Once Penny settled down, she turned back to Sam and said, “Why are you so into making these videos? What’s in it for you?”
Sam wasn’t prepared to answer and worried if something she said might ruin the clip for Alix. She knew she needed to stay on message like she had been told and she repeated lines she had said before. “I really just,” she stopped and slid her arm off Penny’s shoulder. “I want our version of the story told. Not some twisted version. People need to know the truth.”
Her sister huffed.
Did she believe me?
That was the truth, Sam knew. Or the version of the truth she wanted to believe.
Standing, Penny went to her closet and glared into it with no real focus. She looked odd with her one arm gone and the muscles of her back and shoulders so much more defined than weeks ago. She spoke at the closet. “What are we doing? Just sitting around waiting for One Nation to figure out what to do with the cure? We’re like, trapped here. There’s nothing for us to do.”
“That’s why the videos are so important. We have to win public support before we do anything. Otherwise…”
Penny snickered and used the patronizing whiny voice Sam loathed. “Otherwise… Gray Altar will swoooop in and take the cure and basically kill us…” She shook her head. “Right.”
Sam hated that the recorder had picked up her sister’s mocking tone.
“You know it’s true,” Sam said, voice low. “Or they’ll detain us somewhere. Forever. And we’ll be called terrorists for the rest of our lives.”
Penny pivoted and inched backwards into the closet to hide inside the hanging clothes. Long dresses that people had donated to the girls created a dense drapery of out-of-date patterns and ugly outfits. “What if I don’t give a fuck?”
Sam stood. “Huh?” All she could see now were Penny’s bare feet and ankles.
“What if I want them to come here?”
Sam inched closer, hoping the recorder was picking everything up. “And do what?”
Stilled inside the shield of clothes, Penny whispered. “And die.”
Sam inched closer. “What did you say?”
“I want to kill them,” Penny said with such conviction that it frightened Sam.
“Pen…”
Her sister said nothing.
Sam looked around the room, noticing for the first time that Penny really hadn’t made it her own. The identical desk where Sam hung her new drawings and a few photos taken of the baby was almost bare—only a closed laptop with a few physical therapy books stacked in the center. There were no pictures of Mason or personal items anywhere. Maybe they were all stashed away.
Knowing the recorder was only picking up sound, Sam wanted to give a visual clue to what her sister was doing. “Why are you in the closet?”
“Because,” Penny whispered from within the folds.
Sam stepped closer. “Because why?”
Penny’s voice was so low, Sam could barely hear it. “Because they’re watching me… right… now.”
“What? Who?” Sam said, trying not to laugh.
Penny was louder now. “Everytwo. One Nation. Gray Altar. You.”
It felt like someone dropped a rock in Sam’s stomach.
“What do you mean? Nobody’s watching you,” she said, moving closer to pull aside the long coat Penny hid behind. Before she could reach, Penny snapped her hand around Sam’s wrist and wrenched it and pulled Sam’s face to hers.
“Everything we do is recorded. I know,” Penny sneered. “They’ve got a hidden camera in my bedroom. Look. Up there.” Her eyes shot up at the ceiling.
Now that rock in her stomach was a boulder. Sam’s head turned and looked up. “Where?”
“You don’t have to see it for it to be there, stupid,” Penny flung Sam’s wrist away, her face sinking back into the cloak of clothes.
Sam held her wrist and backed away. “Shit, Pen. That hurt.”
Penny’s body slumped back against the wall, totally hidden. “Try having your arm blown off.”
The stillness of the clothes and the voice that came within them was haunting beyond the fact that the sound of that voice was the same as Sam’s. This was something she hadn’t realized until now. The recorder and whoever might listen to the recording would know who was who, but it would be impossible for anytwo to fully separate Penny’s voice from hers. They shared the same trauma. The same victimizer. They felt the same anguish because they were the same person.
And the visual of Penny’s arm tearing off repeated in Sam’s head. The spraying blood and the way her sister had dropped.
“You’re… right,” Sam said. She couldn’t help but look around the room another time to see if there were hidden cameras—pinholes in the ceiling—tiny overt wires. “Pen, people aren’t recording you in here. I’d know.” Saying this immediately made her feel like the most rotten person on the planet. Penny’s paranoia was completely valid. Yes, there were cameras in every common area. The hallways had a dozen each. And the drones that circled the base were enabled with the highest quality surveillance technology.
“Pen…?” Sam said. Her sister’s silence was impossible to interpret. Was she going crazy? Or did she just want me to think that. Did she really want to kill this badly? “You okay?”
Only stillness from the dim closet.
“Just leave me alone.”
Sam saw toes move underneath the dresses’ hems. “I’m not going to leave until I know you’re alright.”
“I’m fine.” Penny said, leaning to scratch an ankle. “I’m just mad at myself.”
Sam fought the urge to touch the recorder to make sure if was still on. The pressure to record more of this emotional conversation wouldn’t subside. It was like obsessively collecting something, wanting more and more, but not understanding why. “For what?”
Sam knew her sister was done.
Penny thumped her heel against the wall. “Just fucking go.”
