Duplicity (15 page)

“We're back in the game room?”

“Yeah, my section of it, anyway. Here, doll.” An orange can materializes in Seb's hand. He offers it to me. “Drink up.”

“Wired x505?” I read from the label. “It says it's equivalent to six and a half Red Bulls.”

“Exciting, isn't it?”

“It has a warning label.”

“Honey, it's a simulant. You don't have a body. It can't kill you. And I'm sure you've done worse.”

That makes me smile. “Why would you assume that?”

“Oh gosh,” Seb says, raising both hands. “I'm shutting my big mouth.”

I crack open the top and take three swallows before gagging.

“Ugh, it tastes like someone pissed cough syrup into orange juice.”

Seb giggles. “Kathy, JENA did mention you're inside a computer, yes? Digital prison? Your brain is spinning on someone's hard drive? Turn off your taste buds if you don't like it.”

I don't have the energy to learn something new so I just grunt and chug the rest. I throw the can at the water when I'm done. It hits the surface and evaporates in thousands of glassy squares.

“How long does it take for this stuff to kick in?” I ask.

“Maybe five minutes? But that's if you had a stomach. I dunno, I've never tried one.”

“What? How do you know it'll even work?”

Seb smiles. “Trust me.”

“That's the thing. I
don't
. Especially considering what happened to your last partner. For all I know you're using me as a scapegoat in case you get caught somewhere you're not supposed to be. What'd you get arrested for, anyway? Why do you randomly add S's to words? Why are we sitting on a beach?” I stare at the water. “I can turn off my taste buds?”

“Yup, I think it's working. Hold on, love.”

The room morphs back to black sheet metal a thousand feet high. The light behind it pulses. I whip my head toward a wall and the darkness peels away, scattering like my eyes are lasers, and transparent screens flash up one after the other. I read about three lines of text before closing one and moving on. I'm on the twelfth screen when Seb says, “Do you have any idea what you're doing? Because I definitely can't read that fast.”

I close screen thirteen. It's data, lots of data, on who's used the mirrors and when. How many billions the company's spent buying up glass corporations and infusing nanobots into mirrors everywhere from major construction to cars. How JENA has to conduct the first swap in total darkness since exposure to light corrupts a chemical the bots use to extract the primary personality. But only JENA uses the mirrors, and JENA alone. No details on how. I bring back screen four. One of the most recent swaps.

Mine.

“‘First attempt at a trade with a conscious target,'” Seb reads, his grin widening as he scans the log. “‘Note: JENA advised no-go. Duplicate initiated contact. Overseer Meng approved trade at eighteen hundred. Target romantically distracted. Highly successful, as social protocol prevented target from exiting during preparations.' Stud muffin. Does she mean from the room, or the girl?”

“Shut
up
. Trying to work here.”

But there's nothing I can use. The text ends with a few suggestions to minimize the noise the mirrors make while JENA charges them, as the nanobots need a massive amount of electric energy to exchange the duplicate and original personalities. Says after the initial swap, the light-sensitive chemical in the target's body neutralizes, making future swaps possible in daylight. Meaning I don't have to catch Obran in the dark. But he's got to be close enough to a mirror to—

Seb is
still
laughing.

“What the hell is so funny?” I snap.

“I can't help it. I just keep picturing … you finally scoring and getting arrested in the middle…”

I don't care enough to correct him. I close out the computer windows and thumb at a shaft of blue light.

JENA responds to thoughts, to pictures I make in my mind. I should be able to picture a room I know has a mirror. Except not the same way I picture the Corvette or Seb's beach or my Wisconsin house. Instead, what JENA sees. Something like the room I arrived in, with its weird reverse furniture and television mirror screen.

Obran used the mirror rooms. JENA may have controlled him, but the log said Obran initiated contact. I should be able to interact with the mirrors the same way he did.

“You were asleep when they took you?” I ask.

“Sweetie, you're talking likes, three hundred miles a minute.”

I sigh and tap my fingers on the wall. “You. Were. Asleep. When. They. Took. You?”

