BROKEN SYMMETRY: A Young Adult Science Fiction Thriller

by Dan Rix

  “So . . . it wasn’t a fall?”

  Dr. Johnson closed the MRIs, clicked out of the program, and faced me. “Blaire, was your father on any medication?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said, “but he could have been on something work related.”

  “That’s okay if you don’t know. Our blood analyzer is being serviced right now, so I’ve sent his blood over to the Institute. Not sure if it’ll go through, though; they’ve really been dragging out this quarantine exercise. Either way, I think it’s possible we’ll find anticoagulants in his system.”

  “Is that why he was acting strange?” I said. “Because of drugs?”

  “It’s very possible. I think your father’s death was the result of a combination of factors, medication plus some kind of bodily trauma.” The doctor paused. “There’s something else I wanted to tell you, Blaire. I doubt we could have saved him, but there is a reason our efforts to restart his heart failed yesterday.”

  I glanced up, curious.

  The doctor continued. “His heart’s on the right side of his body, not the left.”

  “Huh?”

  “He has what’s called Situs Inversus. It’s a congenital condition in which the major organs are found on the opposite side as normal. For example, his heart is on the right side instead of the left. It’s quite rare, about one in ten-thousand.”

  “Is that why he died?”

  She shook her head. “It’s just a curiosity. Like I said, all the major organs are reversed, so the relationship between them is unaffected, hence why inverted individuals are often left-handed, as your father was. But everything still works.”

  Weird. “Wait—my father wasn’t left-handed.”

  “No?” she said. “Forgive me. I just noticed the muscles in his left hand were slightly more developed than his right. Perhaps he did something at work that required an able left hand.”

  “Yeah, because I’m left-handed,” I said. “I remember at dinners if we sat next to each other, our arms hit. We joked about it.”

  The doctor placed her hand on my back and smiled.

  “That left-handed thing . . . Situs—whatever it was—do I have that too?” I said.

  “Only if your mother’s a carrier too. Very unlikely.”

  “Doctor Johnson,” I began slowly, “why didn’t my dad recognize me? He said he hadn’t seen me since I was four . . . that I disappeared.”

  The doctor smiled sadly. “In head trauma cases, it’s fairly common for people to only remember things from many years ago. Often, they’ll fill in the missing pieces with false memories. Just be grateful he still knew you.”

  I nodded, a lump forming in my throat. Head trauma explained his behavior perfectly.

  Unless, of course . . .

  Before it was even fully formed, the question escaped my lips. “What if he had a twin?”

  The doctor studied me, her eyes peering into mine for so long I started to fidget. “Blaire,” she said finally, “are you wondering whether this man is your father?”

  “I know it’s stupid—”

  She held up her hand to stop me. “It’s an honest question,” she said. “If your father did have an identical twin, I’m afraid that would be pretty difficult to sort out. However, it might be reassuring to rule out the alternatives. If you want to, we can run a DNA test.”

  “I want to.”

  ***

  “Still sure you want to do this?” said Dr. Johnson, stretching on a pair of latex gloves. She sliced open an envelope and emptied the contents of a DNA testing kit onto the counter. “It’s not always a happy discovery.”

  “I need to know the truth, don’t I?”

  Dr. Johnson didn’t answer. She peeled back the plastic from a thin, white toothbrush-like utensil. “Open wide.”

  “What for?”

  “We’re going to take a quick swab from inside your cheek.”

  “Don’t you need to draw blood?” I asked, lowering my jaw to permit the tip of the utensil.

  “Your DNA is actually inside every cell in your body,” her voice said close to my forehead. “We use the ones inside your mouth because we know they’re yours.” She scraped the inside of my cheek vigorously. “Unless you’ve been kissing a lot,” she added with a wink.

  She withdrew the swab and bottled it in a tiny plastic container, and we repeated the whole process two more times.

  “All done!” She dropped the three containers into a padded envelope and sealed that as well. “In three or four days, we’ll know whether he was your dad.”

  It was too easy.

  My dad always told me, if the question was too easy to ask, I wouldn’t like the answer. Only hard to ask questions got good answers.

  “What will this show?” I asked.

  “It’s a basic genealogy test. Essentially we’re comparing pieces of your genetic code with your father’s.”

  “And if they don’t match?”

  “Don’t worry. They will.”

  “But just supposing,” I said. “What if they don’t?”

  Dr. Johnson stripped off her gloves, her back to me, and tiny muscles tightened at the juncture between her neck and her jaw.

  “There’s an explanation for everything, Blaire. Remember, a mystery is only a mystery until we figure out the answer . . . and we always figure out the answer.”

  ***

  I left the hospital and trudged through the parking lot, my gaze sinking to the pavement. My father had died of internal bleeding. Hemorrhaging, as Dr. Johnson had called it.

  Could they have saved him? If the police had taken him directly to the hospital, would he be alive right now?

  The heartache stung, and I gritted my teeth to fend off the ensuing wave of anguish. I fought back tears. In my heart, my father had died eleven months ago.

