Impostors Read online

  To everyone fighting for their right to exist

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  PART I: HOSTAGE

  KILLER

  BODY DOUBLE

  SCAR

  DAMAGE

  THE SOFTEST THING

  MACHIAVELLI

  CYRANO

  RUINS

  JUMP

  CODE

  FIRST SON

  FAKE JUNGLE

  VICTORIA

  BALL GOWN

  PARTY

  SWEAR

  TELL ME EVERYTHING

  SPINES

  FLY

  SNAKE

  ESCAPE

  ESCALATION

  PART II: ALLIANCE

  ANVILS

  TRUST ME

  OVERKILL

  CONFESSION

  FRIENDLY FIRE

  TRANSMISSION

  REVEALED

  BUNKER

  COUNTERPUNCH

  CAPTURE

  NEWSFEED

  APPROACH

  JUMP MINES

  GESTURES

  RENDEZVOUS POINT

  STONE

  RAIN

  TEO PALAFOX

  TRUST ME

  FAKING IT

  PROXY

  DAWN

  WARDENS

  FLIGHT

  CRATER

  HIGH COMMAND

  PART III: COUP D’ETAT

  SABOTAGE

  GYROSCOPE

  SOLAR POWER

  FLIGHT

  AMBUSH

  WHITE FLAG

  REBELS

  WAR COUNCIL

  GOOD-BYE

  RAIDING PARTY

  BATTLE

  CRASH LANDING

  HOME INVASION

  NAYA

  SPEECH

  COLLAR

  CLICK

  FATHER

  COL

  About the Author

  Copyright

  We’re about to die. Probably.

  Our best hope is the pulse knife in my hand. It trembles softly, like a bird. That’s how my head trainer, Naya, says to hold it.

  Gently, careful not to crush it.

  Firmly, so it doesn’t fly away.

  The thing is, my pulse knife really wants to fly. It’s military grade. Smart as a crow, unruly as a young hawk. Loves a good fight.

  It’s going to get one. The assassin, twenty meters away, is spraying gunfire from the stage where my sister just gave her first public speech. Her audience, the dignitaries of Shreve, are strewn around the room—dead, faking death, or cowering. Security drones and hovercams are scattered on the floor, knocked out by some kind of jammer.

  My sister’s huddled next to me, gripping my free hand in both of hers. Her fingernails are deep in my skin.

  We’re behind a tipped-over table. It’s a slab of vat-grown oak, five centimeters thick, but the assassin’s got a barrage pistol. We might as well be hiding in a rosebush.

  But at least no one can see us together.

  We’re fifteen years old.

  This is the first time anyone’s tried to kill us.

  My heart is beating slantways, but I’m remembering to breathe. There’s something ecstatic about the training kicking in.

  Finally, I’m doing what I was born to do.

  I’m saving my sister.

  The comms are down, but Naya’s voice is in my head from a thousand training sessions—Can you protect Rafia?

  Not unless I take out this attacker.

  Then do it.

  “Stay here,” I say.

  Rafi looks up at me. She has a cut above her eye—from the splinters flying everywhere. She keeps touching it in wonder. Her teachers never make her bleed.

  She’s twenty-six minutes older than me. That’s why she gives the speeches and I train with knives.

  “Don’t leave me, Frey,” she whispers.

  “I’m always with you.” This is what I murmur from the bed beside hers, when she’s having nightmares. “Now let go of my hand, Rafi.”

  She looks into my eyes, finds that unbroken trust we share.

  As she lets go, the assassin lets loose again, a roar like the air itself is shredding. But he’s spraying randomly, confused. Our father was supposed to be here, and only canceled at the last minute.

  Maybe the assassin isn’t even thinking about Rafi. He certainly doesn’t know about me, my eight years of combat training. My pulse knife.

  I make my move.

  Rafi’s speech was perfect. Clever and gracious. Unexpected and funny, like when she tells stories in the dark.

  The dignitaries loved her.

