Impostors Read online

  He shrugs. “It won’t be easy, getting them to trust me. But there must be Victorian forces out here, still loyal to my family, still ready to fight. The rebels and I can help each other.”

  Without Col, I have nowhere to go … except home.

  “But we agreed to be allies,” I say.

  He turns away, embarrassed.

  “That was back when I thought our parents were trying to set us up. This is deadly serious. The rebels will believe that I hate your father, Rafi, because of what he did to my family. But why would they trust you?”

  “Because I’m …” Not Rafi. But my lips won’t say the words.

  I don’t know what will happen when I unleash this secret. Do I really exist outside of this lie?

  “Because you’re a trained killer?” Col shakes his head. “That’s just another reason not to let you get too close.”

  “But I’m not—” Even thinking the words makes me start to unravel. “I’m really—”

  Col’s hand goes up for silence. He’s staring into the forest, and I can hear the faintest stirring of the leaves.

  “Jaguar,” he whispers.

  I close my mouth, relieved. A wild predator seems safer than telling him the truth.

  “The Rusties almost wiped out the big cats,” he says softly. “But they’re everywhere now.”

  “So it’s okay to eat one?”

  Col gives me a pained look. “Really?”

  “What? We’re starving!”

  “People don’t eat cats, Rafi. How do you not know that?”

  I shrug. My father eats what he wants. Whether or not it’s on the menu. Or the endangered list.

  “We follow it,” Col explains. “It’s probably stalking something we can eat.”

  We push along the edge of the forest. Col moves in perfect silence, but I’m clumsy and loud. I’ve been trained to fight in ballrooms, tight corridors, and stairways, but not the wild.

  Col comes to a halt, and the bow unfolds in his hand. Its nanotech polymers spread like wings; the string shivers taut. He stares out into the grassland, at something I can’t see.

  When I switch to heat vision, a white blob twitches out there against the sun-warmed rocks. The rabbit’s ears stick up like antennae.

  In the cooler forest to our right, the sinuous curve of the jaguar lurks on a branch. It’s watching us, probably wondering if we’re a threat.

  How deadly are these big cats? I know in theory that the wild can kill you, but no animal is worse than an assassin with a barrage pistol.

  Then I remember the snake, invisible and almost silent, and I shudder.

  Beside me, Col notches an arrow. Then he stands there unmoving for endless seconds.

  When he strikes, it’s all one motion—drawing the bow, aiming, letting the arrow fly. It flits through the tall grass, and an instant later the cottontail explodes into motion, its hind legs scrabbling. But it’s like a pinned insect, the fluttering taking it nowhere.

  As Col runs forward, I turn to watch the jaguar, my knife ready. But it’s already disappearing deeper into the trees, graceful and unhurried.

  I switch off my heat vision and catch up with Col as he’s breaking the rabbit’s neck. He holds the limp body up by its ears, a look of satisfaction on his face.

  “I don’t have anything to skin this,” he says. “Can that weapon cut like a regular knife?”

  “It’s not very sharp when it’s turned off. But sure.”

  Col looks up into the sky. “Think we can risk a fire?”

  I close my eyes and listen. Last night, we fell asleep to booms in the distance—explosions, gunfire, suborbitals entering the atmosphere. But today is silent, the Victorians either defeated or in hiding.

  My father must think we’re dead, or that I’m headed toward the ruins on foot, hoping to be rescued. He has no reason to look for me this far down the coast.

  And my stomach is rumbling now.

  “Might as well,” I say. “Unless you want to eat it raw.”

  “This is amazing, Col.”

  The rabbit really is good. It’s harder to chew than vat-grown meat, but the flavor is more intense. Even the smell of it cooking was hungry-making, fire smoke and charred flesh.

  I just wish we had some salt. And that I hadn’t burned my tongue on the first bite.

  “La faim est la meilleure sauce,” Col says.

  More French, but it’s an opportunity. Maybe if I tell the truth about myself slowly, it won’t be so hard.

  “I don’t know what you just said, Col.”

