by Dan Krokos
My other version leans on her staff a little, smiling. It’s the smile you make when you’re happy to see someone, maybe someone you haven’t seen in a long time. Even their hair is identical to ours; the boy matches Peter’s longer black curls, and the girl has her reddish brown hair cut to the same length as mine.
“I’m Grace,” she says. She drops a hand on the other Peter. “And this is my teammate Tobias.”
Grace and Tobias. I thought they’d have the same names as us—but that wouldn’t make sense. I almost smile at the thought; no words come because I can’t speak. It’s like walking into the bathroom in the mall and seeing my face for the first time all over again. I must make the same facial expressions. My voice has to sound like hers.
“What’s so funny?” Grace says. She steps to her left and Tobias steps to the right. The space widens between them, but there’s no way we can make it. Another step, widening the circle to come in from the outside. I reach up and wrap my fingers around the hilt poking above my right shoulder. The katana comes off easily. I twirl it once before holding it out before me.
“Give me the sword, Miranda,” Peter says next to me. I haven’t taken my eyes from our twins.
“You don’t have to protect me, Peter.”
“I’m not. Just let me try first.”
Tobias and Grace continue their slow circle toward us.
“Are you better with a sword?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Then I got it.” I raise my voice a little so Grace and Tobias can hear. “You don’t seem surprised to see us. But we’re just learning about you.”
They trade a look. Tobias—who has an aura of menace Peter lacks—has a strange gun on his hip; there’s a spool of cable connected to it.
“Do you know what they’re trying to make us do?” I say.
Peter shifts his feet on the gravel beside me. They’ve stopped moving toward us, offering an alley between them for us to escape. No doubt they hope we’ll run for it, and why wouldn’t we try, when they’ve got electro-staves and we’ve got a sword between us. The door behind them is shut all the way. I know the effort it takes to push from the inside, so I’m guessing it’ll be just as hard to pull. I’m so tempted to run, but I can’t trust Peter will follow.
“Many people will die,” I say. “You’re aware of this?”
Grace shakes her head, halfway confused. “It’s not our place to question.”
That’s when I know something is wrong with them. I point the katana behind me, back toward the city. “Look at those people down there. Look at the buildings filled with them. Imagine them fleeing in a mass panic, the chaos it would cause. All for proof of our worth. So we can be sold off to the highest bidder.”
Grace’s eyelids twitch. Her eyes are bright green, unlike my reddish brown ones. “It doesn’t matter,” she says.
It sounds like an automated response. Like she doesn’t fully understand. Like her only goal is to bring us in, no matter what we say.
Tobias jerks his chin at Peter, slowly dipping into a crouch, holding his electrified staff as a walking stick. “How’s the neck?” he says.
“Good,” Peter says. “Thanks for your concern.” I see his head turn toward me in my peripheral vision. “I don’t have any weapons, Mir.”
“I’m aware of that,” I whisper. “Just run. Make sure Noah and Olive are okay.”
“I don’t think so,” he hisses back.
It doesn’t matter, Grace said. These two can’t believe that. If they have any part of us inside them, they wouldn’t go along with the plan. It’s almost like they’re robots...programmed. If we’re two parts of the same team—Alpha and Beta—how can we be so different? Then I remember our purpose, and the obvious question is—how can someone buy and truly control us? There has to be some kind of mechanism, or brainwashing, or something that keeps a Rose in line. Something to make us follow orders. Otherwise we’re just loose cannons.
“Are we twins?” I say to Grace.
She shrugs. Whoever I’m dealing with is not me. I am no longer afraid. My only regret is I can’t risk looking down at the pier behind me, to see if Olive and Noah are okay.
Grace moves in.
