Doppelganger Girl

by T. R. Woodman

  “You better get on back, darlin’. I have some business to attend to here.”

  Evelyn’s mind whirled, and she started to step back.

  “You know we can’t let you leave,” the ranger said, flipping his eyes quickly to Evelyn and then back to Ollie with a savage grin.

  “Yeah,” Ollie said with a sigh. “That’s what they all say.”

  No sooner had the words floated from his mouth than Evelyn watched the rangers turn into a blur before her, moving faster than any man had a right to. She was blinded by flashes from the barrels of guns, the roar of gunfire all around her. She heard herself scream. She jerked her head back, smashing it into the plate glass window behind her, and then tumbled to her hands and knees as her legs tangled together.

  And then it was quiet. Evelyn looked up, her ears ringing. Ollie was pressing the barrel of one pistol against his shoulder, his other pistol trained on the two rangers, who were weakly shifting on the ground at his feet, absently grabbing parts of their bodies. Malcolm was also pointing his revolvers at the men, the haze of smoke blurring her view of him.

  Ollie quickly turned back to Evelyn. “You hurt?” he asked, a serious edge in his voice, obviously amplified by the pain he was feeling in his shoulder.

  If she wanted to say anything, the words weren’t coming. She tried to feel if she had been shot, knowing full well that even if she had, the shock might keep her from registering any pain. As the seconds passed, she felt reasonably sure that other than the lump that was forming on the back of her head from bashing it into the glass, she was unharmed. Unable to speak, she nodded her head.

  “You’re okay?”

  “Yeah … yes,” she said, finally pushing her breath through her larynx.

  Ollie turned back to the rangers. “Damn…” he breathed though clenched teeth and wincing “…those sonsabitches keep getting faster.”

  Malcolm moved around the side of the men, still pointing his guns at them. “Maybe you’re just gettin’ slower.”

  Ollie laughed and winced again as he lifted his elbow, looking at the damage to his shoulder.

  “Ya hurt bad?”

  “No,” he said. “I just got clipped. Stings a bit, but I’ll be alright.”

  The men continued to squirm in the dirt.

  Another flash of light and a roar of gunshots, and Ollie had put another bullet in each. Their bodies went still.

  Turning away from them, he walked quickly toward her, slipping one gun in the front of his pants and another at his back. Maybe it was because his chest was twice as broad as his waist, and his shirt floated around his middle like a flag waving in a breeze, but Evelyn felt foolish and more than a little naïve for not having noticed he was carrying two pistols in his pants. Evelyn sat up on her knees, her nerves frayed and unsure what to do.

  Ollie held out his hand to her. She could see the blood soaking his T-shirt from where he had been “clipped” by the ranger.

  “You killed them,” she managed to say.

  “Better them than us,” he said.

  Evelyn just stared at him, unable to move.

  Ollie knelt down beside her. “Look, Evie, them ranger boys don’t stand down. They don’t walk away. They’re trained to fight and kill, and the only thing they like more than the sight of blood is the taste of it. That bastard was right … there was no way they were gonna let us walk.”

  Evelyn put her hands on her thighs and took a breath. She swallowed hard and nodded.

  “Actually, if you really wanna think about it, we did them a favor.”

  “A favor?”

  “Yeah. You saw the way the big guy was twitching, eyes buggin’, looking like he was about to pop … he was getting ready to snap. They all do eventually, and it’s not pretty when they do. They snap and they take down anyone they can.”

  Evelyn was hearing Ollie, but she felt like she had electricity flowing through her muscles, and she couldn’t move. “I’m just … I just never saw anything like that.”

  Ollie stood and reached under Evelyn’s armpit to help her up. “And I hope you never do again, but we have to go now. We can’t hang around here. It’s not safe, and I don’t know if there’s more of them around or not.”

  Malcolm sidled up next to Evelyn on the other side. He had already tucked one of his revolvers away and had picked up the gas can but still let the other pistol hang heavy in his hand. “We best be gettin’ on back,” he said.

