A Thousand Faces

by Janci Patterson

  "Is that right?" I asked.

  Kalif looked me up and down, like he was hardcore checking me out. I tried not to squirm. I didn't even look like myself; he was just checking my metrics.

  "I think you've got it," Kalif said. "Back up against the wall so I can measure your height."

  Kalif had pencil marks on his wall to show various heights—at home we had one of those in practically every room. I stepped up against it.

  He stood closer than was strictly necessary, and squinted at the top of my head. "You overdid it by half an inch."

  When he looked down at my eyes, I was at a sudden loss for what to do with my hands. "Okay," I said quickly. I stepped around him and shortened my thighs just slightly, where I was pretty sure I'd exaggerated the proportions. It was unlikely that anyone would have noticed so small a discrepancy, but if I got all the details we noticed right, hopefully no one would catch the things we overlooked.

  "All right," I said. "Play the video for me."

  I paced back and forth in Kalif's room, trying to get Andrea's stance and gait right, which wasn't easy with his floor being so covered in cords and cases. He cleaned up around me as I worked, shoving everything under his corner desk.

  "All that's left is the voice," I said finally.

  I was decent at vocal impressions, so I always left them for last. After a long session of endless parental corrections, it was always nice to watch Mom or Dad smile when I hit the voice right after the first few tries.

  Andrea's voice was low for a woman, and a bit soft spoken. Voice is a combination of anatomy and mannerism, and I listened carefully for both as Kalif played the audio file. I repeated the phrases Mom recorded several times—"How was your weekend? Can I help you with something?"—feeling out the cadence as much as the tone and volume.

  "Well, how am I doing?" I asked Kalif in Andrea's voice.

  "That's great," Kalif said.

  I looked down at the total package. "I doubt that, but it'll do."

  Now for the last step, the on/off switch. I closed my eyes and ran my mind over my entire body, memorizing the bend of the face, the feel of each bone, the hang of the flesh. Then I relaxed, as if releasing tension from every part of me, and became myself again. As soon as the transformation was complete, I tensed up again, getting back into Andrea's form before I forgot it. I checked myself in the webcam to make sure I'd gotten it right again, and then repeated the process. Relax, flex, relax, flex. I couldn't hold on to minutiae like fingerprints and irises without concentrating, but I needed to be able to become all the visible parts of Andrea at a single moment's notice. If I could make Andrea almost as natural as my own self was, then I could maintain her by muscle memory, without having to concentrate.

  When I could turn Andrea on and off like a light bulb, I shifted back into me and stayed there. "Your turn," I said.

  Kalif looked terrified. "What?"

  I put a hand on my hip. "My dad was working at the company, too, so there's a persona for you."

  Kalif sighed. "I'm not as good at all that as you are."

  "Do you think I should go alone?" I asked. "I can do that, if you think you can back me up better remotely."

  Kalif waffled. "You're looking to break into the security footage. You don't have any experience with that, do you?"

  I sat down on the edge of his bed. "I don't."

  "So it would be ideal if I were there."

  It would, as long as I could keep my head screwed on straight. "You'll have to get Dad's persona right. Can you do it?"

  He pulled up a three-sixty composite picture of Dad in his Eravision employee persona. "Let me try."

  Kalif changed slower than I did, and more deliberately. He zoomed in on the face and took a ruler to the screen, counting out the proportions of the nose and the eyes in increments. "This would be easier," he said, "if I could just get that stupid program working."

  Kalif and Mel had been working on a program that could scan faces and tell us how well we were matching, but getting the program to find solid reference points was complicated. Mel had been pushing Kalif pretty hard on it the last few months. Kalif didn't seem to mind, but I was pretty sure Mel was only forcing it because he wanted Kalif to get better at shifting than me.

  "You can't use computers for everything," I said. "You can't reduce shifting to pure numbers."

  "It works for irises. And fingerprints. And retina."

  I shook my head. "That's just for biometrics. When you're interacting with people, you have to seem like the person, not just look like them."

