We decided on a few well-known men and women, mostly political figures. We didn’t even discuss the idea of using Aaron’s dad, and I didn’t bring it up. Though it would prove Reg’s innocence, Reg needed something bigger than this to make things right. I assumed that Aaron already had a plan in place of what they would do to right that wrong, and I was positive that they wouldn’t make me privy to that info just yet.
Brody handed me a script of what to say. “So, are we ready?” he asked. “What do you need? Anything?” He smiled as he got up and moved towards the camera. He seemed excited, which didn’t make me any less nervous.
“Um, if you have any candy or anything with sugar, juice or fruit snacks…I get really wiped out after…” I didn’t finish. It was awkward to say it aloud.
Brody opened a messenger bag that he had hauled out with him. It had a couple of juice boxes along with some gummy worms and fruit snacks. I raised an eyebrow at him, wondering how he knew. He responded with a wink that made me blush. I brought my hand up to my mouth to hide my smile. It felt silly, but I felt close to Brody since he was the only one, in a long time, who seemed to care about me. Then, I felt like an idiot. He was only being nice to get what he needed. I wiped the smile from my face and moved over to the chair Brody set up.
Brody propped a sheet up between two trees as the backdrop, so there were no clues to lead anyone to our location. The camera would shoot from my head down to my feet, a full body shot to show the whole transformation. Brody situated himself behind the camera. Then, he peered over at me. “Are you ready?” he asked. I nodded slowly, and he counted down on his fingers, with a three, two, one, and I was on.
It all happened very quickly. I started as a young woman. I think she was some lobbyist I had mimicked. I started out very wooden and choppy, reading from the script. I usually had days to study the people, and it had been a while since I had shifted into this particular woman, so it was difficult to get the words out right.
The script signaled my next shift, which I did effortlessly. Shifting was the easy part. It was pretending to be the person, with their tics and nuances, which made it difficult. Not every mimic could successfully do what I could do, but it didn’t come easily. It took a lot to study nonverbal body language and tone, even the way they stood when relaxed. When I was given an assignment, I was consumed by it all, which was why, as I shifted from one person to the next, I began to think about all of these people, the ones I had mimicked, who had probably died after I had taken their form. They died because of me. The female lobbyist, the male congressman, they were gone because of me, and I had never even thought of them. With each shift, I sank deeper into despair, but I was sure not to show it. It was easier to control my emotions when I was in the form of someone else.
I took a deep breath. “I think I need a break.” And that was when I finally looked at Brody. His eyebrows were raised, and for a moment, he made eye contact with me. I couldn’t gauge his reaction. He seemed surprised, not scared. People were usually scared, especially when I was shifting into them, or they were indifferent because they worked for the Agency and had seen it one too many times.
“That’s a wrap!” Brody yelled as though he was talking to a crew rather than just me. I shifted back to my own form as he got up from behind the camera. His eyes flickered with confusion, and I didn’t know why. I expected the worst, but as Brody approached me, his face lightened. He came and stood in front of me, taking a deep breath in. “Did anyone ever tell you how amazing that is?”
I smirked and shook my head. “Only the people who could see how it would benefit them. Only the people who could see how they could use me to get what they wanted. It’s not amazing. It’s evil.” I didn’t need to remind him that those people, the people from those files, were dead.
“I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the ability to do what you can do. It’s amazing. It’s not something you should be ashamed of. They made it shameful.”
I shook my head again, unwilling to see what made it amazing. My ability to shift was always supposed to be a deep dark secret. Something to hide because it made me different and dangerous. Only I knew the truth. I was powerless. I wasn’t a danger to anyone. So maybe there was some truth to what Brody was saying, but it didn’t change what I had done.
He handed me a juice box and grabbed one for himself, and as we sat there drinking our juice, it felt like Brody wasn’t pretending. I wanted to believe it. Just being around him this way made me always want to see him smile.
