I sneezed violently. It was the fourth time I had sneezed in half an hour. Maybe I was coming down with something. My brain ticked over all the people I'd been near in the week, trying to think whether any of them had been sick. I couldn't think of anyone. Maybe it was just the dust in the attic.

"Mum?" I asked my mother, Sarah Jane. "When was it you last ducted in here?" Sarah Jane isn't really my mum. I don't have a mother. I was just an experiment. Sometimes I wish I could have been born normally, like Clyde or Maria or Rani. They're my friends, my very best friends in the world.

"I don't dust," Mum answered. She smiled, "When you save the world, things like cleaning don't really seem to matter any more.

It was mattering to me. I had just let out another sneeze, a very loud one and my nose felt all blocked up. I remember the very first time I sneezed. I thought my face was blowing up, but mum just laughed.

"Maybe I should do it?" I suggested, feeling the itchy sensation start up all over again. I went downstairs. In the kitchen I picked up a sqaure of blue checkered material my mum calls a 'j-cloth'. I never really got the name, (why 'j'?!) and mum tried to explain something to me about marketing and product names, but I didn't really get it. I don't really see the point of a piece of cloth being labelled a 'j-cloth' when there is nothing remotely 'j'-ish about it. I just guessed there was something I was missing.

Back up in the attic, I stood on a chair to survey all of the high-up surfaces. I had a sudden thought.

"Do you think needs dusting?" I asked uncertainly. It was possible that every time he emerged from the wall that he picked up a little bit of dust. It could accumulate and could potentially get clogged up.

"Don't bother." Mum suggested. Then she added. "We don't really need to dust anywhere up here, it's fine."

I let out a sneeze that had been building up out to prove her wrong and then gingerly set to work on the top of an old mahogony wardrobe. The dust was nearly a centimeter thick in some places. No wonder I was sneezing everywhere.

"What do we need a wardrobe up here for anyway?" I asked mum. It seemed pointless. Wardrobes are for clothes and shoes. Mum and me keep all of those downstairs in our rooms.

"It's useful for keeping things in." Mum said absent-mindedly. She was working on one of the many computers in the attic and ever time I spoke to her I felt like I was interupting something very important. I probably was.

I shrugged and didn't question any more. Finally, all the dust started getting to me. Instead of scooping it up, I just seeme to be stirring it up my nose.

"I'm going out." I said to mum. She nodded and didn't turn away from her computer screen. I grabbed my jacket and headed out. I walked along the road and then down the next, vaugely heading towards Clyde's house. I turned up a side-alley and walked down it, in no rush. The air was unblocking my nose and after a few sneezes I felt almost normal. It was just sneezing again when I fell over something lying on the ground.

I fell onto cold, hard stone. It had recently rained, probably when I was in the attic because the ground was quite wet and the were puddles dotted about. The water immediately began to seep into my top.

I scrambled up again, but I had only got onto my knees when I saw what I had fallen over.

My first feeling was a sense if de ja vous (I think that's what mum calls it). Did I recognise the figure lying prone on the concrete? Something looked so familiar... But no, it was the figure that stirred up memories, it was the clothes they had on. I almost fell backwards in shock, for I had a set of the very same clothes hanging at the back of my wardrobe.

The same long white t-shirt, short-sleeved with a v-neck. The same plain white shorts underneath and the same trainers. I leant in closer. She was unconcious, lying on the wet street her long reddish-brown hair strewn everywhere, dipping in muddy puddles and trailing through dirt.

All her clothes were wet, so I figured she must have been out while it was raining. How long had she just been lying here? An hour? Two? Someone must have noticed her.

The though I was thinking over and over again was; how? I had thought I was the only one the Bane created when they had come to earth, but unless some other institute outfitted their subjects in exactly the same garments as the Bane, I hadn't been as alone as I had thought.

Whispering a quick apology to the unconcious girl, I lifted the long top up over the waistband of her shorts.

Her stomach was as flat and smooth as mine. No belly-button. Quickly, in case she woke up to find me leaning her her , pulling her top up, I covered up her stomach again. What should I do?

Gingerly, I slid an arm under the girl's back, ignoring the scrape of gravel on the back of my hand. It had started to rain again, so I wanted to get back as soon as possible. I slid another arm under her knees. Her shorts extended just above them, so I could see and feel just how painfully thin her legs were. Was I that skinny when I woke up?