  Evelyn looked over her shoulder at the dead men in the road, and she shuddered. It was hard to believe that a little bit of programming could turn the technology she helped create into something so lethal. It hadn’t occurred to her until then that even though there had been other companies working on nanite technology when they had left Earth, none had been so advanced as the tech she had developed. A question started to take shape as she wondered how the government got ahold of her technology. She thought about it only for a second before she realized that had Ollie and Malcolm not stood between her and the rangers, they might have taken her. Evelyn’s mind was dragged into a horrible place at the thought of what they might have done, and she wiped a tear from her eye, the emotion of the moment catching up with her. Not a second later, she realized that if Malcolm hadn’t appeared, seemingly out of thin air, Ollie would probably have been killed also.

  She looked at Malcolm. “Where did you come from anyway?”

  Malcolm smiled, taking a moment as if to measure his words. “Just out for an evening stroll, miss,” he said, sending her a sideways glance and a mischievous grin.

  Ollie chuckled, and in it Evelyn heard the easy laugh of a brother, the hardened laugh of a criminal, the bold laugh of a patriot, the wayward laugh of an outlaw, and she knew these boys were all those things and more. Her earlier suspicions about Ollie had been right. These brothers watched out for one another, and there was no length they wouldn’t go to to protect one another. She also knew there was no other place she’d rather be on the streets of San Antonio than right between their shoulders, bloody or not.

  A moment passed as they walked quickly toward the mission, and Evelyn looped her arms inside theirs. “Thanks,” she said quietly, knowing there was no way she would ever be able to repay that debt.

  “You don’t have to thank us, darlin’,” Ollie started, and then as if to finish a thought they had shared a thousand times, Malcolm added, “Family takes care of family.”

  SPLIT

  In her desperate attempt to convince Tate to leave Earth behind, Jane had stowed away in her father’s shuttle. Locking herself inside her quarters was the easiest way for her to get to the surface, and she had known the shuttle would be going to Atlanta with all of the residents on Vista who had decided, for one reason or another, not to leave Earth forever with the rest of the colonists. In the hours that followed, Jane had heard cries and wails from people who were leaving friends and family members behind, and they all knew that they might never see one another again. From what Jane had told Evelyn, it was all she could do to keep from screaming into her pillow. The sounds would not be quelled, and the sorrow had flooded the cabin of the shuttle faster than the heat as the shuttle entered the atmosphere.

  Even on the ground, though, Jane’s troubles weren’t over. The shuttle had taken her to the Atlanta headquarters of her father’s company. But Ironhead, the slum on the outskirts of the city where Tate had lived, wasn’t close. It would require transportation to cover the fifty or so miles she’d have to travel, and so, as any intelligent person might do, Jane had headed to the parking garage and broken into one of the company’s service trucks.

  At the time, Evelyn had been on Vista. She had been in her body for a few weeks, but other than the scientists deep within the Vista lab where she had been created, nobody knew. To the residents, and to Jane, Evelyn had still been the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-mighty artificial intelligence, which could monitor and track and control all of Vista’s technologies with just a pulse of electrons and a little “flick” of the
code.

  At the time, Evelyn was still all that, but the body she had, seemed like more of a distraction to her than anything else. Everything was strange, and she had feelings, which were entirely bizarre and mostly unwanted, and she had found herself struggling between being the person she had become, and desiring to be the thing she was before. Even so, she had sat atop her perch in the sky—a perch she had never left in her short human life—and watched the computer displays through her new strange eyes, displays she had once known only in her artificial mind.

  She was still in control of everything, all the life support, all the functions and operations and calculations, and billions of dollars’ worth of technology. Thousands of lives were reliant upon her. And she didn’t think any more about it then than a gas hand might have thought about pumping fuel into a patron’s tank. It was what she was. It was who she was. She was a highly sophisticated caretaker.

  And so, as Jane had settled behind the wheel of the corporate truck, thinking it was equipped with autopilot, and declared that she was ready to be taken to Ironhead, Evelyn had rolled her eyes—a first for her—and had had to keep from insulting Jane for her own fleshy frailties.

