BROKEN SYMMETRY: A Young Adult Science Fiction Thriller (11 page)

Desperate, I tried another tactic. “I’m not wearing any panties,” I blurted out, instantly feeling heat rush to my face.

Stone-faced, the soldier clicked the radio on his chest. “We have a ten twenty-four at south checkpoint. Over.”

Crap
.

Damian tapped the shoulder of the guard
—
who whipped around
—
and pulled the trigger. The shot deafened me and echoed off the dark buildings of Scripps, and the soldier fell, blood dribbling from a hole in his forehead just below his helmet.

The other guard spun and raised his rifle. Damian fired again, and the man crumpled to the asphalt, a tiny wisp of smoke rising from a hole between his eyes.

I clamped my hands over my ears and stared at the two bodies, choking on my breath, as the two guard towers lit up with gunfire.

***

Damian yanked me through the gate and shoved me into the gap between the fence and the shed. He edged in after me, just as bullets rained on the asphalt where we had stood an instant before.

He eyed me, intrigued. “Really? No panties?”

I just gaped at him, horrified.

He fired twice from our hiding place, killing another guard on his way out of the shed, and fired two shots at each guard tower, buying us enough time to round the corner and slip into the security building.

A bullet blasted the wall to my right, so close and I felt a puff of air on my cheek. Inside the shed, the one remaining guard took up a defensive position behind a desk.

Without breaking stride, Damian dropped his arm a notch and blew out the guard’s knee cap. The soldier crumpled into view, wincing in pain.

Damian jerked him onto his back, and jabbed the gun at his forehead. “Visitor logs and security footage,” he spat. “Where are they?”

“They’re
—
they’re
—
”

Damian squeezed the trigger.

I flinched, but the gun only clicked. Damian shook out the empty clip and swiped in another one from his pocket.

“Damian, just let him go,” I pleaded.

He ignored me, cocked the gun, and retrained it at the soldier’s forehead. “Try stuttering one more time.”

The guard swallowed. “Black filing cabinet. Second drawer down.”

“The logs?”

“One of those drawers, I don’t know
—
”

The gun flashed, and the explosion stunned me, rang in my ears. The guard went limp, bleeding from his temple.

***

Damian stormed through the shed like a bull, toppling computers and yanking open filing cabinets. He unzipped a backpack and stuffed a handful of notebooks and binders into the main pouch, dumped in a box of CDs, and grabbed whatever else he could find. He slipped a thumb drive into the side mesh and shouldered the pack.

“Come on.” He grabbed my hand and dragged me to the door, where he emptied his magazine at the two towers. While they took cover, we burst out of the security shed into a blinding haze of searchlights.

I traced the beams to their source inside the quarantine zone, where two Humvees and a group of soldiers mobilized toward the checkpoint, shouting orders at each other.

We sprinted out the gate, and a gunner opened fire on us. The bullets tore through the barbed wire fence two steps behind me. Damian yanked me to the ground and the bullets streaked overhead.

“Get to the car as fast as you can,” he shouted. “Remember, left side. Go!”

I climbed to my feet and ran, driven only by adrenaline. Damian reloaded and fired a few shots through the fence then followed me.

We piled into his Mustang as the two Humvees shot through the gate. Damian revved the engine and peeled out, burning rubber. We shot up Genesee Avenue in the opposite direction. Bullets dinged the bumper and rear window, but only left welts in the glass. I glanced behind us.

“Steel plating and ballistic glass,” he explained. The Humvees stopped and headed back to the gate.

“They’re not chasing us,” I said.

“Out of their jurisdiction.”

Police sirens wailed somewhere in the distance. For us? A squad car squealed around the street corner ahead of us and blocked our escape, answering my question. Damian floored it, and the force thrust me back into my seat.

We were hurtling sixty miles per hour directly at the police car. “Damian, stop!” I yelled. 

It was a game of chicken.