Sam didn’t have to say goodbye. She gestured for the door to open twice before it registered. Backing out of the room, she unclipped the recording device from her shirt, no larger than a pencil’s eraser. Before this moment, recording her sister only felt intrusive and insensitive even when she justified it as the betterment of One Nation’s mission. Now, knowing how much her sister was suffering, the only word for it was despicable. In the hallway, Sam rolled the recorder between her fingers. It was astonishing that something so small could ruin their relationship forever.
The base was quiet this late in the evening. Laughter erupted from one of the common areas. Board game night. Something that she and Penny should have been enjoying with Mason and Dixon. They had been trying to figure out some old fantasy game they’d found among the colorful boxes of cards and ten-sided dice, an antiquated distraction from the lack of internet entertainment. Sam turned and watched the door slide closed, knowing that Penny heard that laughter too. Leaving now might be a mistake, but there was little else she could do.
Down the hall, she spotted Alix. She was motioning for Sam to come closer.
Sam took her time approaching and slowed further when she saw Alix’s fingers pressed to her ear.
“You were amazing,” Alix whispered.
Sam didn’t want to believe what she was hearing. “Huh?”
Alix took out her earpiece. “You know how good this is going to be?”
“You were listening?” Sam said. “The whole time?”
Alix turned and expected Sam to follow. “I thought you knew. The recorder transmits too. Can I have it?”
Once they were around a corner, Sam stopped. “So you were spying on us.”
When Alix stopped and turned, her look of surprise made Sam want to laugh. “With your consent.”
“Not really,” Sam said. “I thought I was going to edit this. Not you. This was between my sister and me.” Finding this out somehow saved her integrity. Sam wasn’t surprised that Alix had been listening the whole time, but it allowed her to pivot her al
legiance back to her sister—something her heart told her to do.
“Does it matter?” Alix asked. “I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear. You did such a great job.”
Sam pinched the recorder between her fingers. “Yeah, that’s what you keep saying. I’m doing such a great job. What for? Really?”
Alix crossed her arms. “You know what for, Sam.”
“It’s not worth it. Not like this,” Sam said.
“We can get your sister to agree to using it,” Alix argued, sounding as if she either hadn’t really listened to Penny’s pain or she didn’t care. “Can I have the recorder?”
Sam chuckled and looked down at her sneakers. How was this woman not getting it? “You’re not serious.”
Hands on her hips. Brow crumpled. Alix was poised to grab it from her. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Rolling the recorder around in her palm, Sam was tempted to taunt Alix the same way she had done with the promise of internet fame. Instead, Sam pinched the recorder and brought it up between them like a little pill. Without saying anything, she opened her mouth, extended her tongue, and placed it, expecting to taste the plastic.
“Please… don’t…” Alix said, her expression hardening.
Sam closed her mouth—keeping her eyes on Alix’s— and swallowed. She didn’t smile or smirk. As boring as swallowing a vitamin. Same felt the medicine surge through her. The recording wasn’t just gone, it was like it never existed. Doing this reconciled the betrayal of her sister and proved to Alix where her allegiance laid.
“That’s probably going to make you sick,” Alix said.
Now Sam smiled. “You make me sick.”
Alix’s jaw loosened. “Cute.”
Thoughts on Penny and what she could do for Penny, Sam turned and made her way to the common area. Mason and Dixon were arguing over a move or misplaced character. The sound of dice clacked on the table.
“Your guy would never do that!” Dixon yelled.
“He’s a Singular,” Mason laughed. “How would you know?”
Sam heard Alix huff behind her. “I hope we can still work together!” she called.
Dice rolled louder as she entered the room, one tumbled to the floor. Sam felt her stomach and waved to Alix without turning around.
CHAPTER 9
Years ago, the media had used words like Super Soldier and Augmented Man. These terms were laughable to Prince. He had seen cutting-edge military technology advancements years before they were reported in the news or hit the market. There were trade shows for top brass where the newest launcher and smart-rifle and guided-munition was showcased. And there were clandestine meetings in hotel rooms where even more secret advancements were revealed from inside digitally-locked metal briefcases. Many of them were personal gifts from Lockheed and KBR. Prototypes to try out in the field.
Prince knew he wasn’t a super anything. Just a man who got to play with the fanciest toys, first.
That’s how his love of the StiffArm started. It had become an augmentation he couldn’t manage without.
Yet with all of these technological advantages, Prince understood that nothing was as valuable as his creativity. His ability to read situations and adapt was second to none. His gift of making something out of nothing gave him a tactical advantage over stronger and smarter opponents, though there were few. He was one of a kind. And that was precisely the value that America was built on. Ingenuity. Craftsmanship. Sole proprietary pride. At times, he considered himself an inventor. Not in the traditional sense, he held no patents or trademarks, but he invented techniques and best practices that Gray Altar adopted as their standard. He has shaped the organization as much as it had shaped him.
Prince had saved his own life enough times to forget each instance. He had saved others through aggressive interrogation, sometimes with few tools or gathered intelligence. How amazing was it that a peeled fingernail could reveal the most precious secrets? The threat of a loved one being raped. Erased. Forever. Knowing the threat was real. Prince’s imagination was the only limit. In any given situation, there were so many skills for him to pull from. And he had always admired the art of waterboarding.
