Dirty Mirror

by R S Penney

  Hugging herself and rubbing her upper arms, Anna stiffened as a chill went through her. “I'm with Larani,” she said, though she didn't really believe it. “Whoever this woman is, she is not Jena.”

  “You'd like to think that.”

  Jena's eyes fluttered open, and she tossed her head from side to side. “Really, Anna, I thought you of all people would know I can survive anything.”

  “You'd never work for Slade.”

  Jena laughed.

  It was cruel laughter, vicious laughter, the kind you would expect from a bully who had cornered you on the playground. Had she ever heard Jena laugh like that? Something about this woman was different. There was no humour, none of Jena's acerbic wit. It was all rage and hate.

  No, Anna had never heard Jena laugh like that. But then if everything that she knew about Jena was a lie…

  Jack flinched, turning his face away from the woman he had once called a friend. “Well, since you're feeling better,” he began, “I'm sure you'll be quite comfortable inside a holding cell.”

  Jena stretched out on the mattress, arching her back and then smacking her lips a few times. “Well, then perhaps we should be on our way,” she said. “This bed has wheels, doesn't it? Start pushing.”

  “This isn't a hotel.”

  “You're right, boy; it isn't,” Jena mocked. “But I have no intention of walking.”

  Boy, Anna noted. Jena used to call him “kid.” She filed that little tidbit away in the back of her mind and took some small comfort in the possibility that maybe this woman wasn't the person she had come to think of as a friend.

  “How long have you worked for Slade?” Larani asked.

  Instead of answering, Jena smiled up at the ceiling and batted her eyes. “You know, I think I'd like some french toast,” she said. “All that time on Earth has given me a taste for their food. Fetch some for me.”

  “How long?” Larani growled.

  “With blueberry syrup, please,” Jena went on. “I've come to prefer it.”

  Larani grunted, turning her back on the other woman. She marched to the door and stood there with trembling hands. “Throw her in a holding cell!” she barked. “Leave her there until morning; she can eat then.”

  Laughing hysterically as she sat up, Jena pressed a hand to her forehead. “So, I'm going to be sent to bed without supper?” The sheer pleasure in her voice sent a chill down Anna's spine. “Honestly, you Keepers have such brutal interrogation techniques, I'm sure I'll be revealing all my secrets in no time!”

  The woman curled her legs against her chest and hugged them, burying her smiling face between her knees. “Come on then, Jack!” she teased. “You'd better start pushing me down there. I have no intention of walking.”

  She suddenly looked up at him with a cold expression. “You could use the collar, I suppose,” Jena said, arching one eyebrow. “Force me to obey. Tell me, Jack, do you have the stomach for it? Are you willing to torture another human being?”

  Jack didn't answer.

  He just started wheeling the bed toward the door, and everyone who had come to this impromptu meeting jumped out of the way. Jena cackled with giddy delight. “Oh, I love it!” she exclaimed. “Give me three days, and I'll be running this place!”

  Jack looked like he was ready to spit bullets, but in that moment, Anna was proud of him. Prouder than she would like to admit. A Justice Keeper would resort to violence in defense of their own life or the life of another, but never as catharsis for the indignities they were sometimes forced to endure. Jena could taunt all she wanted, but Jack wouldn't let her bait him…and Anna loved him for it.

  It can't be Jena, she told herself yet again. Jena was focused, methodical. Not cold by any stretch of the imagination, but she had a way of zeroing in on a goal like a laser. What little Anna knew of “Isara” suggested a similar tenacity, but this woman was almost manic in her demeanour. She took a kind of sick pleasure in causing pain.

  They're more alike than you'd care to admit, Anna thought. It took Isara less than ten seconds to establish herself as the dominant personality in this room. Just like Jena would have.

  She felt sick inside.

  Melissa floated in an endless expanse of stars, a white dress with a frayed hemline falling almost to her bare feet and billowing in the non-existent wind. She moved her arms as if swimming, though there was no water. No air either. This was a place of the mind. A place where she could get answers.

