Liege-Killer
Liege Killer is a science fiction novel by American writer Christopher Hinz. The book and its sequels "Ash Ock" and "The Paratwa" are set in human colonies in orbit around a desolated post-apocalyptic Earth. The antagonists of the books are the Paratwa, a new species resulting from experimentation on human embryos in the near future. They are a single consciousness occupying pairs of telepathically linked bodies. The Paratwa are highly skilled warriors but look like normal people; the only way to identify a Paratwa match is by inflicting a great deal of pain upon one of them , and observing the pain in the other. The books follow the activities of humans and Paratwa as these old enemies are reunited more than a century after the earth's apocalypse, during which humans had believed the Paratwa were extinct. The novel won the Compton Crook Award in 1988. In 2013, "Liege-Killer" was adapted into a graphic novel, "Binary", also written by Chris Hinz, and illustrated by Jon Proctor.