The Nancy Experiment

by McKenna, Tess

  On fire I fly

  wings wild for escape;

  the sky be my haven

  where nothing is safe.

  The only of my kind,

  mystic day of the night.

  The sun catch me aflame.

  I fight, but I fall―

  I fall―

  believe I am to blame.

  On fire I burn

  until all ashes remain.

  Yet, a flame.

  Small, mighty, and bright.

  From the ashes of my death

  new wings will take flight.”

  Warnock finishes and closes the book. He removes his reading glasses and looks to Nate and me.

  “It’s pretty,” I say, “but I have no idea.”

  “I think it’s tracing the life cycle of a phoenix but also drawing some ties to the death and rebirth of Jesus, maybe. I don’t know. Is it a religious book?” Nate asks.

  “No, it’s about birds,” I say.

  “I don’t know if it’s religious, but it does give strong hints toward reincarnation,” Warnock says.

  “In the physical or metaphysical sense?” Nate says.

  “I think both. This pasta is amazing, by the way,” I say.

  Warnock and Nate laugh. Apparently every food I taste is fantastic. We leave the book on the table, finish our dinner, and remain together for the rest of the evening telling jokes and stories and forgetting about our own fragile reality.

  “Do you need an extra pillow?” Nate asks me.

  He’s standing on his toes, peeking into the large cabinets behind his sleeping bag. The room is pitch black, almost; a small yellow light shines from the kitchen, but that’s it. I’m already tucked into my sleeping bag with my head on the pillow and my feet shoving my socks to the bottom of the sleeping bag.

  “No, I’m good,” I reply.

  Nate closes the cabinet doors and sits down on his sleeping bag. He flicks on a flashlight and shines the light on the tall bookshelf next to him. He’s quiet, the room is quiet, Warnock is quietly asleep in the other room.

  “Nate,” I say, my voice just above a whisper. “I have to tell you something.”

  “I’m listening,” he says.

  I take a deep breath. “I’m not… who you think I am, not exactly.”

  Nate doesn’t breathe a word, so I go on.

  “You know how I went through a lot of experiments while I lived with Dr. Nancy?”

  “Yeah,” he replies. His voice is reassuring and sad, very sad. Like he knows where this is going.

  “Well, there was this one experiment, an early experiment… and it went terribly wrong,” I whisper. “It was a successful experiment, in a sense… because that’s how I came to be.”

  He is silent.

  “I’m a clone,” I say. “I was created in Dr. Nancy’s laboratory, almost four years ago. The experiment was a success in the way that, I came out completely healthy and with every memory and every thought that belonged to Basia Nancy… But, the experiment didn’t go well on the other end. Basia entered into a coma as a result, and I had to assume her identity so that people Dr. Nancy worked with didn’t know that his experiment left his daughter in a coma. Almost eight months after, Basia woke up, but by then, I had developed into a completely different being…”

  “I know,” Nate says when I no longer can carry on.

  “You what?”

  “I know―er, I didn’t know about the details of Basia Nancy, but I was able to put two and two together.”

  “How―?” I murmur.

  “The scars on your body and the amount of plasma in your blood were the first clues. I knew no ordinary person could survive whatever could have made those scars. When Kiaria read Jericho’s mind the second time, she saw an image of both you and Basia. After the interview with Jericho, things just kind-of clicked, and we were fairly sure. That, and we couldn’t find you on the Finder―”

  “―because according to the government and all natural laws of nature, I don’t exist,” I finish. “Basia Nancy is dead, now. The FBI found her body, and they showed Moton. Now, Moton thinks I’m an imposter, maybe even the mole.”

  “He knows, too,” Nate says. “Zoë caught on to it, too, and she confronted Kia and I. They are the only ones that know… oh! And Cliff. We needed his help.”

  “But… Moton—”

  “He needed a way to get you out of the building while also disguising the fact that he knew who you were all along. It was a risky move, but it will help Kenyon if the FBI believes that’s how it really happened.”

  “I see,” I say. “Thank you… for helping me, and for not confronting me about it.”

  “No problem,” he says. “Anything we can do to help.”

  I sign. I don’t know how I feel about it, about telling Nate who I am. I feel a trembling running through me, yet, I feel okay. I think things are going to be okay. I think I really need to sleep on it.

  “Speaking of scars, I saw the ones on your back,” I say.

  Nate is silent.

  “You don’t have to share if you don’t want to… but they looked like, like cigarette burns,” I say.

  “They are,” Nate says.

  Silence again.

  “My dad was an alcoholic and an abusive person. He was worst to my mom. After she saw the scars on my back and the cuts on my wrists… I mean, I was bullied a lot in school, too, for being too smart for my age… I was trying to protect her by hiding it. She sent Cliff and me to Kenyon the day after she found out,” Nate says.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say.

