Doppelganger Girl

by T. R. Woodman

  “You will do it!” the doctor screamed as she gripped Evelyn’s neck and squeezed.

  Evelyn flailed, trying to see, trying to breathe. She clamped her jaw, desperate to survive. She cried out, tried to scream, trying to force the doctor off, and then, as the black spots of unconsciousness started to appear, she looked into the doctor’s malice-filled eyes and remembered her purpose—to survive, to save the colonists, to save Joseph.

  And then, as if led by a whisper deep within her, she pushed her hands up into the doctor’s face. The doctor grabbed her wrist and twisted, but Evelyn kept pushing toward her, hatred for this woman fueling her strength. As her hand got close, she felt a tingling in her fingers, and then she saw what she had only felt before.

  A wispy silver thread of nanites like a thin flash of silver hair shot out of the tip of her fingers like coiled snakes targeting their prey and buried themselves in the doctor’s eye. Evelyn felt them burrowing deep into the tissues of the doctor’s brain, and as they did, Evelyn watched her expression change from rage to pure terror.

  She screamed and flailed, trying to pull herself free, swinging madly at the threads in her eyes.

  Evelyn felt the nanites hit something hard, knowing they were heading for her spine. She felt a sharp snap reverberate into her fingers, and the expression on the doctor’s face froze, like she had gasped her last breath while trapped under the ice of a lake in the throes of winter.

  A long exhale, and the doctor slumped to the floor.

  Evelyn gasped for air, sat up, and felt the threads of nanites retreat into her fingers. She knew the nanites had severed her spinal cord. Quick. Painless. More than the doctor deserved. Evelyn choked and then saw the rangers, both diving toward her across the cockpit.

  “No!” she screamed, holding up her hands, her fear and anger taking hold of her every thought. She stepped toward them, terrified but desperately wanting them to come closer, and then they were there.

  Silver thread flew out of both hands, crossing the space between them, driving deep into their eyes. They screamed and tumbled into the console, clawing at their faces. She felt the sickening snap of the spark, and the rangers fell lifelessly to the floor.

  Evelyn stumbled and scrambled madly to get to her knees, sucking air and completely unable to comprehend what was happening. And then, like some wounded animal, her heart pounding out of her chest, she let out a guttural scream, letting loose every emotion she had bottled within her—rage, terror, hopeless despair, and then as she realized she was still alive … pure elation.

  Evelyn’s hands slipped on the floor, the blood, sweat, and tears of the battle around her and within her making a soupy mess under her fingers. Grabbing the side of the captain’s seat, she braced herself and breathed, feeling her heart rate start to slow. It was over. She was alive.

  “Well, Evelyn, it seems you’re just full of surprises.”

  Evelyn whipped her head around to meet the president’s glare through the holoscreen.

  “And it seems you’ve left me no alternative.”

  The president looked over his shoulder to the ranger piloting his shuttle. “Major, scan for life signs on the surface and set a course.”

  “No,” Evelyn said, finding her scratchy voice. “Those people are innocent.”

  “You should have thought of that earlier. Now you can watch us exterminate every one of the traitors on the surface. I hope you enjoy the view from up here.”

  With that, Evelyn watched as the president buckled into his captain’s seat. She looked at the monitors and watched, horrified, as every shuttle but her own started to descend toward the surface. She knew the president would show no mercy to the settlers. In a matter of minutes, every person on the surface would be dead—Joseph would be dead.

  Evelyn looked around at the console, desperately trying to figure out what she could do without her nanites, and then she knew. It was her purpose. Protect the colonists. Protect Joseph. She knew what she had to do—she only hoped she would have time.

  Evelyn grabbed the collar, digging her fingers into her neck to get them between it and her skin. She heard a whine, as if the device were squealing in pain, and then she pulled, feeling the collar flex under the strain of her muscles. She had only thought for a second about the pain she might feel once she triggered the alarm, but nothing could have prepared her for what she felt as the needle in the collar plunged into the side of her neck.

