BROKEN SYMMETRY: A Young Adult Science Fiction Thriller

by Dan Rix

“Something must be rotting. No one’s been inside the office for months.” Damian flipped a light switch, and the row of fluorescent panels closest to the door flickered to life.

  “You just said you guys were still here?”

  “I thought we would be too,” he said. “But without Charles, we don’t keep coming to work. In fact, the two of us left La Jolla two months ago.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Overlap. Plus I had to track myself down.” He held up his right hand, still contained in the wrist guard. “For this.”

  A spiderweb brushed my face, sending a shiver across my skin. I averted my gaze, and it settled on a dark lump under my former desk, still cloaked in shadow. “So your reflection is dead?”

  “No, that was in another reflection of the failsafe . . . through a different mirror.”

  My eyes snapped into focus . . . the lump under my desk. “What the hell?”

  “That’s why we don’t nest crossovers,” said Damian. “It gets confusing.”

  “No . . . under my desk,” I said. “I think that’s where the smell’s coming from.”

  “It’s just trash, Blaire.” He held his nose and strolled to my desk, grabbed one end of the lump, and, with effort, dragged it into the light. It was a tarp, rolled into the shape of a cigar. He reached for the edge of the plastic.

  “Don’t open it,” I warned.

  “Your reflection is down here too,” he said, continuing our conversation and ignoring my warning. His fingers closed on the hem. “Except in this version, you never met me—and Charles, of course, doesn’t exist. You still have no idea what happened to your father. Of the four of us, you’re the only one in La Jolla.”

  I watched him lift the tarp off the lump—an object about six feet long. The tarp flapped open, finally revealing its contents:

  A body, lying in a pool of syrupy blood. In a dizzying rush, the odor of decay wormed up my nose, and my heart lodged in my throat. I backed away, palm clamped to my mouth.

  We both recognized the curly gray hair, the broad jaw and forehead, the blue eyes tucked behind a broken pair of frameless glasses—in this reflection, the one person whose body shouldn’t have existed.

  Charles.

  ***

  “He’s reversed,” Damian announced after scrutinizing Charles’s face for a full minute. To my relief, he stretched the tarp back over the corpse. “He’s not from the source.”

  “Then where?”

  “One level up. When we got back from our mission, his reflection still would have been in ISDI packing things up.”

  I nodded. “The Prius we saw at the storage facility.”

  “Exactly. We brought the police to his doorstep; he would have heard them. He would have checked room A, seen the broken mirror, and panicked. I bet he had the same idea we did—to hide in the failsafe. He must have slipped out of the office while you were reversing the keys.”

  “Why is he dead?”

  “I don’t know. Someone killed him.”

  “Who?”

  Damian squinted into the distance, eyebrows tight with concentration. “But this is his style,” he muttered, his voice scarcely a whisper, “but it can’t be . . .” Immediately, he shook his head, as if to clear it. “No, it doesn’t make any sense.”

  “What’s whose style?”

  “He fears his own reflections. He’s scared of one climbing into the source and replacing him, so whenever he crosses over into a broken symmetry, the first thing he does is off his own reflection.”

  “You mean the source Charles? But we’re sealed off from him now. He can’t come down here.”

  Damian raised his eyes to mine. “Unless he came down here before the mirror broke.”

  I stared at him, and then the story clicked. “Because the SWAT team cornered him in the source. He must have escaped into our mirror before it broke.”

  “But why?” Damian rubbed his jaw, his eyebrows furrowed. “He knows better. He wouldn’t dare crossover in a building full of trigger happy SWAT officers. He’s guaranteed to get himself orphaned that way.”

  “Not necessarily,” I said.

  His eyes flicked to mine again. “What do you mean?”

  “Charles was hiding something from us, right? You said so yourself. Maybe he knows another way out. A back door or something . . . a loophole in the system.”

  He stared at me, unfazed. “A back door to what?”

  “The source. Why else would he risk coming down here?”

  Almost imperceptibly, his eyebrows nudged upward. “Like your father,” he whispered. “Charles crossed over and raided your house yesterday . . . what was he looking for again?”

  The hollow thumps of my heart echoed. “My father’s diary.”

  “The one he was carrying when he came out of the artifact chamber,” he said. “Blaire, we need to find Charles and figure out what he knows. We need that diary.”

  ***

  There’s still hope.

  Damian eyed my Jeep, parallel parked in front of my house. “You’re positive you’re not home?”

  “Trust me, Damian. Since I was spared the havoc you wreaked on my social life in this reflection, I can promise you I’ve just finished an expensive dinner and am now in a limo heading to a preparty at my hot date Josh’s house.”

  “Well, whoop-dee-doo for Josh,” he said.

  I used the spare and let us into the house and beelined for my bedroom, where I dragged a shoebox off the top shelf of my closet.

  The police department had called a week ago to say I could pick up my father’s stuff—which I hadn’t had time to do in the source.

  Down here, though, I would have picked it up first thing. And this box was where I’d put it. In my hands, the box felt light.

  I opened it up and saw why.

  “Empty,” said Damian, his arms crossed. “Where is it, Blaire?”