At the last second, the police car swerved out of the way. Damian shifted gears, and we shot past. Two more police cars honed in on us, their headlights prying between my eyelids.

“Put your belt on,” Damian said calmly.

I did, just in time. He slammed on the brakes and yanked the wheel, sending us careening to the side. My body followed, and the belt dug into my neck. The tires caught and we escaped up a side street.

We blew through a stop sign and a traffic light and sped onto the freeway. And only then, when we were in the safety of other traffic
—
albeit going twice their speed
—
did I react to what had happened.

“Those were our own soldiers, dickwad. You just killed our own soldiers.”

“I didn’t,” he said. “Those were reflections.”

“They were just as real as you and me.”

“What’d you expect?” he said. “Cardboard cutouts?”

“You can’t just kill them.”

“We didn’t come down here to play Hacky Sack, Blaire. They exist only because we broke symmetry; they’re just reflections.”

“What about overlap?” I said. “Why do people remember what happens to their reflections?”

“They don’t. That’s just you, and it’s a rare trait. And even if they did, they’d just feel some weird déjà vu.”

I wasn’t buying it. If reflections looked real, if they acted real, then surely they were real in some way. Surely they felt something. Like my neighbor, Dr. Benjamin. Whatever Damian had done to his reflection, it had driven him to suicide. “How many people have you killed, Damian?”

He didn’t answer. I glanced behind us again. We had picked up an entourage of police cars
—
and a news helicopter. They hung back, though, waiting for our next move.

We exited the freeway and navigated past empty warehouses to ISDI, the police still in hot pursuit. Damian didn’t bother opening the garage door. He smashed through it and drove the car into the wall. Steam and smoke hissed from under the hood of his Mustang. He stepped out of the car and strolled to my door, which he opened.

Police cars flooded into the alley behind us, their sirens blazing. A dozen cops piled out and leveled their pistols at us above the doors.

I heard shouts. “Drop your weapons!”

Damian ignored them, led me forward by the hand, and casually held open the door for me. Stairs ascended into the darkness of room B.

“After you, gorgeous,” he said.

***

Although the police didn’t follow us up the stairs to room B, they had no doubt surrounded the building by now. Had this been the source, we would have been cornered like rats. I would have gone to jail for the rest of my life as an accomplice to a murderer.

But this wasn’t the source.

Damian plugged the flash drive into the computer and scrolled through the files with the touch pad. “Perfect,” he muttered.

A voice on a loudspeaker carried up the stairs, along with red and blue flashes, ordering us to come out with our hands up.

My eyes flashed between Damian, leisurely clicking through the folders on the flash drive, and the mirror
—
our doorway back to the quiet room we had left behind, the real world. “Aren’t we kind of in a rush?” I said.

“We have two more warnings before they come up.” Damian rotated the laptop, and the laptop on the other side of the mirror flashed on. Both screens displayed a progress bar.

“Now that the symmetry’s broken, can the police walk through the mirror after us?” I asked.

“They’ll be able to see through it, but they won’t be able to pass through the glass since they’re not carriers. You can empty your pockets.” He tossed his wallet and cell phone into a corner. “Any reflections you picked up after crossing over. We don’t need them anymore.”

I dug through my pockets but came back empty handed. “I think I lost them.”

“Before you go through,” he said, his voice surprisingly gentle, “what color is the tape?”

“Blue.”

He nodded. “Time to go home.”

I stepped through the mirror, back into the source. Once again, a strange sensation propagated through my body where it passed the plane. But this direction didn’t hurt. Instead, it felt like stepping into oxygen, like breathing after holding my breath for two hours. Damian stepped out behind me, carrying the backpack.

“You got everything?” he said. “Clothes, hands, hair?”

“You’re afraid of me losing my hair?”

“I’m afraid of you losing more than that, Blaire. Is
everything
back in this room?”

I nodded, watching the red and blue flashes in the reflection. The voice on the loudspeaker delivered our second warning, now muted through the glass.