  Halfway through a bite, he looks up at me. His fingers shine with grease, and there’s blood on his shirt from skinning the rabbit.

  “‘Hunger is the best sauce’? You’ve never heard that before?”

  “Not the proverb—I don’t know French. I’ve been faking it.”

  He laughs. “Stop it, Rafi. I’ve watched your appearances in Montré. You’re practically fluent.”

  “Not really,” I say. “You see, studying French takes time away from learning to kill people.”

  Col chews thoughtfully. “I don’t know why you’re saying this, but I’ve seen you. No cyrano is that good. Tu parle français.”

  Maybe this is a bad idea, revealing my lies to get him to trust me. But they’re all I’ve got. My deceptions are only things that are really mine.

  Just tell him.

  Was that Rafi’s voice inside me? Or my own?

  And what if telling Col the truth dooms him, like it did Sensei Noriko?

  Tell him everything.

  “There are two of me,” I whisper.

  The world tips sideways, but somehow doesn’t break apart.

  Col just nods. “No kidding. There’s you in the feeds, and the real you.”

  I swallow. “Right. But I mean literally.”

  He gives me a sympathetic look. “I think I know what you mean.”

  “I don’t think you do, Col.” Anger is building in me now. This is hard enough without him being a bubblehead. “There are two of me. I have a twin sister.”

  He still doesn’t understand.

  “She’s real,” I say. “A separate person.”

  Col looks away again, thoughtful. He tears a last piece of flesh from the rabbit’s leg. Swallows it. Drops the bone into the fire.

  Finally, he holds his hands out for calm. “Okay.”

  “That’s it? ‘Okay’?”

  “I get it.”

  I stare at him. “Get what?”

  “What it must be like, being you. Your mother dead before you were conceived. Tutors instead of school. A bubble of drones and bodyguards around you. And at the center of it all, a father like him.”

  My anger sputters. I have no idea what Col’s babbling about.

  “And that’s only the start,” he continues. “My mother told me about the body scans, Rafi, what your trainers must have done to you. And being taught to use that abomination.”

  He gestures at the pulse knife lying next to me.

  I speak through clenched teeth. “What does that have to do with my sister?”

  Col looks away, like he’s embarrassed again.

  “Growing up under threat, unable to walk around in your own city. That dust watching you. No privacy—but always alone. It must play tricks on your mind.”

  “Holy crap,” I say. “You think Rafi’s some kind of delusion?”

  “Let me point out that you said that word, not …” He stares at me, frowning. “Wait. Her name’s Rafi too?”

  “Yes. I mean, no—mine isn’t!”

  I look up at the sky and let out a scream, which probably doesn’t help my case. But there’s no going back now.

  “My name is Frey! We are two different people and thus have different names! She’s the one you saw on the feeds. The one who speaks French and knows how to design dresses. The one who’s smart and witty and knows which fork to use!”

  I throw my rabbit leg into the fire, where it sputters hot grease.

&nb
sp; “I’m the barbarian! The one who doesn’t know anything except killing with ancient weapons. The one who’s stupid enough to fall for a spoiled, smug bubblehead like you!”

  My rant comes to a ragged halt. My throat hurts from yelling. And there’s a shrieking in my head.

  “Rafi,” Col says softly. “It’s okay.”

  “I’m not Rafi. And it’s never okay.”

  He gently takes my hand, and the need to yell at him lifts a little.

  But the shrieking is still there in my head.

  Because it’s not in my brain. It’s out in the real world.

  A shadow flickers over us, and at last I recognize the sound.

  “Hovercar,” I say. “Run for the trees.”

  I can’t see the car overhead, just the smoke from our fire.

  Carried by the wind from the coast, the telltale column stretches away to the west, a massive sign saying Come get us.

  Hunger made me foolish.

  I dash for the cover of the forest, calling the pulse knife to my hand.

  Col’s running back toward where we left the hoverboard to recharge. But its solar panels are open—it’ll take him thirty seconds before he can make it flyable.