  She heard herself scream, and doubled over in pain, refusing to let go of the collar. She kept pulling, desperate, panicked that it wouldn’t break, and then she felt the searing heat of the strychnine as it burned its way through her artery.

  She screamed again, and with a strength she didn’t know she had, she pulled harder, felt the collar give, and then it snapped.

  Evelyn fell to the floor, clutching and clawing at her neck as if she could rip the pain out of her. She felt her nerves start to twitch, and in a moment of clarity brought on by torturous pain, she knew she only had a few minutes left.

  She activated her nanites and searched for the shuttle’s navigation systems. The familiar hum of the computers reverberated in her body as it all came online.

  She connected to Vista, and then using the navigation system on the space station, she connected to the autopilot on all of the shuttles.

  “Sir, the autopilot isn’t responding!” Evelyn heard over the intercom.

  Evelyn’s hands were beginning to shake and twitch. She only had seconds left, and she didn’t have time to think through alternatives.

  “Sir, we’re losing power to the engines!”

  “Do something, Major!”

  “I can’t … nothing’s working!”

  “We’re losing power!” she heard, a chorus of panicking rangers echoing from the other shuttles through the intercom.

  “Sir, we’re in free fall!”

  “Evelyn … stop what you’re doing!”

  Evelyn looked up to see the desperate face of the president on the holoscreen.

  “Stop!” he screamed again.

  Sweat soaked her clothes and ran down her face. She felt herself losing control of the twitches in the muscles. She locked her back and neck, clenched her fists, stared at the president, and steadied her voice.

  “It’s time for you to die,” she said, grinding her teeth to keep her head from twitching, watching with a twisted pleasure as his face lost all color.

  Evelyn collapsed, her face slapping the floor not a foot from the expressionless Dr. Pretty’s. Her back and legs convulsed. Her muscles burned as if she had sprinted fifty miles, and her mind was racked with agony as if she knew she had fifty more to go. She was panting. The screams in her head echoing those of the two-thousand-man chorus crying out to her as she listened to them plunging to their deaths. But she couldn’t stop her own demise any more than she could stop theirs. She had made the choice, and the penance for her judgement was to stare into the face of death, hearing the screams of dying men and feeling the crippling grip of death wrench her body and mind in her final moments, alone in the coldness of space.

  An eternity passed, and then the screams of the men stopped, as if their voices had been snuffed out at once. All she was left with was the sound of her own raspy panting, and the scratching of her body as she twisted on the floor.

  And then she remembered Joseph, a subtle feeling of peace hanging in her chest, warming her heart. She knew he was safe, but the warmth didn’t last.

  She was exhausted, every muscle in her body cramping, spasming. She felt the cold of the metal floor on her skin.

  She stared into the black lifeless eyes of Dr. Pretty.

  She gasped for air like a fish on the shore.

  The space grew dark around her.

  She prayed Jane would be out there, somewhere, to meet her.

  She felt the life within her ebb away.

  Everything went black.

  EVERLASTING

  The grass tickled her fingertips. Tall. Thin. Swirlin
g in the field around her with the gentle breeze, its color subtly shifting as it danced, swaying back and forth. Green. Pink. Yellow. Lighter, then darker. Lighter again. She let the warmth from the field, the warmth from the sun, penetrate her fingers, her face. She breathed.

  She looked up. Her mountain. Bold. Strong. Still. Blue, then white, then sky. Then stars.

  “They’re beautiful.”

  “The stars?”

  “The flowers.”

  Evelyn looked around her. Everywhere, as far as she could see, lilies. The breeze tickled her ear, brushing her hair away from her face like the gentle touch of an old friend, softly singing the sounds only playing children can make.

  She looked at her brother.

  “There is more for me to do.”

  “Yes.”

  She looked at her sister.

  “I don’t want to leave.”

  “You’ll be back.”

  She looked back at her beautiful mountain.

  “Stay with me awhile?”