I braced myself standing up, but she wasn't as heavy as I thoug she would be, even considering how boney she was. I was closer to Clyde's house, but I set off in the direction I had come, back to Sarah Jane's house. There was no question of just leaving her on the concrete. However light the girl was, my arms started to ache from holding her.

The rain was steadily getting heavier and heavier. It was at the point of pelting it down when I turned the corner onto my road. I could see the individual drops when they hit the girl's face. They splashed off in a million droplets. One hit her eyelash, and I expected it just to splash off, but it clung there. Her eyelashes were very long and brown.

I don't know how I made it all the way back, but I did, not having to put her down once. I rung the doorbell , (I had to; my key was in my pocket and I couldn't get to it) and waited.

Rani came to the door. She must have popped in from over the road and waited with Sarah Jane until I came back.

"Luke!" she said in welcome when she saw me, then "Oh!" she said when she saw my burden."Who is she?"I saw her registering the girl's clothes and the way her hair was so long it was dragging along the wet ground, even with me holding her at chest height.

She stood aside for me to come through, shut the door and followed me into the living room, watching as the girl's hair swept along the floor. I had an absurd vision of me doing dusting upstairs with it.

I didn't want to get Sarah Jane's sofa wet, but I couldn't really avoid it, so I put her down on the biggest sofa in front of the TV.

"Are we taking home anybody now?" Rani said sceptically. "Why didn't you just foist her off on someone else? Someone who lived near? What are we going to do with her?" she glanced at the prone figure lying on the sofa, one of her thin arms hanging off and her red, full mouth slightly open.

"She's a special case." I started, but I didn't know how to explain. Rani hadn't been there when I was found, so she probably wouldn't know the significance.

Rani snorted. "I expected you least of all to fall for a pretty face." she teased, but she also looked rather worried. "What's Sarah-Jane going to say? We've got to phone the police." I started to protest that we couldn't phone the police, but...

"Is that you Luke?" I heard mum call. She was coming down the stairs. She had probably finished her work to do on the computer. "Are you back? I was just thinking about putting supper on. Have you seen Rani, she came over." She turned into the living room and caught sight of my expression. "What?"

Then she caught sight of the girl, still lying there motionless on the sofa, her hair dripping over the edge her thin clothes sopping. It was slightly comical to watch her just staring her mouth in a funny 'o' shape. Her eyes widened.

"Luke... where did you find her?" she asked, her voice barely a whisper. "And how is it possible?" she momved closer to the sofa. "Is she OK? She looks kind of..... out of it." It was true. The girl hadn't batted an eyelid since I had seen her. She continued to breath in and out, but there was a ruddedness to it, like she had a cold or something. She was very pale and her eyelids wtere a pale violet colour that didn't look healthy. Her wrists were so thin they looked like they could snap. All in all, she didn't really look in that great a shape.

"I found her in a side-alley." I told her. Once again I wondered; why was she even there? "She was all like this when I found her." I stopped, because I felt what I had said wasn't quite right;something had changed. She was paler, I was sure and I didn't remember her to be breathing ruggedly at all when I was carrying her.

"What's on your arm?" I heard Rani ask. I looked down. Sure enough, something had stained the blue denim a black-ish colour. I sniffed it. It smelt like iron.

Sarah Jane was already rolling the girl over and when she was on her front, we could see that the thin, white fabric of her t-shirt , just under the girl's collarbone, had a large gash in it, with a huge red mark circling it. I could just gape as mum told me to get some scissors. I got them from the kitchen table and gave them to Sarah Jane.

"Go out now Luke." she said, putting the scissors to the girl's t-shirt. She started to cut into it when she realised I hadn't gone.

"Why should I go?" I asked, perplexed. "Rani doesn't, and I want to make sure that she's Ok." I was concerned for her. I could just see the mangled skin underneath the slashed t-shirt and it looked very deep. All the blood on her top explained her white pallor; bloodloss. How could I have been so blind not to notice?!

"Because I'm taking her top off!" said mum. "We can't have you here when she has her top off! She's a girl!"

I realised it was another human thing I wouldn't get, so I went out into the hallway to wait. I didn't know what mum was going to do about the cut in the girl's back; she could only clean it and put a bandage on it. I thought a cut like that would need stitches, but we couldn't exactly take her into a hospital. She had no name for one thing, and no mother or father. She had no records and she would definitely confuse the doctors with her absence of a belly button.