  As I reach the trees, the hovercar roars into view. Its lifting fans churn leaves, dirt, and embers from our fire into a maelstrom. For a moment I can’t see or breathe.

  When the whirlwind passes, I look up. The hovercar is banking into a hard turn—it’s spotted me. The camo skin is set to Shreve combat livery, gray and black.

  A saucer-shaped scout craft, it’s much smaller than the machines that brought me to Victoria. Only three crew, but armed with a pair of heavy kinetic guns. Its armor will stop my pulse knife cold.

  One gun is training on me. The other turret swings along the forest, tracking Col.

  I drop my pulse knife and raise my hands up high.

  “Wait!” I scream into the roar of the lifting fans. “It’s me!”

  They can’t open fire—Col and I are dressed in civilian clothes. My father’s forces must still be searching for Rafi.

  The barrel of the gun aligns with my eyes, until I’m staring into blackness. I know the stats—solid tungsten rounds, fifteen centimeters across, delivered at Mach 4.

  The trees behind me will be sawdust. I’ll be water vapor tinged with DNA.

  The machine hovers a moment longer, dust wreathing around me, and my mind feels like it’s a thousand klicks away. Like I’m looking down on a dream.

  Then a voice crackles through loudspeakers.

  “Miss Rafia. Please take cover.”

  They want me to get down so they can open fire on the forest. They think Col ran because he was keeping me prisoner.

  “No!” I yell, moving sideways, putting myself in front of the gun tracking him. “Hold your fire!”

  The machine wobbles a little, uncertain. The crew can’t hear me in there, not over the engine roar.

  A hatch irises open on the bottom, and two soldiers drop to the grass. They roll to absorb the shock of landing and come up with rifles leveled.

  But not at me.

  I get in the way again, try to yell over the roar of lifting fans.

  “Stop! He’s a friend!”

  One of them frowns at me, lowering her weapon, but the other’s still sighting into the forest. His rifle’s airscreen glimmers with a target.

  I run straight into the whirlwind beneath the hovercar, and the man hesitates just long enough …

  My fist catches his jaw. I yank the rifle from his hands, spinning around to jab its stock into the other soldier’s face. She falls while he’s still stumbling. I kick at his knee from the side, something snaps, and he goes down screaming.

  I swing the rifle again, connecting solidly with his head. A few seconds later, neither of them are moving.

  The hovercar is right over us. The big guns are still pointed into the trees.

  At my gesture, the pulse knife rises up from the ground. It zooms past me into the hatch, set to a corkscrew pattern. Maybe it won’t hit the pilot at full pulse.

  The craft starts to shudder, wobbling above me like a top at the end of its spin. About to fall on me.

  This was not my best plan.

  I drop flat between the fallen soldiers, hands over my head, eyes shut. The tempest stages around me, then reels away—I look up.

  The hovercar is slewing off into the trees. Whole branches disappear into the lifting fans, spewing out as wood chips and shredded leaves. The car cracks into a thick, old trunk. One fan comes down on a young tree, and its engine jams with a metal squeal.

  The other three fans keep spinning, flipping the craft over and driving it top-first into the ground. Leaves and dust geyser up from the forest.

  With a final grinding rattle, the machine goes silent.

  I stand up, blinking, my ears ringing with the silence.

  The soldier lying beside me groans. I pull the zip ties off her belt and bind their wrists, steal their medpacks, then shoulder one of the rifles.

  I’m headed for the downed hovercar when a call comes from the air.

  “Rafi!”

  I turn to face Col, gliding up on the hoverboard. His eyes are wide at the destruction all around me.

  “You couldn’t just run?” he asks.

  “Had to stop them from shooting you. You’re welcome.” I glance back at the bound soldiers and drop my voice. “And it’s Frey.”

  “Okay, sure,” he says, in his new Rafi-has-delusions voice. “But we should get out of here.”

  I point at the downed hovercar. “We should check on the pilot first.”

  Also, my pulse knife is in there somewhere.

  The hovercar sits among the trees, upside down and slantwise against an uprooted trunk. The lifting fans are motionless, ticking as they cool.

