Doppelganger Girl

by T. R. Woodman

  “I … I don’t know what to say, Tate … I really don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  Tate smiled. “Do you think you can get us back to Vista?”

  Evelyn’s mind stopped again. She felt like Tate kept dipping her brain in goop, and every time she had some traction on a real thought, he’d slop it all up again. Tate stayed on Earth six years earlier because he wanted to help people, and he put his life at risk to do it. Now he was asking to leave. The scrambling of her brain continued as she struggled to connect the few bits of information she had.

  “I guess,” she said with a loopy tone that sounded more like a question than an answer.

  Tate cocked his eyebrow. “Is that a yes?”

  “Yes, that’s a yes,” she said, trying to sound as convincing as she could. “I can get us back to Vista.”

  The flicker of a smile came across Tate’s lips but was quickly replaced with a more determined look. Tucking Evelyn under his arm, he started to escort her back to the room where Ollie, Tillie, and their brothers waited.

  “Come with me, Evie … We don’t have much time, and Tillie needs our help.”

  WITNESS

  “I think I can help your sister …”

  Ollie squirmed a little, and Evelyn could tell he was trying to suppress a smile. She didn’t blame him. She still had no idea what Tate planned to do, and she didn’t want to get her hopes up either.

  “…but I have never tried to help someone as sick as Tillie is. She doesn’t have something as simple as a virus, or an infection, or even a tumor. If it were any of those things, it would be easier.

  “The treatment is going to be really hard on her … She’s going to suffer … and because the damage to her cells is so severe, there is a chance the treatment will kill her. But I think she will survive, and I am willing to try.”

  Evelyn looked at Ollie and at his brothers, who had stepped next to him. Tanner spoke up.

  “Tillie isn’t a stranger to suffering, Father … If you give her a chance to live, she’s gonna take it. But if something happens, and she doesn’t … well, we’re just grateful you’re giving her a chance. Maybe you could just make sure she’s right with our maker before she goes.”

  Tate smiled. “I will, and now I need all of you to leave the room,” he said, not wasting a second in shooing the brothers and Antonio out of the room. Evelyn started after them. “Stay, Evie, I need your help.”

  Evelyn stopped mid-stride and turned. By her programming, she knew how to perform every medical procedure ever devised, but unless Tate was going to reveal a secret compartment full of IVs, plasma, and a truckload of chemicals, she didn’t know what she was going to be able to do.

  Tate knelt at the head of the cot and brought his lips close to Tillie’s ear. Evelyn still hadn’t moved from her spot, and she couldn’t hear what he was saying, but a moment later, she watched as he closed his eyes, bowed his head, and placed his hands on Tillie’s head.

  Still Evelyn couldn’t hear, and even though she had never seen it before, she was certain she knew what Tate was doing—he was administering Last Rights and trying to prepare her, as Tanner had asked, to meet her maker.

  Another moment passed, and Tillie still hadn’t so much as flinched since Tate approached her. If it wasn’t for the faint rattle of her raspy breath, Evelyn wasn’t sure she would have been able to tell that she was even alive. The doubts about whether Tate could help this girl continued to swirl within her. As the moments passed, and Evelyn watched her brother praying over her, gently cradling the back of her head in the palm of his hand like a doctor holding a newborn baby, Evelyn felt the knots in her stomach fade. She had no reason to believe it, and she had no idea what was going to happen, but she felt a warmth of comfort wash over her, and in the moment, standing there in the dingy and dark mission, something came over her. She just knew Tillie was going to be okay.

  Another minute passed, and Evelyn realized she was holding her breath, wondering why Tate was taking so long to get started with whatever it was he was going to do. Confused, she took a step closer. “Tate … is there something I can do?”

  Slowly, as if he was waking, groggy after a deep sleep, Tate turned and smiled. “Yeah. Help … me,” he slurred, and then, as his eyes rolled back into his head, the Healer collapsed into the dirt.