  I listened from the sidelines, hidden, wearing the same dress as her. Everything identical—our faces because we’re twins, the rest because we work hard at it. I have more muscle, but Rafi tones her arms to match. When she gains weight, I wear sculpted body armor. We get our haircuts, flash tattoos, and surgeries side by side.

  I was standing by to step in and wave to the crowd of randoms outside. Sniper-bait.

  I’m her body double. And her last line of defense.

  The applause swelled as she finished her speech and headed for the viewing balcony, the brilliant daughter stepping in for the absent leader. Hovercams rose up in a multitude, like sky lanterns on our father’s birthday.

  We were about to make the switch when the assassin opened fire.

  I crawl out from behind cover.

  The air is thick with the hot-metal reek of barrage pistol. The rich scents of roast beef and spilled wine. The assassin fires again, the roar thrilling my nerves.

  This is what I was born to do.

  Another table between me and the assassin is still upright. I crawl through chair legs and dropped silverware, past a spasming body.

  On my back, looking up at the splintered table, I feel wine dripping through bullet holes onto my face. It’s summer berries and ripe heaven on my tongue—only the best wine for our father’s events.

  I squeeze the knife, sending it into full pulse. It shrieks in my hand, buzzing and hot, ready to tear the world apart.

  I shut my eyes and slice through the table.

  Our father burns real wood at his winter hunting lodge. All that smoke trapped in a few logs, enough to rise a kilometer into the sky. A pulse knife at full power shreds things just as fine—molecules ripping, energy spilling out.

  A swath of oak, dishes, and food dissolves into a haze of fragments, a thick hot cloud billowing across the room. Sawdust glittering with vaporized glassware.

  The assassin stops firing. He can’t see.

  Me either, but I’ve already planned my next move.

  I scuttle out from beneath the halved table, lungs clenched against the dust. At the edge of the stage, I pull myself up, still blind.

  A grinding sound fills the ballroom. The assassin is using the cover of dust to feed his barrage pistol—the weapon uses improvised ammunition to make it smaller, harder to detect.

  He’s reloading so he can shoot blind and still kill everyone.

  My sister is out there in the dust.

  The taste of sawdust fills my mouth, along with a hint of vaporized feast. I set my pulse knife to fly at chest height. Hold it like a quivering dart.

  And the assassin makes a mistake—

  He coughs.

  With the slightest nudge the knife flies from my hand, deadly and exuberant. A millisecond later comes a sound I recognize from target practice on pigs’ carcasses—the gurgle of tissues, the rattle of bones.

  The sawdust is cleared by a new force billowing out from where the knife hit. I see the assassin’s legs standing there, nothing above his waist but that sudden blood mist.

  For a grisly moment the legs stand alone, then crump
le to the stage.

  The knife flits back into my hand, warm and slick. The air tastes like iron.

  I’ve just killed someone, but all I think is—

  My sister is safe.

  My sister is safe.

  I drop from the stage, cross to where Rafi still huddles behind the table. She’s breathing through a silk napkin, and hands it to me to share.

  I stay alert, ready to fight. But the air is filling with the buzz of security drones waking back up. The assassin was wearing the jammer, I guess, so it’s mist now too.

  Finally, I let my knife go still. I’m starting to shake, and suddenly Rafi is the one thinking straight.

  “Backstage, little sister,” she whispers. “Before anyone figures out there’s two of us.”

  Right. The dust is clearing, the survivors wiping their eyes. We hustle away through an access door beneath the stage.

  We’ve grown up in this house. Playing hide-and-seek in this ballroom with night-vision lenses, I was always the hunter.

  My comms ping back up, and Naya’s voice is in my ear:

  “We see you, Frey. Does Gemstone need medical?”

  This is the first time we’ve used Rafi’s code name in a real attack.

  “She’s cut,” I say. “Over her eye.”

  “Get her to the sub-kitchen. Good work.”