  She couldn’t drive the truck for her, Evelyn had told Jane, and the revelation that she was going to have to learn to drive if she wanted to get all the way to Ironhead had apparently whumped Jane like a brick on the head. Over the intercom between them, Evelyn had heard Jane’s frustration in the grumble she exhaled, and could almost hear the self-deprecating barbs she was mentally unleashing on herself. But Evelyn had little compassion then. She was barely human and was having her own problems dealing with emotions she had, until then, only understood through words. She hadn’t ever felt anything, the way she was then, and with the level of patience only a computer can lack, she had told Jane to suck it up and drive or get her butt back to Vista.

  In the moments that followed, Evelyn wasn’t surprised—she knew Jane’s bullheadedness had the potential to be the stuff of legends—but she was impressed at how quickly Jane had cast her doubts aside and driven. She stepped on the gas. She drove across the corporate lawn. She rammed the truck through a fence to avoid being seen by the authorities, and even though the chance was slim that she was actually going to get all the way to Ironhead on back roads, even with Evelyn navigating, she had done it. It was the first time Evelyn saw Jane as anything more than a pampered, somewhat spoiled, and definitively naïve girl. Jane had become her sister—her big sister—and her determination to win in spite of the odds affected Evelyn in a place she hadn’t really known had feelings—her heart.

  That was Jane. Stubborn. Foolish. Passionate. Strong. All the things Evelyn didn’t feel she was most of the time, for the better and worse. As they coasted along the dirt road, her in the back of the truck once again, she was glad the irony of chastising her big sister when Jane had had to drive for the first time hadn’t landed her behind the wheel of this broken-down pickup, with no more skill than Jane had when she needed to step up to the challenge. Instead, her backside was getting sore as the hard metal plate of the truck bed vibrated underneath her, and once again she was reminded that she could use a little fat and some curves in certain places.

  It didn’t much matter that the headlights in the rusty pickup had long since burned out. The moon was bright enough in the cloudless sky that the only difference between the night they drove through and the day they had left behind was the fact that everything looked more blue and less burnt.

  Ollie and Malcolm had seen to it that she made it back to the mission okay, and after a short discussion in which they seemed to ignore all of her input, the boys decided to hand deliver her and Tate to the shuttle. Evelyn was nervous to drive the pickup, and she was glad the original plan for her to drive herself and her brother out to the landing spot was scrapped. After what happened with the rangers, the boys just couldn’t let them try to make it on their own, especially with Tate in a constant state of feeling like he had just scaled a fourteener. The boys were going to make sure she and Tate made it, so they lay low in the mission for the day, and as the sun started to set, knowing they’d have the cool evening and the dark for cover, Ollie, Tanner, and Malcolm loaded Tillie, Tate, and Evelyn into the truck, stopped for a fill-up paid for with what Tate had left for money, and they headed into the scrub.

  Now, an hour past the wave and nod goodbye from the old man at the filling station, they rumbled through the hill country, the ghostly glimmer of the bone fence running alongside them far in the distance.

  “You know, Ollie,” Evelyn said absently, thinking about the endless miles they had ahead of them, “we can fly all of you out to California.” She knew it would be dangerous to detour halfway across the country, just to make a pit stop, but she figured it was the least she and Tate could do. “You’d have to leave the truck behind, though … There’s no way to get it back to the shuttle.”

  “What, and leave all this behind?” he asked, waving his arms around the rusty bed of the pickup with a flourish.

  Evelyn laughed. “I think you can do better.”

  Ollie grinned, gave her a thoughtful nod, and let a moment pass. “I appreciate the offer, but I think we’re all set. This heap ain’t worth much, but it’s worth something, and we aren’t in that big of a rush to get back.”

  “And Ollie’s afraid of heights.”

  Evelyn looked at Tillie. She was leaning against the cab alongside Tate, a mischievous grin and a spark of trouble in her eye. It was amazing how quickly she was improving, and every time Evelyn looked at her, she saw more strength and color return to her body. Even in the thirty-six hours since she had first sat up in her cot, Tillie had regained a lot of strength and was eating and drinking as much as her brothers did. And even in the dark, Evelyn could see the delicate features in her face, her thin cheekbones and narrow jaw, had a beauty and strength about them that made it obvious exactly how much trouble she had been for her overprotective brothers.