  CARETAKER

  Evelyn raced to her brother’s side just seconds too late to prevent his head from making a sickeningly dull thud as it slapped the dirt floor. “Tate!” she gasped, sliding her hand quickly under his head. She put her ear to his lips and heard a faint breath covered by a low moan, and then felt him shake, like he was having the start of a seizure.

  “Tate!” she screamed again, lifting her head. Her hands were shaking, and she struggled to steady them as she gently pried his eyelids apart, looking for signs that he was still conscious. Even in the low light, she could see his pupils were dilated.

  Evelyn heard footsteps running up behind her. “Evie!” Ollie said, nearly tackling her as he slid in the dirt. “What happened to him?”

  Her shaking hands had become a shaking all over. “I don’t know!” she said, bursting into tears and grabbing at his arm, looking for some sign of life.

  Then she saw the blood all over the tips of his fingers.

  “Oh damn!” she heard, looking quickly over her shoulder to see Ollie bolt over to Tillie. Seconds later, Tanner and Malcolm were on the other side of her. “Till … hey, Till … come on and wake up …”

  Evelyn couldn’t see, her eyes were so full of tears, and she could hardly hear over her own cries. All she could think about was the fact that she had already lost Jane and now she was losing the last remaining family member she had in the entire universe. “Tate,” she heard herself say softly, and then she felt him squeeze her hand.

  “Please … calm down,” he said through a tired exhale.

  “Tate, what the hell did you do?” Evelyn heard herself gasp through sobs.

  “It’s okay, Evie,” he said. “I gave her my nanites.”

  “You what?” she yelled.

  “Ollie … boys … let her rest … She’s gonna need you soon enough,” Tate said, trying to prop himself up on his side, only to roll back onto the dirt, seemingly having spent the little energy he had left.

  Then it all started to click, and Evelyn’s world stopped spinning, though she still felt the aftermath of being on the verge of hyperventilating shuddering in her lungs.

  “What do you mean, she’s gonna need us soon enough?” Ollie asked with a note of frustration in his voice. “Seems pretty obvious she needs us now. She’s not moving.”

  “Explain it to them, Evie,” Tate said as he slowly propped himself up, bracing himself on the edge of another cot, which had blended into the shadows. “She just needs … time.” He patted Evelyn’s hand, tiredly, gently. “Go to her.”

  Evelyn turned, and letting go of Tate’s arm, she slid over to Tillie and put her ear to Tillie’s lips. She could hear her breathing. She put her hand to her forehead and felt the clammy heat coming off her skin. The fever was there, but now that she knew what Tate had done—apparently what he had been doing to heal people—she knew the worst was still on the way.

  “Tanner, Malcolm,” Evelyn said, snapping her eyes quickly at them. “Go find Brother Antonio and bring some water … and anything cool you can find … and ice if there is any. We need to keep Tillie hydrated.”

  As Tanner and Malcolm ran off, Evelyn looked at Ollie. Her mind raced. How am I going to explain this?

  Ollie cocked his head, and the flicker of trust he had in his eyes seemed to fade. “Come on, Evie, tell me what the hell’s going on here.”

  “You know how I said before that all healing comes from God?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, sometimes God uses science. My brother has millions of these things inside him called nanites. They’re robots, but they are so small you can’t see them without a microscope. His are programmed to heal,”
unlike some others, apparently, she thought as she remembered the beefeater rangers they saw earlier that day, “and he transferred the nanites to Tillie.”

  The look on Ollie’s face told her she hadn’t lost him, but he also quirked his brow as if she was reading to him from a pulp science-fiction magazine. “Damn,” was all he managed to say.

  “He transferred them to her through her skin, and right now they’re flooding through her body, collecting data, and figuring out what’s wrong with her.”

  “Okay, and then what?”

  “Well … then they go to work. For your sister, the nanites are going to act like a fever. When you’re sick, your body temperature rises as it tries to kill off the disease. So that’s what the nanites are going to do. They are raising her body temperature to kill off any bacterial infection that’s present.”

  “Well, that doesn’t sound so bad.”

