Prime Identity

by Robert Schmitt

  “Yes, it can.”

  I held my hand forward, then clenched it into a fist. The air around his arm flared an intense shade of purple to my grav-sense as I snapped the spacetime around his arm, contorting all the lines inward at a force many thousands of times stronger than earth’s gravity.

  He screamed as he fell to the ground, his arm now a collapsed stump.

  “I told you she was serious.” The woman’s voice was only just audible over the sound of his screaming.

  I turned around to see she was hopping down the bleachers toward me.

  “You’re under arrest as well.”

  I held my arm out and pulled the spacetime around her to a point on the ground a few feet away from me. She dropped to the ground heavily, then slid across the polished wooden floor to the point where I had directed the gravity.

  She laughed and looked up at me with a demented grin on her face. “Don’t worry, Amber, I’m not going to put up a fight.”

  “Why?” I stopped short, staring down at her.

  She laughed even harder at my confusion. “Why what? I know what you’re thinking, dear, but we both know it’s rude to assume. Say it.”

  “Why a mind smith?” I asked, unable to stop myself.

  “We needed to see who the new Gravita was.” She grinned even wider. “With Doctor Quantum dead, there was no other way to know. Of course, I don’t think any of us could have hoped for anything like what actually happened. I can’t wait to let the others know.”

  “Let the others...” I froze as she disappeared. “No.”

  “The Syndicate sends its regards.” Her voice echoed faintly in my ears, even as my eyes stayed trained on the ground in front of me.

  It was an illusion. At some point, probably when the man had first swung a fist at me, the woman had slipped away, leaving an illusion in my mind to distract me while she left.

  “Gravita!” Kiara called from the far end of the gym, pulling my attention away from the point on the ground where the illusion of the woman had faded into nothing. “What are you staring at?”

  “Nothing.” I shook my head and raised my gaze to her.

  “It looks like the wall was taken out with an ordinary bomb.” Her voice came through distorted as she appeared at my side in a stutter of motion.

  In another blur of speed, she crouched down at the man’s side and shoved a standard power-nullifying clamp over his forehead, then pulled a syringe full of some drug from one of the compartments of her suit and pricked it into his side. A moment later, his eyes fluttered shut and he fell unconscious.

  “Good work with him.” She nodded to me as she stood up. “Clean-up crew should be here well before he wakes up. Let me do a sweep of the bleachers and building to make sure there are no more threats, and then we can take him in for processing.”

  I couldn’t manage to do more than nod, then watch in silence as she zipped away. My mind reeled over my conversation with the mind smith as I made my way out of the gym to find myself in one of the abandoned corridors of the school. Imagined or not, I knew she had been privy to what I had said, and from what she had planted in my mind, I had little doubt she knew exactly who I was.

  Was this entire attack just a decoy to get me within range of a mind smith? I wouldn’t put it past a group like the Syndicate to do something like that, but it seemed like a lot of effort just to get a peek into my mind.

  “Gravita?” A familiar voice from behind me almost made me jump. I twisted around to find myself facing both of my daughters.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked. “It’s not safe.”

  “We figured if there was another bomb,” Nicole stammered. “It wouldn’t be in the same place as the first one.”

  “Plus...” Sam rolled her eyes. “My sister’s completely obsessed with you.”

  “Shut up!” Nicole whispered to Sam, her eyes darting to her sister.

  “Let’s go find your teachers,” I said.

  I reached out and put an arm around each girl as I steered them down the corridor, away from the carnage of the gym. Nicole glanced down at my arm on her shoulder, looking as though she might faint. Despite the somberness of the moment, I suppressed a grin. We made our way through the deserted hallways of the school, moving toward where the rest of the student body was gathered out back. As we neared the exit, though, Nicole stopped.

  “Gravita?” She turned to look at me. “Before you go, can I ask for your autograph?”

  “Umm, sure.” I nodded, unsure that I could say anything else. Sam smiled at me in clear discomfort as Nicole darted into a deserted classroom, leaving the two of us alone.

