by S E Anderson
“Yeah, I just didn’t say anything because I like watching you struggle,” she said. “No. Of course not. The last cabinet I haven’t checked is that one, but it’s locked.”
I opened the file on security. “Hold that. I think I found what we’re looking for.”
“What?”
“Evacuation plans!”
“Shouldn’t they be on the walls?”
“Not very nice of them. Think we should call in a tip, say they’re not up to code?”
I placed the small black-and-white maps on the desk, smoothing them out. Blayde grabbed a highlighter from the pencil pot.
“Here.” She scribbled on the paper. “Too big to be a chimney, not the right place to be a bathroom.”
“That looks like the old bell tower,” I said, tapping my finger on the spot. “Zander and I found it on our first night here. Well, he did.”
“Do you think we can get the patients out through it?” she asked.
“It’s wide enough, sure,” I replied. I couldn’t help but feel the excitement rising inside me. It was impossible to hold back a grin. “If one of us can get up there, we can open it and jump the patients to safety. First, we have to get them through the vents out of the rec room, though, since we can’t jump it blind. Not all of them are going to be onboard with that.”
“Let’s go save some lives,” she said. “Heroes!”
She took a step toward the exit, leaning her head out the door and glancing back and forth to see if the coast was clear.
A hand clamped my mouth before I could follow her. It held in my scream, another arm grabbing my waist and restraining me entirely. Crap!
“Don’t make a sound,” a voice whispered, the breath tickling my ear.
The old cabinet we hadn’t had the time to check out? Well, that was freaking gone. The shapeshifter had been here the whole time, waiting, watching.
Seeing everything.
“Sally?” Blayde called back, hissing. “Come on. Hero time.”
“Over here!” a voice called from up the hallway. My voice. Footsteps getting louder, coming this way.
I watched as another me breezed past, stopping in front of the office door.
It was surreal seeing myself through my own eyes. Seeing Zander’s big leather coat, much too large for me, bulking up my shoulders. Was that really how the back of my hair looked? When was the last time I’d had a haircut?
“Sorry, jumped ahead,” the other me said with a grin. But my face was all wrong. It was mine, but the shapeshifter wasn’t using it right. The smile was off. That or I just didn’t recognize my teeth. I fought against the arm restraining me, but it wasn’t a human arm. It had wrapped fully around me, fused with the body on both ends. It just went from waist to waist like a tight seat belt.
And biting was a no-go, unless I wanted a mouthful of sand.
“Stick with me, okay? Zander would get in such a fit if he let me get a scratch on you.”
“Yeah, I would.” Zander appeared from around the corner, placing his arm over my shoulders. Far too much swagger for the real Zander. Not when people were counting on him to save their lives.
I tried to press my tongue through my captor’s fingers, but the fingers were gone. The palm tasted like sawdust and grime. Its grip tightened.
“Zan?” Blayde asked sternly. “I thought you were staying with the patients.”
“Well, we thought it would be important for both of us to break the news to you, together,” he said, pulling the faux-Sally closer to him.
Fally?
No, wait, she didn’t deserve a name; she shouldn’t exist. She didn’t exist. It was my body; she had no right to parade around wearing it like that.
“What kind of news?” Blayde asked, a small tremor entering into her voice.
“Big news!” other me announced with a broad grin. She flashed her the beautiful diamond the size of a pigeon’s egg resting on her ring finger, her left hand dipping heavy with its weight.
“Sally and I are getting married!” Faux-Zander said excitedly. Other me laughed with excitement, leaning up to kiss him.
“What?” Blayde’s confidence shattered so loudly I was certain that chunks of it could be found lodged deep in the institute’s walls.
“We want you to be the maid of honor at the wedding!” other me said with girlish glee.
“We’re thinking June!”
“We’ve already started looking at dress designs and cakes and such. Oh, and a house. We need a safe place for Zander Junior to grow up …”
Faux-Zander placed a hand on the fake Sally’s belly. “We didn’t want to tell you until we knew the gender!”
