Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by the Author
Thank you
A Thousand Faces
Kindle Edition
© 2015 Janci Patterson
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, printing, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author, except for use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons—living or dead—events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Cover by Melody Fender
Cover image from istock.com/Johnnyhetfield
Author Photo by Michelle D. Argyle
For Brandon,
who writes about heroes
and is one.
One
When I stepped out of the parking garage in downtown San Jose, I looked exactly like Emmeline Sinclair. As I walked down the street toward Emmeline's engineering firm, I concentrated on keeping my face thinned, my nose pointed, and my eyes lightened. The comb Mom had bought at Emmeline's favorite jewelry store dug into the back of my skull, holding up my hair, which I'd faded to blonde to match Emmeline's subtle highlights. I glided down the street in three inch stilettos, a giant teal scarf wrapped around my neck—bought at the flea market where Emmeline liked to go on weekends. I was grateful for it, because the cut of the blouse was lower than I liked, and Emmeline's breasts were a full two cup sizes bigger than mine to emphasize it.
Emmeline might have had better fashion sense than me, but at least I had the intelligence not to walk three blocks every day in shoes with no arch support and no grip. This outfit was ridiculous; Emmeline was an engineer, not a movie star. But today I would wear it, because that's what Emmeline always did, and my job was to be exactly like Emmeline.
My parents were counting on it.
As I approached the building, I pulled the lanyard bearing Emmeline's name tag out from under my scarf. It doubled as a key card—a method of security as common as it was easy to duplicate.
The lobby was open, so I didn't need to scan the card to get in. The real test wasn't the door. It was one thing to look like Emmeline, and another to act the part so her co-workers wouldn't notice anything amiss. As I moved through the revolving doors, I tossed my scarf over my shoulder with a flick of my wrist, like I'd seen her do in the security footage.
My shoulder twinged. Mom had made me practice that little maneuver a few too many times. Between that and the stilettos, I was going to need a chiropractor after this.
I strode across a lobby filled with large fake ficus. A security guard—Frank—stood behind a counter looking down at his workstation. He sipped coffee from an extra-large Styrofoam cup. Even if he'd been a useful mark, I couldn't have impersonated him; Frank had a jagged scar over his left eyebrow—something that even my parents couldn't duplicate.
"Morning, Em," Frank said.
"Good morning," I said. I'd practiced this interaction from security recordings. I wanted to say his name, to prove I knew it, but Emmeline never did that. Frank probably wouldn't have noticed the difference, but lots of little inconsistencies would gather his attention, even if Frank couldn't put his finger on why. When it came to impressions, trying too hard was the easiest way to fail.
Don't be nervous, I told myself. I was Emmeline, confident engineer today, not Jory, frightened girl on her very first solo job. I'd been doing impressions since I was a child, but impersonating my best self was always the hardest one.
I headed down the hall to the elevator, resisting the urge to tug at the front of my shirt. These weren't my breasts; they were Emmeline's. But that didn't make me feel less exposed.
The doors opened just as I got to them; Frank had called the car from the front desk. He was good at his job, and I was glad it wasn't him I was here to embarrass.
I forced myself not to wince. Even that was a sign that I was soft. My parents wouldn't have thought twice about getting him fired, if the price was right.
Once in the elevator, I scanned Emmeline's name tag, which would give me access to the fourteenth floor: the research and development department.
When I stepped out of the elevator I found myself in a small sub-lobby with nothing but a padded bench, an emergency phone, and an identity verification machine. My heart beat faster. This was what professionals called a man trap. I'd come through one set of security measures, with more still in front of me. If Frank suspected anything, he could lock down the machines on either side while he called for backup. My hand went to my face. There was Emmeline's long nose, her sharp cheeks. There was no reason for him to doubt my impression.
The only thing standing between me and Emmeline's office was my nemesis: the eye scanner. I stepped up to the biometric machine, concentrating on breathing normally. Frank could see me through the security cameras, and there was no reason for Emmeline to be afraid of an eye scan she passed every day.
I, on the other hand, had studied for this test for hours, and I still wasn't sure I could do it. An iris or a fingerprint required too much concentration to hold on to for a long period of time—it was too intricate, so I couldn't bring it with me like I did the rest of the persona. I had to be able to summon it from memory. Mine was sharp—a good memory was a survival skill for a shifter.
But the number of variables in an iris scan stretched it to its limits.
I put my hand on the palm pad first. Emmeline always did both the eye and hand scanner together, but if I tried to do both at once, I'd be twice as likely to fail. I'd chance one tiny inconsistency if it meant improving my odds of getting through. I'd matched each detail of the fingerprints at home, practicing over and over until I could do the whole thing in seconds. Now the scanner lit up, reviewing each wrinkle and crease. A green light flashed.
I relaxed my shoulder muscles, loosening the knots forming in my neck.