  “It’s not, but they’re also going to attack all the dead and mutated cells—everything that’s damaged in her body—and given how sick she is, that’s a lot, Ollie. And all those toxins and disease are going to have to come out of her, somehow.”

  Ollie grimaced.

  “If you think you’ve seen Tillie sick before, just wait … the next few days are going to be rough.”

  Ollie pursed his lips and nodded. “Okay. So then what? Is she gonna live?”

  Evelyn looked back at the pasty form of Tillie, twitching under her blanket. The girl was tough, and it was going to take every bit of her strength, but the nanites were programmed to heal, not kill, and even though she might look like she clawed her way out of a grave, the nanites would save her. She was as sure of it as she was that Tate was going to wither away without them.

  “I think she’s going to make it.”

  Ollie nodded, a flicker of hope again in the steels of his eyes. He took a long look at his sister and then turned back to Evelyn.

  “How do you know so much about all this anyway?”

  Evelyn thought for a second and realized they had lost all hope of being incognito the moment Tate blasted a million microscopic robots into Tillie’s bloodstream.

  “I’m the one who programmed the nanites, Ollie.”

  “You?” he asked, standing, the loop in his tone making it clear he was struggling to wrap his mind around that bit of information.

  Evelyn stood. “Yes, me,” she said with a hint of indignation, furrowing her brow slightly. “I’m pretty smart.”

  Ollie laughed and pulled back, the easy smile returning to his lips. “Damn straight you are, darlin’. A pretty face and a brain to match. If I’d known I was gonna meet the girl of my dreams when I woke up this morning, I would have put on a clean shirt.”

  Evelyn laughed. Even standing in the dirt, fighting to keep his sister alive, he still had a lightness about him, and a mischievous twinkle in his eye.

  “Ollie, you’re sweet—”

  “No, no, no,” Ollie interrupted, holding up his hand and teasing her, Evelyn was sure. “Some things are best left unspoken.”

  Evelyn felt her face flush again, and putting her hands on her hips, she looked down and shook her head. As the moment passed, Evelyn walked back over to Tate. He was still in the dirt, mostly asleep, leaning against the side of the cot. She patted his shoulder gently. “Come on, Tate. Let’s get you into the bed.”

  A second later, Ollie was behind them both. Looping his hands under Tate’s armpits, he pulled, and again with a strength that didn’t seem possible given how thin he was, Ollie hoisted Tate into the cot.

  “There you go, Father … Get some rest.”

  “Thanks, Ollie,” Evelyn said.

  Evelyn sat on the edge of the cot near Tate’s feet, and as she did, she realized she hadn’t slept in thirty-six hours. As if the knowledge alone triggered a yawn and a nearly overwhelming feeling of exhaustion, Evelyn slumped. She leaned against the wall and closed her eyes.

  “Ollie,” she said, having only the effort of her exhaling breath to fuel her words. “It’s gonna be a long night … You may want to sleep a little.” If Ollie responded, she didn’t hear it, and the fog of sleep overwhelmed her.

  HELPLESS

  Evelyn woke to the sound of retching. Rubbing her eyes, letting them adjust to the dim light, she could see that Tillie had fallen out of the cot, was weakly propped up on her arm, and had vomited water and bile into the dirt around her. Gasping for breath in between heaves, her hands shaking helplessly, she was sobbing silently, tears and sweat running down her filthy face, and trickles of blood coming from her nose, the vessels in her sinuses having ruptured from the violence within her.

  The room reeked of sickness and death, like rancid cheese bathing in sewage, and it was all Evelyn could do to keep from retching herself.

  Evelyn and Tillie’s brothers all bolted to her side, trying feebly to provide her some comfort. It didn’t help. Nothing could help.

  The healing had started.

  WISE

  “Is he okay?”

  The question came from the dark and from a voice she hadn’t heard much. Evelyn turned around to see Tillie, unexpectedly sitting upright in her cot, her filthy blanket wrapped around her despite the fact that it was plenty warm in the room. Her hair was matted to the side of her head—and it was anyone’s guess how long it had been since she had bathed—but the fact that she was awake and not vomiting and carrying on a conversation seemed like a miracle.