“I’m pregnant!”
“We’ve known for some time yet, but you’re the only person we’ve told so far.”
They kissed once again, yet with a little more fire now. Well, if you could call it fire. I’d seen more chemistry in a Hallmark special.
Ugh, gross. His hand was pulling her leg up around his hip and she was leaning back, somehow eating his face in the process. That couldn’t have been how we really looked; if so, then I honestly did owe Blayde an apology.
The only thing up with my stomach was its hunger for actual food. No buns in this oven. Oh great, now I’m craving buns. Seriously, they could have gone a little out of their way to feed us something other than oatmeal and toast for breakfast.
Screw it, I was getting distracted. I tried to shake the creature off me again, but it gripped tighter, following my every move and pulling me back. I was sinking into it like vertical quicksand.
So, this was her greatest fear. Doctor Smith had ripped the dying Zander scene straight from my eval. She may have been a monster, but she was a damn good psychiatrist—or psychologist? —knowing exactly what knife was most likely to make me bleed. Blayde couldn’t truly see us like this, could she? If Zander and my relationship was what was most likely to scare her, then she wasn’t being cold to me this past week; she was being civil.
“We’re afraid what teleporting could do to the baby, so we’re not going to go anywhere for a while,” Faux-Zander added, coming up for air. He didn’t drop fake Sally’s leg. She kept licking his stubble. “And then we have to stay here a little. You know, we’re not going to expose an innocent babe to the dangers of space travel.”
“You’re going to be an aunt!”
“You’re free to stay with us on Earth!” Zander grinned broadly. “You could go into teaching, if you want to!”
“You’re attractive. I’m sure there’s a guy here for you!” other me added. “Humans are good in bed.”
“We sleep together!” Faux-Zander chirped.
“Auntie Blayde. Would you rather be called Baba or Dede? Baba’s easier for a baby.”
Suddenly, the fake couple started to kiss again, somehow, impossibly, more enthusiastically than before. Blayde’s face was as white and empty as this page was when I had writer’s block.
“Baba!” Fake-Zander said as he broke away from the kiss.
“Let’s move to Toronto!” other me exclaimed.
“Blayde has a lot of money saved away. We could buy a very expensive house!”
“I like to make you spend money on me! I’m frivolous!”
“And very hot!” he exclaimed.
“Aunt Blayde!” she added.
Blayde was frozen there, watching their increasingly surreal entangling of limbs. It was like something out of hentai. No wonder she blanched.
I swung my elbow back into the creature holding me, but it met nothing but shifting sand, its suction pulling me in fast.
I closed my eyes to the disgusting sight just as other Sally stuck her foot down Zander’s waistband. Deep breath. All you have to do is jump a meter, a single meter. Well, more if you can manage it. Just out of the creature’s clutches. You can’t bring a single grain with you.
My eyes flew open, and I flung myself into the hallway, leaving the beast behind, landing squarely around other Sally. She screamed as I
tackled her, dropping to the ground like a wet sandy mass. I mean, it wasn’t a stable structure to begin with.
Did I have any qualms about punching my own face? Why, yes, indeed I had a few. But all I had to do was look at those purple hickeys on her neck before having my rage meter refill to the brim.
“That’s my face, you douchecanoe!” I sputtered. “Give it back!”
Other Zander was trying to pull me off, his strong arm wrapping around my neck, tight enough to cut off the air. But screw it. I didn’t need air like I used to. I was going to pass out at some point, but not before I made this face-stealing sand bitch stop impersonating me.
I was starting to see stars, and not the cool gas kinds. Still pretty and sparkly, though. Other Zander ripped me straight up and flung me to the ground, throwing himself on top of me with his fingers still on my throat.
Zander’s face stared down at me with pure hatred in his eyes. He pushed me back further into the ground, slamming my head into the linoleum-covered floor. As the stars flickered more freely, it was hard to see the wrong in his features. It was, unmistakably, Zander.