There are two ends to her staff and only one blade to my sword. I parry as fast as I can, whipping it left and right as she tries to smack me with one end and then the other. I don’t have gloves like she does; the shocks from her staff travel down the sword and up my buzzing arm. With every hit I almost lose my grip. Grace sweeps the staff up between my legs but I thrust down and catch it, groaning against the pain in my arm. The blade sparks on the staff. Grace reverses and tries to come from above with the other end. I sidestep and the sizzling staff smashes onto the gravel with a burst of white sparks. I don’t have time to counterattack. Peter is beside me, on his knees from a solid strike to the chest. He tried to block with his forearms.
“Just run!” Peter says.
Maybe it’s the lack of sleep, or the shock. Whatever the reason, Grace is faster than I am. She hits me three times in the ribs, so fast her staff is a white, crackling blur. I stagger back—one step, then two. Three. I’m too close to the roof’s edge. My foot slips and my arms pinwheel, keeping me in place an extra second. Grace is in front of me, reaching out to grab my neck. To stop me, or give me a final push? I grab her arm but her footing isn’t strong enough. She slides over the gravel and I’m looking at the night sky. A strange end, to fall seven stories with your doppelgänger. Images flash in my head, more phantom memories, too fast for me to decipher. Faces mostly—Noah, Peter, Olive, Tycast. And someone else. Someone who looks like me, but much older. It might be my mother.
A final flash—
I’m a child, my head not reaching my mother’s waist. She kneels down and looks into my eyes. We have the same auburn hair, the same nose, same lips.
“I have to go now, sweetie.” A man stands behind her. He has a red goatee and kind eyes. “This is Phillip. He’s going to help teach you, okay?”
“Where are you going?” I say.
I never get my answer. I blink, and the woman’s face is suddenly Grace, clutching me as the floors rush by. I try to count them but we drop too fast. My body tenses, convulsing as it tries to writhe away. If only I can orient myself, get my legs pointed the right way. The surge of hope is dashed. Whatever way I land won’t be good.
Wind roars in my ears. I squeeze my eyes shut and brace for the end.
Then the wind stops.
I jerk so violently that, for one awful second, I think my neck has snapped. Something squeezes my stomach so hard I can’t breathe. I’m upside down, dangling ten feet above the sidewalk next to the building. Swaying. I look up and see a long black cable connected to Grace’s leg. Grace has her arms wrapped just above my hips, hands clasping her elbows. That’s why I can’t breathe. I am strangely calm about everything. The cable jerks upward a foot. Grace grins at me, triumphant. I can barely hear her over the machine-gun pound of my heart.
“Close one,” she says.
“Yeah,” I say, then punch her in the face. She groans, grip loosening for an instant. I backflip out of her arms. My feet swing down, and I land crouched on the sidewalk below her.
She curls upward, a vertical sit-up. Tobias isn’t standing on the edge; he’s using the roof as a fulcrum. “Let me down!” she shouts.
I spare a glance at the pier—Olive and Noah are gone, and Peter is up there alone. I sprint through the door Peter and I first came through. My vision darkens as the blood rushes out of my head, but I keep it together, taking the stairs two at a time. I reach the top and burst through the closed door.
Then skid to a stop, carving furrows in the gravel.
Peter is on his knees. Blood runs from a cut on his forehead to the tip of his nose. Tobias stands next to him, staff in one hand, katana in the other. The sword’s point nestles under Peter’s chin.
“You should’ve run,” Peter says. His shoulders slump.
“We onl
y need three of you for the dry run,” Tobias says. “I could kill him, and it would be within my orders.” That’s why Grace held on to me, in case Tobias had already killed Peter.
I hear Grace come through the doorway behind me, but don’t bother turning around. She kicks the back of one knee and I stumble forward and down, cutting my palms on the crushed rock. I settle into a kneeling position and put my hands behind my head. Peter stares at me like he’s mad I didn’t save myself. I shrug at him.
It’s false bravado; inside I am shivering and shaking. We failed. I have no idea what will become of us now, or if Noah and Olive escaped.
And since there’s no way we’ll cooperate, they’ll deny us our memory shots, erasing all the new ones I’ve made. It’s the only possibility.