Here was a system built of minimal components—a water source, a bucket, a rag. Zip ties and handcuffs, along with chairs and tables, were ambient tools already available inside interrogation facilities so he excluded those from the system’s quintessential item list. All it took was the willpower to utilize those few pieces in the correct way, with relentless application, and someone could extract vital intelligence from an unwilling source. He had seen some men break within minutes. Waterboarding had not only saved innocent lives, it had fortified the homeland in ways even the CIA couldn’t imagine. That, to Prince, was the pinnacle of the creative act. Using so little to achieve so much. A man who can make something from nothing is not unlike a god.
Just like pencil to paper, Prince knew it was the will to act and perfecting the craft that provided the gestalt. Without those key principles, the water, bucket, and rag were domestic items destined for unremarkable doldrum. In his hands, he could crack the most dense stone, drop by drop by drop.
With this in mind, he wondered what his options were. It was impossible to prepare if he didn’t know what he was walking into. As this was a solo mission and there would be little time to interrogate his target, Prince knew he would have to be unusually creative.
Prince stood in his usual spot inside the gunship, forearm resting on the wall. They cruised at top speed. “What do they call it, Janet? When people dance to music, like really expressively?”
“You might need to be a little more specific.” Janet said through her mic from the cockpit.
On his forearm display, a video of a man and a woman rotated and volleyed off and over each other, two toned bodies in an unscripted ballet. “When the dancers interpret the music on the spot.”
“Interpretive dance?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.” Prince slapped the gunship’s cabin wall, making the video blur. And it wasn’t a few seconds until he swiped the video away to play One Nation’s latest episode. YouTube had taken it down, but the hackers were resilient in reposting and preserving the comments and even displaying the number of views. All people had to do was search One Nation Baby or Sam or Penny Van Best and multiple secure websites popped up. Sam’s face filled the screen. He supposed this was the fifth or sixth time he had returned to the video, always wondering to what extent he had damaged the other sister—the twin that hadn’t appeared yet. “Two,” he muttered, mocking the slang. Prince paused the video with a tap. “How close are we?”
“Clip in. We got minutes.”
“Right right,” Prince said, motivated now. Clipping his tranquilizer bullet belt into the bottom of his pistol, he made sure the other end of the belt pulled smoothly from the chamber on his back. After chambering a round, he holstered the pistol and leaned against the wall. The gunship swayed. His body knew what to do. Counterbalance and shift until the armored chopper straightened. From a case on the floor, Prince lifted a black dagger and flipped it a few times in his hand.
Though he should have expected it, Prince was jolted when Merrick radioed. “Prince Charming. You read?”
“Loud and queer,” Prince shot back, finishing the old joke.
Merrick didn’t indicate he was amused. “You’re gonna love the intel we just received on Mister Jason Herz.”
“Spill it.”
“We managed to crack a firewall to one of his remote servers. Or we think it’s his. Anyway, he’s an UpSet.”
The word shot shivers down his arms.
“Oh gross,” Prince moaned.
Janet looked back at him in silent disapproval, but Prince paid no mind.
Merrick continued. “So he’s going to have a body double. We’re not sure who exactly, but the guy should look a lot like Jason. Same hair, height, all that. Definitely dressed the same.”
“Will the drones be able to tell them apart?” Prince asked.
>
“We hope so, but there’s no real guarantee. Jason and his fake twin might be that convincing.”
There was little else that repelled Prince more than Sets other than the naturally born Singulars who wanted to be Sets so bad that they paired up with other wannabes—making themselves both look like each other. The internet made it relatively easy for an individual to find a person who matched their looks. A few websites provided the service, using algorithms to match similar looking users of the same height and weight. A hair cut and colored contacts later and two strangers could become a pair of pretty convincing twins. It wasn’t uncommon for one UpSet would move half the way across the world to be paired with their adopted twin.
“I think I’m gonna be sick,” Prince choked into his radio. “Do you have a pic of Jason’s UpSet?”
“Negative,” Merrick said.
Real Sets resisted these UpSet’s assimilation at first, but over time the fake twins gained acceptance. Now two totally non-natural twins could date and marry two naturally born Sets. If Generation 2 couldn’t get any worse, Prince thought. Now they’re recruiting normal people.
“I’ll treat them both as equals,” Prince assured Merrick.
“Guess that’s the right thing to do.” Merrick said. “You have everything you need?”
Prince patted his backpack that contained over a hundred rounds and his two loyal drones. “I’m good. Bullets are all tranquilizers if I need them. Got enough to put five football teams to sleep.”
“These guys have any detection devices?” Janet asked through their earpieces.
Prince spun the dagger from over to underhanded positions. “No. They’d like to think of themselves as passive resisters.”
“Over and out then,” Merrick said.
“Over and out.” Prince opened the gunships’s bottom catch, filling the cabin with humidity. He watched treetops race by. With their sound-dampened rotors, few civilians would have noticed their presence.
“One minute to LZ.” Janet called.
Two Girls Book 2: One Nation Page 10
