Jamie caught up with her at the door. He was panting and his legs were shaking, but he was smiling.
“Ready?” She waited for his nod and tried to push the door open. The wood had swollen with age and heat and in the end, it took both of them leaning their weight on it for it to budge. It creaked open and they stumbled through.
Silence greeted them. The room was empty. Flagstones stretched across the space rather than wooden boards. The ceiling was high and irregularly shaped windows let the midday light into the room.
“Is this the top room?” he asked, his voice hushed.
“Almost.” She pointed to a little door on the far side and sighed. “What do you want to bet that the last staircase is outside and super-narrow and there will be things trying to scare us off it?”
“Oh, that is one hundred percent what it’ll be,” he agreed. Wind ruffled his hair and made his cloak snap. “Well, shall we?”
Their boots scuffed on the floor. They studied the area cautiously as they crossed it, sure that this was too easy.
About halfway across, the wind picked up. Taigan’s cloak dragged against her neck so hard that it was almost impossible to make the clasp work and when she succeeded, the cloth tore from her fingers so quickly that one of her nails ripped. She hissed with pain and held a hand up to shield her eyes.
She took one more step, then another. Her feet slid on the floor.
When the headwind disappeared, she sprawled on the floor, face-first, only for the wind to reach down and pluck her into the air upside down. She spluttered and kicked, waved her knife, and eventually fought her way upright, which was more difficult than she had expected when she had nothing to brace against.
“Let me down!” She had no real belief that the wind could hear her but it helped her feelings somewhat.
It must have been able to hear her, after all, because it hoisted her higher and blew all her hair in her face.
“Why?” she yelled at it.
Predictably, it didn’t answer. It did, however, grasp Jamie and start to pull him back across the floor toward the door.
“No!” he shouted at it. “No, no, no, no—” His cloak seemed to be strangling him too, and he lost valuable ground while trying to unwind it from his neck.
“Jamie?”
“Don’t—worry,” he assured her roughly before a rock tore loose from one wall and pounded into his shoulder. He screamed.
“Jamie!” She fought with everything she had and there was no way to get free. Either she didn’t move at all or her force tumbled her without getting her closer to the floor.
The wind was relentless. It dragged him back and droplets of water and ice battered him until he tumbled through the door and it slammed behind him. Only then was she released to fall to the flagstones with a thud and a cry.
Her brother pounded on the door outside. “Taigan—Taigan!” She could tell from the sound that he was throwing his whole weight against it.
“Jamie.” She ran to the door and pressed her palm against it. “Jamie, don’t. Don’t waste your energy. We both know it won’t open.”
She could almost feel the way his shoulders sagged with resignation. “I know,” he whispered.
They both knew she was right. She had to do this part alone. After a deep breath, she turned to retrieve her staff. Whatever was at the top of the tower, she would meet it on her own and she would not back down.
What she saw, though, was not what she expected at all.
Silk robes trailed on the floor, so deep a purple that only the shimmering folds showed it wasn’t jet-black. Pale skin, dark hair, and power swirled around everything in a shimmer like a nebula. To her surprise, she realized the woman was beautiful,—beautiful, powerful, and completely self-contained. Her lips curved in a smile.
“Who are you?” Taigan asked. Her voice was shaking.
“I’m what you could be,” her other self said. She tossed her head lightly to settle her hair behind her shoulders, a gesture she was all too familiar with. “And we don’t have to fight, you know. Come with me and you’ll have everything you’ve always wanted—a world where you can never fall into a coma, magic at your fingertips, and no one to hold you back. True freedom.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Taigan backed away. Her pulse thudded so hard in her ears that she was sure she would explode.
“Um, Prima?” Her voice quavered. “Do you have any ideas?”
“Wow, humans do not respond well to this.”
“What?” She groped on the floor for her staff. While she knew she looked ridiculous, she didn’t want to take her eyes off her other self.
Who, of course, did nothing remotely threatening right now. She merely watched the real Taigan cast about stupidly for her weapon.
“Humans speak so much about who they might be if they made different choices. I thought it would make sense to show you that other self. But neither you nor Justin likes this at all.”
“Okay, so… I don’t know who Justin is.”
“Well, he was the first one who—"
“Is it relevant right now?”
“You said you didn’t know who he was,” Prima pointed out.
“Uh-huh. Look, I—” She broke off. “I’m not crazy,” she said to the counterfeit. “I’m talking to Prima.”
“I know,” her construct said. “I’m you, remember? You in the future.” She held her hand up and let the power play over her fingers. “I have Prima to talk to too. Don’t I, Prima?” Whatever the AI said to her, the fake smiled. “She gets boring, doesn’t she?” she confided to her real self.
“What? No.” She was almost offended. “She’s your friend.”
Her double gave her a scathing look. “She’s an AI, she’s not a friend. She can’t be.”
“Strong words from someone who isn’t real.” Taigan gave up, looked around, and realized she had been several feet from her staff. She hurried to retrieve it. “You exist in a future I haven’t chosen yet,” she called over her shoulder. She adjusted her hands on the grip when she turned back. “And I don’t think I will. I don’t like you very much.”
