Impostors

by Scott Westerfeld

  Because I wore the red jacket, like a lovelorn bubblehead. Like someone whose social life is more important than her mission.

  Focus.

  The door pings.

  “Excuse me, Rafia.” A male voice comes into the room. “This is Warden Renold. I’d like to have a word with—”

  I open the door and punch him hard in the face, my improvised weapon giving the blow extra weight. He topples backward, hits the ground.

  My hand screams with pain. It’s been so long since I hit anything.

  I kick the warden once in the stomach to make sure he stays down. They’ll come in numbers now, but the security barracks are all the way downstairs. It’s the drones I have to worry about.

  But I have a plan for that.

  I run for the billiard room, which has a window overlooking the courtyard. Close enough to the tallest tree to jump—maybe.

  On the way, I tear the ball gown lining into pieces. I aim the firestarter at the strips of tulle, tossing them at curtains and pieces of furniture. The hallways start to fill with smoke.

  Halfway to the billiard room, a drone comes down the hall. But it zooms right past me, spraying fire-foam. Alarms are ringing in every direction, a thousand sensors calling for its attention.

  Someone could reset the drones’ priorities to focus on me instead of the fires, but by now my father’s attack has started in the Rusty ruins. Palafox security has bigger things to worry about than one runaway rich kid.

  They only have to underestimate me for a few more minutes.

  In the billiard room, I spill two racks of balls in front of the door. Grab a pool cue off the wall.

  One swing of the cue smashes the window to pieces, glittering shards scattering out into the night. It’s old-fashioned glass, not safety polymer, so I sweep the cue back and forth to clear the window frame.

  Stepping out into the dark, I realize that the tree branch is farther away than I thought.

  My stomach does a little flip. The ground is nothing but blackness below. A few stars sparkle through the jungle canopy.

  A clatter of balls sounds behind me—a warden coming in, losing her footing. I leap at her, the cue spinning like a lopsided bō in my hands. She raises some kind of stunner, but the heavy end of the cue knocks it from her grip. When she blocks my swing at her temple, I follow with a thrust to her stomach.

  She’s down.

  But more will come. I have to make the jump.

  Flinging the cue aside, I run for the window, wishing I had crash bracelets.

  The cool night wraps around me. My hands grab for the tree branch, palms slapping against smooth bark and holding for a moment. But my momentum carries my feet out, and my fingers slip.

  I fall in ringing silence, but only for a second—a lower branch hits my midsection like a body tackle, knocking the breath from my lungs.

  The branch bows under my weight, and the rattle of leaves comes from all directions, the flutter of wings. My crash landing sending a host of creatures stampeding through the canopy.

  Somehow I hold on.

  But the window of the billiard room is right there, gaping open, shining light out on me.

  Sucking in shallow, painful breaths, I start to climb. Up into the darkness of the dense treetops, the crisscross of vines pricked with stars.

  This is what I was made for, but somehow the ecstasy of combat isn’t kicking in. Breathing is agony after the gut-punch of landing on the branch.

  The gut-punch of Father sacrificing me …

  Rafi was right. Since they stole Seanan from him, my father has wanted to scream at the world, Take my child! I don’t care!

  He’s trading me for a pile of metal. I was just a distraction, a way to give the Palafoxes a false sense of security.

  This is what I was made for—throwing away.

  I hear voices from the open window below and freeze.

  A man in a warden’s uniform leans out. He scans the upper branches quickly, then gives the ground below a hard look. The lighting along the paths is flickering on.

  Two drones waft into position behind the warden, and he sends them out the window with a jerk of his hand. They descend into the garden.

  Why can’t they see me? My body heat must stick out like a brush fire against this cool jungle.

  Setting my eyescreen to night vision, I realize why—the canopy is full of living things. Flocks of birds and scurrying creatures, a lively host all around me.

  But if the warden looks harder, he’ll recognize my shape.