  “Here.” Nicole came out of the classroom a moment later, a pen and ream of paper held out for me.

  “And what’s your name?” I feigned ignorance as I uncapped the pen and poised it over the paper.

  I nodded as Nicole stammered out her name, then jotted down a short message for her. A moment later, I handed them both back to her. Sam scooted closer to her sister, her eyes fixed on the paper clutched in Nicole’s hands.

  “Man.” Sam laughed and glanced at me. “No offense, Gravita. I mean, you just saved our school and all. But your handwriting is horrible. It looks just like our dad’s.”

  “Sam!” Nicole hissed. “That’s...”

  The back of my neck pricked with sweat as Nicole paused and tilted her head to the side as she looked back at the paper. She squinted at the note I had written, her eyebrows furrowed in concentration. Her eyes went to the pen in my left hand, and she froze. Did she know Gravita hadn’t always been left-handed? Of course she did. She was obsessed with her. She knew Gravita’s shoe size. She would know that Gravita wasn’t left-handed. I could see the gears grinding in her head as her gaze rose to my visor. An odd mixture of shock, disbelief, and wonder played across her face in an instant before she could mask it. She blinked and stared at me as though she were seeing me for the first time.

  9

  “HEY, MOM, DAD, CAN you come here a minute?” Nicole’s voice carried in from the other room, drawing my attention away from the pile of laundry I was folding. I shared a look with Jake, who was helping me fold the laundry, before I set the shirt in my hands down with a sigh.

  “I wonder what this will be about?” he asked, sarcasm all but dripping from his voice.

  As we came into the living room, I was unsurprised to find Alan, Sam, and Nicole sitting on the couch waiting for us. Alan seemed bored, slumped against the arm of the couch with his arms folded, though Sam and Nicole looked like they might be sitting on thumbtacks. Honestly, given the events of the day, the only thing that surprised me was that it had taken this long for our children to confront us.

  I had left Sam and Nicole at the exit to the school, giving them some lame excuse about needing to inspect the perimeter for other threats without answering the accusation in Nicole’s eyes. If I had wanted to assuage her obvious suspicions, I perhaps could have tried to make sure I was the one to pick up both her and Sam from school once the staff had dismissed the students, but with having to take the rogue we found at the school into custody, along with the mountain of paperwork Kiara and I had to file about the incident, it was hard enough for me to manage to leave the hub with enough time to pick up Alan after school. Instead, I had the school call Jake, who ended up leaving work early to collect our daughters. I had given Nicole and Sam a well reasoned explanation for why I had been unavailable to pick them up during the day, but I could tell by the furtive look they shared at my story that they didn’t believe me. Dinner had been... awkward, to say the least.

  “Oh.” Sam started with a jolt at seeing us. She glanced at Nicole, who was watching her pointedly. Jake and I, meanwhile, sat down on the couch adjacent to the one they were all sitting on. “This is going to sound weird, but Nicole and I were wondering if we could show you two and Alan what we’ve been learning at our piano practices?”

  “What?” Alan threw up his hands. “You want us all here so you can play the p
iano?”

  “Well, yeah.” Nicole nodded. “Mom and dad are paying a lot of money for the two of us to learn piano, and it’s been a while since we’ve played for you guys, so Sam and I thought it would be a good idea.”

  I glanced at Jake, who had narrowed his eyes as she spoke.

  “Whatever.” Alan pulled his phone out. “I don’t get girls.”

  “Alan.” I scowled. “That’s fine, Sam. What did you want to show us?”

  “Well, I’ve been learning one of Chopin’s nocturnes, opus nine, number two.”

  She looked nervous as she got up and paced over to the piano. I watched in silence as Jake got up to stand behind her as she pulled up a seat at the piano and uncovered the keys.

  I shifted uneasily as she started playing, then looked at Nicole, whose eyes were trained on Jake. A minute and a half into her performance, my suspicions were confirmed.