Killing me.
He screamed, falling to the side. Blayde stood over him, laser pointer in hand, shooting another beam of ripping red light into his core. He screamed again, dissolving into a puddle of grains, rolling up the wall and into the nearest vent. Other me was nowhere to be seen.
“You good?” Blayde asked.
Already, my throat was knitting itself back into order. I exhaled heavily. “I’m good.”
I sat up, brushing sand from my eyes. The creature had lost some cohesion when she had hit him, it seemed. I coughed up the particles that had made up my fake fiancé.
“What’s this?” I asked, picking up a brown bullet from the ground. “Did you … where did you get a gun?”
“I didn’t,” she replied, coolly. “That’s not a bullet. The Pachoolean left it behind.”
I dropped it instantly. “Did the thing … crap itself?”
“Hot sand clump,” she said, bending over to examine it herself. “It formed when my laser shot through it, like when lightning strikes the beach. I suppose Pachooleeans are silicon-based life forms.”
“So, you had absolutely no idea what was going to happen when you shot the thing?”
“No, but isn’t it neat?” she said, grinning. “Inert. Silicon released from thought. Need a hand?”
She helped me to my feet. Her face had filled with color, as if none of this had ever happened.
“Are you good?” I asked her.
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Well, with the whole facing your worst fear and all …”
Blayde’s face fell before she exploded with laughter. She collapsed to the floor, eyes bursting with tears, slapping her knee as she spun around on the linoleum.
“Facing my worst fear,” she howled. “That’s a good one!”
“Hey, you’re making a scene,” I said, but my voice was drowned out by her guffaws.
“Smoochy smoochy. I’m so scared!” she managed to blurt out in between laughs. “That’s beautiful, Sally.”
“But, look, Blayde, I saw your face,” I said. Maybe I shouldn’t have insisted. But I was her friend, dammit. Whether she liked it or not. “You were terrified.”
“I wasn’t scared. I was offended!” She pushed herself up to her feet, clutching her abs. “I’m pissed because that’s what she thought my greatest fear was. When, obviously, I’m the one who hates clowns.”
“So, if I told you I was marrying Zander and/or pregnant with your brother’s child, you wouldn’t shoot me with your laser?”
“I knew she wasn’t you,” Blayde snapped. “Why? Are you?”
“What? Marrying your brother or pregnant?”
She shrugged.
“No. But if I was, I would tell you, you know that right? I would make sure all weapons are out of reach first, though.”
She snickered. “Zander doesn’t need to hear about this.”
“No, he doesn’t,” I agreed.
“In any case, at least now we know how to get these damn things,” she said sternly.
“We zap them with lasers? How big can your laser pointer shoot?”
“It’s a laser.” Blayde rolled her eyes. “The light doesn’t diverge. It’s one single beam.”
“So?” I asked. “Poke them in a lot of places. They’ll be as good as dead.”
“If it has to come to that. Worst case scenario, they just get smaller and smaller until nothing’s left. But our priority is to get everyone out safely.”
“I’m right behind you.”
No obstacles lay in our way as we made our way down the corridors of the institute. Blayde read the map, instructing me to turn here, there, and so on, until we reached a very long and surprisingly empty stretch of hallway.
“Sally?” Smith’s voice called, echoing through some distant stretch of corridor. “Come out, Sally. You need to calm down. Rid your mind of such delusions; there is nothing wrong here. Your head is playing tricks on you!”
“Are you a delusion?” I asked Blayde.
She punched me in the shoulder. “Did you feel that?”
“I dunno, it could have been my mind playing tricks on me.”
She chuckled. “Come on, just ignore her.”
We turned our attention to the wall on the end of the corridor where the bell tower’s base had once been. Unfortunately, a lone metal door stood in our way, cruelly laughing at us the way cold metal doors do.
“Blocked off,” I muttered, sliding my hand across the frustrating thing. “Are you sure it’s here?”