  I start climbing again, careful not to shake the leaves. The sharp outline of rooftop against open sky is almost within reach, but the branch beneath me bends under my weight as I go farther out.

  Then I hear a sound against all the alarms and shouting below. A slithering.

  And I remember what Dr. Orteg jokingly warned me about when he put my eyes in—

  Snakes are cold-blooded, matching the temperature of their environment. They’re invisible in heat vision.

  And they don’t like being stepped on.

  The sound is soft, like the rasp of a dry tongue against the bark, mixed with the faint rattle of leaves.

  Which direction is it coming from?

  The branches are crowded together up here, and other sounds distract my ears. The garden below is full of wardens and drones.

  Someone’s going to spot me up here soon.

  I reach out to take the next branch, hoping my fingers close on bark, not scales.

  The branch feels thick enough to hold my weight, and I swing across. Hanging there, I listen. The slithering sounds closer now.

  But I can’t focus on the snake. A dozen armed soldiers and a house full of security drones are after me.

  I hoist myself up, wrapping my legs around the branch.

  The roof is so close. As I shimmy upward, the leaves rattle, but I don’t care about noise. I just want to put my feet on solid ground.

  Then the slithering sound comes again. I freeze. Switch off my useless night vision.

  There it is ahead of me. Scales glinting in the moonlight, sinuous and coiling.

  Two black eyes like dots of oil.

  It stares at me with boundless patience, paralyzing me. I hang like that for an endless time, barely breathing, dimly aware that my muscles are starting to burn.

  Sooner or later, I’ll fall.

  It’s a drone that saves me, the little red-and-green running lights whirring up into the corner of my vision. Only a meter away, the barrel of its little stunner is pointed right at my face.

  “Don’t move,” it says. “We don’t want to hurt you, but we will if we have to.”

  Hurt me? If it hits me with the stunner, I’ll tumble all the way to the ground. Maybe that fact will make the operator hesitant.

  I don’t even have a weapon. So I improvise one, my reflexes overriding my fear.

  I reach out to grab the tail end of the snake and fling it at the drone. It hits with a smack and tightens its coils around the little machine. The drone tips over, its lifters fighting the shifting weight.

  But the startled creature won’t let go, and together they tumble away through the leaves.

  I’m already scrambling for the roof. Noise doesn’t matter anymore. If I can only get to those bungee jackets and hurl myself into the night.

  This branch is just close enough for my fingers to reach the roof edge. I swing across, my feet scrabbling on rough stone.

  A heave of my burning muscles hauls me up and onto the parapet. Solid stone feels like salvation, but I don’t have time to rest. I roll from the parapet wall onto …

  Needles. Spines.

  The edge of the cactus garden.

  A thousand pinpricks pull a ragged gasp from my lips. I launch myself from the cactus bed and onto the gravel rooftop.

  My jacket is pinned to me, a hundred little hooks still in my skin. I pull it off, tearing spines with it.

  “Stop right there,” comes a familiar voice.

 
; Another drone, two meters from me.

  “You don’t have to fight us,” it says, speaking with Aribella’s voice. My father’s forces are invading the ruins, and she’s focusing on me.

  Why do I matter so much?

  Because she doesn’t realize that my father has thrown me away.

  “You can’t escape, Rafia.”

  She’s probably right. There are no weapons for me to grab. My jacket lies at my feet—maybe I could throw it at the drone, but I’m exhausted, my muscles screaming.

  “You have nothing to fear from us,” Aribella says.

  I want so badly to believe her, to think that someone is on my side.

  “Okay,” I murmur, and raise my hands. “I give up.”

  “Very good, Rafia. I knew you were a smart—”

  Something slams into the drone, lighting up the night with sparks and flame.

  I stumble away, hands across my eyes, almost falling back into the cactuses again. My eyes pulsing with leftover explosion, I can see someone at the far parapet, the dark mountains framed behind him.

  He’s holding a hunting bow.