The fake raised an eyebrow. Real Taigan had to admit her counterfeit self was rocking that dress. She looked confident, collected, and everything she usually wasn’t.
It was a pity she was such a bitch. The girl strode across the floor to the other door, only to meet an invisible barrier and be thrown back to the other side of the room. She skidded to the door that kept her from Jamie and looked sadly at it.
It would be nice to have him there.
She looked at her fake self and tightened her hold on the staff. “Let me past.”
“No.” The refusal was almost languid.
“Why not? Are you scared?”
“It can’t possibly surprise you that I want to exist.” Her other self folded her arms. “And that only happens if you turn and go back into this world.”
“Well, I won’t do that,” she said. “So you can save us both some trouble and let me past.”
Again, she tried to cross the room and again, she was thrown back. This time, however, she was ready. She tumbled over one shoulder and planted her feet to keep herself from sliding back any farther. When she stood, it was to burst into a sprint and not at the door but instead, at her counterfeit.
She landed a good blow. The staff whistled and struck the fake full across the face. The tip drove into the false Taigan’s cheekbone and her head whipped sideways. She fell with a cry and did not come up immediately. Her hand covered her cheek, and when the real Taigan raised her head to look, an ugly bruise bloomed on her cheekbone under broken skin and a mess of blood.
Appalled, she clapped a hand over her mouth. It had been easy to think of her fake self as an enemy when she hit the floor in a skid and even when she swung the staff. Watching it strike home, however, and seeing her skin break under the force of the blow caught her deep in the gut.
“I’m so sorry,” she said before she thought abou
t it.
Her counterfeit’s retaliation was swift and painful. Dark power billowed out of her fingertips and caught Taigan in the chest. She felt it twist inside her torso and squeeze her heart and she cried out. When she came to, she was on the floor, gasping for air. She sat without even realizing she was trying to do it and bent forward with her hand over her chest.
“You’re not the only one who can hurt the other,” the fake said. “You’re merely worse at it.”
Another cloud of black erupted and this one searched for her nose, her mouth, and her eyes. She fought to her feet and began to swing the staff. While she didn’t connect most times—trying to squeeze her eyes shut and not breathe didn’t do wonders for aim, as it turned out—she managed a solid thwack a few times and eventually, the smoke disappeared.
The two adversaries glared at one another, panting.
Real Taigan moved first. The staff lunged forward to catch the construct in the shin. Before her fake self could retaliate, she lifted the weapon and began to bring it down with all her strength. Her opponent rolled out of the way and shouted at her to stop and eventually, she managed to evade enough strikes to stand and tackle her real self to the floor.
“Would you stop?” Fake Taigan’s eyes were narrowed. She tried to pin the girl’s arms. “Listen to me for a second, dammit!”
“Fine.” She all but spat the words. “You have two minutes. Speak.”
“That’s not wise,” Prima warned.
Maybe it wasn’t but her arms were tired and she wanted to rest.
“Don’t you want something more than to go back to that place where they all think of you as an inconvenience?” the fake challenged her. She sat to let the real Taigan sit as well. “Come on—look at how they go out of their way to make you go back to that world. Coming to get you, making you feel guilty. It’s not your fault you have this talent.”
“Talent?”
“Your mind put you in this world where you can conjure anything,” the construct said eagerly. “When you’re me, you’ll be able to do anything you want. Anything. I have the best food and I can eat as much of it as I want without ever gaining weight. Instead of being out in some stupid, boring world with no magic and rent to pay, I have a floating castle. I can have anything I want by snapping my fingers.” She looked at Taigan. “Come on, think about high school. Do you want to go back to those douches? Seriously? Get your driver’s license, pick a major, go out on blind dates, and drink bad beer at parties?”
“I…” She told herself that she was only hearing about the bad things. “Here, you don’t have Emmy or Jamie.”
“Good,” said her other self with disdain. “Come on. Jamie is the worst—you know that. He’s always trying to get you to fit in and feels like he’s broken because he thinks you’re broken. Seriously, he merely wants you shoved in some normal-shaped box so he can go off to college and stop worrying about you.”
“That is not true.” She stood and held the staff at the ready.
“You said I had two minutes,” her other self said. She scrambled to her feet as well.
“And then you started insulting everyone I love. You don’t get the rest of the two minutes.” She shook her head emphatically. “Stick around here. I don’t care but I’m going home.”
Fake Taigan stared at her for a moment, her arms folded. Then she exhaled an artful sigh. “Fine.” She snapped her fingers and all her injuries vanished and reappeared on real Taigan’s body with washes of pain through her cheek, her ribs, and her shin. “If that’s how you want to do this,” she said, “you’re about to find out how it feels to lose.”
“If you kill me, you don’t exist then either,” she pointed out.
“Everyone has a breaking point.” The construct held both hands up and let lightning play between them. “At some point, you’ll be willing to leave simply to make the pain stop.”