  Nate turns off the flashlight and lies down.

  “It’s okay. Thanks for asking. Not many people would,” he says.

  Eventually, after another prolonged silence, we whisper goodnight to each other and let our heads sink deep into our pillows, deep into a whispering, heavy sleep.

  XXVI: Tangible Dirt

  Thursday, April 3, 2065; 9:56 p.m.

  First person

  I barely slept. I would doze off for what felt like five minutes, and then I’d be awake again, trying to make myself fall asleep. I tried everything. I meditated, but there were so many thoughts running wild in my head that I couldn’t focus. I told myself a story of a prince turned into a frog who traveled the world looking for a girl to kiss him, but when he found a willing girl and they kissed, she had peanut butter on her lips. The prince was allergic to peanuts. End of story. I then tried doing sit-ups until I would pass out with exhaustion, but that just made me sore and less sleepy. I counted sheep. I counted to two-thousand three hundred and seventy-six.

  At last, the sun gleamed through the shaded window and gradually illuminated the room. I heard Warnock moving around in his room, and then I finally fell asleep. Warnock woke me at noon, telling me to get to the church with Nate to clean the mess we made last night with our wet, muddy shoes. Now that we finished cleaning that, and the other random chores Warnock had us do so he could keep-up his story that no one can come to the church today because the cleaners were coming, Nate and I sit at the table in the kitchen with the quarter and our cleaned dinner plates on the table.

  “So what’s on it?” Nate asks.

  “Documents. Documents and files related to the experiments Dr. Nancy performed in the past five years,” I reply.

  “Five years he’s been doing this?!”

  “More, actually― before he graduated from med school, I believe. The experiments in the first so-many years overwhelmingly failed, so most weren’t documented.”

  “I thought an experiment couldn’t be a failure, even if the results aren’t what you wanted.”

  “That’s how it works for Dr. Nancy.”

  “Hmm,” Nate says, and then he’s quiet. He stares with his eyes fixated on the table and doesn’t move except for the steady rise and fall of his chest.

  “What’s on your mind?” I ask.

  “Hm? Oh…” he says, glancing up at me for a second then looking back down at the table. “I’m
just thinking about the others.”

  “Yeah,” I sigh.

  I forgot how difficult this must be for him, and Zoë, Kiaria, and Cliff. They had to act against their teammates, their friends, their title to help me. Nate left with me; he looks like the biggest traitor of them all; he may have just thrown everything away by coming with me, that is, if the others know that Zoë, Kiaria, and Cliff helped me escape. But the mole, the mole in Kenyon probably knows that I’m a clone, too. Why he or she didn’t sell me out to begin with, I don’t know.

  “I’m sorry you had to go against your friends to help me,” I say.

  “It was the right thing to do,” he says. “Besides, we’re not completely on our own out here.”

  “You talking about Warnock?”

  “No. Kiaria and Zoë are doing what they can back in Kenyon. Zoë is supposed to contact us either tonight or tomorrow.”

  “How? Does she know where we are?”

  “Yeah. The Metanites― we all have trackers on us so we know where everyone is in case we’re needed in an emergency or in case something bad happens.”

  “Would this constitute as something bad happening?”

  “Yes, but luckily, Kiaria and I are the only two people comfortable using the tracking system, so Kiaria could easily make it look like I destroyed my tracker.”

  “Do you still have it on?!”

  “Yes, but―”

  “Oh, God! Take it off, you idiot!”

  “Annika, trust me. I would take it off, but not until Zoë or Kiaria knows that we’re okay. I needed to keep it on in case Dr. Nancy’s men found us.”

  “Where is it?”

  “It’s on the backside of my watch.”

  “I think it’s a really bad idea to have a tracker on you,” I say as calmly as I can. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings while he looked so torn-up. “But, I trust you, so just… be careful.”

  He nods, his eyes still fixated on the table. I look out the window, and it’s opaque outside. Ten o’clock. I wonder how long we’ve been sitting here, how long we’ll be here, at Warnock’s church. This isn’t the safest place anymore, not with Nate’s tracker still intact. We should leave tonight, or tomorrow morning, early, before the sun comes up and the Sunday-morning churchgoers arrive.

  “I think… Marissa is the mole,” Nate says.

  “What? Why do think that?”

  Nate shrugs his shoulders. “I don’t know. She acts weird around you, and she’s always been there when something went wrong.”

  “But the art museum―that totally shook her. She was not okay after that―”

  “I know! I know,” he says. “I can’t explain it, but everything just makes sense to me when I think things over. She was there at St. Patrick’s Day when she and Zoë found you, and maybe the art museum was a total sham. I know you said that woman was ready to kill her, but I don’t think that woman would’ve minded killing the mole to cut off the loose ends after they have you. And I know Marissa is a daughter of the government, but I would be surprised if Dr. Nancy doesn’t have people in government working to cover up what he’s been doing the past so-many years.

