Impostors

by Scott Westerfeld

  Now all I can see is the sadness in her eyes.

  “I’m not going to fight you fair, Naya. You’ll win.”

  “Then at least I’ve taught you something.”

  “Get out of my way.”

  “No, Frey. I serve the heir, not you.”

  I can see past her to Rafi’s door. My old bedroom.

  A weight lifts from me. “She’s here?”

  “Yes, Frey. She misses you.”

  My pulse knife is set humming with a squeeze.

  Gently, careful not to crush it.

  Firmly, so it doesn’t fly away.

  “Don’t make me hurt you.”

  Naya shakes her head. “There’s no other way.”

  There are many other ways—the world has taught me that in the last month. But in this house, there is only one.

  I throw my knife.

  It roars into her. Broken fingers, broken ribs. Sprains and dislocations. Burning muscles, battered pride. All that pain, traded for slivers of praise.

  Nothing is left of her but the smell of rust.

  I knock on my bedroom door.

  “Rafi. It’s me.”

  An endless moment of silence, then softly, “Frey?”

  My eyes sting, something rising in my throat. My first answer isn’t even a word.

  I grip my last grenade. “Stand back. I’m about to blow this—”

  The door slides open.

  Rafia stands there, her face alight.

  She’s in the dress she wore for our sixteenth birthday—a gradient of feathers shifting like sunrise from orange to red, rubies tracing her waist. Her eyes are set off by a new necklace of slim gray metal.

  For a beautiful moment, I’m certain that the Palafox psych team was wrong. This is Rafi—my confident big sister, every strand of hair in place, every accessory curated.

  Until her arms wrap around me, and I feel the shudders in her grip, the panic in her heartbeat.

  Her door wasn’t even locked. She’s too beaten to run.

  She pulls away, spins once around. “I dressed up in your favorite, little sister. When the sirens started, I knew you’d come.”

  I can hardly breathe. “You’re beautiful.”

  “And you’re … real.” Her words come in a whisper. “He said you were dead. Half of me, gone.”

  The need in her gaze makes me ashamed. I didn’t miss her with that intensity. The world was too busy hitting me. I had a war to fight, a boy to learn.

  While she was stuck in this room.

  I can see it behind her, the walls set to the same colors she picked when we were ten. The photos of us together, erased from the house servers, but taped to our wall. The velvet dog whose tiny artificial brain learned to tell us apart, even when our father couldn’t.

  The room looks to me smaller now. Not even half a life.

  Rafi reaches out, runs a finger across the scar above my eye—our scar.

  “Nice makeup,” she says. “Who did it?”

  “A friend.”

  “You have friends now,” she murmurs, ecstatic and jealous and sad.

  After this long apart, it’s strange to see my face in hers. Like some pretty-era software showing what the surgeons will make of me. More elegant, more refined.

  More fragile.

  She looks at her fingertip—it’s slick from touching my face. It’s on my hands as well, and in my hair.

  “Naya,” I say.

  “Oh, poor Frey. When the sirens started, I told her to run away. I’m sorry she didn’t.”

  I take my sister’s hand.

  “It’s not our fault. Come on.”

  We take the stairs down to the med center.

  The commandos stare at our identical faces—that baffled expression I’m so used to, redoubled. As if no one ever really believed there were two of me.

  Rafi greets them like visitors in our home. A haughty nod and a measuring glance for each. And through her gaze I realize how motley a company we are. The rebels in their skins, Yandre’s arm in bandages, all of them are injured in some way.

  Dr. Leyva finds his voice first.

  “We’ve corrupted the spy dust, citywide. And the feeds are under our control.” He looks out the broken window. “But there isn’t much time to turn this fight around.”

  Against the dark sky, the battle seems muted now. Streaks of light and smoke, but no more burning rings—the Palafoxes’ plasma guns must be expended.

  “This speech better be good,” Boss X says.

  “A speech?” Rafi clasps her hands. “Lucky I dressed up.”

