“Aren’t you a little old to be dressing up for Halloween?” I asked as I returned my attention to the stove.
She waved a dismissive hand and reached into the cupboard next to me to pull out some plates. “In high school, dressing up is pretty much the only good thing left to do on Halloween.”
I raised an eyebrow, my mind filled with a dozen less-than-savory things I had managed to do at her age on Halloween.
“Fine, but couldn’t you have chosen a costume that was a little less... skintight?”
“Maybe.” She shrugged and paced over to the dining room table. “But since this is my last year and all that, I wanted to go for the authentic look. This is about as authentic as they come.”
“I get the feeling Gravita’s suit has a bit more padding than that, dear.” I scrunched up the side of my face as I examined her outfit more closely. In fact, I was certain it did, which was really saying something.
“Mom.” She paused from setting the plates around the table, her eyebrows knit together as she looked me over. “You’re doing it again.”
“What?”
“I’ve never seen you make that face before.” She finished putting the plates down and stepped closer, then squared her hands on her hips. Given the costume she wore, her pose looked, if possible, even more defiant. She looked to the stove. “But I’ve seen dad make that stupid look a thousand times. You’re the one cooking all the time now, and I don’t think I’ve seen dad touch the stove in a month.”
“What are you saying?” I sighed and turned to face her, having just turned the stove off.
“What’s going on?” She narrowed her eyes at me. “It’s almost like...”
“Whoa!” Alan came skidding to a halt as he slid into the kitchen and caught sight of Nicole in her glistening costume. “Where did you get that get-up?”
“Internet,” she said, her eyes not leaving mine. I still saw suspicion there.
“Cool.” He looked sheepishly down at his own costume, which looked like a heavy brown bathrobe with a hood sewn onto the neck. A silver tube hung from his waist.
I looked at him. “Can you go let your sister and father know that breakfast is ready? If we don’t leave soon, you’re all going to be late.”
Nicole seemed to come to a decision as he turned and left. She shrugged and reached up into the cupboard now for cups. “Do you remember when I was really little and I used to hide from you and dad in the laundry shoot downstairs?”
“Don’t remind me.” I rolled my eyes as I set the skillet of eggs and pile of steaming tortillas onto the table. “I don’t know why I ever taught you to hide there in the first place.”
A wide grin split her face. “Mom almost killed me when I jumped out at her that one time. Do you remember how loud she screamed?”
“She was so mad.” I laughed despite myself, then stopped a second later, the smirk on her face causing me to cast back over what she and I had just said. “I mean—”
Our conversation was thankfully interrupted by the others as they came into the room, and I didn’t dare bring anything up in front of Sam and Alan. Still, as we ate breakfast, the few times I screwed up my courage enough to look over at Nicole, it was to find her watching me with a slight grin twisting up the corners of her mouth. After breakfast, I collected all the dishes and put them on the counter next to the sink, eager to put a little space between her and me. She wouldn’t forget what I had said any time soon, and she was far too stubborn to ever let things be where they were, but if I had enough time to think through an excuse, maybe I’d be able to convince her that I had just made a momentary slip up, nothing more. Maybe...
“Hey, mom.”
Nicole drew out the second word as she set her dishes in the sink and leaned her back against the counter, and I fought against the urge to shiver. Evidently, despite the skintight nature of her costume, it still had pockets, as she dug through one of them to produce a candy bar. “I know you never get to have these, you know, because dad hates coconut, so I thought I’d share.”
I looked down at the blue wrapper in her hand and suppressed a shudder. Did she seriously carry Coconut Joys around in her pocket all the time for random moments like this? Who did that?
“Oh.” I looked back at her with a fixed smile on my face. “Thank you, honey, but I just had breakfast. I’m full.”
“Come on, mom.” She smiled and ripped the package open, then held it out for me. “You don’t have to pretend. Dad’s not around. I know these are your favorite.”
“Okay.”
I reached over and picked up the bar, then tried to keep a smile plastered on my face as I plopped it into my mouth. Maybe, like my experience with motion sickness, the fact I was in a different body meant I now wouldn’t mind the taste of coconut. There was a time in my early childhood when I loved coconut. Maybe I would...
“Mmm.” I raised my eyebrows in apparent enjoyment, even as the taste filled my mouth. Evidently, it was not like motion sickness, because I still couldn’t stand the taste, new body or not. I tried to stop my eye from twitching, but her eyes flashed all the same as she watched me.
“Good, right?”
“You have no idea.” I smiled, then squeezed my eyes shut as I forced myself to swallow. I tried desperately to stay relaxed as the urge to dry-heave became almost unbearable.
“Alright.” She balled up the wrapper and tossed it into the trash, then gave me a hug. “Sam and I have to get to school. But, I was wondering if maybe you and I could have a chat today after school? It’s just, there’s this guy in my English class, and I dunno. Maybe we can just have some girl talk...?”
She flashed a devious smile at me as she left the kitchen, which I tried unsuccessfully to match.