  So why did this hurt so much?

  I knew the answer, of course. It was because I needed closure. I needed the truth.

  Since last night, I had become convinced he had come back with a message for me . . . a message he had written down.

  I needed his diary.

  From my experience with bureaucracy, though, I knew that if the diary remained in evidence, I would never see it again. When they finally got to it years from now, it would be filed away in some archive and lost forever.

  I had to get it back while I still could.

  On my way home I stopped by the hardware store and made copies of every key on the police officer’s key chain. Then I went back to the police station, apologized for picking up the wrong keys, and got my own keys back.

  It was that easy.

  At two in the morning, dressed in black jeans and a black hoodie, I parked a block from the police station and took a minute to steady my breathing.

  ***

  The fourteen police cars parked on Eastgate Mall in front of the San Diego Police Department hunkered down like sleeping grizzlies, their engines still cooling and clinking from the second shift.

  I was sneaking right into their den.

  Straining to keep myself from shaking, I climbed the handicap ramp to the front door as casually as I could manage. If someone asked, at least my story wouldn’t have to account for crouching in the shadows like a burglar.

  At the lock I fumbled with the keys, now shivering, and I swear the clinking could have woken anyone within a mile.

  The first one fit, but didn’t turn the lock. The second didn’t fit. I tried the third, the back of my neck burning.

  Footsteps sounded behind me, and I freaked. A spike of adrenaline fried my nerves—and any hope of playing myself off as an officer’s daughter. I scampered behind a trash can, curled into a ball, and held my breath.

  The drum of my heartbeat obscured
my senses. My limbs tensed, but the two approaching figures weren’t cops.

  A drunk couple stumbled past me and continued down the sidewalk.

  I didn’t let myself breathe until they were out of sight, and then only barely.

  Back at the front door, lightheaded and nauseous, I tried the rest of the keys. Key number four fit but didn’t open the lock. Beyond the glass, emergency light strips lit an empty hallway. No one about. Please stay like that.

  Key number five. The last key. I jabbed at the slot, my hands now shaking violently. The key didn’t fit.

  It must have been one of the others. Maybe I’d turned the wrong way. I would have to try them all again. Or maybe none of them fit—maybe the rookie didn’t even have the station key. Why would he?

  An earsplitting police siren drove needles through my heart. I froze, choked on my fear. Suddenly, it was daytime.

  Bright light singed my neck and cast my shadow onto the floor inside the door. An inch from my eyes, loose strands of my hair caught the glare like filament.

  Headlights. Right behind me.

  The light moved on, though. The patrol car sped down the street, and its siren faded into the distance. For several minutes I stood at the station door, too terrified to move.

  I had to try all the keys again.

  But the cold and the adrenaline rush had leeched the dexterity from my fingers, and the keys kept getting tangled. Why the freak did this guy need so many keys anyway?

  At last the first key slipped into the lock, but like before it didn’t turn. I leaned into it, and the metal dug into my finger. No way . . . with more pressure, the key would snap. I eased off and rotated the key the opposite direction. Still nothing.

  On a whim, I tugged the handle anyways. The handle and the lock rotated as a unit and the door clacked open.

  Warm, police-smelling air whisked past me. Oh God. I had just broken into a police station. The urge to flee sent me stumbling backwards. My heel banged into the trashcan. The noise startled me, and I scrambled over a hedge and tore down the street, soaked with sweat.

  A block away I caught myself.

  The truth. My father had written the truth in that diary, addressed directly to me.

  Recovering the diary was not a choice.

  I steeled my resolve and marched back toward the police station, slipped inside, and beelined for the evidence room.

  Dim fluorescent strips swam overhead, catching up with me on the linoleum. The same hallway I ran down yesterday to find my father. The reminder hurt.

  I pressed on and found the door marked Evidence. I tried the handle. Locked.

  Back to the keys.

  I repeated the same process of trial and error that had gotten me into the station. Of course none of the keys worked.

  Footsteps.

  I jerked around, but saw nothing. Just the dark hallway. A petrified shiver shook my body, hiked my breathing.

  Then I really did hear footsteps. Coming toward me. I ran.

  Only the wrong direction. I crashed into a body at the intersection between two hallways. The man grunted, and his cup of coffee crashed on the floor. I caught sight of his face just as he did mine.

  Joe Paretti.

  Chapter 3

  “No. No-no-no,” he said. “Do I have to arrest you, Blaire?”

  “The door was open,” I lied, and then all my pride flew out the window and I burst into tears. He grabbed my arm and dragged me into his office.

  “I’m writing you up for this right now,” he said. “Getting you sent to juvie for this. Breaking and entering . . . and a goddamn police station . . . Jesus Christ.”

  “I had the keys,” I mumbled. “Your partner gave them to me. I was coming to return them.”

  Joe slammed the door to his office. “Let me see those.” He wrenched the keychain out of my grip, and his eyes narrowed at the ACE Hardware logo on the duplicated keys. He flung them to the ground.