Peter smiles at me, shaking his head. Behind it I can see he’s as scared as I am. Blood drips on his lips. “You never did listen to my orders,” he says.
I smile back. “Aren’t you glad you’ll have company?”
17
They cuff us. I can’t feel my fingers by the time we reach the first landing. It doesn’t seem real. We didn’t come all this way to be captured by knockoffs. At the bottom a van waits with the rear doors open. My shoulder rubs against Peter as they guide us to the van.
“They’re going to make us like them, Miranda,” Peter says. He won’t look at me. Inside the van I see Noah and Olive, similarly restrained, and I breathe again. I’m torn between relief at seeing them safe, and dread because they’re captured along with us.
“What does that mean?” I say.
But I know. Whatever they did to Grace and Tobias. The thought of being altered more makes acid surge up my throat. Becoming robotic. Less myself. I close my eyes, try to imagine how they’ll do it. Drugs? Brainwashing?
“It means they’ll do something to make us play along. So we can’t think for ourselves. We won’t be ourselves.”
He meets my eyes reluctantly. “If that happens, I want to...”
“Want to what?”
We’re at the back of the van and he shakes his head. I step inside and sit down on a bench next to Olive. She smiles weakly at me. Peter sits next to Noah, across from us. Noah is soaking wet, water beading in his short hair. Grace shuts the door, and now the only light comes from a small bulb in the ceiling.
“Hey,” Noah says to me, “that’s you.” He looks as sick as Peter, sick as I feel. He knows we failed, that there’s nothing to protect the city now. Or us.
“I noticed that,” I say.
There’s a partition between us and the front of the van. I hear the doors open and shut. The engine starts. We sway in our seats as the van pulls away from the building.
“So what happened up there?” Noah says, eyes on the ceiling. He sounds a little slurred, like his tongue is swollen. Maybe someone punched him in the mouth.
“They had better weapons,” Peter says flatly.
Noah nods at that. “Okay, fair enough, but seriously.” “Seriously what, Noah?” I say.
He leans forward. “Seriously, Mir. How. Did this. Happen.”
Olive kicks his knee across the van. “You dove in before we decided it was clear.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Your fault.”
Noah laughs. “They were waiting for me down there. I found the cache, though, so Tycast wasn’t lying.” In the dim light, I see him shift something into his cheek.
“Of course he wasn’t,” Peter says.
“What if they deny us shots?” Olive says.
“In that case,” Noah says, “it was nice knowing you guys.” He doesn’t seem worried now. My skin burns, which I’m glad for because I’d rather feel angry than helpless....
Then I realize he’s mouthing the word quiet. He opens his mouth. Inside I see four tiny vials under his tongue, each filled with a lemonade-colored liquid.
While we talk without really talking, I pay attention to where the van is going. I count the turns and stops, trying to picture it in my head. Eventually I lose track, and so do the others. It sounds like we’re on a freeway for a long time. Then more traffic lights. We turn and the van tilts down, like we’ve just entered an underground parking lot. We trade glances, priming ourselves for whatever comes next.
The van stops, and the front doors open and shut. A second later Grace opens the rear doors and I blink in the bright light. An underground parking garage, empty but well lit.
“Out you come,” Grace says, waving us down.
“So who are you?” Noah says, smiling like an idiot at Grace. “Miranda two-point-oh? Do you have upgrades?”
Grace punches Noah in the stomach and he bends over, groaning. He can’t catch himself because his hands are behind his back, so he goes down on one shoulder and rolls onto his side. “Same sense of humor,” Noah says once he has breath. They put bags over our heads, which is pretty useless since we could always follow our way back from wherever we’re going—a moving vehicle is one thing, but on foot I’m confident.
The bag is scratchy and makes the air I breathe hot and moist. “Alpha team has better bags to put on people’s faces,” Noah says. I hear Grace—or someone—hit him again.