  Closing her eyes, Melissa focused her thoughts. “Ilia!” she called out, diving like a fish through the endless void. “I need to talk to you!”

  Ground rose up to meet her, lush and green and dotted with trees. She noticed a river carving its way through the landscape and flocks of birds moving past underneath her. Boy, her mind could conjure some amazing imagery.

  Melissa landed on bare feet at the top of a grassy hill, lifting her hands up in front of her face to study her fingers. It felt strange to be so solid in what was essentially a very vivid dream.

  Another woman materialized before her, dressed identically in a white dress that left her shoulders bare. This lady was tall and slim with a pretty face and short hair that she wore parted in the middle.

  Jena.

  Melissa let her head hang, then rubbed her eyes with the back of one hand.“That might not be the best form to choose,” she said. “Right now, everything is very confus-”

  “It isn't Jena.”

  “I'm sorry?”

  “The woman that you encountered at the university!” Ilia said. “The one who names herself Isara! She is not my former host!”

  “Can you be sure?”

  Ilia strode through the grass in a way that reminded Melissa of the moments right before her father launched into one of his most scathing lectures. In the blink of an eye, she was towering over Melissa. “I remember everything that Jena experienced!” Ilia said. “She never fought Anna in Tennessee. She despised Grecken Slade with every particle of her being! Under no circumstances would she ally herself with that…traitor!”

  Hearing those words was such a relief; Melissa felt every muscle in her body relax. She was about to thank the Nassai for setting her mind at ease, but Ilia was still fuming. “Jena believed in the ideals of the Justice Keepers!” she insisted. “And she would never kill indiscriminately the way this Isara does. More to the point, I would not have allowed it! This woman may look like Jena – she may sound like Jena – but she is not Jena!”

  Melissa crossed her arms, frowning down at herself. “Well, all right then,” she said, nodding slowly. “At least that much is settled. So, all this time, Jena had an evil twin. Or maybe…a clone!”

  “A clone?”

  “Think about it!” Melissa exclaimed. “You're Grecken Slade, and this one annoying Justice Keeper has been a thorn in your side for years. So, how do you deal with it? You make a copy of her, your very own Jena.”

  Ilia didn't look convinced.

  The Nassai stood before her with a hand pressed to her middle, a tight frown on her face as she stared down at the ground. “Jena was a formidable enemy because of who she was. You can't clone life experience.”

  “No, but…Maybe that wasn't the point.” A thought occurred to her, accompanied by a feeling that reminded her of the times when she couldn't wait for the teacher to call on her because she just knew she had the right answer. “Maybe the point was to destabilize us, make us doubt one another.”

  “Then why would Isara hide her face?”

  Melissa turned her back on the other woman, trudging up the hillside and stopping there with her hands clasped in front of herself. “I don't know,” she said with a shrug. “It could be that she was trying to get information, use Jena's access codes.”

  Ilia leaped off the ground like a ballet dancer and floated up the hill, passing right over Melissa's head. She landed in the grass, then promptly turned around. “You should know it doesn't work that way,” she said. “Having Jena's face doesn't give you her access cod
es. You can't clone a fingerprint.”

  Tossing her head back, Melissa shut her eyes so tight it made her tremble. “Then I don't know!” she snapped. “But I'd better go tell Larani what you just told me. And one more thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “You offered to help me learn how to fight like Jena,” Melissa said. “I accept.”

  It was hard to keep the tears off her face.

  Larani was the sort of person who prided herself on a certain amount of emotional control, but discovering that Jena was not only alive but also one of Slade's most trusted lieutenants was like a kick to the stomach. Her insides felt as if someone had tied them in knots. It was a shock to realize that she cared this much.

  Well…No, not really.

  Months ago, she had smothered her feelings the instant she first recognized them for what they were. Jena had been unavailable at the time, with Melissa's father, no less. Not that Larani had time for such indulgences. It was a source of irritation for her to feel like she had been reduced to a babbling school girl. Romance was for the young; she was in her mid-forties, which was old for a Justice Keeper.