  The hatch is on top of the machine now. I climb onto Col’s hoverboard so he can fly me up. Leaves are still fluttering to the ground around us. At least a dozen trees are damaged.

  So is the hovercar’s camo skin. It keeps changing patterns randomly, from dappled forest to sky blue to parade colors.

  I jump down onto the slanted armored hull, crawl to the hatch, and stick my head in.

  “Hello?”

  No answer.

  “It’s me, First Daughter Rafia. Don’t shoot!”

  “So that is your name,” Col says.

  “I’ll explain later.” I hand him the rifle and crawl inside.

  The cabin lights are off, and all I can see is a jumble of wires, equipment, and fire-suppression foam. In a few spots, the pulse knife has stripped away everything down to the armored hull.

  Most of the cabin is in darkness. My eyes adjust slowly.

  “Anyone in here?”

  Still nothing. But I hear a drip, drip, drip.

  I’ve never been inside this tiny a scout car. It’s about half the size of one of Rafi’s closets. As I crawl, something jabs my knee—a sharp little rectangle of plastic.

  A handscreen. Ruggedized for military use, with a satellite antenna to get signal out here in the wild.

  I switch it on—a newsfeed from home. War footage that I don’t want to see, but the screen’s glow illuminates the tiny cabin.

  The pilot’s in front, still strapped into his seat. He’s hanging upside down, unconscious.

  Then I realize what the dripping sound is—blood trickling from his forehead. It could be a minor cut … or a concussion, his brain swelling in his skull. The iron smell fills my head.

  I reach up to the control panel and switch on the cabin lights.

  He doesn’t wake up.

  If I unstrap him, he’ll fall and crack his head against the hull armor. But I can’t just leave him hanging here.

  First things first. My pulse knife is somewhere in this wreckage. I splay my fingers, hoping it can see me in the glow of the handscreen.

  There’s a scrabbling sound, like a rat in the wires, and hot metal jumps into my hand.

  Th
e knife’s blade is scored from bouncing around the inside of the hull, but it can still fly. I’m more worried about its battery light blinking yellow.

  I crawl back out of the hatch, give the handscreen to Col.

  “The pilot’s hurt, maybe bad. How much juice does that hoverboard have?”

  “Not a lot. About a hundred klicks before we have to recharge.”

  “That’s far enough. I’m going to turn on the ship’s distress beacon. Be ready to move.”

  “Why?” Col asks.

  “Because once the beacon goes off, their backup will be on its way!”

  He takes a slow breath. “I meant, why call for help? That pilot is part of an army that just murdered my family.”

  I stare back at Col, and for a moment I understand what he sees when he looks at me, trained to kill since the age of seven. That darkness in his eyes must also be in mine.

  But soldiers wearing the uniform of Shreve have protected me and my sister our whole lives.

  “Col. Have you ever heard of just following orders?”

  “Yes. It’s an old Rusty phrase, meaning a crappy excuse for war crimes.”

  “So we just leave him here to die?” I gesture at the other two. “You want to shoot them too? They recognized me. That messes up your plan to stay hidden, doesn’t it?”

  “Good point.” Col looks down at the rifle in his hands. It’s still in fire mode, the airscreen glowing.

  He raises it, aiming straight at the bound soldiers sixty meters away.

  “Col,” I say.

  Maybe I could stop him. But my reflexes won’t engage. All that exquisite battle calculus in my head refuses to add up.

  Col is a problem I can’t solve with my fists.

  So I say, “That’s exactly what my father would do.”

  He hesitates, then swears under his breath, lowers the rifle. “Hit the switch. I’ll be ready.”

  “You’ll thank me.” I can still see the assassin some nights. Those legs just standing there after my knife burned away the rest of him.

  I climb back down into the hovercar, trying not to smell the pilot’s blood.

  Now that the cabin lights are on, I see a medpack stuck to the bottom of his seat. A quick spurt of medspray to his forehead makes me feel better.

  The emergency beacon is a rocker switch on the control panel. It starts blinking red when I give it a flick.