“Oh, and one more thing?” She poked her head back into the kitchen. “I thought dad was left-handed, wasn’t he? And you weren’t? Were you two just practicing using the other hand this morning?”
“Umm....” I met her gaze with something that could charitably be called a smile, and she grinned as she ducked away.
My mind churned through the implications of Nicole knowing about the swap as I left the house with Alan that morning. Outlandish as it might seem to think two people had switched bodies, I knew that was the conclusion she had come to. All of her comments at breakfast and after had been too specific. Perhaps the idea wouldn’t have occurred to my grandparents, who had grown up in a world that hadn’t yet discovered primes, but I knew better than to wonder for a second if Nicole would think the idea impossible. Seemingly immutable laws of nature were broken every day by primes. It was the world we lived in. I knew she realized what had happened, or could at least guess at enough of it to know I wasn’t Amber. She even knew, by my reaction to the candy bar, that I was—well, that I had been—her father.
It was almost inconceivable that she wouldn’t share her discovery with Sam and Alan. I hadn’t had the chance to tell Jake that she knew in the bustle of everyone leaving for the day, but I knew I would need to talk it over with him sooner rather than later. I decided to call him as I drove to the hub, hoping to catch him while he was still on his commute.
After dropping Alan off, I rifled through my purse to look for my phone. I wouldn't have had to worry about finding my phone if I could carry it in my pocket, but that wasn't really an option anymore. The pockets on my jeans were too small to fit a pack of gum, much less anything larger. And it wasn’t just the jeans I was wearing then. Every single pair of jeans I owned had the same-sized pockets. Every. Single. One. Who designed jeans with pockets that small? And why did women put up with it? I might have even worn a dress more often, if it meant having bigger pockets. But dresses didn’t usually come with pockets either. It was like there was some nefarious conspiracy to force women into carrying purses with them. I despised it but had begrudgingly accepted the necessity of carrying one with me when I left the house.
As I shook out all the contents of my purse onto the seat next to me to find my phone, my p
ager beeped and lit up, vibrating at my fingertips. I grabbed it and glanced at the number flashing across its front. I had been given the pager the day before as a way for the arbiter network to reach me in a pinch, since it had a signal that was almost impossible to block. My stomach tightened as I extricated my phone from the pile on the seat and dialed the number.
“Amber.” Kiara’s voice sounded on the other end of the line. “Sorry for paging you, but I totally forgot: I need you to come in as soon as you can.”
“What’s the emergency?”
“No emergency. I just... forgot something we have to do today.”
“I’ll be there in a sec,” I said, already putting the car in gear.
I was a little more than curious as I made my way into the hub less than ten minutes later. Kiara was waiting for me at her usual spot near the elevator as I got off it.
“You need to suit up.” She nodded toward the locker rooms as she set off. “Looks like today you’re going to get a first-hand look at the PR branch of the arbiter program.”
“Meaning?”
She smiled back at me as I followed her into the locker room. “Have you heard of the high school outreach program?”
“Possibly?” I frowned as I reached my locker.
In response to my puzzled look, she unfolded a piece of paper and set it on the bench next to me. I glanced at it as I stripped naked to get into my suit, but what I saw made me pause.
“Apparently we were a good fit for it.” She shrugged as I looked back up at her. “Given that we’re something of a team right now, and you’re just starting to wet your feet in the arbiter program.”
“But this is at...” I trailed into silence as I looked back down at the paper.
“I noticed that too.” She smiled sardonically. “Luck of the draw on that one, I guess. Looks like we’re going to be presenting at your daughters’ school.”
“We should slow down!” Kiara’s voice came in through an explosion of static to the radio in my helmet.
An hour had passed from the time I had gone into the hub. We were flying a thousand feet in the air, making our way to the high school where we would present. Given the nature of our assignment, I had been able to persuade her to let me fly us rather than take the car. Now, she wore a pilot’s helmet over her head to supply her not only with an easier way to breathe through the intense winds that she would experience during flight, but also with a way to be heard over the wind as well. My suit was already equipped with a communications array, so it was simple enough to patch the microphone in her helmet to my radio.
“Where’s your sense of adventure?” I asked, my eyes trained on the school that was just visible ahead. “I thought you said you liked it when you and Jake flew during your internship days?”
“That was more than ten years ago!” she shouted. “And I’m pretty sure we never went this fast. Can we please slow down?”
“Fine.” I sighed and cut the strength of the field around both her and me in half.
We landed out on the football field, where a small wooden platform and podium had been set up in the middle of the field. Students filled the bleachers both ahead of and behind us. As we swooped down from the sky, the crowd erupted into cheers and applause. The principal, who stood at the podium, tried to restore calm as Kiara and I set down on the platform, but it proved to be a futile gesture. Only once we had made our way to the podium did the students seem to settle down.
I listened mostly in silence while Kiara spoke to the student body, rehearsing what I was sure everyone there already knew about the history of the arbiter program, how it had begun out of the discovery that a small portion of the population, for reasons still not understood, started exhibiting powers that science could not explain. The fact that this discovery became public at the height of the Red Scare in the early Fifties had itself been part of why the government had gone to such extreme measures to ensure that the public was comfortable with the idea of super humans. Out of that caution, the arbiter program had been born.