“I can read maps in at least five different galaxies—that I know of. Do you seriously think a 2D Terran map is going to best me?”
“We’re gonna need much more than a laser pointer to cut a way through this. You realize this, don’t you?”
“Shut up. I’m thinking.”
Amazingly, her big brainpower time seemed to be working. Sparks shot forward, bursting through the door, landing on my clothes before I patted them out, awestruck.
“Blayde, are you doing this?” I asked, having to raise my voice over the deafening sound of grinding metal. “With your mind?” I added for good measure. “Man, I’m sorry I interrupted your thinking. This is amazing.”
“Sally, I have never had—and do not and probably never will in the foreseeable future—have telekinesis.”
“Then what exactly is happening right now?”
“Frash. It’s the Agency.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Agency! Run!”
I spun on my heels, my feet hitting the ground so fast that my poor sneakers were hot with the friction. But running was no use. The instant the metal door fell on the floor behind me, the sound chasing me down the hallway, someone put two bullets into my back.
And I died, which was fine since it hadn’t happened in a while. I just didn’t want to make a habit of it.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Support comes in many forms but this one’s not right for me
It’s a relief when the bullets finally roll out of your skin. Even better when the wounds close shut, the brain releasing a rush of endorphins to say that everything is a-ok. Ah. Thanks, brain. Why weren’t you doing this back when I needed you in high school?
“Shut up,” Blayde hissed.
“But I haven’t said anything.” I rolled over on my back. There was neither a sky nor a ceiling up there, but there was fabric for some reason. Very handsome fabric. Very green.
“I never said you did. I just told you to shut up.”
Always looking out for me. What a sweetie. I sat up, which was tough with my hands zip-tied together. I was on a plastic mat on the floor—no, ground. Grass was all around us. Somehow, I had been brought outside.
It was a mild relief to know there definitely was a way out of the hospital. The sucky part was knowing the Agency was controlling it.
“W
hy are we in a tent?” I asked. The makeshift building was large enough for a state fair pie-eating contest. Probably not what we were actually here for.
“Zip!” said Blayde.
“Why didn’t we just jump instead of run? Seriously. It’s like you want to be caught.”
“Quora quora quora, reep quoeh quo fubo folo?”
Even without the words making a lick of sense, the voice that uttered them chilled me to the bone. Foollegg burst through the door flap, her lips a line so thin she had possibly painted them on with liner. Her eyes shot between me and Blayde, her hand resting passively on the butt of her weapon. The dark black Agency body armor that climbed her lanky frame made her look like an elongated ant, flimsy but well protected.
“Geh coo no?” she asked, a smile playing on her lips. Blayde flashed her most devious smile.
“We’re not pulling any tricks, Foollegg,” she said. “We’d already be gone if this were some kind of trap.”
“Hold on,” I stammered. “Why are you speaking English when she’s speaking … whatever?”
“Oh, right. Foollegg, do you not have a translator?”
“I can speak English, thank you very much,” she said in a convincing Texan accent, but still she reached into her pocket to retrieve a little gray box, which she hung around her neck. “Anywho, the Iron and the … tagalong? I’m sorry, we haven’t come up with a better name for you yet.”
“You could probably be a little more creative than a Girl Scout cookie,” I said. “But I won’t blame you. Could your annual budget not cover a better translator? Has the Agency been hit with some tough times?”
“Nickname pending, then,” Foollegg shrugged as she unfurled a collapsible stool and took a seat in front of us, rubbing her pale white hands together. “To rehash: this is the best escape you could come up with? It has to be the most convoluted thing I’ve ever seen.”
“At which point I told her we would have already left if that were the case,” said Blayde. “Right, Sally’s up to speed. Can we hurry this up, please?”
“You lock down a mental institution, block every way in and out of the place, and trapped a hundred people inside. News vans are surrounding the front of the complex. And you know humans. You can never keep their greedy little hands off a little bit of gossip. What’s this all for?”