“Yeah, and everyone else I've talked to, too. Passed out in front of my computer, woke up in a gray room.” He gives me a thoughtful look. “What was it like, swapping real time?”

“Kind of like waking up with you half an inch from my mouth.”

“Like the best day of your life?” He cackles, then goes serious. “But you woke up in the gray room, right? Or somewhere elses?”

I almost tell him. Almost, then I shut my mouth and remind myself I don't trust him. I have to keep some secrets to myself or I'll lose the only edge I've got.

Because if that's it—

If it is—

That's
why JENA's so freaked about my security access. That's why she didn't approve Obran's swap and why she works me until my brain melts, because I saw something she didn't want me to see.

And now I know exactly what I need to picture to create our escape route.

There's still a problem. The second I re-create the room, Seb will see how I did it and I'll lose my edge. I wonder if I can block his view of what I'm doing. Like Obran did with the mirrors, when I was the only one who could see him.

“Okay,” Seb says. “This expression you're wearing right here screams psycho killer.”

“Yeah, well. Looking at you does that to my face.”

Seb snorts. “Your mother taught you absolutely no manners. We are a
team
whether you like it or not, and I am not putting up with this attitude.”

I turn back to the wall and focus on creating the room in a way Seb can't see. Like he said, swapping the security tape.

I smile and think he might not be too far off on the “psycho” bit.

I open the screens again, pull up a text window, and think,
Seb is a wrinkly old man
. The words appear on-screen, white against blue. No reaction. About that, anyway.

“We need to work on this ignoring thing, too,” Seb says. “I'm a talker, you know? You can even just nod. It's better than”—he gestures spastically at the screens, pulling up a hundred nonsensical windows—“this.”

I raise a brow, waiting. This feels too easy. Either I'm getting good at this, or I'm doing it wrong. Seb shifts uncomfortably.

“You do realize, nothing is happening right nows,” he says, biting a nail.

“I'm thinking.”

It
is
working. Seb's looked at the insult twice with no reaction. I watch him a second longer, then recall the memory of that very first room with its shadow cabinets and lightless lamps. My bathroom materializes. Not the right way at first, because I'm used to seeing it with the toilet on the right and the palm trees on the curtain bending west. Slowly, everything flip-flops and loses color. Seb's avatar fades. Only the glow of wire-thin cyan remains in the darkness, sketching the details of the trash can, the sink, the shower curtain. Above it all looms the mirror, black and empty except for a splat of white distortion in the corner where I punched it before. On the other side, sunlight,
real
sunlight, filters through an inch gap between the door and the frame. The light's off otherwise.

This is it. Picturing the room in reverse—this is how to connect to the mirrors. But this is only how to see through them; touching it doesn't grant reentry. I proved that already. So what does?

SPLASH.
The room disappears and I choke on another mouthful of salt water. This time, no hand reaches into the molasses to get me. I claw to the surface and drag myself to shore, where Seb waits with his arms wrapped loosely around his knees, scowling. I cough out a mouthful of bitter ocean.

“Dude, what the hell?” I say. “Why'd you pull us off the server?”

“Yeah, still can't really understand what you're saying in turbo speak, but a little ticked right now. Are you fooling around on me, Kathy? Because you know how I feel about breakups.”

“No, I'm trying to figure out how this all works! These little swims aren't helping.”

Seb gives me a full scan before turning his attention toward a cluster of pink and orange clouds, where the sun has just dipped under the, um, horizon. Or floor. Or whatever you'd consider it.

“I may look like I play nice,” Seb says. “But if you're hiding something from me”—he gives me a crooked smile—“I'll kill you.”

“Yeah, I got that.”

I don't want to but I move closer to him, like I'm all innocence and rainbows, and wipe my palms on my wet jeans when I sit down. I make the boots on my feet disappear and dig my toes into silk-soft sand.