“Has it honestly not occurred to you that if you’re doing all this to get me to stay, it’s because you’re in the wrong?” She leaned on her staff and cursed herself for the earlier hard blows. Her shin and cheekbone both ached horribly.
“I know you’re happy here,” her other self said simply. “I know you have everything you could ever want and you’re free of all the things that held you back. If pain is what it takes to bring you here, I won’t be sad about it.”
Taigan looked over her shoulder at the door. If she left now, she would never have to face the specter of falling into a coma again. She would know that she would wake up every morning and that she wouldn’t slip away into death without ever knowing she was gone. Not only that, she would be able to have a family of her own if she wanted—a perfect family. She could learn magic.
Heck, she could fly if she wanted to. She could have a pet dragon and silk dresses that never caught on anything or got stained.
Jamie wouldn’t understand, but why should she chain herself to the same world as him simply because he had to be there? It wasn’t fair. Life wasn’t fair, though. In her place, he’d do the same. She pressed down the voice saying he absolutely wouldn’t.
He would be tempted exactly like she was.
Because she probably held him back and annoyed him as much as he held her back and annoyed her. He wouldn’t want to go back to the real world to build a relationship with a sister who could disappear at any moment and who sucked up all the family’s resources and his parents’ attention. While he was there, he could have anything he wanted.
He would be tempted and that knowledge steadied her.
“You’ve made a choice,” Prima said and she sounded afraid.
“Yeah,” Taigan said. “I have.” She looked at her other self. “You’re desperate to bring me to you because you’re in pain and you want to feel like you made the right choice. But you’re lonely. All the people who held you back from pursuing your path? They made you stronger too. You found joy in loving them, in changing for them, and in helping them to change too. You’re watching the world go by outside and you’re afraid that you made a terrible mistake.”
She turned her back and went to the door. Jamie couldn’t open it but she hadn’t tried.
And that, she saw now, was the test. She grasped the handle and pulled and the door slid open with no difficulty. Jamie, slumped against the opposite wall, scrambled to his feet.
“Taigan—what happened?”
“I saw my greatest fear,” she said. She was smiling now and pulled him into a hug and squeezed her arms until he squeaked a protest. “It’s uncertainty. I have the chance to live here forever in a big mansion filled with gold coins and silk dresses, and…no you. No Emmy. No Mom and Dad. No uncertainty. It turns out, that’s miserable.”
He frowned. “Are you sure?”
“Yep.” Taigan jerked her head at the room. “I need your help, though. The other me won’t go quietly.”
“The other—” He poked his head through the doorway and did a double-take. “Sweet Jesus, that’s terrifying.”
“What is it with humans and doppelgangers?”
“It’s a horror trope for a reason, Prima.”
“Yes, but what is the reason?”
“I—” She shook her head. “It’s not important. Right now, we’re going to go home.”
“You know you can’t get past me,” her other self said. “You’re not strong enough.”
“Not on my own,” she agreed. “But I’m not on my own.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The twins entered the room together and separated to flank the fake Taigan.
She folded her arms and looked wearily at them. “Remember, I know you both. I know you won’t win this.”
“Uh…huh.” Jamie looked rather like a deer in the headlights.
However, the construct’s attention was firmly fixed on him, so the real Taigan took her opening and winged the staff at her. It caught her on the head and she winced, swore, and whipped her head around to look at her attacker.
“If you wanted another injury,
you could simply give it to yourself.” She gestured and the bruise disappeared from her jaw to appear on Taigan’s.
“What are you doing?” Jamie demanded.
“I’m showing her that she’s only hurting herself,” the fake said. “After all, I am her and she is me. One day, she’ll be the one standing here and facing her old self.” She gave an artful sigh. “It’s very tiring.”
“Right.” Taigan circled constantly. “You’re merely afraid I’ll realize you don’t need to exist.”
“All right…listen.” The fake turned and flung all her power at her. It resembled billowing black smoke.
This power, too, clutched at her heart. Her back went rigid and she uttered a scream. It hurt in ways she hadn’t known she could hurt, ways at once deeply fragile and entirely beyond a body.
“Why won’t you—” The fake broke off in anger. She threw more magic, followed by another wave, until Jamie tackled her. She pushed him away but the pause was enough for Taigan to stand, panting.
“It’s only pain, it’s only pain, it’s only pain…” She almost sobbed with it.
Her other self looked at her. “You should not have stood from that.”
The meteorite was almost burning where it lay against her skin and Taigan suddenly realized what was happening. She gave a little smile and picked the staff up. “I did get up,” she said. “So, are you ready to go? Come on. Let’s go.”
She didn’t wait for a response and launched into action. The other self backed away with bursts of energy surging from her fingertips.
And the real Taigan understood, finally, how this would end. The fake might come from the future but she had forgotten some things—including how things had been when the twins first came to the world of PIVOT. She countered each of Taigan’s strikes with a laugh but all her attention remained focused there.
“I can do this all day,” she boasted.
With the last of her strength, she put the staff across her opponent’s chest and shoved. The construct stumbled back, already preparing a witty retort.
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