False Sight

by Dan Krokos

  I’m ready.

  The desk is still between us. Outside, I hear another jet roar through the sky, and more gunfire. I want to keep her talking. If I have to make her think, she might give me an opening—just a calm second where I can lunge and end the dance before it begins.

  I step forward, a feint.

  Nina swipes her sword up slowly, vertically, meaning to cut me up the middle. It’s lazy. I parry down and across with Beacon and then step back, putting the desk between us again.

  I visualize Nina’s blood on my blade, the way Noah’s coated hers.

  Nina charges. She tries to impale me across the desk and I slap her blade down. It gouges into the ancient wood. Papers scatter sideways, seesawing to the floor.

  She turns her blade sideways and tries to cut at my thighs, but I jump back, swishing my sword through the open space in front of her.

  “Your plan sucks,” I say, trying to distract her with words. “You know they secured the president at the first sign of trouble.”

  “It’s a sign,” she says, circling the desk. I hold my ground. Every second I waste with her spreads the eyeless infection further. “I’m showing the world something right now. The images alone will soften them up. They’ll be ripe with terror.” She lets her blade drop to the desk and scrape the surface.

  We’re both behind the desk now. Nothing between us but air.

  Nina slashes the air in a repeating X, forcing me to backpedal until I parry. Sparks burst, and the hilt wrenches my wrist. I kick out my heel for the inside of her knee, and she goes down on that knee. The rush of victory floods my limbs—with her below me, she’s exposed, at my mercy. I just have to lower my blade to her throat.

  Then she surprises me; she drops her sword, grabs my wrists with both hands, quick as snakebites, and falls onto her back, taking me with her. Her foot rises and plants in my stomach as she pulls me down, then lifts me over her head as her fall turns into a roll. She tosses me over her. I’m upside down when I hit the far wall and crumple on the floor, stunned. But the rage builds and gives me clarity.

  The air is sweet with roses; Nina is releasing her fear-waves.

  I stand up. Beacon is a few feet away, between us, glowing like a ruby in the light of the Torch.

  I fit my armored toe under Beacon and kick it up, then pluck it out of the air and spin, slashing horizontally, each spin bringing me closer to Nina. She intercepts the last slash with her own sword, stopping me. The hilt vibrates in my hand. And suddenly we’re chest to chest, blades crossed between us, noses inches apart. My left hand cups the back of her neck; hers does the same, pressing the Torch’s shaft against the base of my skull. The metal is hot. The red bulb burns bright in the corner of my left eye. We pull with one hand and press with the other. Our blades scrape together. This is the moment. The world is stuck between two scraping blades. Hers is close to my neck. Mine is close to hers.

  “Give up,” she grunts. “Kneel.”

  More talking, when the time for talking is over. I snap my head forward and smash my forehead into her nose, returning the head-butt she offered me only hours ago. I feel her nose cave like wet clay, and blood that isn’t mine flecks my face. Dizziness washes over me, but I slough it off.

  “I owed you one,” I say as she stumbles back. But I don’t stop there. This person took not one but two of my friends, and they deserve justice. I follow her, slashing out again horizontally. Her neck makes the same sound when my sword bites into it that Noah’s did. There’s a burst of blood and her back hits the wall.

  I see my mistake, but it’s too late.

  The Torch slips from her fingers, and the red bulb shatters on the floor.

  The Torch crackles, red electricity dancing over the carpet. Nina slides down the wall, blood flowing out of her neck. She tries to say something, but she can only cough blood onto her lips. I stow Beacon, then snatch up the Torch and hold it with both hands and close my eyes to feel something, anything, but it’s dead, just a shaft of metal. Dead like Nina is about to be. I watch her eyes dim while I wait for the Torch to turn on, because it can’t be broken, not after everything we went through to get it.

  If Nina could talk, she’d say, You still lose.

  Thousands of eyeless scream in the night as they’re set free. I fall to my knees.

  I failed; the eyeless have no master now. Nothing will stop them from roaming the world. And if Gane is right, they’ll never quit. Just keep eating and multiplying until our world is as barren as his.