  Her office was lit only by a single lamp on her desk. How long had she been sitting here anyway? Several hours? She remembered making her way down to the cafeteria and forcing herself to eat a bowl of soup, but for the last few hours, she had just been lost in her own thoughts.

  Larani felt tears on her cheeks, then buried her nose in the palm of her hand. She massaged her tired eyes. “You have work to do,” she reminded herself. “You don't have time to sit here and mope about-”

  The door chime cut her off.

  “Come in.”

  When the double doors slid open, Melissa stood in the blue-walled corridor with her head down. “I'm sorry to bother you, ma'am,” she began. “But there's something you should know.”

  “What is it?”

  The girl took a hesitant step forward, and the door slid shut behind her. She forced out a deep breath. “She's not Jena,” Melissa said. “The woman we've got locked up in a holding cell? She's not Jena.”

  Larani stood.

  She leaned over the desk, pressing her palms to its surface, and shook her head. “I don't mean to be harsh, Melissa,” she said. “But we took a sample of that woman's DNA. It's identical to Jena's.”

  Melissa jumped and clapped her hands so hard it sounded like someone had set off a firecracker. “Then I was right!” she exclaimed, striding toward the desk. “Ma'am, Isara is a clone!”

  Lifting her chin to study the young woman, Larani narrowed her eyes. “A clone,” she said softly. “I wish that were true, Melissa, but she also has Jena's fingerprints. You can't clone a fingerprint.”

  “Okay, so she has Jena's fingerprints,” Melissa said. “And Jena's DNA as well. But she doesn't have Jena's memories, I can guarantee it. My symbiont remembers Jena's life backward and forward, and Jena never did any of the things Isara did.”

  Clamping a hand over her mouth, Larani shut her eyes. A mystery. Normally, she liked mysteries. “I don't know,” she muttered. “We know Slade's people have the ability to swap out a true Nassai for one of those corrupted symbionts.”

  “What's your point?”

  “Perhaps Jena…exchanged the symbiont you carry for one that would let her attack Anna without consequences.”

  “Ilia would remember that.”

  Crossing her arms, Larani hung her head. A heavy sigh escaped her despite her best efforts to suppress it. “I see you've also named your Nassai,” she grumbled. “A practice I would rather discourage.”

  The girl held her gaze with dark eyes that – just for a moment – seemed to belong to a woman twice her age. “Ilia is a person,” she said firmly. “Why shouldn't she have a name of her own?”

  So much was changing.

  Larani had never considered herself a traditionalist – in fact, she prided herself on being able to adapt to new situations – but the Justice Keepers had certainly morphed into something very different from what they had been twenty years ago, when she was just a raw cadet. She supposed that was a good thing, but it did take some getting used to. Over four hundred years of humans Bonding with Nassai, and it took some cheeky kid from a backward world in the middle of Dead Space to come up with the idea of naming them.

  Melissa looked flustered; it was clear the girl was adamant about proving that this Isara was not the Jena Morane she had come to love. So, why was Larani so dead set on believing the worst?

  Turning her back on the girl, Larani went to the large window behind her desk and braced her forearm on the pane. “It's possible, Melissa,” she admitted. “But the truth is we don't know what to make of Isara.”

  “Quiz her,” Melissa suggested.

  “Hmm?”

  “Ask her things only Jena would know.”

  Well…That really should have been the first arrow in her quiver. Why was she so willing to believe that Jena had betrayed them? Was it because hate was easier to handle than…whatever else she might have felt? “That's a good idea, Melissa,” Larani said softly. “I'll have someone look into-”

  The door slid apart again, and this time, there was no chime to announce the new visitor. Instead, Jon Andalon came striding through as if this were his office. “We have a new problem,” he said. “A big one.”

  Larani spun around.

  The man stood on the other side of her desk, breathing slowly. “I was attacked in my apartment today,” he went on. “By two men who used a kind of cloaking technology I've never seen before.”