  His rage terrified me.

  While Joe rummaged in his filing cabinet for the proper forms to write me up, I stole a glance at his desk—at whatever it was keeping him here so late at night.

  My dad’s report.

  I peered closer.

  Adams spotted on John Hopkins Dr. in bushes below South Employee Parking Lot. Speaking incoherently and delusional . . .

  Under possible suspects, he had written Charles Donovan . . . and my name—Joe slapped an arrest form on top of the report and nailed me with a stink eye.

  “But I’m sixteen,” I said.

  “Think I give a damn?”

  The phone in Joe’s office rang, and he paused, halfway through writing the date. He picked up the phone.

  An angry woman’s voice hissed over the speaker.

  He replied, “fifteen more minutes, hun, I promise—”

  “I’m just going to leave, okay?” I said, backing toward the door.

  Joe waved me back, absently at first, then vigorously when I didn’t come. I obeyed, my head hung low.

  I heard his wife say, “Is somebody there with you?”

  “It’s nobody, hun.” Joe massaged his temple, clearly flustered. “No, you didn’t hear a girl . . . look, she snuck in. I’ll explain later. Just give me fifteen minutes!” He hung up.

  Joe wrung his head in his hand and kneaded the sides of his head. “Just leave, Blaire, before you try my patience any more. I’ve had a long night.”

  Without waiting for him to change his mind, I bolted. Besides, I already had another idea.

  The wife.

  ***

  I cupped the phone to my shoulder on Saturday morning and flipped through my mailbox while it rang. After two rings the woman answered.

  “Is this Mrs. Paretti?” I asked.

  “I thought I told you to take my name off your calling list,” she said. “You’re from Outbreak Awareness, right?”

  “No, I’m calling about your husband.” I scratched absentmindedly at the seal of a letter addressed to me. “I’m Blaire. He’s working on my dad’s case.”

  She paused. “How’d you get my number?”

  “I looked it up on the internet.”

  “Could I have the name of the site you found it on?”

  “Look, I was just calling to see if you could ask your husband something.”

  “Sorry, I’m not interested. Please take me off your calling list.”

  “No, I’m calling about your husband,” I said. “I need you to talk to him because he’s being unfair and he’s not listening to me.” Even to me, my voice sounded whiny, like a spoiled kid’s. Great.

  She didn’t respond, so I continued. “My dad died and left me a diary. It’s all I have left from him, and Joe—I mean, Detective Paretti—won’t let me have it. If you could just talk to him for me—”

  “If it’s evidence he can’t really give it back to you now, can he?”

  “But if you just talked—”

  “It’s Blaire, right?” she said. “How old are you?”

  Her question deflated my confidence, and my answer sounded pathetic. “Sixteen.” No one cared about a sixteen-year-old girl. They cared about fifteen-year-old girls and seventeen-year-old girls. Sixteen-year-olds were just punks.

  “Hold on,” she said, her voice now edged with suspicion, “what do you want with Joe again?”

  “Just tell him he’s being unreasonable.”

  “Whoever you are, stay away from my husband,” she ordered. “And don’t call me again.”

  “Mrs. Paretti, wait—”

  The woman hung up.

  I lowered the phone, mouth agape. Had she just hung up on me? I redialed her number, but it went to voicemail.

  Fuming, I busied myself with the
envelope in my hands and slid out a typewritten letter.

  Dear Ms. Adams:

  After careful consideration of your application, Intelligent Symmetry Design & Interiors is pleased to offer you a summer internship at our Mission Valley branch. Please arrive promptly at 9:00 AM on June 30 for orientation.

  Sincerely,

  Amy Donovan

  Administrative Assistant

  The internship I had wanted so badly just two days ago. My biology teacher had invited me to apply because I scored in the top percentile on the PSAT and somehow earned the title of National Merit Semifinalist. I barely remembered the months right after it happened. Just a haze.

  But now the letter reminded me of how shallow my life had become without my dad.

  I always forgot how jealous my classmates were, how they thought I had everything—grades, guys, first place in cross-country, internships, probably even a scholarship to Berkeley or Harvard.

  But none of that could fill the hole in my heart. None of that could bring him back. At the thought, pressure swelled in my sinuses.

  I would give it all up in a second to see my dad again. In a second.

  ***

  In the afternoon, I clipped my cell phone to my tights, plugged in my earbuds, and cranked up my indie rock. Then I took off running into a blast of hot air, prepped and hydrated for five miles.

  Within two blocks, the April heat stripped me out of my shirt, and I tied it around my waist. My pink sports bra earned a honk of approval.

  I lengthened my stride, relaxed my body, and pushed myself to the edge of my natural gait. The exertion constricted my throat, and I forced myself to take longer, deeper breaths.

  Then I broke through. My legs sailed ahead of me, caught me and propelled me, rendered me weightless again and again. I was practically sprinting, giddy with endorphins and hardly breathing. I could go all day.

  Sweat slicked on my stomach and back, cooling the skin. My focus sharpened.

  The diary.