As I listened to Kiara explain to the students what a usual day for an arbiter looked like, I couldn’t help but look out over the sea of faces in front of me. I discovered that Nicole had been right when she said dressing up for Halloween was still popular in high school. From the look of it, most of the students in front of me were in a costume of one sort or another. I was struck by a strange pang of nerves as I noted that quite a few of the girls in the bleachers in front of me were wearing Gravita costumes, like Nicole had. As I looked out at the crowd, in fact, I saw a familiar pair of blue eyes that were fixed on me, and my stomach tightened. Why was I suddenly nervous? I knew Nicole would be there.
At the end of her speech, Kiara stepped back to allow the principal to open the audience to any questions they might have. There was a small bustle as a few of the students got to their feet and shuffled their way down the bleachers to the field, where a microphone had been set up. I tried not to shake my head as I noticed a particular blonde girl was near the front of the line of students with questions. I had no doubt Nicole’s question would be for me.
I stepped up to the podium as the first student in line directed his question at me, silently grateful there was a built-in synthesizer in my helmet that distorted my voice enough that it would be unrecognizable. Most important, it was a high-grade synthesizer, so it lacked any trademark distortions that would give away the fact I was using one. Most people wouldn’t even guess the voice they heard when I spoke wasn’t my natural one.
Before the student finished his question, though, an explosion ripped through the air from my left. My head snapped toward the sound in time to see a fireball erupting from the side of the gymnasium, less than a hundred yards away.
Acting more through instinct than thought, I reached my hand forward and crafted a bubble of negative curvature around the field and stands. I didn’t even know if I could make a field that large, but with no time to think through whether I could, I tried anyway.
Torrents of steel and cinderblock careened through the air, much of it on a direct course for the bleachers and field. Evidently, my field was large enough, as most of the debris seemed to hit an invisible wall around the bleachers and slid down to the ground into piles a few feet from the edge of the stands.
In a heartbeat, Kiara had sprinted forward toward the explosion. Her powers lent themselves to the task, as she could move with incredible speed. Before I had the chance to blink, she was standing, poised, by the side of the gymnasium that had detonated outwards.
For my part, I glanced to the stands where the students seemed to be in shock. A few of them had already scrambled to their feet, but none of them were moving fast enough.
“Get everyone out of here!” I jabbed a finger behind me, away from the gymnasium, as I stared at the principal. I made sure he nodded my way before I turned my attention back to the site of the explosion, where the dust and smoke was only starting to clear.
Even as I heard the principal shouting directions into the microphone, I soared over to the side of the gym, then used my powers to clear some of the wreckage away. By the time I got there, though, Kiara had already made it through the rubble to disappear through the collapsed wall.
My boots tapped on the wooden floor as I dropped to the ground, my eyes drawn to a strange flickering from the far wall. I was greeted by the sight of a man standing under the basketball hoop, his hands forward in a fighting stance. A strange green energy crackled up and down his arms as he smirked toward Kiara and me.
“Can you deal with him?” Kiara called over to me. “That explosion was either from traditional explosives or a rogue. Either way, I need to make sure there isn’t going to be another one.”
“Sure.” I was surprised at the flatness of my voice as I started toward the man.
“You’re under arrest,” I shouted over the noise of the fire alarm blaring in the gymnasium. Distantly, I still heard students shouting as they evacuated the bleachers behind me.
I stopped a few feet away. The fire alarm, meanwhile, quieted. “I’m not that optimistic. I’m required by law to put you under arrest, but I think we both know that’s not how this is going to shake out.”
“She’s serious, you know,” a woman called from somewhere behind me.
I twisted around to see a young woman sitting on the bleachers against an adjacent wall. I paused as I studied her. There was something familiar about her. I had seen her somewhere before, but I couldn’t remember where. It was important—I knew that much—but my mind refused to work through my memories of her. I blinked and refocused my attention on what she was doing, not who she was. Mind puzzles weren’t important. Not at the moment.
She leaned forward in interest, her chin resting on her hands. “She wants to kill you.”
The man nodded. “Feeling’s mutual.”
I snapped my attention back to him as he lunged forward and swung a fist at me at a blinding speed. I pushed myself back and twisted out of the way just in time to miss his swing, but as his arm swept past my back, the green energy arched from him to my suit.
I stifled a scream as liquid pain flooded down my spine, causing my knees to buckle under me. My vision crackled and I struggled to stay on my feet as my muscles seized from the intensity of the pain.
“Is... is that it?” I struggled to catch my breath as I fought through the pain wracking every inch of me and pushed myself back into a fighting stance. I blinked to clear the tears budding in my eyes, wishing, not for the first time, that I didn’t wear a full-faced helmet to allow myself the luxury of wiping my eyes clean. “Your energy causes pain? Is that all?”
“Pain can kill you.” He laughed at my stiff movement, and his eyes flashed as he reared back for another punch.
Prime Identity Page 11