  The gunfire has dropped away to random and faraway drumrolls. I set my forehead against the cool curved wall of the office and close my eyes.

  I don’t want to feel anymore; I don’t want to lose.

  “We should kill them,” Noah says.

  I spin around awkwardly on my knees and almost slip in Nina’s blood. Noah stands next to the president’s desk, half leaning against it with five fingertips.

  “We should kill them all,” he says. His face is pure rage. His hands curl into fists. “We should go to True Earth and kill the Originals and anyone who stands with them.”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “We never knew what to do.”

  I rise, muscles groaning in my back and legs. “They’re free now.”

  An explosion rocks the night. Another jet screams overhead. All of it sounds farther away than before. Like Commander Gane said, the cancer is spreading.

  “So we find a way to stop them.” He walks to me and uses his finger to lift my chin. “Do you know why I love you?”

  “No.”

  “Because you’re strong. You never give up.”

  “You don’t love me.” My voice cracks. How much longer do I have to be strong? Not long. It’s over, so he should know the truth. He should know before we both die. He should be able to feel something else, something real.

  “Why not?” he says.

  “Because I’m not really Miranda.”

  He looks into my eyes. His hands cup my face gently.

  Tears run down my cheeks all at once. This is where I stop holding my secret. His thumbs wipe my tears, even though I know that’s impossible. “When you left her…” I swallow. “She died. And Mrs. North used me to replace her. The memory fragments I have belong to the girl before me.”

  I’ve just killed him again. It’s plain on his face.

  “Miranda…” he says, shaking his head.

  I kiss him.

  It isn’t right, or even real, but somehow I do it. While the world begins its slow death around us. His lips are soft at first, unsure, but then they react. “I’m sorry,” he says with his lips against mine. “I’m sorry.”

  “You didn’t know.”

  “I always—” he begins.

  Just outside, I hear the unmistakable rising whistle of a fired rocket, then a short, sharp explosion that shakes the walls and wakes us up. Noah takes my hand and squeezes it once.

  “The director still has a Torch. Don’t you dare give up.”

  He disappears.

  As the Torch begins to rumble behind me.

  The bulb doesn’t glow; it can’t; it’s still broken.

  But the metal shaft vibrates on the floor next to Nina.

  I stare at it for a moment, dumbstruck, watching it dance on the carpet. I pick it up and the vibration tickles my palms. I wait. There’s nothing else to do. The vibration has to mean something. Maybe it’s a final death rattle, or whatever’s inside the shaft trying to turn back on.

  Then it stops.

  Another rocket whistles nearby, followed by man-made thunder.

  The Torch isn’t moving, but it feels like it wants to get away, like my hands and the Torch just became opposite magnets. A breeze cuts through the office, bringing the mixed scent of pine and hot metal. The room around me begins to darken, like it’s fading from existence, and suddenly I can’t feel my palms. The Black is spreading around my fingers, over the backs of my hands. A few seconds later it’s up my arms, down my legs, acr
oss my chest, erasing me bit by bit. The Black crawls up my neck, my chin. Over my face.

  I hold on tight and close my eyes, and when I open them, I’m in a different place entirely.

  It takes me a second to understand what happened as I fall to my hands and knees, gagging. The Black enveloped me, and now I’m not in the Oval Office, but outside—I feel a sweet breeze and the open sky above me, even though I haven’t looked around yet. The urge to vomit is strong and hot, but the feeling passes after a few seconds and a few swallows. I blink and breathe and look at the smooth metal floor under my gloved hands. The Torch begins to roll away from me, and I lunge for it, but it stops under someone’s toe.

  The toe belongs to a foot covered in armor identical to mine, but with brilliant golden scales instead of black. I’ve seen those scales before on the director, in Mrs. North’s memory. The gold is the same color as the wall to my left; to my right is open air—we’re on a walkway attached to the side of a golden building.

  I look up, fingers still on the Torch, completely exposed on all fours.