  That last word sounds strange in my ear. All my training up to this moment might have seemed like work. But this?

  This is me, complete.

  “Is it over?” I ask Naya.

  “Uncertain. Your father’s locked down on the other side of the city.” Naya’s words are sharp with the possibility that this is only the start of something bigger. That at last the rebels are moving in force against our father.

  I guide Rafi past stage machinery and lighting drones, to the stairs that lead down. Cleaning drones and cockroaches scuttle out of our way.

  Five soldiers—everyone in Security who knows of my existence—meet us in a kitchen cleared of staff. A medic shines a light in Rafi’s eyes, cleans and seals her cut, flushes her lungs of smoke and dust.

  We move in a tight group toward the secure elevator. The soldiers settle around me and Rafi, hulking in their body armor like protective giants.

  The glassy look in my sister’s eyes hasn’t faded.

  “Was that real?” she asks softly.

  I take her hand. “Of course.”

  My trainers have run surprise drills on us a hundred times, but nothing so public, with dead bodies and barrage pistols.

  Rafi touches the wound on her head, like she still can’t believe that someone tried to kill her.

  “That’s nothing,” I say. “You’re okay.”

  “What about you, Frey?”

  “Not a scratch.”

  Rafi shakes her head. “No, I mean, did anyone see you—next to me?”

  I stare into her eyes, her fear cutting into my excitement. What if someone in the ballroom saw us? A body double is worthless if everyone knows they’re not the real thing.

  Then what would be the point of me?

  “No one saw,” I tell her. There was too much dust and chaos, too many people wounded and dying. The hovercams were all knocked out.

  And what matters is: I’ve saved my sister. I let the ecstasy of that flood into me.

  Nothing will ever feel this good again.

  “I want a scar,” Rafi says.

  Our doctor goes quiet.

  We’ve been moved up to the house medical center, where our father takes his longevity treatments. The surfaces glisten, the staff wear white disposables. Rafi and I are lying on tufted leather lounges facing a picture window—a sprawling view of Shreve and beyond, the city rolling off into forest and storm clouds.

  Our father isn’t back yet, though the city has been quiet. This wasn’t a revolution. Just one assassin.

  The doctor’s assistant is cutting away my fancy dress, checking for any injuries I’m too brain-pumped to feel. She’s the only member of Orteg’s staff who knows that I exist.

  She always seems scared of me. Maybe it’s my stream of training injuries. Or maybe it’s because if she ever lets slip that I exist, she’ll be disappeared. She’s never told me her name.

  Dr. Orteg leans over Rafi, shining a light on her brow. “Fixing this will only take a minute. It won’t hurt.”

  “I don’t care what hurts,” she says, knocking his light away. “What I want is a scar.”

  Looks pass between the doctor and his assistant, the caution that descends whenever Rafi’s being difficult. Her explosions of temper come without much warning.

  Dr. Orteg clears his throat. “I’m sure your father—”

  “My father understands exactly why.” She arches her neck, sighs dramatically at the ceiling, reminding herself to be patient with lesser beings. “Because they tried to kill me.”

  Silence again. Less fearful, more thoughtful.

  Rafia is more popular than our father. No one ever polls the question, but our staff studies the metrics. The way people talk about her, the expressions on their faces, the movements of their eyes. Everything captured by the spy dust shows it’s true.

  But no one wants to have that conversation with our father.

  Dr. Orteg looks at me for help, but Rafi’s right. The scar won’t let anyone forget what happened tonight. What the rebels tried to do to her.

  Then it hits me. “Like those old pictures of Tally Youngblood.”

  Rafi’s eyes light up. “Exactly!”

  A murmur passes through the room.

  No one’s seen Tally in years, except her face in random clouds, like she’s a saint. Or in shaky hovercam shots. But people still look for her.

  And she did have that scar, just above her eyebrow. Her first strike against the pretty regime.

  “Interesting point, Frey,” comes a voice from the doorway. “I’ll ask your father.”