He crumpled his juice box. “Well, Meda, I think it’s cool. The way you can shift. It’s so fluid and unreal, not creepy like in the movies.” He moved closer to me. “And if people weren’t abusing your unique gifts, it would be a blessing, not a curse.” He reached out and squeezed my hand. I looked down at his hand gripping mine. My eyes slowly traveled back up, and I looked back into his eyes. “Oh,” he said, looking at his hand over mine like he wasn’t sure how it got there.
“Brody!” Dan called. Brody quickly dropped his hand and bent down to fold the tripod back up like nothing had happened. Dan walked up the steps, moving away from the bunker. He eyed us suspiciously. “Are you done? It’s time to hit the road.” Brody gave Dan a thumbs-up, and Dan turned to go back inside, only looking over his shoulder once.
I waited to see if Brody would tell me where we were going. He folded up the tripod and handed it to me, then grabbed the camera and stuffed it in a box with some other miscellaneous equipment. I followed him back to the bunker, disappointed he didn’t say a word, but as Brody opened the door, he came face-to-face with Aaron.
“Where is she?” Aaron demanded. Then, when he saw me over Brody’s shoulder, still at the top of the steps, he yelled, “What the hell, Brody?”
Brody looked back at me and then to Aaron. He knew why Aaron was angry. I did too. Aaron’s voice was sharp. “What are you thinking letting her wander around without any cuffs? She could run at any moment.” I stood still, not wanting to go near Aaron, but also not wanting him to think I planned on running.
“She’s fine.” Brody stayed between me and Aaron but motioned with his head for me to follow. I went as quickly as I could while trying not to bang the folded tripod legs on the doorframe.
“You’re getting careless,” Aaron said, directly in Brody’s ear. “That’s what she wants. She is fooling you, and you are falling for it. She’s waiting for you to get comfortable, complacent, and then that’s when she’ll strike.” I put the tripod on the kitchenette table and backed towards the bathroom door, trying to disappear.
Brody put the box on the table. He turned to Aaron. “We’ll talk about this, but not here, Aaron.”
“But…” Aaron started, his face turning red. He looked like he was ready to start punching again.
“I said, not here,” Brody said calmly as his eyes flicked from Aaron to me. Aaron stared at him and then turned towards me. He glanced back at Brody, who raised his eyebrows as though he was making sure Aaron understood him. Aaron gave a curt nod and walked around Brody, heading towards the keypad door. Brody shut the outer door and made sure it was locked. Then, without looking at me, he turned and followed Aaron through the door.
I quickly slipped into the bathroom and tried to slow my breathing. I examined my face in the mirror to make sure it was mine. What was going on between Brody and Aaron? Was Brody playing a game with me? I thought he was sincere only moments ago, but then again, in my life, I’ve had a difficult time telling who was being truthful and who was pretending. I reminded myself I shouldn’t trust anyone. Not even Brody.
chapter 10
From the doorway of the bathroom, I watched as the boys gathered up various electronics and loaded them into the camper that was parked in the narrow tunnel located at the back of the bunker. Most of the items were unidentifiable; they seemed to be disassembled laptops and various odds and ends. There were also guns. I wanted to help, but I didn’t want to ask what I could do to help and draw unwanted at
tention from Aaron, so I tried to stay out of the way as best as I could.
When they seemed to be finishing up, Brody came to get me and led me to the camper. This time he had me walk in front of him, though the cuffs were still MIA. When Brody directed me to sit on the sofa in the back of the camper, and still no cuffs appeared, I felt relieved. The camper was an older model. It smelled musty, but it looked clean. The sofa had rutty material that was hard on my skin, but the bright cheery yellow of the interior made up for that. We were like a ridiculously messed-up family going on a vacation.
Dan came in lugging a heavy green cooler. He opened it and pulled out a soda, popping the top and slamming it in one drink. I saw soda and various food items in the cooler. Aaron brought in duffel bags that were bulging at the zippers. They looked heavy, and Aaron’s face strained to lift them.