  “Come on!” Col calls. “I’ve only got two more explosive arrows.”

  He glitters in the starlight, because he’s covered with ferroglass dust.

  My pulse knife is on his belt.

  I run across the roof and wrap my arms around him.

  Col holds me for a moment, then pulls back, frowning.

  “Ouch! Why are you so pointy?”

  “Sorry. Took a roll in your cactuses.” The spines in my nightshirt are still prickling me all over. “How did you get up here?”

  “The stairs,” he says.

  Of course—the roof is a fire escape. When the house smelled smoke, it opened all the doors, security lockdown or not.

  I could have taken the stairs.

  “Couldn’t sleep,” Col says. “So I went down to the old building and called the knife, like you showed me.”

  He coughs once, and a little sparkling cloud lifts from him. I should probably tell him that breathing ferroglass dust is a bad idea.

  I splay my hand, ring and middle fingers together. The knife jumps from his belt and into my palm. With it trembling in my hand, it’s like a missing part of me has returned.

  “When the alarms went off, I thought I was busted,” he says. “But it wasn’t me. Your father hit our forces in the ruins.”

  “I didn’t know he would do this, I swear.”

  “You’re not him, Rafi. But we should hide you until we figure out what Jefa plans to—”

  His voice drops away, and he pushes me backward, clearing space to notch another arrow on his bowstring.

  I spin around. Three more drones are lofting up from the garden.

  “Save your arrows, Col,” I say, and throw my knife sideways.

  It takes a sweeping course around the roof. Hits the rightmost drone on the side, turns it into metal and plastic fragments, then continues on to plow through the other two.

  A moment later it’s back in my hand, humming with delight, as warm as fresh bread.

  “Whoa.” Col stares at me, only now realizing the power of the weapon he’s given me.

  I kneel and pull open the box of bungee jackets. “They’ll send more drones. Let’s get these on.”

  “Um, Rafi?”

  I look up. Col snaps his fingers and rises into the air.

  He’s standing on a hoverboard.

  Smugly.

  “I liberated all my hunting gear,” he says. “Thought you could use a ride.”

  I stand back up, staring at his board. It’s all-terrain, with lifting fans and solar panels. Not fast, but perfect for crossing the wild.

  There’s so much I want to say, but all I’ve got is “Thank you.”

  Col folds his bow, collapsing its hingeless nanotech polymers down to the shape and size of a boomerang.

  “Step on.”

  I climb up behind him, and the board rises higher into the air and over the parapet. The jumble of the city opens up below us, my stomach clenching.

  “No crash bracelets?” I ask.

  He shrugs. “I was in a hurry.”

  “Wait—why are you coming?”

  “I’ll take you to the edge of town.” Col angles us forward, gaining speed over the rooftops. “If anyone chases us, they won’t shoot at me.”

  Of course—he’s the beloved first son of Victoria.

  And this way we don’t have to say good-bye yet.

  “Tell them I took you hostage,” I say, holding on to him as we gain speed. “So you won’t get in trouble.”

  “Or I can tell Jefa the truth—she shouldn’t use people’s children for collateral.”

  “Sure,” I say. “Telling the truth is one way.”

  We bend our knees together as the board drops into the alley behind House Palafox, leaving the alarms of war behind.

  We zoom down the alley, ten meters above empty streets.

  Looking back over my shoulder, I see no signs of pursuit. Maybe they know that Col’s with me—there’s no way to shoot the board down without killing us both.

  Or maybe they’ve got too much else to deal with.

  It’s hitting at last, the ecstasy of combat. With my arms wrapped around Col, our weight leaning together into the turns, that rapture of unquestioned reflex and purpose comes over me.

  But then, as we peak above the rooftops for a moment, I catch a glimpse of the night sky streaked with flames ahead—my father’s suborbitals coming down in the distant ruins. Jagged forks of lightning reach up from the earth, contesting with them.

  Our families are at war.