  Kalif gave me another of those half-smiles that made my heart do a Riverdance. "You don't think I can make a program to do that? I thought I was a prodigy."

  Calm down, Jory. I put on my best, unflappable shifter smile. "If you do, I'll buy you dinner. For now, we do things the old way." I sat on the stool next to him and watched as his face grew longer and squarer.

  "Is that right?" he asked.

  "A little thicker in the chin," I said.

  Kalif messed with the bone structure, filling out his face too much, and then scaling it back, trying to find the right shape.

  "There?" he asked.

  "Better," I said. "But your skin is still too dark."

  Kalif adjusted the tone.

  "Do you know why you make your skin darker than your parents'?" I asked.

  Kalif rolled his eyes. "Dad says it's because I've been raised hearing about my heritage, but I think it's because of my name."

  Mel believed that we were all descended from the assassins of Hassan-i-Sabbah, which would make us all of Arab descent. Dad said that was just wishful thinking—trying to look back and fit ourselves into history. We could have had our DNA analyzed to determine our heritage, of course, but Dad wasn't brave enough to do that, even to prove Mel wrong. The fear that scientists might discover something bizarre in our DNA and send the government after us was too overwhelming.

  The name thing made sense, though. His subconscious formed his body to match the cultural assumptions about the label his parents had given him.

  "Is the heritage thing important to you?" I asked.

  He grimaced. "It's important to my dad. I'm not even sure if it's real, but I wouldn't say that to him. My skin makes him proud, like he's raising me right, or something."

  I'd never heard him talk about his dad with so much scorn. "You think he's wrong about our ancestry?"

  Kalif shrugged. "I don't believe anything until I see evidence." He pointed to his face. "Is it still too dark?"

  "Yes," I said.

  He lightened the skin around his eyes.

  "Too far," I said. "Now you look like a cancer patient."

  Kalif grinned at me, his own dimples showing through John's blanched face. "Maybe this guy got really sick overnight. You don't know."

  I laughed. "Yes, let's go confess cancer to his coworkers. That won't draw any attention."

  Kalif leaned closer to the webcam, examining his eyes on the screen, and trying to get the color just right.

  "Almost there?" Kalif asked.

  Almost was an overstatement. "You haven't done the freckles."

  "I hate those," Kalif said. "Why did your dad have to use them?"

  "Because they're hard and he's good at remembering them." It was one of the things I would look for, if I ever had to go looking for my dad when he was in persona. That wouldn't be easy, though. I hoped this situation wouldn't come to that.

  When Kalif turned to me again, he did almost have it. "Well?" he asked.

  "Your jaw is still off."

  Kalif turned back to the camera and started adjusting, but he was lengthening the lower mandible instead of the upper.

  "No," I said. "Here." I reached out and ran my hand from his ear to the curve in his jaw bone. His face was rough, like he had a five o'clock shadow. I had to give him props for that—John probably wouldn't have shaved in a while.

  Kalif turned slightly, his lower lip barely brushing my thumb. My insides t
ingled. When he nodded against my hand, I realized I'd left it there longer than I needed to. I pulled away and focused on the picture in the computer. Idiot, I thought. I should have pointed there, instead.

  If Mom were here, I'd have asked her for help with my just-friends signals. I was sure she'd love to coach me in that. Except I wouldn't need that coaching once I found her. She and Dad would want to split, immediately. If all went well, tonight would be the last night I'd spend with Kalif. And since I'd have my parents back, that should feel like good news.

  So why did I feel this crushing weight in my chest?

  "Better?" Kalif asked.

  I turned to his image on the screen, instead of to him. "You need to adjust the hairline." I pointed at the computer image this time. "Here."

  "You're really good at this," Kalif said. "Thank you."

  "No problem," I said. "I mean, you're doing this for me, after all."

  His image in the computer monitor smiled at me, and even that took my breath. "I should have been practicing with you all along," he said. "You're way more patient about it than my parents."