Dan stumbled in a race against no one to the driver’s seat. “I call driving!” He smiled with glee as Aaron followed and slid into the passenger seat, his long legs filling the space in front of him. Brody joined me on the sofa that was behind the driver’s seat, which meant Aaron was able to watch us. He did look back at us once after Dan started the engine, but once the vehicle was in motion, Aaron opened up his laptop and began typing furiously. I was surprised they had WiFi in this old rig. They must have had a hot spot or something.
As we plodded along back roads, each bump jolted my aching body, and I had to brace myself. The old rig didn’t travel well. It was a silent and painful first hour, but when Aaron shut his computer and leaned his head against the door for a nap, Brody turned and faced me, casually bringing one leg up on the sofa. I tried to pretend like I didn’t notice as his leg brushed up against my side, but I didn’t do a good job because I was staring down at the point where our bodies converged.
Brody didn’t seem to notice. “Meda, if you don’t mind my asking, how did they find you? I mean, how did they know about you?” I turned and looked at him sideways. “I mean, you clearly knew the danger of turning in front of someone. I’m assuming you were careful.” He shrugged.
I pulled my legs up and crossed them, angling towards Brody. I also made myself smaller, something I had a habit of doing when I was in my own form. I didn’t want to talk about it, but there was nowhere to hide, and I had Brody’s full attention
“From the way you’re looking at me, I can tell it’s eating at you.” He studied me. “You probably never had the chance to talk to anyone about it. It might relieve some of the guilt you have. We’ve got time. Want to share?” Brody raised his eyebrows. Aaron was asleep in the passenger seat, and Dan was watching the road and singing along to the music on the radio. It was hard not to trust Brody.
“It was such a stupid mistake,” I started quietly, playing with the folds on the leg of my pants.
“It’s okay. As kids, we’re supposed to make mistakes.”
“Yeah, but I couldn’t afford this mistake. And I had been warned. I knew the consequences.” Once I started, the words came out easily. “Generally, we don’t change until we… you know…hit puberty,” I said, cringing internally. “When the time came, my dad borrowed a friend’s car; I’m guessing that he thought someone could be tracking his. We drove miles away, into the middle of the forest. I wasn’t sure what we were doing. The trip lasted hours. I felt like we doubled back a couple of times.”
“Your dad was a smart man.” Brody smiled and rested his arm on the back of the sofa.
I nodded. “I think he knew they would always be watching. I just wish he would have told me enough so that I understood the gravity of the situation.” I looked far away, to a different time. “That was the first time I changed. He made me shift into him. He coached me, obviously with tips he learned from my mother.”
Brody tilted his head in confusion. “Oh,” I doubled back. “My father was no mimic. It was my mother. But she was long gone by the time I was ready to change. Anyway, he made me look into his eyes and take his hands. It was strange, seeing his face reflected in his eyes. He then told me to never do it again. And to always assume people were watching.”
I bit my lip and continued, the camper shaking my voice as it journeyed down the road. “I remember he had tears in his eyes. He said I looked exactly like my mother.” I grabbed a piece of my dark, shiny hair and twirled it around my finger. “I looked nothing like my father. He was a redhead. My twin sisters have his complexion. Freckles and all. I have my mother’s dark complexion.”
I could tell Brody wanted to ask about my mother, but he was too polite to interrupt. “Then, when I became a teenager . . .” I paused and laughed. “God, I say that like I’m not anymore, but in a way, I don’t feel like it. Anyway, I was rebellious. It was a big change for me, going from being homeschooled by my mother and then having her leave me. My dad dropped me into a public school, immersed in a sea of children with completely different backgrounds, some wonderfully creative and some terribly cruel. I had never witnessed such cruelty before as I did in that first year in public school.
“Anyway, we took another trip to the woods. He told me the truth, or his version of the truth, about how the government has been using mimics for centuries. How, as the story goes, it started when the settlers came and took over the land. The Native Americans long had the skill to shift, but only in a certain bloodline. They used their abilities to sabotage the settlers, but they couldn’t hide it forever.