  “I should have put it here.”

  “Well, you didn’t,” he said. “Remember, these two months have diverged. Can you think of anyplace else you might have put it?”

  “I probably studied it for answers, since I didn’t have you and Charles to explain things to me.” I strained, trying to remember some overlap from this other reflection. “It’s harder two levels down, isn’t it?”

  “Overlap?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s not something you can just will yourself to remember. Don’t worry about it, let’s just search the house. Most likely you left it somewhere obvious. By your bed, or in the living room . . . or in your locker at school.”

  We divided the rooms and turned the house upside down. After searching for an hour, we met back in my bedroom, both empty-handed—except for a box of leftover Chinese food Damian was munching on.

  “That’s disgusting,” I said.

  “It’s from yesterday, not two months ago.”

  “Give me that.” I snatched the box from his hand and piled some of the chow mein into my mouth. I was starving.

  “So there’s a simple solution,” said Damian.

  “I can tell I’m not going to like this,” I mumbled through a full mouth.

  “Cute,” he said. “We’re going to find your reflection and just ask her where she put the diary.”

  “No. We’re not supposed to engage our reflections, remember?”

  “Considering we’ve already been orphaned, I think the rules have changed,” he said. “Where are you right now?”

  “That’s right. I forgot you don’t do high school—I’m at this thing called prom.” I scarfed down another bite of noodles, slurping one up my chin.

  “Get dressed. We’re going.”

  I smirked and tossed the empty carton of Chinese food in the
trash. “Are you asking me to prom, Damian?”

  “Maybe when you stop chewing with your mouth open.”

  Chapter 23

  If I was to crash my high school’s prom impersonating . . . myself, then I wanted to do this in style. I flicked hair off my forehead, still wet from my shower, and dug through my closet. “Ugh, what am I going to wear—”

  Damian grabbed my arm. “Look, we don’t have time. Just wear something slutty.”

  “Nice try, creep.”

  “Here—” he pulled me back and rummaged through my clothes, “I’ll pick out your outfit.”

  “The hell you will—” A black dress landed on my face, and I peeled it off to reveal a knee length dress I had worn only once. One I was definitely not wearing to prom. “Damian, this is the dress I wore to my dad’s funeral.”

  Damian straightened up and caught my gaze. “Is that going to be a problem?”

  “One, it’s conservative. Two, it has sentimental value.”

  “Well, time to move on.” Damian whipped out a knife and roughly cut off the sleeves. Then he leveled the blade to cut off the bottom two feet of the dress.”

  I grabbed his wrist before he could cut any more and pushed him away. “Chill, Edward Scissorhands. We’re not going to a strip club.”

  “Touch it up how you want,” he said, whacking the knife’s hilt into my palm. “I’ll be back.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Your dad’s closet.”

  “Wait—”

  But he was already gone. I tried on what remained of the dress, and found it still too conservative.

  On a whim, I slashed one of the halters entirely then tapered the material in a straight line from one shoulder to my armpit. Again, I twirled in the mirror. The cut exposed one of my shoulders, my collarbone, a lot of my back.

  Not bad.

  The dress could fit a lot tighter, but it would have to do.

  “A one strap. Nice,” said Damian from the doorway. I spun and caught him cinching a bowtie. The collar of a pressed white shirt stuck up from under a sleek tuxedo that was all creases and hotness. He’d regelled his hair and even managed to find his brand of cologne.

  My eyes roved up and down the length of his torso, and I felt my lower jaw plummet, smitten by this new version of him. And jealous; he’d stumbled on a James Bond suit, and I had to hack my dress out of funeral garb.

  But it wasn’t the jealousy that rendered me incapable of taking my eyes off him.

  “We’ll get you a picture at prom,” he said, catching the desire in my eyes. He extended his hand. “Ready?”

  ***

  A half dozen limousines idled outside Paradise Point Resort & Spa, their drivers leaning against the hoods smoking cigarettes.

  I tossed my Jeep’s keys to the valet and pulled Damian toward the ballroom, and the salty air whipped through my hair. We followed a cobblestone path from the parking area around a koi pond, through a jungle of ferns and palm trees hung with lanterns, and emerged on the lawn behind the ballroom. Four bouncers guarded the doors.

  Lucky we were two levels down, in a reflection of a reflection, because my student I.D. card faced the right way again. The bouncer studied the card under a blue light, then shined the light into my eyes.

  “Have you been drinking tonight?”

  “No.” I squinted into the glare and suppressed the urge to swallow, feeling more like a high school student than I had in a month.

  “Are you carrying any alcohol, weapons, or drugs?” he said.

  I shook my head.

  “Where’s your stamp?”

  “Huh?”

  “We stamped your wrist when you first came through.”

  So my reflection was already inside. “It must have washed off,” I said. “We just went out for some fresh air.”

  “Uh-huh.” He narrowed his eyes at my I.D. card again and crosschecked his clipboard.

  Yesterday I had snuck into a military quarantine zone, and now I couldn’t get into prom? I glanced behind me, hoping Damian could help me with the story, but he had vanished. Typical.

  “Where’s Josh Hutchinson?” the guard asked.