  Evelyn snorted a laugh, her face flushing with heat at the sound, and she looked back at Ollie, who was shaking his head slowly, pursing his lips.

  “Really?” she asked, wondering how a man could stand in front of military-trained killers with guns drawn without a hint of fear in his eyes but couldn’t climb on board a shuttle.

  “Who can explain the mysteries of the mind?” he said thoughtfully. He looked at Evelyn and his grin returned. “I trust you won’t hold it against me. You know, my ego is rather fragile.”

  At this, Evelyn, Tillie, and even Tate, who had been trying to rest in anticipation of the hike to the shuttle, all burst into laughter.

  A moment passed and the grin on Ollie’s face faded. He looked down at his hands, as if he was considering whether they were really his or not, and then he cleared his throat.

  “So, do you think you’ll be coming back at all? I hate to think this might be the last time we’re going to see you.”

  Evelyn could see Ollie was bothered, and she felt the muscles tighten in her chest. She knew it was strange to feel such a way after only a few days, but she had never felt safer in her life than she had felt with him. She knew it was probably just an illusion, a trick of the mind, that it was only because she had watched him put his life between the rangers and her, but a part of her ached at the thought of never seeing him again.

  He looked quickly at her, and Evelyn just caught the glint of the moon in his coppery eyes. The ache went deeper. She faltered. She knew she had little reason to go back to Orsus—she had completely abandoned Joseph and she had no family there anymore. The only thing she had to look forward to was more abuse from Colette Vandergaast and the rest of the settlers, with barely a shred of hope that Joseph might forgive her.

  Evelyn knew almost nothing about this boy in front of her, but she knew he’d kill for her, die for her, and in the moonlit moment, the rest seemed trivial, like all she knew about him then was all she ever needed to know. Evelyn didn’t want to breathe; the gravity between her
and the boy just feet away drew the ache deeper into her belly, leaving behind a growing, sweltering heat in her chest.

  Yes, Ollie … I’ll come back for you.

  The truck hit a rut, and Evelyn felt the sharp smack of steel on her tailbone, shattering the fragile stillness of the moment. Evelyn breathed, trying to hold on to it, but is was gone, and she remembered what she had to do. She was going to take Tate to Vista. She was going to return him to Earth with enough nanites for himself and as many other people as he wanted to help. But after that, she didn’t know whether she would pick up the mantle of her sister to help refugees escape Earth or travel with Tate in his quest to heal the world. Maybe it would be something else entirely, and if she’d be with Joseph or Ollie or all by herself, she didn’t know, but in the moment, she knew she couldn’t leave him wondering.

  “I think this is where we have to say goodbye, Ollie,” she said, her voice cracking slightly, unexpectedly. Her gut wrenched as she abandoned the longing ache deep inside her, leaving it to twist with nowhere to go. She quickly looked away. Catching Tillie’s gaze, she saw the smile, which didn’t light in her eyes, and knew it was the unspoken thank-you from one girl to another for not stringing her brother along. For letting him down easy.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Evelyn saw Ollie nod his head and sigh into a deep breath.

  “Well,” he said, forcing the smile but not the wink, “it’ll be good to get rid of you. Pretty girls are nothing but trouble anyway.”

  “You got that right,” Tate said, still resting against the cab with his eyes closed, his grin nearly stretching from ear to ear. “Why do you think I became a priest?”

  AIMLESS

  There were tears as Evelyn hugged Tillie and her brothers and kissed Ollie on the cheek. Ollie had insisted that he escort Tate and her back to the shuttle, and Evelyn had to all but slap him back into the truck. In the end, Tillie laughed and Ollie relented, reasoning that they couldn’t get the truck any further into the country given its condition, and it didn’t make sense for his family to wait ten hours for Ollie to hike in and hike back out. He had insisted on giving her one of the slide-action pistols they had taken off the rangers the day before, for safety, he said, but the cold heft of the pistol never felt anything but alien next to her skin, so she stashed it away in her pack. She figured if they happened upon a rattlesnake or a bobcat or another pair of robo-rangers, they’d just have to do her the courtesy of letting her unpack her .45 before they messed with her or Tate.