  “We’ll be with you forever.”

  They sat, gazing at eternity through the stars.

  She opened her eyes and closed them immediately. She didn’t want to see. She didn’t want to move, but she did after a moment, just to feel the gift of her body, however painful it was. She ached, deep into every muscle, every tissue spent, exhausted beyond its natural limit. She breathed and then lifted herself to her elbows, then her knees, and then her hands. Then she crawled across the floor to the chair.

  She climbed into her chair, feeling like she was summiting her mountain.

  Her eyes closed as she slid into the seat. She swallowed. She opened her eyes and looked around.

  They were still dead.

  She remembered the screams. She remembered the pain. She remembered Joseph. She remembered her choice.

  She wept.

  JUDGED

  Her mountain sailed by, the shuttle taking the long way around the side rather than racing over the top. She wasn’t in a hurry. She wanted to see Joseph, but she didn’t know what he might choose, and she figured as long as she wasn’t there, she could still hope he might choose her.

  It took days, by her estimation, for her nanites to clear the strychnine from her system. It may have been easier if she had been coherent and able to flush out her body with fluids, but she couldn’t. Even after she woke up, it took hours of in and out consciousness in the cockpit for her to realize she needed to get to her quarters. It took an hour for her to crawl to her bed. It took another hour for her to peel off the clothing she had soiled, the product of losing control of her nervous system. And after another day of in and out consciousness, guzzling water when she could, Evelyn finally sat up in her bed, on her own strength, and didn’t feel like her head was coming apart.

  She worked up the strength to stand and shower.

  Her face and body had taken a beating by the doctor, beyond the damage the poison had done to her insides, and apparently, her nanites were more focused on keeping her alive than with worrying over how her face might be healing. But now, just a few days after smelling its putrid breath but missing her sweet kiss with death, the cuts were gone and the bruises nothing more than ugly yellow patches on her ribs and face. Even the swelling had subsided.

  What hadn’t subsided was Evelyn’s desire to avoid the cockpit, so she had navigated the shuttle from the rear, all the way down to the crash site on the surface, which as she had hoped, had been in the middle of the ocean.

  With the shuttle hovering over the surface of the choppy water, Evelyn thought of the tremendous loss of life that would be remembered by no one other than herself. For what seemed an hour, she stared and then finally worked up the nerve to enter the cockpit. Dragging the bodies to the rear, straining her aching muscles to do so, she rolled the doctor and the rangers out of the open bay door into the ocean. She told herself she hoped they might find peace among the others.

  In spite of the death, the blood had all been hers in the cockpit, so as the shuttle flew away from the crash site, Evelyn wiped down the cockpit and cleaned the floor. There was no residue of death. Only the memories and nightmares.

  And now, as Evelyn flew over the grassy fields beyond her mountain, the settlement she had founded just minutes away, she prayed that time might stop, unsure whether she might find in Joseph a forgiveness she didn’t know if she would ever grant herself.

  She landed the shuttle on the grassy patch she had left over two weeks before. Evelyn didn’t know what to expect. She was sure the colonists weren’t going to throw her a parade with her return, but she did wonder if they might come for her bearing torches and pitchforks. She hoped for something in between, but only because she desperately wanted to see the crooked smile of her green-eyed boy, and she didn’t want to be chased out of town.

  Evelyn sat in the cockpit and looked out the window. Nothing stirred. Nobody came. The sun was setting behind her, casting an orange glow on the fields of grass before her. She took a deep breath, stood, walked to the ramp, and stepped into the cooling end-of-day air. She listened for a moment for the sounds of voices but only heard the rhythmic sound of the bugs humming in the fields.