  Sam stopped as she hit the wrong key. “That’s as far as I’ve gotten.”

  “That was very good.” Jake smiled and rested his hands on her shoulders. “How long have you been practicing it?”

  “Two weeks.” She winced.

  “Really?” He smiled. “That’s impressive.”

  “I can’t seem to get the next part down though.” She stood up and stepped away from the piano, then glanced at Nicole. “Mom, I know you know the whole thing off by heart, so can you show me?”

  “Oh,” I stammered as I got up.

  Nicole was watching me with a thin smile on her face. For his part, Alan looked... well, still bored, but maybe not as disinterested as before as he looked up at me from his phone. Sam was watching me as well, a genuine look of curiosity and worry on her face. I knew Nicole had shared her suspicions about Jake and me with her. I didn’t have to see the intensity in her gaze or how she rolled the bottom of her tee shirt between her thumb and fingers, the same way she did whenever she was nervous, to know that. Nicole had put her up to this to test her theory that I wasn’t really Amber. Now, though, unless I could think up something fast, they would have all the proof they needed.

  Everyone’s heads snapped to the piano as the next notes in Chopin's nocturne filled the air. I looked over and was surprised to see Jake sitting at the piano bench, his eyes closed as he played the piece.

  No one said anything until Jake finished, though I could tell by the look on Alan's face that he was in shock. I had never learned to play an instrument, so it only made sense that he would be surprised. Sam had taken her seat back next to Nicole, and she kept glancing between Jake and me as he played. By the end of his performance, her eyes were glistening lightly. Nicole, meanwhile, watched him with rapturous attention, her thin smile still in place.

  “When did you learn to play the piano, dad?” Alan asked after Jake had finished and turned around to face the rest of us. The shock was still evident on his face.

  “That’s not dad.” Sam buried her head in her hands.

  “What?” He looked, if possible, even more confused.

  “Mom and dad switched bodies,” Nicole said.

  “You two can’t be serious.” He rolled his eyes. “I mean, that sort of thing might happen on the news, but not to mom or dad. We don’t even know any primes.”

  “Alan.” Jake gave him a soothing look. “Your sisters are right. Your father and I swapped bodies about a month ago.”

  Silence filled the room. I’m not even sure if anyone was breathing. For the longest time, Alan just stared between Jake and me, a strange expression screwing up his face. Finally, he stood up and walked away.

  “I'll go talk to him.” Jake got up and patted me on the leg as he left the room.

  “Dad?” Sam's voice was shaky as she looked back at me. “What happened? Why didn’t you or mom tell us?”

  “It was that fight with Doctor Quantum, wasn’t it?” Nicole leaned forward with her eyes trained on me.

  “... Yes.” I nodded, though my gaze flickered to Sam before answering. Lying had cost us too much already. I wasn’t going to do it anymore.

  “Are you... I mean, was mom Gravita?” Nicole’s voice was almost a whisper.

  “Yes.”

  “I knew it!” Nicole jumped up and pumped her fist in the air. A second later, though, and after a glare from Sam, she sat back down with a sheepish expression across her face.

  “Why didn’t mom or you tell us?” Sam asked.

  “We wanted to see if we could reverse it,” I said. “We didn't want you guys to have to worry about it if it was only a temporary thing. But it doesn’t look like we're going to be able to do anything to change us back.”

  “I... I guess that makes sense.” She finally nodded. “But then, why didn’t mom ever tell us she was prime?”

  “That was my fault. She never told me, because, well, you both know how I felt about primes.”

  Nicole looked like she might explode if she didn’t speak. “Then, that was you today, at school? You’re Gravita now?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s it like?” Sam asked, filling in the momentary silence that came from Nicole, who looked to be at an utter loss for words.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, being prime. Being able to move things with your mind—”

  “She doesn’t move things with her mind,” Nicole interrupted. “Er... I guess, he doesn’t move things with his mind.”