  I braced my arms on his desk. "Well, now we know."

  "Yeah," Kalif said. "I just hope it's not too late. I don't want to mess up this mission."

  No kidding. That was my job. "You'll do fine," I said. "Do the rest of the body, and then we'll try the voice."

  That was where we ran into real trouble. Kalif reached for the voice and came up sounding too young, then too deep. He tried to lighten the tone and sounded like Michael Jackson. I smothered a laugh.

  "Come on," Kalif said. "Mock, but help."

  I held up my palms. "I don't know what to tell you. It comes naturally to me."

  Kalif grit his teeth at himself in the webcam. "To my mother, too. It's a shame I didn't inherit her talent."

  "Try it again."

  But when he did, he sounded effeminate.

  "Just give him a cold," I said. "Then you'll have an excuse for not showing up to work today." Hopefully the bosses would be out of the office, and we wouldn't need excuses, but it couldn't hurt to have them, just in case.

  "That I can do," Kalif said. I waited while he narrowed his nasal passages and inflamed his throat. "How's that?" he asked in a stuffy voice.

  "More scratchy," I said.

  "Who's the genius now?" he asked. His voice was so hoarse that everyone would notice, but no one would suspect anything was amiss.

  "I don't know," I said. "But let's just hope you don't need to get through a voice recognition portal."

  Kalif shook his head. "They don't have any. I have the security schematics." Though his voice remained scratchy, he sounded more confident once he could talk about things he was prepared for.

  "Okay," I said. "Practice turning it on and off, and we can stop torturing you."

  Kalif had almost mastered the instant change when we heard footsteps on the stairs coming down to the basement. Kalif shifted back into himself and sat down at his computer, closing the image program and pulling up the server thing he'd been working on before.

  His mom opened the door without knocking, and found us sitting on stools at Kalif's desk. "Any word?" I asked.

  "No," she said, taking each of our hands. I don't know who we would have been but ourselves, unless we decided to swap identities just to mess with her, but the habit ran deep.

  "Jory was giving me pointers on voice changes," Kalif said. "She's a good teacher."

  That was smart of him to say. If she'd heard any of what we were doing, now she'd have an easy explanation, and maybe she wouldn't suspect that I'd lied to her.

  Aida looked surprised. "If she can coach you in voices, she must be."

  I wanted to defend him, but Kalif didn't look insulted—probably because Aida was right, about his skill level at least.

  "Do you need help with lunch?" Kalif asked.

  "It's already done," Aida said. "I was just coming to tell you two to come up and eat."

  Kalif nodded. "We'll come now."

  As I followed Kalif and Aida up the stairs, I wished I was a better teacher. I was going to have to depend on Kalif to keep up his persona during the stress of the mission.

  When it came to breaking in to Eravision, we could both use all the help we could get.

  Six

  We agreed that his parents might suspect something if we stayed in his room all day, so I declined Aida's invitation to dinner and went home in the mid afternoon to go over Andrea's profile and to pack the essentials: flashlight, lock picks, disposable cell phones, and a change of casual clothes. I did fine until it got dark, and then I paced the downstairs hallway, looking at the pictures on our walls—sunsets, weeping willows, an oversized canvas of the Golden Gate bridge cutting through fog. Nothing personal, nothing that would identify us. Nothing that we wouldn't very shortly be leaving behind.

  I stood in front of the Golden Gate picture. My father had bought it at IKEA along with most of our furniture. We could get another one just like it in the next place we landed, if we cared to. So I knew when my eyes teared up that it wasn't the picture I was torn up about leaving behind.

  It was past midnight when Kalif finally knocked on my door; I must have stared at the photo for an hour, but I hadn't let the tears slide farther than the corners of my eyes.

  I opened the door to find Kalif standing there barefoot in sweats and a t-shirt. I stuck out my hand and we pressed our palms together, his shifted temperature as usual, and my eyes threatened me again. I tightened my tear ducts, sucking them dry.

  Kalif looked down at his clothes. "I thought it might convince my parents I was going to bed," he said. "Too much?"