  More soldiers will die tonight.

  “I’m so sorry,” I murmur into Col’s shoulder.

  “You tried to stop this by coming here! It’s Jefa’s fault for trusting him.”

  Col thinks I came here of my own free will. That my presence had some chance of making my father stay his hand. But I was disposable, a way to make the Palafoxes drop their guard.

  All that training in escape and improvised weapons wasn’t as a last resort. It was always the plan to leave me exposed in enemy territory.

  All my life, I thought my sister and I were a knife with two edges. But she was all that mattered, and I was just a bullet to be fired and forgotten.

  What if I was fooling myself along with everyone else?

  We fly until we reach an industrial belt at the edge of the city. The buildings are windowless and square, and the roads swarm with self-driving trucks.

  The factories down there must be shifting gears, ready to produce drones and battle armor. Aribella plans to retake the ruins.

  She doesn’t know my father.

  “We’re close to the city’s edge,” Col says.

  The hoverboard slows. Past the factory lights I see the dark expanse of the desert.

  I’ve camped in the wild before, but the thought of going out there alone makes me nervous.

  At home, Rafi was always there in the next bed. Even as a hostage, there’s always been a house full of people around me. The thought of making my lonely way out into that blackness makes my stomach twist.

  Before this moment, I had no idea I was afraid to be alone. Of course, I didn’t know about the snake thing either, until I came face-to-face with one.

  A shudder goes through me.

  “You can take my jacket,” Col says. “It’s heated.”

  “Thank you.”

  The board comes to a halt, and he turns around to face me.

  I look down at myself. I’m a mess, my nightshirt dotted with cactus spines.

  Col shrugs his jacket off. “You can’t make it all the way to Shreve on one charge. But this board has solar panels.”

  “It’s okay. They’ll pick me up in the ruins.”

  He turns, frowns at the streaks of light in the west.

  “Don’t be so sure about that. You could be walking into a battle.”

  I let out of sigh. People
always think the fight will be fair, but it never is.

  “I’ll be fine, as long as I’ve got my knife.” The board shifts a little beneath our feet. “Thank you for helping me escape, Col.”

  He drapes his jacket around my shoulders. It’s warm, but not as warm as being in his arms.

  “Why did your father do this?” Col asks. “How could he risk losing you?”

  I could tell him what I’ve realized at last—that risking me was always the plan. My father used me to lure the rebels out. He warned me to be ready to escape. My whole life I’ve been disposable.

  But that confession can’t be the last thing I say to him.

  So I make up a lie. “Something must have gone wrong. An accident. Friendly fire …”

  He nods. “This can’t last long. Wars between cities never do. I’ll ping you as soon as I can.”

  I look away. Col won’t be able to ping me, because my sister will get her name back once I’m home. As far as the global interface is concerned, Frey doesn’t exist.

  “Just remember,” he says. “This fight has nothing to do with us.”

  It has everything to do with me, the impostor who tricked the Palafoxes into trusting my father.

  “I’ll miss you,” I say.

  “Me too, Rafi.”

  He takes my shoulders then and leans forward.

  The warmth of his lips on mine sets the air humming, like my skin when a rainstorm is on its way. There’s a rushing in my head, and in it I hear my own name instead of hers, as if this kiss is the first thing that really belongs to me alone. And I know exactly how to kiss him back, like I’ve been practicing my whole life for this.

  But then my father’s voice whispers in my ear—

  Emergency message.

  I startle, pulling back.

  Col stares at me. “What?”

  I tap my cyrano, and my sister’s voice starts crying—

  Get out of that house! Now, Frey!

  Out a window! Kill anyone in your way!

  In thirty seconds it won’t matter!

  I look up into Col’s dark eyes, hoping I’m wrong.

  Knowing I’m right.

  Aribella wasn’t lying that she had a surprise for my father up her sleeve. His forces have been repulsed in the ruins. This fight is harder than he expected.