  “You’re awake,” Evelyn stated, turning and sitting cross-legged in the dirt, an overwhelming sense of relief washing over her.

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I feel horrible.”

  Evelyn sort of understood the response, and she cocked her eyebrow, wondering if the girl was actually doing as well as her voice sounded.

  “I feel horrible that y’all have had to care of me.” Tillie opened her blanket and looked down at herself, grimacing—no doubt at the stench. “I mean, have you ever, ever, had to deal with anything more disgusting than me. I want to throw up just looking at myself.”

  “Please don’t.”

  Tillie laughed, and Evelyn could see her teeth had spaced apart from the receding gums—all things that were results of the sickness and that were likely to correct themselves as she continued to get better.

  “But how do you feel, Tillie?”

  She shrugged, a grin on her face. “Probably pretty bad, but worlds better than I did … I don’t think I’m ready to go for a night out on the town with you, though.”

  Evelyn laughed. Even when she met Tillie in the bed of the truck, she had her sense of humor. This was one tough girl. “You will be soon enough.”

  “So, is he okay?” Tillie asked again, nodding and looking over Evelyn’s shoulder.

  Evelyn glanced at Tate on the cot. He was asleep, even though it was the middle of the day. He hadn’t been awake for more than a few hours at a time over the past two days.

  “Yeah, he’s okay.”

  “He doesn’t seem like it. I know I’ve been pretty out of it, but I can’t remember seeing him anywhere but that cot.”

  “He’s just tired.”

  “You aren’t telling me something.”

  Evelyn rocked her head back and forth. Tillie was going to have to know at some point, and given they didn’t have a whole lot of time left for explanations, now was as good a time as any to tell her the truth.

  “The nanites Tate gave you … he needs them too. Without them, his body won’t work right.

  “When he was very young, he was sick, and the nanites helped repair some of the damage, but they couldn’t fix everything. Without the nanites, his body just doesn’t operate as well.”

  “Well, I’m starting to feel better. Let’s just give them back to him.”

  “That’s what he has been doing—loaning them to people, if you want to think about it that way—but most of the time, the diseases he’s helping people get over can be destroyed with nothing left behind. Things like
cancer. Once the nanites get to a tumor, they destroy it and it’s flushed out of the body. Infections are the same way. But radiation sickness is different.”

  Tillie sat straighter in her seat, obviously realizing that just because she was feeling better, it didn’t mean she, or Tate, were in the clear.

  “The radiation messes with your cells at a very deep level. It can screw up your DNA, the stuff that makes you you. So you’re going to need to keep the nanites.”

  Evelyn could see by Tillie’s reaction she was getting worried, looking at her hands as if they seemed different to her somehow.

  Evelyn laughed. “Don’t worry, Tillie, you’re not going to turn into a cyborg or a robot or something.” She paused for a moment and then leaned in with a whisper, “I have them in me too.”

  Tillie’s eyes went wide, and she let out a little “huh.”

  “You’re going to keep feeling better, and you will probably get to a point in the next several weeks where you feel better than you ever have. Basically, the nanites are going to help your body run the way it should. Trust me, it feels pretty good,” she added, only then realizing she had no idea what she was talking about. She had never known what it was like to live in a body that didn’t operate exactly as it was supposed to, in perfect health. Still, she didn’t want to stumble over her thoughts with Tillie, so she went on.

  “So you’re going to keep the nanites.”

  “But what about your brother?” Tillie said, standing.

  Evelyn’s train of thought stopped. She couldn’t believe the girl was on her feet. Not a day before, she could hardly move on her own. She had lost about ten pounds of dead cell tissue as her body purged it from her system, and the girl didn’t have ten pounds to lose. In fact, she was so emaciated from being sick, there wasn’t a rib in her body that didn’t look as if it wasn’t about to press through her paper-thin skin. But here she was, standing and getting some color back to her cheeks.