After the file transfer completed, Damian pounded the red button on the wall and the ultrasonic tone pierced the room. The mirror buzzed and shattered. I covered my ears, and when I pulled them back all was quiet.

No sirens. No yells. No flashing lights. All that had happened in the reflection, gone. The guards Damian had shot in the head, point-blank range. Gone.

“They’re still there right now, Blaire,” he said, sensing my thoughts and holding my gaze. “In
this
world, they never saw you. I didn’t steal anything. No one was killed.”

I nodded, staring at the remnants of the mirror hanging in shards from the frame, amazed at how quickly I had accepted the whole thing. Crossover.

Like it was already my life.

Chapter 10

I sat in
the corner, hugging my legs. Where were their bodies now? If we went back to the south checkpoint, we would find the guards alive and well, utterly clueless.

I didn’t know how okay with that I was. I just didn’t know. Next to me, Damian packed up without a word.

“What was that all for?” I asked.

“This.” He raised the backpack, full of our loot.

“Why?”

“So next time they let us in.”

“No . . .
why?
What’s inside the quarantine zone that’s worth killing people for?”

“We didn’t kill anybody,” he said.

A stray shard of glass loosened from the frame and clinked down the chute. It would land in a dumpster full of broken mirrors.

“Could someone put the pieces back together and rebuild the mirror?” I asked.

“No, it’s just an ordinary broken mirror now,” he said. “The reflection orphans the moment it cracks.”

“Will I still overlap with it?”

“First of all,” he said, “your reflection wasn’t down there so there’s no one to overlap with. And no, you can’t overlap with an orphaned world. Only one that’s connected.”

“Were Amy and Charles down there?”

“Their reflections were, yes.”

“Where were they?”

“Just in the other room.”

“So they heard the police cars coming?”

Damian chewed on his lip. “I try not to think about that.”

“Did they?”

“That’s why the walls are soundproofed,” he said. “They wouldn’t hear the sirens until it was too late. Even then, they would have assumed they were in the source, like we do. By the time they realized they weren’t, we would have been long gone.”

His explanation didn’t sit right. “Do you think they were scared?”

“It doesn’t matter if they were scared,” he said. “They were just reflections.”

“You say it like they’re not alive.”

“Because they aren’t,” he said. “There’s one source of every person, and we’re it. Reflections are copies; they’re like shadows, it doesn’t matter what happens to them.”

“You said earlier that once we break symmetry they start acting on their own, of their own volition. That means they’re real people.”

“Blaire, their universe is gone now. It didn’t exist before we broke symmetry and it doesn’t exist now. We haven’t added or subtracted anything.”

“I’m just saying maybe we should leave them off better. Maybe we shouldn’t just kill them haphazardly, and maybe we shouldn’t leave Charles and Amy with thirty cop cars on their doorstep.”

Damian chewed on the inside of his cheek; I could see his jaw muscles working silently. “You get used to it,” he said.

“What if I don’t want to?”

Damian shouldered the backpack and folded the laptop under his arm. “We go through this door now,” he said softly, and he reached for the door labeled
source
.

***

“Just as I thought,” said Charles, his eyes beaming as he took my vitals downstairs, my feet hanging off the desk. “Minor fever, slight elevation of blood pressure . . . but otherwise completely unscathed.” He laughed. “Your body was made to crossover, Blaire.”

“Run a brain scan and tell me if you still believe that,” I said.

Charles squeezed my hand and brought his gaze to my level. “I was throwing up for two days after my first crossover,” he said. “Amy was sick for a week. Damian spoke gibberish. I’ve never seen anyone recover this quickly. Damian said you only vomited once.”

His voice sounded muffled, like I was hearing him through a cup pressed firmly over my ears. I closed my eyes to shut him out.

“Do you know why you’re special, even among us?” he said.

I couldn’t concentrate. I felt a tickle on my nose, and before I knew what was happening, Charles dabbed blood off my lip.