“Over the years, the government identified that bloodline. They signed treaties so the natives wouldn’t share their secret. They gave them gifts in return. But they couldn’t track all the bloodlines, and even some of the diluted ones, like mine, have the gift.”
I paused. Brody’s head tilted in interest. In fact, he looked more than interested, and it made me shift uncomfortably in my seat. I leaned back a bit. He nodded, wanting me to continue.
“I don’t know where my father got his information. For all I know, he got some of it from my mother, but I’ll never know for sure. I don’t even know if it’s true. It sounds like a made-up fantasy novel. Anyway, he went on to remind me not to trust anyone, not even my stepmom. I think he suspected she was a spy, but he went along with it for the safety of my sisters. He told me they took my mother, and before she left, she told him to remarry and to move on, though he never could stop thinking about her. I thought he was crazy. I thought he was making that up so I wouldn’t be mad my mother left us.” I shook my head, trying to shake out the painful thoughts. “But I didn’t listen to my father.”
Brody put his hand on my knee. I couldn’t help but look at his hand, strong with vital blood coursing through his visible veins. “It’s normal for teens not to listen to their parents, Meda. You shouldn’t feel guilty about that.” Brody’s words didn’t make me feel any better. I felt worse because, once again, he was being a little too kind. Just a little too understanding.
I started again. “I followed his directions until I turned sixteen. That was last year, on a stupid summer night. My friends wanted me to buy beer. They weren’t really my friends. I mean, I was homeschooled by my mother until I was ten. Then my mother left. I didn’t know how to fit in. So often I did whatever anyone asked me to do. Even if it wasn’t the smartest or the best for me.” I stopped and looked at Brody. “I guess not a lot has changed.” I pursed my lips. Brody’s face remained blank.
“I didn’t tell them how I was going to get it. I wasn’t that stupid. I knew enough not to share my secret with anyone. But I thought I could get away with it if I shifted into my friend’s mom, and having already been in contact with her mom during a previous sleepover made it easy. I knew her mom was in for the night because we were at her house, and she was in her pajamas, so I thought I was safe.
“As it turned out, I wasn’t. My stepmom was at the store. When I saw her, I was so nervous, but I knew she couldn’t see through my skin. She couldn’t know I wasn’t my friend’s mom. But I must have caught her attention, probably because I was so nervous. And then I saw her look to my hand. I
was twisting my earrings, an annoying nervous tick I developed around the time my mother left. She looked to my hand, and I knew right then she knew who I was.
“My stepmother was the one who turned me in. She had been planted there by the Agency. I didn’t even make it home before they grabbed me. They told me if I complied with them, my father and sisters would be safe. If I fought against them, they’d have to eliminate my father because he knew too much, only they didn’t know how much my father knew, otherwise he wouldn’t be alive right now. If he is alive…” I trailed off for a moment and then pushed the thought out of my mind.
“After that, they trained me to observe. That was my role. They tried to train me as an assassin, but that was one thing I refused. I couldn’t kill or hurt anything. There was one mimic there that could. I never saw any of the others, but they talked about her a lot. They called her Isi. She was younger than me and cruel. Anyway, I was thankful they had her because it meant I wouldn’t need that skill. I was their mimic who paid attention to details, and I was fine with that.”
“And that’s it. Fast forward to now.” Brody tilted his head at me.
“Pretty much. They let me speak to my father from time to time, and he continues to play along with my stepmom in order to ensure my safety. I also get to see videos of my sisters. Other than that, I wasn’t given much else besides a room in the compound and enough food. Even if I could get away from them, I have nothing to run to. They control every aspect of my life.” I looked down, picking at my fingernails seeing as I didn’t have any earrings to spin.
“You said you have nothing to run to,” Brody interrupted my thoughts.
“Yeah?” I questioned.
He shrugged. “Now you have friends.” He smiled.
I was confused. “What do you mean, friends?”
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