  “No, big sister. This one’s mine.”

  She draws herself taller, imperious again. “And what exactly are you going to say?”

  “That you’re declaring a coup against him. That we’ve shut down the dust, so the army and citizens can side with you. That you’ll be the leader now, and everything will change.”

  “You can handle all that?”

  For a moment, I’m her little sister again. But I hold her gaze.

  “I’m ready for this.”

  She smiles. “Here’s what I think, Frey. If we really want to hit him hard, we should address our city together.”

  No one speaks.

  It slowly ticks into place in my brain—this is all our plans combined. Tearing everything away from him at once. His power, his city, his home, his secrets.

  “You’re right,” I say.

  Boss X lets out a rumbling laugh.

  We stand side by side.

  The camera hovers in the middle of the room, framing me and Rafi in the broken picture window. With the battle blazing behind us, it will be obvious we’re talking live from our father’s tower.

  Bitter cold wind flutters the jagged safety glass, and more Shreve soldiers are storming the stairs now. Others are flying up the tower walls on hoverboards. Shots ring out as our commandos fight them off.

  None of it ruffles my sister in the least.

  I’d almost forgotten that persuasion was her job, not mine.

  When the hovercam winks on, Rafi greets the people of Shreve. She tells them that she is in control of the tower. Then she fulfills her promise from the night before I left, and tells them our secret.

  “As you can see,” my big sister says, “I am not alone. I have never been alone.”

  My mouth goes dry. Somehow I can feel the curious gaze of two million people shifting between us, comparing us. One in a damaged sneak suit, her hair wild, covered with a slick of blood. The other, perfect as always.

  A knife with two edges.

  “I want you all to meet my twin, Frey. Though in fact many of you have met her already, and all of you have cheered for her. She took my place in crowds, in receiving lines, whenever there was danger. She was my first protector.” Rafi’s voice turns cold. “Because your leader raised one of his daughters to take a bullet.”

  It’s strange, this revelation unfolding here. There are no shocked faces in the crowd. No audience metrics in an eyescreen. Just my sister laying bare the truth of me before a hovering cam.

  “Since we were seven years old, Frey has been trained to kill. Every brutal day, she was harmed by her teachers, and there was nothing I could do to help her.” Rafi’s voice breaks, both genuine and exquisitely artful. “And every time I left our bubble, I had to wipe her from my mind, to pretend to everyone that she didn’t exist. Our father made me an accomplice in Frey’s pain—in her erasure—every hour, every moment.”

  Her voice falters again, showing them what Col taught me to see—how hiding me twisted her inside. But she never loses her train of thought, never misses a beat. This speech is so perfect that I wonder if Rafi has been writing it all her life. Practicing it under her breath. Dreaming it in the bed next to mine.

  Waiting for this moment.

  It was worth risking everything to give her this chance.

  “Frey fooled you all, because she is magnificent. But she didn’t deserve this. This is not normal.”


  She looks at me, and I realize it’s my turn.

  Rafi’s already made the speech I practiced. There’s no more to say about my broken bones, or hidden passageways, or Sensei Noriko. All I have left to say is what matters to me now.

  “When this war began, our father threw me away. I was nothing to him but a way to steal some metal, conquer a city, and murder a family in their own home.”

  My voice wavers. Not artfully, like Rafi’s, but with a shudder in my chest.

  “When he sent that missile to destroy House Palafox, he thought I would die with them. A sacrifice to make him look daring and strong. The only reason I’m alive is that one of our father’s intended victims was helping me escape. I owe Col Palafox my life.”

  I wonder if Col is watching. By now the whole world must have tuned in, except for people with a battle to fight. But I hope he’s seeing this somehow.

  “Col and his army are here to free you. Stop fighting him, and start fighting your real enemy. We call on you, the citizens and army of Shreve, to join us. To reject our father. To make Shreve a normal city again.”

  It’s strange. I expected to utter these words in Rafi’s voice. But at long last, I’m using my own.