  An Olivia stares down at me. She could be my Olive, but she’s not.

  “Where did you get this?” she says.

  I scan her body language in an instant—she’s relaxed. Her narrowed eyes study me; not surprised to see me, but more…impressed. I’m not a threat.

  Her eyes flick down to the Torch. “You broke it.”

  “No I didn’t,” I say before I can stop myself. Behind her the sky is golden, like that time near sunset before all the reds appear. Yet the entire sky glows gold, when it should be one end or the other. Which leads me to believe this isn’t my sky at all. I see tall buildings from the corner of my right eye, but I don’t dare take my eyes off the girl, no matter how much I want to look.

  “Get up,” she says, reaching down. I swing at her purely out of reflex, and she bats my hand away lightning fast, no more effort than I would need to block a child. “Don’t do that again.”

  I obey, wondering how the hell she did that. She grips my arm, but it doesn’t hurt. She checks up and down the walkway to make sure we’re alone, then presses her armored hand to the smooth golden wall. An invisible seam opens with a moan, resembling a tear in thin fabric. She yanks me through, and the seam closes behind us until it’s just a wall again, which should surprise me more than it does. We’re in a small, circular, featureless room with no light source, and yet I can see. The soft light seems to come from the walls themselves.

  She says, “We need to make this fast. What is the status of your world?”

  I open my mouth, but no words come out, my mind racing to catch up. I was in the Oval Office seconds ago, and now everything has a gold tint and an Olivia is holding me hostage.

  “The status.”

  She asked about my world. She must know who I am. “The eyeless are free,” is all I can say.

  She closes her eyes. “I can’t help you. Not directly.” She holds up the broken length of metal that used to be the Torch. “Repairing this will take too long.”

  Everything clicks, and I realize who stands before me—the Olivia who visited Noble, who told him the truth and positioned him in Commander Gane’s world.

  The Original Olivia.

  She doesn’t wait for me to respond.

  “Director Miranda has another Torch. Obtaining it would be nearly suicidal, but there’s no other way to save your world.”

  A moment passes. I shrug and say, “I have nothing better to do.” But I don’t feel the words.

  She doesn’t buy my bravery. “Do you know where you are?”

  “True Earth.”

  “Yes. The Torch is designed to return to me if it’s broken in the field. But acquiring the second one from the director isn’t the hardest part.”

  She doesn’t have to tell me. “Destroying the eyeless.”

  “Yes.”

  “Commander Gane told me what to do. He told me how to destroy them in the Verge.”

  “Good.”

  “But I’ll die.”

  Olivia nods. “That’s true. But you’ll save the world.”

  I clench my hands into fists and tremble. I want to scream. I want to hit her calm, placid face. “There has to be another way.”

  She shakes her head. “There isn’t. Killing all of them at once would require you to be close enough with the Torch. And once they feel threatened, even you won’t be able to control them. It has to happen all at once. You must lure them.”

  “I don’t want to do it.”

  I want my chance to live. From the day I opened my eyes, it’s been this. But I’m silly for saying I don’t want to, because I know I will.

  She knows it too.

  I always wondered if there was going to be more to my life, and now I know there isn’t. It’ll be over soon, and I won’t have to fight anymore.

  “And when the eyeless are gone, what will True Earth do then?” I say. I need to know this won’t be for nothing. I need someone to say I existed and then died for a reason.

  “They won’t stop, but it will buy us time.”

  “What if I fail?”

  “Then your universe belongs to them. So you won’t fail.”

  Right then I let go of everything.

  “I have to get back before I’m missed,” Olivia says, “but I need to reopen that scar on your cheek so it seems fresh. We don’t have scars in our world.”

  Before I can protest, she lifts a knife to my face and drags it across the scar from Mrs. North. I feel no pain at first, just pressure. Hot blood rolls down my cheek.

  “Good.” Then, rapid-fire, she says, “Now go. The Rose Tower is just around the bend—you’ll know it when you see it. Put your hand on the wall to get inside. Tell someone you were attacked. If anyone asks your number, it’s M-two-four-zero-seven. Remember that. Act like you belong there, because nobody can prove you don’t. Once you have the Torch, you can use it to return home just by thinking about it. Understand?”