  "No," I said. "It was probably a good idea."

  He grinned. "But my feet are freezing."

  I swung the door open wider. "Come in."

  I'd already changed into Andrea's clothes, and practiced shifting in and out of the persona to make sure I had it. It had taken me a minute to adjust the warp of my corneas to see properly through her glasses, but holding onto that was much easier than an iris pattern, especially since if I lost concentration on it, the world blurred.

  In both my home body and in hers, Andrea's clothing hung loosely from my frame, just like it did in the pictures of Mom. I appreciated that—it meant my anatomy could be less exact.

  While Kalif changed in the bathroom, I slipped on Andrea's shoes; I wasn't sure what it said about me, but her plain, brown, round-toed flats were much more my style than Emmeline's flashy heels. I wondered which ones Kalif liked better, but I didn't want to ask, for fear it was the heels.

  Not that it matters, I reminded myself.

  When Kalif stepped out of the bathroom, he was in full persona. He might have been Dad standing there, all ready for work. I walked up to him and offered him my hand again. Andrea and John's hands shifted from cool to warm to cool, just the way ours had a few minutes ago. Even though Kalif didn't look like himself, the signal alone sent tingles up my arm.

  It felt like home.

  I pulled my hand away.

  Damn. I was in so much trouble.

  "I read that Andrea's car is parked in a garage downtown," Kalif said.

  He'd gone over the profiles, too. I nodded, trying to focus. "And John takes the bus."

  "The bus sounds impractical," Kalif said, "so we should drive to the garage and get the car."

  "We can take my parents' car to the garage. We need a cover story. Andrea might go in to get something she left in the office. John was sick, of course." I paused. "Maybe they both were, and they just failed to call in. But I'm not sure why they would go in together."

  Kalif looked in our living room mirror. This was the real tell that shifters lived here: full length mirrors in every room. "We could change the personas a bit," he said. "Decide that they're dating, which is against office policy. I checked the employment materials your parents collected."

  My stomach fluttered. It was a good idea, and he said it without interest. But if datin
g was the first excuse on Kalif's mind, I was in exactly as much trouble as I thought I was.

  I should have told him no, should have come up with another story, but even as I tried to conjure one, my mind blanked.

  "Okay," I said finally. "That way we could act caught if we run into anybody." Which we might do anyway, at the rate we were going.

  Kalif motioned to the door. "Should we go?" he asked. If my embarrassment was showing in my face, Kalif didn't react to it. Maybe I was just imagining his intentions.

  "Yes," I said. "I'll drive." I charged out the door before I could make things more awkward than they were.

  I took the long way out of the townhome complex so we wouldn't drive by Kalif's place. Not that I expected his parents to be sitting by the front door, watching, but we couldn't be too careful. We could evade them by shifting, but they'd recognize the car.

  Kalif guided me through the city to the correct parking garage—Mom had paid for a permanent spot, so she could leave it there whenever Andrea wasn't at work. I pulled out John and Andrea's lanyards with their employee name tags, and we both looped them over our heads. Those we hadn't even had to duplicate—since John and Andrea were employees, the company had handed them over freely.

  We switched over to the second car. "You better drive again," Kalif said.

  "Will do," I said. I steeled my nerves and locked in my physical form before I brought up the details of the plan. If we were going with this dating thing, we need to iron it out before we tried it on. "So how long have we been dating?"

  "A week," Kalif said. "Keep things recent."

  "Sounds right. Sometimes new relationships make people flaky." Or batty, in my case. Not that Kalif and I were headed for a relationship. I needed to get that idea out of my head quick, or I was going to botch everything.

  Kalif just went on talking like we were discussing the weather. "And we're back to the office because you left your phone there."

  "If we're together, that also explains why we're both sick."

  Kalif smiled.

  My cheeks burned. "I just meant . . . I mean . . ."

  "I got it," Kalif said. "Calm down. Don't forget we have to hide the relationship. Company policy."