I'd passed.
Now the eyes.
We talk about eye color like it's simple. Mine are brown; yours are blue. But the truth is that irises are colored in complex patterns—much more complicated than the sheen of highlighted hair, or the tilt of a nose. Those things could be faked to create a general impression that would fool the human eye.
But the scanner? If I was even a millimeter off of Emmeline's iris pattern, it would know. I adjusted my irises, pushing them into the scattered star pattern of Emmeline's blue eyes. I sharpened the ring of brown around the outside of them, making sure I had the ripples of its edges just right. The center of the star I tightened last.
Unlike a fingerprint, the lines of the pattern didn't follow one from another, which made it harder to ensure I'd gotten every bit right. But I couldn't stand here forever fiddling with it. Frank was watching.
I pushed my face against the forehead rest and stared into the light ahead. The machine made a low beep, and the light inside it turned off. I looked down at the palm pad. The light now glowed red.
The knots in my neck reformed. I squeezed my tear ducts, narrowing them to avoid all danger of crying on the job. I'd done this at home. I should be able to do it now.
Of course, when I failed at home I was able to try again with no consequences. If only I could stop thinking about those now.
I took a deep breath, reshaped the iris stars, and pressed the palm pad again, but the machine just made the same low beep noise. The tiny room seemed to close in tight around me.
Failure number two. Either our practice scanner wasn't as sharp as this one was, or, more likely, I'd failed to match the exact details of the pattern.
Was it the center of the iris that was off, or the edges? If it were a fingerprint I'd be able to trace it through and find the problem.
With eyes? No such luck. And I'd gotten it right so many times at home.
I straightened up to Emmeline's full height, shifting my spine fully erect. I'd wanted to do this job perfectly, to prove to Dad that I could. But now it was time for a different kind of test.
The door opened behind me, and a security guard walked in—Leonard this time, not Frank, who wasn't supposed to leave the lobby. "Morning, Emmeline," Leonard said.
I tried to be aware of my body, holding Emmeline's neck and arms still and confident, so Leonard wouldn't perceive I was upset. The real Emmeline would be annoyed, but she wouldn't take a malfunction personally. Projecting that emotion at Leonard would draw undo attention.
"Morning," I said. I kept my voice as light as I could manage, and tilted my chin to the side, the way I'd seen Emmeline do when she spoke. "Scanner's being picky."
Leonard looked at me and at the scanner. He jabbed a ballpoint pen into the reset button on the side. "Try it again?"
The walls pressed in further. This time he might notice if I did the pieces separately. I hadn't let go of the handprint, though, so I put my palm back on the reader, and looked into the eye scanner. Perhaps I'd made the center of the eye too tight. I loosened the pattern a little and hit the button again.
The machine made the low beep a third time. I let my brow furrow, both for Emmeline and for me.
Failure number three.
I let my neck muscles wind tighter. Mom always said that if we had to let the frustration go somewhere, at least work it out internally, where it wouldn't show.
Outwardly, I spoke slowly in Emmeline's cool, gliding voice. "It worked yesterday," I said.
Leonard pressed his own palm and forehead to the machine. The light glowed green, and I heard the door snap open. "Huh," he said. "It's not the machine."
Oh, crap. I clamped down on my lungs, controlling my breathing. Excuses raced through my mind.
I heard my Dad's voice in my mind. Stay calm, he always said. Don't make excuses. You'll just sound guilty. Let them find their own explanations.
And, after a moment, Leonard did. "Maybe your data is corrupted." He gave the machine a dirty look. "I'll make a report."
I forced a smile. "Thanks," I said. I gathered myself up to Emmeline's full height, and moved toward the exit to the man trap.
Leonard held the door open as I passed.
I kept that smile pasted on my face as I walked down the hall. Leonard was also good at his job—he'd come to check that I was actually Emmeline, instead of just bypassing the eye scan portal remotely, like a lazy guard might have. Dad said not to judge security guards just because we foiled them. Odds were slim that either Frank or Leonard had ever heard of a shifter.
Good thing, because if he had, I'd have been screwed.
I walked down the hall to Emmeline's office and sat down in her chair. The seat back stretched up over my head, and the swivel glided so smoothly that I wanted to kick my legs out and twirl around. But Emmeline wasn't the twirling type.
Time to get the job done, before Emmeline's co-workers stopped by to ask her questions I couldn't answer. I plugged my flash drive into Emmeline's computer and restarted it, using the keyboard commands Kalif had given me to enter on startup.
For me, this job was a test, but not for Kalif. He was only six months older than me, but he worked for my parents all the time, and had been working for his for years. The program he'd installed on the flash drive bypassed Emmeline's computer security and let me onto her desktop. I opened her computer files and found the information on the new tablet prototype she was overseeing. I set the files to download while I was working.