  “Yes,” I say, while still absorbing her words. My stinging cheek actually helps. The pain focuses me.

  She puts her hand on the wall and a seam splits open, showing me a world I couldn’t have dreamed.

  “One more thing,” she says. “Take this.”

  She takes my hand and turns it over, then presses a small black square the size of a stamp into my palm. It adheres to the armor, then dissolves into a liquid my suit somehow absorbs. A second later, I feel it push through the skin of my palm in a way that’s somehow pleasant.

  “What was that?”

  “If you find yourself against uneven odds, make a fist as hard as you can. Now go.”

  I step through the seam, and it seals shut behind me.

  The air smells like pine and hot metal, the same scent I experienced when the Torch first started buzzing on the floor of the Oval Office.

  I spend twenty seconds taking stock of my surroundings with a tactical eye, committing the area to memory. It’s nothing I could’ve imagined, not in a million years. I’m on a long, winding walkway. At the railing, the ground is just an idea far below. Up here are golden towers, impossibly wide, connected by covered bridges and open walkways. Each tower is rounded and smooth, no hard angles, like polished stalagmites made of gold, rising what feels like miles from the earth.

  Everything is gold, the sky included. An unnatural sky, yet rich and deep and beautiful. If there were clouds, they’d be made of honey.

  I lean over the railing, searching harder for the ground.

  “What are you doing up here?”

  I push away from the railing and try to hide how startled I am.

  It’s Noah. But not my Noah. He wears the same armor as me, black, but pristine. Clearly he hasn’t seen combat. His eyes widen as he takes in my battered face and chewed-up armor.

  “What the hell happened to you? What’s your number?”

  “M-two-four-zero-seven,” I say automatically.

  “Who attacked you?” he says, pulling a sword off
his back. The sword hums and the blade is out of focus. It’s vibrating too fast to see clearly. I can only imagine what happens when the edge touches flesh. Behind him, one tower is the color of a rose. It’s the only non-gold one in sight.

  He checks up and down the walkway. “I asked who attacked you. And why did you let them do that to your face?”

  His tone isn’t familiar, and it’s really messing with me, since I know the face so well. Blurry-vibro sword or not, I refuse to let my mission end seconds after it begins. I harden my eyes and straighten up to show he isn’t intimidating.

  “There were three of them,” I say, figuring the peaceful way out is a lie.

  “Who were they? Were they Peters?”

  At first I think he means that in the possessive, as in, Did the attackers belong to Peter?, but then I realize he means Were they actual Peters?, as in plural. And right then it becomes clear that my number 2407 might mean I’m one of at least 2407 Mirandas. If I had to bet, I have a good idea which tower they’re all in.

  I assume he’s asking because the Peters have been known to do this. Or maybe the Noahs just don’t like the Peters.…

  “Yes,” I say. “They were Peters.”

  “Of course they were. Do you remember their numbers?”

  “No, I—”

  Without warning, he shoves me up against the tower wall, and I have to stop myself from putting an elbow through his nose. He pulls a little laser pointer from a pouch on his hip and shines it into my eye. “Keep it open!” he growls when I squint. I force my eyes open and he goes, “Hmm.”

  “Hmm what?”

  He brings his wrist to his lips. “I have M2407 wandering around on the high decks outside the Rose Tower. Claims she was beaten by a trio of Peters. Her armor is damaged. Please advise.” He waits a few seconds. I slouch against the wall, feeling embarrassed despite myself. He seems disgusted I let a couple of Peters get the best of me. “She tests positive for a memory swap, yes. Yes.” He focuses on me again. “What were you doing out here?”

  “I don’t remember. They hit me in the head a few times.” I tenderly touch above my right ear and fake-wince. He’s so unlike my Noah. There’s no hint of playful mischief in his eyes, just intensity. It’s Noah’s face, his body, but everything underneath is different.