  And suddenly I know how to end this.

  “I’m free of my father’s lies now, a freedom that you all deserve. It won’t be easy, or steady, but it will be yours. Because the only sure path to freedom is to seize it for your—”

  The lights go out. The hovercam falls to the floor.

  Dr. Leyva appears at the door to the control room. “They cut the power! That’s all we can do here!”

  I turn to face the window.

  In the night sky, the booms and streaks of flame are fading, the struggle ending in a whimper. Without the chaos of battle, how can Shreve soldiers declare themselves for Rafia?

  There’s no Victorian army left to tip the balance. Just a galaxy of lights wheeling in the air, away from the fight, toward us. The army of Shreve is headed home to retake our father’s tower.

  We were too late.

  “Did they hear us?” I ask.

  Dr. Leyva nods, staring at a handscreen. “It was on all the feeds. The whole city is talking, reacting. But they can’t digest this right away. And we’re out of time.”

  “Poor Frey,” Rafi says softly. “Did you think one speech would change everything?”

  “I just thought …” But I’m not sure of the rest.

  “It was a good speech,” she says. “We’re perfect together.”

  Boss X claps my shoulder. “It was a start, but we need to get out of here.”

  It takes me a moment to realize that they’re all looking at me, waiting for whatever’s next.

  My head is spinning. The next step was supposed to be victory. But we were too slow in taking the tower, Col’s army too weak.

  All there is to do is run. But there’s shooting all around us.

  “We have to get out through the trophy room,” I say. “It’s one place they can’t blow up. Two floors down.”

  “We can’t go down!” Zura calls from the broken stairway door. Gunfire lights up the stairwell behind her.

  “Yes, we can.” I squeeze my knife and let it fall.

  It hits the floor screaming, billowing dust. When it leaps back into my hand a moment later, a jagged hole has opened, full of fire-suppression foam and sparking wires.

  “Me first,” Boss X rumbles.

  His pulse lance buzzing, he leaps through. I follow, grabbing onto the edge to swing out of his way.

  He’s fighting drones, his lance slicing elegant arcs through the air. As I land, my knife takes one out—then sputters to the ground.

  Its battery light goes red.

  I’m unarmed, but Zura has dropped through, her barrage guns adding to the din. Moments later, the ninth floor is secure.

  One more floor to go.

  “Cut here,” I tell Boss X.

  He attacks the floor with his pulse lance. By the time the others are all down behind us, we’re ready to descend again.

  This room is quiet and dark. As I thought, Father’s security wouldn’t dare start a firefight here. Nothing is more precious to him than his trophies.

  They’re mostly portraits. Paintings of his former allies, his enemies, all the people who no longer appear in the Shreve propaganda feeds. Erased people, existing only in this abyss of memory.

  Our father never forgets his victories.

  There are normal hunting trophies too—the stuffed heads of stags and boars and lions. A hundred kills at least, and a rack of hunting rifles and hoverboards.

  “Are these boards charged?” Zura asks.

  “Always, in case of a fire. But the guns aren’t loaded.”

  “Good enough.” She pulls a hoverboard off the wall.

  While the others climb down from the floor above, I orient myself. This room is our father’s guilty pleasure, with no windows to let in prying eyes. But the outer wall should be right here, behind this portrait of—

  Me.

  Frey.

  Definitely not Rafi. Not with that mussed hair, the workout clothes, the knife in my hand. A sheen of sweat, and that look of battle ecstasy in my eyes. Wilder than I ever pictured myself.

  Our father already has a portrait of me in his trophy room.

  But he only thought I was dead for a few days. How long does it take to paint someone?

  Was this ready before I left for Victoria?

  Then I see her, hanging right across from me—Aribella Palafox.

  The painting captures her confidence, her certainty. Every stroke of the brush reminds me how formidable she was.

  But she’s gone, and I’m still here.

  A voice rumbles in my ear. “One day, your father’s picture will hang here too.”