“We don't have to fight like this, you know,” Seb says, his voice suddenly female. His avatar shifts to a willowy redhead in a pale green sundress, wavy hair cascading to her waist. “We'll work a lot faster if we trust each other. We both want outs, we're both scared of being left behind. This isn't easy for me, either. Mom said I've always been too trusting, and I guess that's how I got burned last time. But seriously, you're the only kid my age in here, and I have a feeling you're my only way out. I'm not going to ruin that by jerking you around.” She turns emerald eyes to me. “Besides, if it's not obvious, I really like you. You're like this rocker jerk on the outside, but you've got this soft part you've let Emma into, which makes me think you're pushing people away because you don't want them to hurt you, and those are my favorite projects. You're like a fixer-upper!”

I glare at him—er, her—and remind myself I'm supposed to play nice. “I am
not
a project. I push people away because I don't like them. And I don't need to be fixed!”

“Oh, sweetheart, shh, it's okay. You're really stressed right now, just watch the pretty sunset.”

And … and I …

I do. I press my feet deeper into the sand and swap my jeans, in a ripple of churning squares, for a pair of black board shorts with green zombie faces. Trade my Rage tee for a loose gray tank. I lie back on the bank and enjoy fifteen seconds of lapping waves and seagull calls before I jerk upright, my foot tapping like crazy.

“I can't sit here,” I say. “I need to do something or I'll explode.”

“I'll take you back to the mirror server, but no sneaky stuff,” Seb says, tossing her head. “And no zoning outs. Makes me think you're up to no good.”

 

14. CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?

“OH, KATHY,
nice work.”

Seb, back to himself, gapes around the shadow room I've created. I can't focus enough to veil what I'm doing and part of me—that weak, stupid part of me—wants to trust him, wants to believe what he said on the beach. Not like I have a choice. I don't have time to mess around in here while Obran does what he likes with Emma.

So naturally, I've chosen her place for this attempt. What I can recall of her room—the mirror doors that slide to reveal her closet, the bookcase next to the four-poster bed, the oak dresser with glass trinkets cluttering its top—stands in the blackness around us in silhouette. Seb reaches for the outline of Emma's teddy bear. His fingers sweep through the illusion.

“Amazing,” Seb says, gazing toward the closet, where the mirrors glow like TV screens. On the other side, twilight filters through the trees outside Emma's window, bathing the real world in hues of pewter. The sound of clinking forks and plates echoes from the distant kitchen.

“Can we just go through?” Seb asks, running a finger down the screen.

“It's not that easy. I've tried.”

Emma's voice. “Okay, Mom, I'll do that in a bit. I'm talking to Samantha.”

I don't have a heart that can jump but that Wired x505 kicks me when Emma appears on the other side, flips on the light, and shoulders the door closed. Emma, real, and ten feet away. I've never wanted so badly to dive at someone's feet and make a pathetic fool of myself if it meant I could get out of here. But as soon as I think it, the mirror starts to waver, the room starts to fade, and in my panic everything goes dark. Seb asks what happened. I stop thinking about wanting to get out. I think about just seeing her, and the room comes back.

Emma holds her cell against her ear and smiles as she falls back on her bed.

“I know, Sam, but I really don't think Ben's your type. Isn't he a big partier?” Pause. “Hey, don't turn this around. Brandon and I are doing fine. He's busy with some new web design job he took, but he showed up after school today with roses. Mom invited him to eat with us. He just left.” Another pause, and she snorts. “Yeah, Tanner totally glared at him the whole time, but didn't say anything. I've never seen Brandon so chatty. Mom and Dad loved him.”

Seb snickers and whispers, “‘Brandon,' is it? I bet you'd never actually buy her roses.”

“I don't know,” Emma says, sitting against the headboard. “He's so different now. I mean, I guess in good ways, but … I don't know how to describe it. He doesn't joke around anymore, he's always so tired, and I feel like he doesn't actually … like me.” She laughs. “Yeah, I know he brought flowers, but I dunno, I feel like I'm an obligation, or something.” A longer pause. “I didn't ask him to change! I told you, it just happened. I don't know why, and he won't talk about it. I miss it, to be honest. His tattoos were
so
hot.”