BROKEN SYMMETRY: A Young Adult Science Fiction Thriller

by Dan Rix

  Her eye twitched. “I’ll be meeting with him in a few minutes. In the meantime, why don’t you wait in the lobby? I need to have a word with Charles about your MRI.” She closed my folder and started toward the door.

  “I thought you said I was fine.”

  “It’s just something I want him to be aware of. Nothing serious.” She left the room before I could respond, leaving me alone with the icy glare of the fluorescents and my troubled thoughts.

  And my folder.

  I practically lunged for the manila folder on the desk. A half dozen black and white films slid out into my palms. Cross sections of my body, nothing recognizable. A sticky note was stuck to the back of the folder on which Dr. Johnson had written two words.

  Situs Inversus?

  I remembered it was the condition my father had, and didn’t really tell me anything. When I closed the folder, though, a chill sank through my skin.

  ***

  My father did not have Situs Inversus.

  The man who had Situs Inversus was a reflection from a lower level who had crossed over into the source, as Charles had explained to me earlier.

  Situs Inversus was evidence that someone was from another level, like how a piece of paper we took through a crossover would be reversed for everyone else, but not for us. That’s why when Damian crossed over, he became left-handed. I became right-handed.

  I found Damian out in the lobby and in a hushed voice told him about the sticky note I had seen in Dr. Johnson’s office and my ensuing anxiety. “Do you think I’m a reflection?” I asked, voicing my fears at last.

  “It’s not possible,” he said, shaking his head. “You would have remembered crossing over.”

  “But if I have Situs Inversus—”

  “You don’t,” he said. “It was probably a reminder she stuck in your file after your dad died to check you out too. You’re not reversed, Blaire.”

  “I feel reversed.”

  Damian lowered his gaze from the ceiling and leveled it with me. “If you were a reflection, I would know.”

  The nurse stuck her head out. “Damian . . . Damian Silva?” She glanced around the empty waiting room.

  “Can I come in with you?” I said.

  “No. Stay here,” he said, his voice edged with warning. He fixed me with a threatening stare, until satisfied I was rooted to the seat, and then sauntered back with the nurse.

  He didn’t want me to hear his diagnosis.

  Suddenly, I really wanted to.

  Stay here? Not a chance.

  ***

  The moment Damian disappeared around the corner with the nurse, I checked that the receptionist was busy and darted after them. The interior halls of the hospitals bustled with nurses and doctors.

  I glimpsed Damian’s yellow leather jacket rounding a corner at the end of the corridor. I hurried after him, but when I reached the intersection, the hall was empty.

  They’d slipped into one of the rooms, but I couldn’t just check each one.

  Think, Blaire.

  Up ahead, the hallway branched around another receptionist’s desk. I ran forward and grabbed a clipboard hanging off the desk. I scanned the columns of typed and highlighted names, then flipped the page.

  Damian Silva—I now knew his last name.

  No Damian. This wasn’t even a list of appointments.

  “Excuse me, ma’am, can I help you?”

  I dropped the clipboard and glanced up at the obese, wiry haired receptionist who’d spoken. “I’m looking for my brother, Damian Silva. Do you know what room he’s in?”

  “I could check for you. What doctor is he seeing?”

  “Doctor Johnson.”

  She typed away, her arms and gut jiggling. “Nothing’s coming up. Is that in radiology?”

  “Forget it.” I spun away from her. Here I was missing the crucial truth about Damian, about crossover sickness. And there was no way he was going to tell me afterwards.

  My gaze scrolled up the hallway, pausing on each of the identical doors. They probably just took him to the same room where Dr. Johnson saw me. Duh, Blaire, should have thought of that first. I slipped away from the desk and located the exam room I had just left, and pressed my ear against the steel.

  Just muffled voices, their words masked by the hum of background noise. My thudding heart didn’t help either.

  An orderly entered the hall, striding toward me. I jerked up straight, hoping he hadn’t spotted me eavesdropping. He passed by, only briefly making eye contact.

  I’d just have to risk it. I applied pressure to the handle until it clicked, then edged the door open a crack. Dr. Johnson’s voice, now audible, escaped from the gap.

  “. . . you have to tell Charles about this,” she said. “You should have stopped a long time ago.”

  I leaned back against the wall and folded my arms, propped the door with my heel, and listened. The staff would just think I was waiting for someone.

  “Those are the normal side effects of crossover,” said Damian from inside the room, his voice laced with tension. “I’m not worried.”

  “You should be,” said Dr. Johnson. “With the kind of damage your body has sustained, I’m amazed you’re functioning at all.”

  “That’s because it doesn’t hurt me anymore,” he said. “Check your records; it’s not worse than last time.”

  “That’s what I’m saying,” she said. “It is worse. It’s destroying your body . . . it’s killing you. You have to stop.”

  “How many do I have left?”

  “Damian,” she said, “your MRI shows new areas of hemorrhaging in your stomach, brain, and other vital organs. These are not minor issues—”

  I covered my mouth with my hand.

  Hemorrhaging. Just like my dad.

  “How many do I have left?” he spat. “How many crossovers before I expire?”