The four of us sit on a bare concrete floor in a cell without a door. One wall is a smoked glass window, the other three are white. They didn’t remove our bags until we were inside. There was an elevator that went up many floors, a few short hallways. Other than that I have no idea where we are.
The first thing we all did was sit down and tuck our legs and squeeze the cuffs over our feet, to put our hands in front of us.
“At least we’re together,” Olive says, scratching at the pocked floor with a nail. She sits across from me, next to Noah. There isn’t much room, so her leg is resting on top of mine.
Noah stretches his arms over his head. “Maybe. Who knows for how long.” He must have the vials spaced around his mouth, because I can barely tell his voice is different.
“You’re always so negative,” Peter says.
“Hey, c’mon leader. Lead us out of here.”
“Noah,” I say.
Noah holds up his cuffed hands. “You’re right, I’m sorry.”
He holds a finger to his lips then pretends to scratch his nose. He’s afraid they’re watching us, which of course they are. Noah opens his mouth like he’s yawning, and Peter sees the vials. Olive must know, because she gives me a sly smile.
The wall of smoked glass slides open. Four soldiers in black armor point rifles at us. They wear the same thin metal helmets worn by the soldiers in our base, with the same creepy narrow visor. Two come in and pick me up off the floor. I don’t struggle. Peter does. He tries to stand but a soldier kicks him in the chest.
“I’m the leader. Take me,” Peter says. They ignore him.
“It’s fine,” I say. “I’ll see you guys in a minute.” I will it to be true, even though it feels like I’ll never see them again.
My team stares at me with blank faces. The glass wall slides shut.
The soldiers march me down a hallway. I consider building a fear wave, but it won’t do anything except give me a headache. Or burn me out, since we’re cutting it close with the shots. If it’s after midnight, then I had my last shot yesterday morning, before leaving on the bikes with Peter. No way to tell how much longer it’ll last, since I’ve used my fear since then.
The first door on the right opens to a small office, complete with a desk and bookshelves. Grace sits behind the desk. Seeing her face startles me, which is probably not something you can get used to. She points at the chair across from the desk and the soldiers sit me down. At least it’s comfy. She nods at the soldiers and they leave, shutting the door behind them.
We stare at each other.
“These cuffs are a little tight,” I say. Just banter to mask the unease, the creeping dread rising in my throat. We can all talk the big talk, but I don’t think any of us expects to leave this place the way we came in. For now I have to fake it, even if I can barely hold my
head up. I have to show Grace I’m not afraid.
“You know it’s impossible to escape from here,” Grace says. “There are too many doors, too many guns you’d have to pass.”
“My home was kinda like that.”
Grace comes around and unlocks my cuffs. She tosses them onto the desk and sits back down.
“Who’s running the show here?” I say.
“I am.”
“I meant, who is your Dr. Tycast?”
Grace smiles. “Dr. Conlin. Janet Conlin.”
I rub my red wrists. “So why am I talking to you?”
“Because Conlin thought I’d be able to get through to you best, seeing as we share the same DNA.”
I look up from my wrists. “Yeah, about that. So you’re my...clone?”
“Who says you’re not mine?”
“No one,” I say.
“The truth is neither.”
I swallow, wondering if I should believe anything she says. If I should allow her words to sink in as fact, or keep fighting them.
“Then what?”
“I know it’s hard to accept at first,” Grace says, ignoring me. And what’s that in her face now? Compassion and understanding, it seems like. “I was like you at first. I didn’t want to accept the truth. And I didn’t. But they helped me with that.”
“How?”
Her eyebrows scrunch together. She stares at some point over my shoulder. “I don’t remember.”
“Yes you do. What did they do to you?”
Grace shakes her head.
“How are they controlling you?” I say.
“It doesn’t matter,” Grace says, and for a single insane second I think she’s going to cry. “They just do.”
“Who is Rhys?” I say. If she’s off balance, maybe I can keep hammering her. Push her over the edge until she tells me something useful.