Another bloody nose.

What happened to my body when I crossed over? What did it do to my insides? I touched along my ribs, straining to feel if I was all there, but everything felt numb.

Part of me was gone.

“It’s because you have two crossover chromosomes,” Charles continued. “You have a biological safeguard against flaws in the crossover DNA, which helps prevent transcription errors. Your body goes through completely intact.”

I stood up, pushing his hand away. “I need to go home,” I said, fighting back tears.

“Not just yet, Blaire,” said Charles, his eyes twinkling. “We must have a toast.”

***

In his office, Charles popped the cork, and fizzing champagne spilled over his hand. Laughing, he shook his hand off over a pile of paperwork on his desk and filled four glasses, which he passed around.

“You guys are all twenty-one, right?” He grinned and raised his glass. “Tonight, we welcome our new teammate, Blaire Adams, who just completed her first successful crossover. Carriers are rare, but a daughter of two carriers is even rarer. We are exceptionally lucky to have her.” He winked at me and raised the glass to his lips.

Amy made a sour face and drained her glass in a single gulp. Then she slammed it down on her dad’s desk and brushed past me into the hallway.

Damian had used a word . . .

Expired.

So I was more valuable to Charles than he first let on. Indispensable, in fact. He needed me to replace Amy. Last week, when he almost retracted my job offer, had all been an act. Reverse psychology. And I fell for it.

Charles needed me . . . bad.

Damian leaned against the window, swishing around his champagne and watching the bubbles dissolve out of the liquid. He didn’t meet my eye, nor did I particularly want him to.

Through the window, the rusty tint coloring the horizon caught my eye. The lights of San Diego, reminding me again that I wanted to be home. In my bed.

Forgetting all of this.

I set my glass down untouched. “I should get home.”

“Blaire, stay a little,” said Charles, making a pouty face. Though I hadn’t touched my champagne he topped me off, this time to the brim, spilling champagne onto his desk. “You’re off the clock. Enjoy yourself.”

“Kind of hard right now,” I said. “After that.”

Charles ignored the comment and rubbed his hands together. “We have to choose a nickname for you.”

“A nickname? Please don’t.”

He refilled his own glass with a grin. “Damian’s the Yellowjacket. Amy is
—
or
was
—
”

Amy poked her head into the office, stopping him short. “Dad, can I talk to you?”

“Aren’t you going to celebrate with us, Amy-baby?”

“I need to talk to you.”

“I’m listening.”

“In
private.
” Her eyes flashed to me.

Charles sighed and took a final sip of his drink before following her out. Which left me and Damian.

Our eyes flashed together, then split apart. Silence followed. Damian carried his glass to the desk and carefully poured the champagne back into the bottle. He did the same with mine.

“It’ll make him feel better,” he said. “Go home.”

I slipped out the door and practically sprinted down the hall. I didn’t have a problem staying out late; there was no one at home to care, but right now, I
really
wanted to be home. In bed, wrapped in my comforter. I wanted to wake up tomorrow and have this all be a bad dream.

Amy’s voice carried from downstairs. I was about to descend the staircase and interrupt their conversation, when something about her tone made me pause just out of view. I listened in, my heart pounding.

They were talking about me.

***

“. . . simply out of the question,” said Charles. “Your body’s too fragile. We have Blaire now.”

I hung close to the top stair, so I could hear them without being seen.

“Daddy, she’s
reckless
,” said Amy. “She could have gotten Damian killed. She didn’t follow the briefing and he had to take on the guards by himself. It’s just one crossover
—
”

“Amy, you’re
expired
. End of discussion.”

She glared at him. “I know my own body.”

“I don’t think you do,” he said. “You were already showing symptoms on your last mission. You might not even make it through one crossover.”