  “I don’t know,” said Dr. Johnson. “There’s no cut and dry number. Your body is resilient to some of the effects of crossover but not others. Maybe you have a dozen left—maybe the very next one will kill you. I just don’t know.”

  A crinkle of paper indicated that Damian was rising from the exam table. “I’ll tell Charles the good news, then. That I’m fine, just like always, and that you’ve cleared me to continue crossing over for another month.”

  ***

  Damian bumped into me on his way out of the exam room, and I didn’t even bother hiding the fact I was eavesdropping. I confronted him right there in the hallway.

  “Why do you do it?” I said.

  His dark eyes flashed with warning. “I told you to stay in the waiting room.”

  “You still crossover, even though you know it’s killing you.”

  “Not your concern, Blaire.”

  “Are you stupid?” I said. “Are you suicidal? Are you insane?”

  He held my gaze, his cheek bones casting deep shadows down to his clenched jaw. “All of the above.”

  “For once, could you give me a straight answer?”

  “About why I crossover?” he said. “It’s all I know. It’s my life. Why do you care, anyway? You’re healthy.”

  “I don’t want you to die,” I said, my frustration overriding the certain regrets I would have later about admitting as much.

  “You’re wasting your energy,” he said. “It’s already too late for me.”

  “Just stop doing it,” I pleaded, my eyes stinging with tears. I wiped them away angrily. “Stop crossing over.”

  “I can’t,” he said, angling his head away from me. “I just can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m addicted.”

  “To crossing over?”

  “It’s different for me. You f
eel like crap when you crossover, but every time I go through, it’s like my cells are cleansed and reborn. They vibrate with life—at least until it wears off. If I don’t crossover every few days, my body starts rejecting the source. I get sick. And it just gets worse.”

  “Damian—” I whispered, my hand inching toward my mouth, “this is horrible. We have to do something.”

  “Do what, Blaire?” His black eyes drilled into me. “Haven’t you noticed? No one understands what this thing is. They’re researching crossover DNA in a freaking military quarantine zone. They have no idea.”

  “What about Charles?”

  “He wants the same thing we all want, and he doesn’t care how many of us he expires.”

  “And what is that?” I asked. “What do you all want that’s so valuable it’s worth shaving decades off your life?”

  “You know what it is.”

  “Sorry. Never got the memo.”

  “Don’t you already crave it?” he said, a disturbed glint in his eyes. “Haven’t you always?”

  “Stop talking in riddles and just tell me.”

  Damian raised an eyebrow and smirked, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “The true source, Blaire. Open your eyes. We’ve been looking for it this whole time.”

  Chapter 14

  My first solo crossover came the following Tuesday. Once in the reflection, I was to enter the quarantine zone posing as Jennifer Cupertino, a 26-year-old genomics postdoc who, according to the schedules Damian and I had stolen on my first crossover, was scheduled to arrive at the south checkpoint today at eight PM.

  Damian had stolen the relevant ID cards, access codes, and biographical information for dozens of visitors scheduled for the next month. Had the military known of the security breach, they would have reprogrammed the access cards and enforced extra screening for the dozens of visiting doctors and scientists whose identities had been compromised, making my mission utterly impossible.

  Of course, they didn’t know of the security breach. There hadn’t been a security breach.

  Charles chose me for the mission instead of Damian because the guards were male, and in case of failure, he assured me I could flirt my way past them.

  I knew from experience this was not so, but I held my tongue.

  For Damian.

  The idea that we might be in a reflection hadn’t left me since he mentioned it in the hospital. In fact, I had caught it like a virus. But now I pushed it from my mind because I had to do this mission right.

  The doctor’s words still rang in my mind. Hemorrhaging. Crossover was tearing him apart just like my father.

  I had to convince Charles I was so good that he never needed to send Damian on another crossover. Because Damian might not survive another crossover.

  I could.

  Even if it hurt like hell.

  ***

  At 7:15, I drove Charles’s Prius—Damian had forbidden me from using his Mustang, even in reflections—down the left-hand side of Ocean Bluff Avenue and pulled into the parking lot of The Hilton Garden Inn, where Jennifer Cupertino was staying.

  I was amazed at how quickly I had adjusted to life in a reflection, almost like it was second nature to me.

  I grabbed the ziplock bag, containing two Rohypnol pills, also known as “roofies,” off the passenger seat and pocketed them.

  Given that I was already in character as Jennifer Cupertino—lab coat over a baby blue button up, thick glasses, hair pulled into a tight bun—it wasn’t difficult to wheedle an electronic key from the receptionist for her room on the third floor.

  Amazing how ruthless I could be knowing I’d never face the consequences of my actions. I was like a different person. Like a sociopath.

  I listened at the postdoc’s door until five minutes lapsed after her last shuffling, then let myself in. Steam billowed from the open door of the bathroom, immediately on my left.

  I bit my lip and hopped across the doorway, praying she didn’t spot me from the shower. Beyond the bathroom, I froze on tiptoes, my heart rate spiking. Had she seen me?

  The shower cut off.