  She started down the long dirt path leading to the village, feeling a little out of sorts, as if she was returning after years instead of just days. She wound her way down the familiar path and past Potter’s Field. She still had yet to see anyone, and for a moment, she wondered if the president had managed to regain control of his shuttle, and had actually exterminated all life in the town. But no sooner had the thought flitted past than she heard the sounds of voices coming from the campsites, where she finally saw people milling around, apparently finishing up their daily work in the fields and farms. Nobody stopped. Nobody looked. Even with the sound of gravel crunching under her feet, she wondered if she actually did die on the shuttle and was just passing through as a ghost. The isolation she felt in spite of seeing others was eerie and made her shudder.

  Evelyn walked through the outskirts of town. It looked the same. The buildings hadn’t been improved upon, and the one noticeable difference from before she’d left was that none of the electric lights were running. She wasn’t surprised.

  As she approached the center of town, she heard the familiar sounds of elevated voices coming from the council building. She slowed, a nervous energy building in her stomach as she rounded the corner.

  The building was ahead, a soft light and a cacophony of voices emanating from the doors. Evelyn felt like her pace was slowing and her pulse was rising with each step closer, and then she stepped through the door.

  At first, the crowd didn’t seem to notice her, but as she weaved her way toward the center, the murmurings among the bystanders started drowning out the debaters in the middle. Evelyn kept glancing around the room for a sign of Joseph, hopeful that he would be there too, but if he was, she couldn’t find him. Pushing past the last of the crowd, she stepped to the center of the room and met the gaze of Colette Vandergaast.

  Evelyn noticed that the seats had been moved from being in a circle to being in a semicircle, with Mrs. Vandergaast in the center, and where everyone had the same chairs before, hers was substantially larger now and was elevated on a small wooden platform.

  “Evelyn … we thought you were dead.”

  “Hoped,” a voice sheepishly sounded from the crowd. Evelyn looked around, a spark of heat lighting in her chest at the childish and hurtful remark. She looked back at the councilwoman, who seemed content to only partially conceal her smirk.

  “Sorry to disappoint you, Councilwoman.”

  “Senior Councilwoman, Evelyn. Since you’ve been gone, we’ve made some changes to our leadership structure. We found that it was less efficient to have a council of equals without having a leader. So we elected a senior councilperson to act as the spokesperson for the group. I was elected.

  “And, no, your being here is not a disappointment. A surprise, perhaps, but not a disappointment. It will give us the op
portunity to clarify a few things with you.

  “A few days ago, the skeleton crew on Vista reported that forty shuttles appeared in orbit around our planet. They were from Earth, I presume?”

  “They were,” Evelyn replied, catching a glimpse of movement out of the corner of her eye. Turning her head slightly, she felt her heart thump in her chest. It was Joseph. He had just stepped through the door, a rather stiff look on his face in seeing her, and the thump inside her quickly settled. It wasn’t the reaction she’d hoped for, and she started to feel uneasy. Not a second later, her stomach cramped as she watched Misha walk in behind him, settling in a spot too close to him to be just friendly.

  “And, you were aboard one of those shuttles. Is that correct?” the councilwoman asked.

  “Yes,” Evelyn said absently, watching both Titus and Autumn come in the room behind Joseph and Misha. It appeared word had gotten around that Evelyn was back, and her biggest fans were showing up with Joseph to watch the spectacle.

  “And within five minutes of arriving, you hacked into Vista—”

  Evelyn snapped her head back to meet the councilwoman’s eyes. “What do you mean, hacked in? I have always had access to the computer systems on Vista.”

  “Very well,” the councilwoman accepted. “So, within a few minutes of arriving, you accessed the computer systems on Vista?”

  “Yes, I did,” Evelyn said, standing straighter.

  “And you took control of the shuttles?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you sent thirty-nine shuttles crashing into the ocean?”

  “Yes.”

  “Evelyn, by the scans we took of the shuttles, there were almost two thousand people on those shuttles. How do you explain your actions?” the councilwoman asked, a tone of condescension in her voice, shrugging her shoulders seemingly for effect.

  Evelyn took a deep breath and felt the eyes of the room burrowing into her. She knew why she had to do what she did. She didn’t care what everyone thought, but she hoped Joseph would understand.