  Standing there is Dona Oliver, his private secretary. Behind her is a bank of screens—the control room, where our father’s staff monitors every feed in our city. News, gossip, even the images captured by the spy dust all filter through this tower.

  Dr. Orteg gets back to work, looking relieved that the decision is out of his hands now.

  Dona turns away from us, whispering into her wrist. She’s beautiful in an extravagant way. Big eyes, flawless skin—that crazy-making gorgeousness from the pretty era, back when everyone was perfect. She’s never had her beauty surged into something more fashionable. Somehow she carries it without looking like a bubblehead.

  Rafi takes a hand mirror from the table between us. “Maybe the scar should be on the left side, where Tally’s was. What do you think, little sister?”

  I lean across and take her chin gently, give her a long look. “Leave it right where it is. It’s perfect.”

  Her only answer is a little shrug, but she’s smiling now. I’m pleased with myself, and that pleasure blends with leftover excitement from the battle downstairs. Sometimes I’m a decent diplomat, even if diplomacy is my sister’s job.

  The faraway look fades from Dona’s face.

  “He agrees,” she says. “But nothing unsightly, doctor. Make it elegant.”

  “Only the best scars,” my sister says, laughing as she eases back into her chair.

  It takes a full ten minutes to perfect Rafi’s injury. It seems an elegant scar is trickier than none at all.

  She’s beautiful, as always, but a blemish on her face feels like a mark against me. I should have gotten to her quicker, or spotted the assassin before he had time to open fire at all.

  When Dr. Orteg is done, he gives me a troubled look—he has to cut me now.

  The same scar exactly.

  He picks up a bottle of medspray.

  “Wait,” I say.

  Everyone looks at me. I’m not usually the one giving orders. I was born twenty-six minutes too late for that.

  “It’s just …” The reason isn’t clear in my mind, and then it is. �
��It hurt, didn’t it, Rafi?”

  “Splinters in my face?” She laughs. “Yeah, a lot.”

  “Then it should hurt me too.”

  The others all stare at me, like I’m too shell-shocked to think. But Rafi seems pleased. She loves it when I cause trouble, even if that’s her job.

  “Frey’s right,” she says. “We should match, inside and out.”

  The room sharpens a little—a tear in my eye. I love it when Rafi and I think the same way, even after all that work to make us opposites.

  “Inside and out,” I whisper.

  Dr. Orteg shakes his head. “There’s no reason to do it without anesthetic.”

  He looks at Dona Oliver.

  “Except it’s perfect,” she says. “Good girl, Frey.”

  I smile back at her, certain this is the best day of my life.

  I’m not even disappointed that she doesn’t ask our father for permission to hurt me.

  Half an hour later we’re alone in our room, sitting side by side on Rafi’s bed. Her wallscreen is set to mirror us.

  We keep the lights low, because my head is throbbing. Dr. Orteg had to redo my scar three times before it matched Rafi’s.

  I didn’t let him use the medspray until it was done. I wanted to feel it the same way she did—the sharpness of breaking skin, the warm trickle of my own blood. When we touch our scars, it will be with the same memory of pain.

  “We look amazing,” she whispers.

  That’s how she always talks about our looks—in the plural. Like it’s not boasting if she includes me too.

  And maybe it’s true. Our mother was a natural pretty. The only one in the city, Father brags to anyone who’ll listen. He says we’ll never need a real operation, even when we get old and crumbly, just a touch-up here or there.

  But our mix of his glower and our mother’s angelic face has always looked disjointed to me. And now this scar.

  Like Beauty and the Beast had daughters, and raised them in the wild.

  “I don’t know if we’re pretty,” I say. “But we’re alive.”

  “Thanks to you. I just sat there screaming.”

  I turn to stare at her. “When did you scream?”

  “The whole time.” She drops her eyes. “Just not out loud.”

  Rafi was her usual self in front of everyone—bratty and full of swagger. But here alone with me, her voice has gone quiet and serious.