  Larani felt her jaw drop, then shook her head to clear her mind. “We've never been able to make a working cloaking device,” she replied. “And to the best of my knowledge, neither have the Antaurans.”

  Jon crossed his arms and grunted his displeasure, approaching her desk with his head down. “That may be so,” he said. “But clearly someone has. I've got the two men who did it in lock-up.”

  “A cloaking device…” Melissa whispered.

  At times, the girl was so quiet, it was easy to forget her presence. She seemed to be putting the pieces together in her head. “And Director Andalon was attacked on the same day that Isara hit the university. It can't be a coincidence.”

  “Who?” Jon snapped.

  “A woman who's given us some trouble in the past,” Melissa answered. “We just found out she's a clone of Jena.”

  “I beg your pardon, Cadet.”

  Larani raised a hand to forestall any further argument. She needed time to think, to analyze the factors. Every instinct she had told her that Melissa was right; there was just no way these two incidents were unrelated. But if Isara had been the one to provide the cloaking devices to the men who attacked Jon… “I take it you recovered the devices they were using?” she inquired.

  “Yes.”

  “Then let's go have a look.”

  The Science Lab was a large room on the sixth floor with windows that looked out on a skyline that was lighting up as evening set in. A series of consoles arranged to form a circle took up much of the floor-space.

  Dr. Maz Atero was in an uproar.

  A short man in a white lab coat, he paced a line across the room with his hands in the air. His round face of smooth, dark skin was handsome enough, Melissa supposed, but the mop of brown hair gave him a boyish look. “I don't believe it!” he shouted. “An actual working cloaking device.”

  As usual, Melissa waited in the corner with her hands clasped before herself, her head bowed respectfully. Do a lot of listening and a little talking; that was advice she had once heard her father offer to a young cop on his way to his first meeting. She had taken those words to heart.

  Larani was hunched over with a palm pressed to her forehead, and it looked as if she might collapse from fatigue. “So you can confirm it?” she mumbled. “This isn't just some complex holography?”

  “I did say as much, didn't I?”

  That came from Director Andalon, who sat on the windowsill with his han
ds on his knees. He shook his head slowly in exasperation. “Two men attacked me this afternoon, and they were invisible.”

  “I just want to be sure,” Larani muttered.

  Dr. Atero lifted something that looked like a loose-fitting smock and pulled it over his body. His head popped through the neck hole, and he blinked several times. “See for yourself,” he said.

  The man touched a button on the garment, and just like that, he seemed to ripple out of existence, leaving only a slight shimmer in the air that you might have missed if you weren't paying attention. To Melissa's eyes, he was gone, but Ilia could still sense him. It was somewhat disorienting.

  That shimmer in the air moved as Atero made his way around the ring of consoles. “The device creates a field that refracts light around the body,” he said. “It would make incredible camouflage if not for the fact that it runs out of power in about ten minutes.”

  “Still,” Larani said. “It's an advantage.”

  It was hard to resist the urge to begin dry-washing her hands, but Melissa was able to maintain her composure. Anxiety was like a lump in her stomach. Enemies that could make themselves invisible? True, she could sense them, but the Sons of Savard could do all sorts of damage with that technology.

  Jon was on his feet in an instant, pacing across the room with an expression that made it look as if he had just bitten into a lemon. “Could this be used on starships,” he asked, “Or other military tech?”

  “No, it wouldn't work.”

  “But a ship can generate enormous amounts of power.”

  The shimmer moved away from Jon, and when Melissa focused on the awareness that came from her symbiont, she could see that Atero was fiddling with his multi-tool. “The device bends light around my body,” he said. “But that only prevents EM waves from reflecting off of me. If I happen to be the source of those waves…”

  Suddenly, there was light shining in the middle of the room. Light so bright it made Melissa shield her eyes. The flashlight on Atero's multi-tool. It was somewhat distorted by the cloaking field – almost if someone had held up a prism that broke the white light into a rainbow of colours – but still clearly visible.