  “I don’t know. He’s inside. I think. Can I go back in, please?”

  The guard raised the light to my eyes again, and compared my face to the card. Finally, he gave a nod and moved aside. Home free.

  Only not.

  A huge woman with bad B.O. and a moustache blocked my path. “Legs apart. Arms out,” she barked.

  When I didn’t comply, she grabbed my wrists and jerked them away from my sides. “Legs apart, arms out,” she repeated, this time with attitude.

  I spread my legs, briefly feeling sorry for the woman. After all, her night consisted of an endless stream of dolled up, ungrateful teenagers—but only briefly.

  Her hands clamped around my leg, just above the knee, and without warning she groped the inside of my thighs, roughly feeling all the way up my dress to my crotch, then back down the other leg. My eyes widened. Then she felt around my hips and wrung my waist like she was trying to squeeze water out of me.

  I felt completely and utterly violated.

  Inside the carpeted hallway leading to the ballroom, I found Damian leaning against the wall, hands in his pockets.

  “Where’d you run off to?” I demanded, still trembling from the frisk and feeling oddly vulnerable.

  “Blaire, I can’t exactly get felt up by Man Hands over there, I’ve got a Desert Eagle forty-four Magnum in my pants.”

  “Is that what you nickname your penis?”

  “That’s cute. Come on, let’s go find you.”

  A group of girls in pink and purple dresses approached us, and their gazes flicked to Damian. Oh, right. No one at my high school had ever seen him, but—Ew! I felt my upper lip curl; they were practically undressing him with their eyes.

  I halted Damian right in front of them and dragged him down by the lapels of his tuxedo for a lusty kiss, forcing them to part around us.

  “Focus, Blaire,” he said.

  “You’re stiff as a board,” I said. “You’re supposed to look like a high school student, not a hit man.”

  “Blaire?” said a voice behind me. I yanked my hands off Damian’s tuxedo and spun to see one of the towering basketball players, Bryce McMahon. Josh’s best friend.

  Caught.

  ***

  He glanced between me and Damian, his eyebrow cocked. A full foot shorter than him, his date clung to his arm.

  “Hey,” I said, through a swallow.

  He noticed my dress. “Did you change?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Josh is looking for you.” His eyes narrowed on Damian again before his date tugged him away from me.

  Behind me, Damian’s hand hovered at his belt, and for a second it looked like he was about to reach for the gun and start killing students.

  “No.” I grabbed his wrist. “These are my friends.”

  He shrugged and lowered his hand. “We’ll start there,” he said, nodding to the ballroom up the hall. The shadowy dance floor resembled a nightclub. Lasers and disco lights streaked across glittery dresses and twinkled in the chandelier, flashing to the beats of a popular dance song.

  On our way to the ballroom, most of the students we passed recognized me and waved. Was I actually more popular in this reflection? I suspected it had something to do with going as Josh’s date.

  A girl emerged from the ballroom ahead of us. Instantly, my eyes gravitated to her—along with the wandering eyes of the other girls’ dates lining the walls. She had to be someone’s date from another high school. Because I knew I hadn’t seen her around.

  She was dolled up with pink lip gloss and turquoise
eye shadow, and her auburn hair drifted in slow motion behind her; she was a bombshell.

  My eyes fell to the contours of her floor length turquoise gown. The fabric hugged the slender shape of her body all the way down to her hips, where it slitted around her upper thigh. A side cutout displayed a lightly tanned section of her waist. From that revealing glimpse of her bare torso, I recognized the toned body of a fellow runner.

  She walked unselfconsciously, oblivious to the gazes following her up the hall. Gorgeous, yes. But uptight, prissy, and pretentious. I knew her type. The upturn of her nose and the pout hovering permanently on the edge of her lips gave her away.

  For a split-second her eyes lingered on Damian before averting. I don’t think anyone but me caught her.

  I veered to the side to get out of her way and pulled Damian with me, but his fingers unclasped from mine. He had stopped dead in the middle of the hallway to stare at her, his mouth agape.

  My heart sank a little. No . . . a lot. If Damian ever ogled girls, he did so when we weren’t together. Confronted with this creature, though, I had become chopped liver.

  I watched her approaching on a collision course with Damian, dreading whatever was coming. Suddenly, even though I had been staring right at her, her face came into focus—and I understood Damian’s surprise.

  I did know the girl.

  Of course I hadn’t seen her at school. Of course I didn’t recognize her; I never had to before. Because until tonight, she had only existed in the fleeting, two-dimensional glimpses I caught in mirrors.

  She was my reflection.

  A million times I had glared into her eyes, gawked at her face, scrutinized her flaws.

  Not once had I actually seen her.

  ***

  At the realization, my heart fluttered. That was me?

  Once again, the girl’s eyes—my eyes—settled on Damian, standing right in the middle of the hallway blocking her path. She gave a little scowl, as if daring him to stand his ground. Of course, he did.

  I stared at my reflection, transfixed by the way she carried herself, by mannerisms I never knew I had, behavior I wasn’t even aware of. She stopped right in front of Damian and locked eyes with him.