

She smiled at herself.

The Eight lying docilely in the black tub of goo stared up at her. She had been hiding in the mountains on Picon, preaching a heretical religion of a destroyer/creator Mother Goddess. She believed that she was one of many incarnations of this goddess and led human rebels to retake Delphi.

She is quite mad, the Threes whispered to her. You should be the one to box her. You are her sister.

Boomer secretly hated the Threes and she knew they hated her.

She put two fingers on the thin metal box at the side of the tank, pressing down. The Eight looked up at her. "I'm not a machine. I'm a goddess. You'll know my fury. You shall fall to your knees and worship me! You shall-"

Boomer pulled the box out of its place. The tank darkened and the Eight fell beneath the once glowing ooze. Her empty eyes stared up into themselves, mirroring back over and over and over again.

She slipped the box into her pocket, remembering again what it had been like to die.

****

Gaeta watched Dradis. The screen was blank. There had been no contact with the Cylons since the Great Turkey Shoot.

He had more and more time off since this sudden lull. He had gone to see the other "Sharon" since then. She had been curious about him and Boomer. She asked a few polite questions. She could remember talking to him as Boomer, the day in the CIC. But that was all. She remembered Chief and being with him but that was all. It was disconcerting to hear things that Boomer would otherwise never have told him flow so freely out of this…this woman's mouth.

To counter this steady stream of slightly degrading statements, Gaeta told her all about what Boomer had been like when they were together. Sharon listened intently as if there was some knowledge to be gained from these conversations. Sometimes he wished she would say something to make him feel less like he was making it all up. He hadn't seen Boomer in so long, he was beginning to feel like a stalker, laying out all his fantasies for his victim to inspect. It was creepy.

He had lost track of the days since he had seen the real Sharon. This seemed implausible to him; he was someone who was always counting, measuring.

He asked her "Do you believe me that all of this happened?"

She paused, as if wondering what he wanted to hear.

"Yes."

"Why? How do you know that this isn't some trick to test you for surveillance information?"

She frowned. "I don't know. It seems like a very convoluted story to come up with just for security purposes. And they already have my cooperation because of Helo. And if they really wanted something like that, they would have sent Chief, because we were already involved...I mean, Boomer was already involved with him, not me." She looked down at her hands for a moment, "Why bring in a whole new person? It wouldn't be logical." She shrugged.

Gaeta wasn't satisfied. Wasn't she supposed to be an exact copy of Sharon from the beginning of the war? Hadn't Sharon had any feelings for him then? Did it honestly matter?

His head was spinning from all of these odd, almost existential thoughts, the sort of thinking he wasn't used to. He was usually buried in exact calculation. Everything was quantifiable in his little universe in the CIC. He suddenly burned to be doing his job, a feeling so ridiculous that he had to keep a shout of laughter from bursting out of his mouth. "I should really go."

He put the phone back in its cradle and left as swiftly as possible, hiding his laugh behind his hand.

***

She could feel herself giving up. Everyday staring into the mirrors felt more and more like she was slipping away, slipping into herself. Over and over, she could hear the words of the others: You are one of us, you are our sister, you are our destiny. She hated them for it. She didn't believe in destiny, she never had. Destiny was for self-involved kings and similar small men, confined to dusty history books and dusty corners of military offices.

Memories of her home tugged at her heart, but when she tried to go back to them, through projection, copies of herself walked by, arm in arm with copies of herself all happy and dressed prettily. It made her feel sick, watching herself wandering the halls of Galactica over and over again, hand in hand with another Sharon, a Doral, a Six The reflections seemed like they were everywhere and no matter where she went, the only person she couldn't find was herself.

A spiteful Three had told her about the new Sharon on board Galactica, about her baby, about Helo. This last part had made Boomer want to cry from rage. Helo had liked her, he had always liked her and for the Cylons to twist it this way…

Everyday, all she got was more and more angry. It seemed like cruel black spills of ink were seeping their way through her, permeating every layer of her. When she projected now, the walls were like white paper, with black shadows, sliding across them, their curved and hideous points reaching out and spreading like a thousand boiling veins, burning everything with fever in their path.