I took a deep breath. The data theft was just a side project. It might help Mom and Dad or Kalif's parents with assignments for other companies, or they might just sell the information. When it came to new tech development, there was always a buyer.
Now for the real job, and then to get out of the building as quickly as I could. I opened the web browser and typed in the string of commands I'd memorized—a protocol to upload Kalif's files to their server via FTP. They'd break down the internal firewalls that kept one department from looking at the work of the others. Kalif had designed the program himself. He was brilliant like that.
The breach would be discovered immediately, by design. The client was the company's systems manager, who was also the son of the owner. He'd been telling his dad for years that their network security had all sorts of holes in it—that anyone running an inside job could easily compromise it. But his father wouldn't listen, so he hired my parents to create a problem his father couldn't ignore. He'd be monitoring the system. The servers would be shut down within minutes, and he'd be the hero who discovered the problem. After that, his father would have to raise the network security budget.
I watched the download progress on Emmeline's computer screen. As soon as it finished, I could make my exit. The progress bar was at ninety percent when a knock came at the door.
I froze. Stay calm, I told myself. These people might not be expecting a shifter, but if they thought Emmeline had just tampered with their network security, they might detain me. It wouldn't take long for anyone who knew Emmeline to determine that I wasn't her, and the situation would deteriorate from there. This was why my parents rarely let me out on field missions, and never alone like this before. If I screwed up, I might not get another job until I was twenty.
I switched off the computer screen, and waited until I was sure I could speak casually in Emmeline's voice.
"Yes?" I asked.
The door opened. A woman with a pixie cut stood there, wearing a flowing brown blouse, a pair of slacks, and brown flats. She was one of Emmeline's co-workers, another engineer. I wished we could have picked her as our target, but she had braces. Our bodies couldn't shift into anything unnatural, and dental installations were out of the budget for this particular job, even if it had been safe for us to wear them. Which, since we couldn't shift them, it wasn't.
"Hey, Em," she said.
I forced a smile. "Hi, Brooke."
It took all my effort not to cringe. There I went, throwing out names just to prove that I knew them.
"Did you get the email about the meeting this morning?"
Thanks to Kalif's AM hack, I had. "Pushed back an hour," I said.
"Right. I was thinking we could use that time to go over the presentation again."
I chewed the inside of my cheek, where Brooke wouldn't be able to see. Now? I knew nothing about Emmeline's presentation. I could put her off, but the more things I committed to, the more pieces of evidence there would be that I'd been here instead of Emmeline.
I put my hand on the phone and gave Brooke an apologetic look. "I've got someone on hold," I said. "Sorry, my head's a bit full at the moment. Ask me again in twenty minutes?" I tried to casually cover the hold lights with my fingers, so she wouldn't see that they were all dark.
Then the phone rang.
I gave her a flustered smile, letting some of my real feelings show through. "Seriously," I said. "I've been here five minutes, and it just won't stop."
Brooke nodded. "Big day. I get it. I'll be back."
She shut the door on her way out, and I melted back into
my chair. I needed to get out of here, stat.
But first I answered the phone. "Hello?" I said, in Emmeline's voice.
"Oh, hi," a stranger's voice said. "I just wanted to let you know you forgot your dog's collar."
That was the code, to let me know the real Emmeline had arrived across town to pick up her dog. Even though I was alone in the office, I made my face look concerned. "I'll be right there."
The line went dead, and I tapped my nails on Emmeline's desktop calendar while the files finished. Kalif's dad had let the dog out last night when he broke into her house and stole her cell phone. He was supposed to call her on her house line today to tell her he'd found her dog, and then Kalif's mom was supposed to turn off her land line and her internet, so she couldn't call into work to say she was going to be late.
That was the other problem with Brooke. She didn't have a dog.
My data finished downloading, and I pulled the thumb drive from the computer.
The job was done. Time to make my exit.
I stood up and walked back down the hall to the elevator. These heels were beginning to wear on my ankle. I buffed up a callus to protect it.
Getting out was easier than getting in. I didn't need an eye scan to leave, nor a key card to select the lobby. I gave Frank a worried glance on my way back. "I just got a phone call," I said. "My dog escaped from the yard. I need to go pick her up and take her home."
"Glad she's safe," Frank said. "It's strange. The IT department says there's nothing wrong with your data. Leonard told them he saw it fail with his own eyes, but they said there shouldn't be an issue."
I edged toward the door. Getting caught by Frank would only be marginally better here in the open than inside the man trap. "Those IT guys," I said. "They never believe there's a problem."
Frank chuckled. "Ain't that the truth. Leonard'll meet you at the scanner when you get back. We'll find the issue if I have to call them down there myself."
My heart pounded. "That's not necessary," I said. "Let's see if the problem resurfaces before we bother them."
A Thousand Faces Page 1