  “No.” I met her gaze and just managed to keep myself from grimacing. “I know it has to be really weird to think that your mom and I swapped bodies, but to the rest of the world, we didn’t. It would probably be better for you guys to keep... to keep referring to me as Amber, and your mother as Jake. That also means...”

  “Okay.” She winced. “Well, you don’t move things with your mind, right? You change gravity?”

  “Yes. That’s also how I fly.”

  “Can you show us?” Sam leaned forward and tucked a stray hair hanging in her eye behind her ear in a quick, distracted motion.

  “Sure.” I let a small smile pass my lips as I tapped into my powers.

  “Whoa, dad. Your eyes glow...?” Nicole stopped and looked away from me in alarm as she and Sam floated an inch off the couch.

  After the revelations and stress of the day, I couldn’t help but smile as Nicole and Sam floated around the room, laughing as they tumbled in microgravity. I didn’t sustain the field for more than a minute—I knew first-hand how disorienting and nauseating being weightless could be—but both girls looked happier than I’d seen them in months as they settled back onto the ground.

  In all, Nicole and Sam seemed to take the news that their parents had swapped bodies much better than Alan did. Jake hadn’t made much headway talking with him after he stormed out of the living room, but I hoped he would cool down in a few days.

  The next morning, I went in to the hub only to discover a bevy of administrators waiting for me to give more details about what had happened at the school the day before. I already had a strong idea why they had such unusual interest in our account. Every news channel that morning had covered the high-profile breakout of the rogue that Kiara and I had captured. Apparently, he was associated with the Syndicate, because security footage showed they were the ones that had broken him out of the holding facility hours before sunrise.

  The more I learned about the Syndicate, the less their ploy of attacking a school where they knew arbiters were present made any sense. They were a group of rogues that aligned with the primer movement, a wacky counter-culture group that claimed the registration and arbiter system we had developed in America to keep primes in line was barbaric and evil. The Syndicate’s stated purpose aligned with that view. They claimed to fight for better rights for primes, but in practice, they were little more than a loose conglomerate of terrorist cells throughout the Midwest that simply aimed to sow distress and chaos wherever they could. The fact Doctor Quantum had apparently belonged to the Syndicate wasn’t much of a surprise. What was a surprise was the Syndicate’s evident inter
est in me. It went against their usual tactics, which almost exclusively involved loose, uncoordinated attacks at public venues where arbiters were not present.

  That fact evidently didn’t escape the attention of the administrators in the arbiter program. After hours of increasing interrogation that morning, I started wondering if they were going to rescind my status as an arbiter altogether. Finally, after asking me for what had to be the twentieth time to recount every word of my conversation with the mind smith at the school, they let me go, with the warning that they would probably want to speak with me if anything else came up.

  For her part, it looked like Kiara was facing almost as much scrutiny as I was, though if it bothered her, she didn’t show it. She had been an arbiter for over a decade, and as she had explained it to me, the questioning we were going through was fairly standard.

  Our beat that day was thankfully about as quiet as my first day had been. We dealt with a handful of primes using their powers unlawfully, either because they hadn’t registered their powers before using them in public and their powersets were above a Class C level, or because they were registered but using their powers improperly. Other than that, the day was quiet.

  I discovered that, despite the chaos of the previous day, Kiara had still had her party. In everything that had happened, Jake and I had decided against going, but apparently even squashing a terrorist attack at a school wasn’t enough to make her postpone a planned event. As she put it, in the line of work we were in, postponing social events whenever a crisis came up would mean never having any, so she had learned long ago to live with both.

  Alan was silent through the car ride home that day, and without knowing what to say to him, I was quiet as well.

  “Why did mom lie to us?” he asked after I had killed the engine.

  “What?” I turned to find him staring at a spot on the floor by his feet.

  “If mom wasn’t an arbiter, you two never would have switched bodies. Now, I lost my mom and my dad.”

  I frowned, something in my chest closing up at his words. “We’re still here for you, Alan. You haven’t lost us.”