  Ice crystallized in my veins. I scanned her room, frantic, noting the details as fast as I could. Her purse hung off a chair. A plastic cup, half full, sat on the bedside table. An open can of Pepsi One perched on the TV.

  I shook it. Mostly full.

  Less than six feet away, blocked from view by only a thin wall, the girl was drying off. Miraculously, she hadn’t heard or seen me.

  I plopped one of the roofies in the open can of soda, hurriedly tiptoed across the room and dumped the other in the water. On my way back I grabbed her purse, and ran. But she was just coming out of the bathroom. We collided in the narrow entryway and she screamed.

  Failure.

  Before she could fully react, I hustled past her and flew out the door, muttering an apology. By the time she gathered her towel around her and emerged into the hallway, I was already tugging open the door to the stairwell.

  “Hey—” she shouted.

  The massive steel door slammed shut behind me, cutting her off.

  Whatever. She wouldn’t drink the water or the soda, but without her car, the keys to which I now carried in her stolen purse, she wouldn’t make it to the south checkpoint by eight.

  I would.

  ***

  “Jennifer Cupertino.” I spoke the words evenly and handed my ID to the soldier who’d stopped me at the checkpoint—the same guy, I recognized with a twinge in my stomach, that Damian killed on my first crossover.

  His eyes flicked between me and the picture on the card. “Do you have clearance?”

  “I’m supposed to meet Doctor Anderson in the genomics lab,” I said. “You should have me on file.”

  The soldier handed the card back to me and leisurely clicked his radio. “Miss Cupertino here for Doctor Anderson. Please confirm.”

  After a pause, the radio crackled. “Have her park outside. We’re sending someone to get her.”

  “Ten-four.” The soldier stood up straight and pointed to a steel gray Mercedes and a black Ford Excursion parked alongside the empty street. “Over there.”

  In the rearview, I saw him lean over the car behind me and repeat the process. I let out my breath. Not a flicker of recognition from five nights ago. Nothing.

  I parked Jennifer’s car, itself a rented Chrysler 300, behind the Mercedes and walked back to the checkpoint, my heart contracting in my throat. According to our preliminaries, this Dr. Anderson was scheduled to give Jennifer Cupertino—me—a tour of the genomics lab, after which Charles wanted me to steal one thing . . . the strain of Aneuploidy-47 DNA they were sequencing.

  Without looking up at me, the soldier waved me through the gate. “Go ahead. Armed escort’s waiting inside.”

  Too easy.

  ***

  “Bet you’re wondering why we called you in,” said Dr. Anderson, sliding a magnetic card to unlock the door to the Joint Center for Structural Genomics building on the northern end of the campus, which I noted he wore around his neck. “What’s genomics got to do with USAMRIID, right?”

  The drive from south checkpoint to the JCSG building had been like entering Area 51—floodlights scorched the pavement, infantry patrolled the rooftops, and Humvees mounted with missile launchers idled hungrily.

  Dr. Anderson, a lanky scientist with a goatee, thick glasses, and a bird’s nest of curly hair tumbling down to his shoulders, pushed through the door and strode into the building on the verge of a run, me in tow. I liked him immediately.

  “You-sam-rid?” I said, doing my best to pronounce the acronym as he had just used. Keep the questions short. Keep him talking.

  “U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. Since Doctor Benjamin’s
incident, they’ve really turned up the heat in this place. They want to be absolutely sure.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Don’t worry, this isn’t a hot zone anymore. They’re keeping the perimeter, though. Makes our job easier, right?”

  “Our job?”

  “Figuring out what the hell that thing is down there.”

  Down there. I thought back to the blueprints I had seen of the Immunology building.

  The artifact.

  I tailed Dr. Anderson down a dim, fluorescent-lit hallway. Cameras tracked us at every intersection. They would notice anything suspicious.

  “So why me?” I said carefully, through a dry mouth. Okay, Blaire. Calm yourself. I had studied every square inch of the JCSG building in the blueprints. If—and when—things went south, I could escape fast.

  “They’re calling in everyone who’s got a chance at cracking this thing,” said Dr. Anderson. “Professor Yager claims you’re something of a genomics savant.”

  “Yeah, it comes naturally,” I said. Uh-oh. “Something I’ve always been good at.” Just shut up, Blaire, stop talking. “Ever since an early age, my parents said I had a gift.” Please, please stop talking. “It’s like I can just see things—”

  “Well, let’s hope so,” said Dr. Anderson, rescuing me from the hole I’d dug myself. “Because the rest of us are stumped.” He unlocked another door and admitted us into a lab flanked with computers and freezer sized gene sequencers. “Here we are.”

  Behind a glass partition, robotic arms swiveled and slotted trays into neon blue stacks. Bunches of cables dangled from the ceiling like so many vines and snaked out to the different humming machines, giving the lab the messy feel of a technology startup, not a laboratory.

  Dr. Anderson yanked a pair of latex gloves out of a steel box mounted on the wall. “Let me preface: these are cultures taken directly from the artifact. USAMRIID did their tests, and found nothing pathogenic. They sent it to us to get this thing sequenced. That’s where you come in.”