“But Damian and I trained together,” she said. “We know each other’s styles
—
”

“I’m going to phase out Damian, too. Even if his body doesn’t show it, I know it’s breaking him down. But that doesn’t matter. With all the security records they got tonight, we’ll be able to make Blaire a false identity and send her alone next time.”

“Wow, she has you wrapped around her little finger, doesn’t she? What did she do?
Wink
at you?”

“This is for your own safety,” he growled. “Crossover sickness comes on suddenly. You know that.”

I shifted, and my knee cracked. They both glanced up. Realizing my cover was blown, I emerged at the bottom of the stairs. On my way to the door, Amy watched me like a hawk.

“I don’t even know why you trust her,” she muttered under her breath, just loud enough so I could hear.

***

My alarm didn’t go off the next morning, and I woke up feeling totally shaken at nine. I groaned, realizing I would completely miss first period even if I left right now.

Why hadn’t my alarm gone off? I reached for my cell phone, which I had dropped on my bedside table the night before. It was off, probably out of batteries.

I plugged it in and collapsed back in bed, and all at once the previous evening invaded my mind in a grotesque rush. I massaged my temples and cradled my head.

Crossover
.

Even if I quit the internship, I couldn’t forget what I’d witnessed. What was possible.

From my back, I powered up my cell phone and watched it light up. A white screen appeared for a second, then the phone shut off. I tried it a second time.

The screen flashed white and displayed a single line of red text.

I blinked once, and something prickly dripped down inside me and pooled under my skin.

The text was backwards.

I kicked off the covers and jerked upright, my heart making dull thuds against my sternum. It could only mean one thing.

I was still in a reflection.

I scanned my bedroom for any indication, breath shallow. Last night, we crossed over in room B. We returned through room B. After the champagne, I had driven home, gone right to bed. Where was the glitch?

Why was I still in a reflection?

The familiar layout of my room washed over me. I summoned every detail from the night before, the red tape, the blue tape . . . everything should have flipped back to normal. What had I missed?

Come to think of it, my room
wasn’t
flipped. Just my phone.

Ah. Now I remembered. The night before, when Damian told me to empty my pockets. I must have accidentally brought the reflection of my phone back to the source.

My real cell phone, which I must have left at the office, probably still functioned normally. I blew out a sigh of relief and let the pillow swallow my head.

But why didn’t this one function normally? If everything was just a mirror image, the circuits should still function the same. Shouldn’t it at least turn on?

It was just like Damian had said. Crossing over damaged electronics

God knows what it did to humans.

***

AP Biology, my last class before lunch, passed like a fog. When the bell finally rang, I flinched and kneed the underside of the desk, drawing stares. I teetered to my feet and rushed the exit. Outside the hazy sky blinded me, forcing me to shield my eyes.

Voices followed me down the hall, distant and muted. Nothing felt real.

I could walk through mirrors.

“Blaire!” someone called, a voice I recognized. Halfway across the quad, I turned to see Josh Hutchinson jogging to catch up with me. “Do you have a second?” he said, out of breath.

“Not really
—
”

“Good. Wait right here.” He squeezed my shoulders as if to press me into the grass, winked, and ran around a corner. I folded my arms and waited.
Okay
, Josh.

Students filtered into the quad. A couple of freshman wheeled out two large amplifiers, trailing orange power cables, and aimed them at me. I snapped out of my daze
—
and only then noticed that students weren’t coming out to lunch. They were stopping at the edge of the grass, forming a large circle around me. I caught sight of my friends, who waved at me, grinning.

I must have missed an announcement this morning about a rally. I was about to flee when a third freshman ran into the circle carrying a large cardboard sign. He tripped and did a faceplant into the grass, and the whole school erupted in laughter. He jumped to his feet and raised the sign to cover his beet-red face. I read the sign and felt my face turn the same color.

Don’t Move, Blaire

Uh-oh.

The sound of flutes and a gentle drumroll drifted into the quad, and the crowd split. The marching band filed into the quad in full uniform and gathered in two clusters, also facing me.