  I look up at Boss X. His fur is blood-matted, one eye clouded by injury. But his expression is very human, very sad.

  I wonder if the assassin—his lost love—is among these faces. But that’s not for me to ask.

  I’m not ready to tell X what I did.

  His lance buzzes to life in his hand, and he raises it up, a look of wolfish glee on his face. For a moment I think he knows somehow, and he’s going to burn me down.

  But all he says is “Time to go. Which wall do I cut?”

  I take the portrait of me off the wall, out of Boss X’s way.

  I don’t want it sliced to pieces. I want my father to see my face every day, knowing that I’m still out there. Alive, fighting, looking for more ways to hurt him.

  That girl in the painting looks so fierce, so strong. I want her to be the truth of me.

  My sister joins me to stare at it.

  “You, Frey? How sweet. That means he thought about you.”

  I look around the room, all those lost faces.

  “Yeah, but I’m hanging here with his enemies.”

  “Silly Frey. Dad loves his enemies more than his friends.” She waves a hand at the paintings. “For one thing, he knows what to do with enemies. You mount them on a wall with the other stuffed heads.”

  Her voice is trembling. I look into her eyes, and see a kind of panic there.

  “I always hated this room.” She wraps her arms around herself. “It’s like being in his head, the only thing worse than being in his family. You lucked out on that, you know—not being a real daughter. I wish I could give you back those twenty-six minutes.”

  “I know.”

  I was only a throwaway, a tool. But she had to be his daughter all those years. I hated not being seen, but being seen was worse. I was never in a room alone with him.

  What if all that time, she was protecting me too?

  “Do you suppose there’s a painting of me?” she asks. “In storage somewhere? Ready to hang?”

  “It doesn’t matter, Rafi. We’re leaving.” I take her hands. “It’s going to be okay.”

  “It’s not.”

  “It’s different out there, Rafi. There’s a whole world wher
e he can’t touch you. You never have to see him again!”

  Her voice goes soft. “But I can’t come.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Rafi’s fingers go to her throat, touching the new necklace. “If I leave the house, this goes off.”

  I stare at it. “He put a tracker on you?”

  “No. A bomb.”

  The wall is almost open.

  Boss X has carved away the insulation and wiring, but the outer wall of the tower is solid duralloy. Too strong for a pulse lance.

  Zura is setting explosive charges.

  Shreve forces have occupied most of the building. But the spy dust is corrupted. They don’t know where we are, or that we’re about to blast our way out of the tower. The floor above us is full of proximity grenades, and Yandre holds our last plasma gun in their good arm, for any hovercars in our path.

  But my sister is wearing a bomb around her neck.

  “Anything?” I ask Dr. Leyva.

  He’s staring at his handscreen. “I’ve pulled all the code from the necklace. It’s nothing too head-scratching.”

  I nod. “He wouldn’t bother with anything complicated. Rafi’s not great at tech stuff.”

  She looks at me slantwise. “Rafi is standing right here.”

  “The problem is,” Leyva says, “I don’t have time to run a hardware schematic.”

  “What does that mean?” I ask.

  Rafi groans. “It means that the bomb around my neck is being defused by the host of a cooking feed!”

  “A science of cooking feed.” Leyva stares at his screen. “I’ve been hacking Shreve code for a month now. It’s mostly been easy. But when I see code this simple, I worry there’s a trap—a trigger hidden in the hardware.”

  He looks up at her.

  “This is you, after all—la princessa Rafia. You’re more important than a bunch of solar panels.”

  Rafi swallows. “So I’m stuck here.”

  He holds out the screen. “My hack is ready to go. Just push that button. But—”

  “But my head might blow up. What are the odds?”

  Leyva lowers the screen. “You’d know better than I.”

  I shake my head, my anger building. “If you don’t know, Doctor, how are we supposed to?”

  Leyva spreads his hands. “It’s not about the bomb—it’s about your father. If he’d wanted to, he could’ve made this code too strong to break in a few minutes. But he made it easy.”