  “I don’t want it to be her, I don’t, and I hope to God that I’m wrong, but I feel really strongly about this, Annika, and I don’t know what to do about it. I couldn’t tell anybody either, because they would think I’m being superstitious and overreacting. Maybe it’s not her, and maybe whoever it is just wants to frame her because she’s the perfect scapegoat, but I―”

  “No,” I interrupt. “I think you might be right.”

  Nate looks up at me.

  “I hope it’s not her, but I see what you’re saying. It could be Marissa― it could be any one of them, but it definitely could be Marissa,” I say.

  “The mole isn’t the worst of it,” Nate says. “The government has been investigating Moton and the Metanites since they caught wind that Basia Nancy might be staying at Kenyon. I heard from Kia that Moton plans to bluff and tell them he knew all along that you’re not Basia Nancy, his reason for not turning you in, but anyway, nothing he or the Metanites does goes without the CIA or someone infiltrating our sources. Watch messages, calls, emails, nights out― they intercept all of it. The Finder and the Mind are the only two programs they can’t access.”

  I grip the quarter in my hand, the object worth more than my own life. The tangible dirt that could put Dr. Nancy away forever.

  “This is what she’s after. If Marissa is the mole, then this is what she wants. Whoever raided my bedroom when Jericho escaped was probably looking for this. We have to make sure she doesn’t get it in time.”

  I stand up and stride out of the kitchen and head toward the church. Nate gets up and follows me, calling to ask what I’m doing. I burst into the church area and see Warnock standing in front of the table and looking out at the empty pews with a paper of scribbled notes in his hand. Normally, I would make some teasing remark about his scrawled notepaper, but not now. Not when I have something important to do.

  “Warnock,” I call. The old priest turns as I march toward him.

  “Annika! Did you come to hear my sermon?”

  “I need you to do me favor,” I say. I hold up the quarter. “I need you to make a copy of this and send it to a friend of mine in Kenyon.”

  “In Kenyon? I thought that’s where you just ran from?” Warnock exclaims.

  “I don’t have time to explain, but I need this to be copied and delivered to Kiaria Ying at Kying3@fasttrack.com as soon as humanly possible.”

  “Annika, you can’t email something to Kia without the… oh!” Nate says. His face brightens with realization. “That’s genius! I’m sure so many eyes will see the email before it even gets to Kia―”

  “―so it will be impossible for Dr. Nancy to destroy the evidence,” I finish. I hand the flash drive over to Warnock, who holds it out in front of him and studies it.

  “And this is the key to destroying Dr. Nancy’s experiments?” Warnock asks.

  “It will destroy him,” I respond.

  “Wait!” Nate says. I turn and see his eyes on the front door to the church. “There’s somebody out there.”

  Sure enough, I could hear whispering from behind the door. The whispering stops, then a sharp crack, and the door creaks open. Two figures stand outside the entrance to the church, disguised by the darkness and large, unflattering raincoats. When the door opens completely, the two figures rush into the church drenched head to foot and close the door behind them. They shiver and shake the cold off themselves with their backs to us.

  “X? Izzi?” Nate calls to the figures. The two turn, and Izzi and Xander’s faces peek at us from behind the hoods of their raincoats.

  “Nate!” Xander says. A smile crosses his face.

  “Nate! Annika!” Izzi echoes.

  They stride toward us with shoes squeaking and leaving a trail of muddy water behind them. What the hell is going on?

  “What are you guys doing here? How’d you find us?” Nate asks.

  I can see him trying to hide his happiness at seeing them because his lips curl slightly up on the left side. I’m not as pleased to see them, and I don’t pretend to hide that. However, I’m more interested in their motives for finding us.

  “We’re here on Zoë’s behalf,” Izzi says, looking at Nate. “She couldn’t contact you without the CIA infiltrating the message, so she sent me and X here to find you.”

  I watch their eyes. Izzi stares mostly at Nate, though she will glimpse at Warnock or me from time to time. Xander stares at Nate, and then his eyes flicker to the red dot on the quarter in Warnock’s hand.

  “Nate, things are bad at Kenyon,” Izzi continues. “Some of the Metanites are profoundly angry with both of you, and those of us who know the truth have to pretend irritation. Moton is swarmed by FBI, CIA, MI6― everyone wants to know what’s going on; Moton either doesn’t understand the real story, or he’s refusing to tell them. And to make things worse, everyone is freaking out ab
out the mole. Some people think you’re the mole, Nate, and others think it might be Thunder. He’s been out a lot since Annika came to Kenyon, and he hasn’t caused any trouble since the day Jericho Novak broke into Kenyon.”

  The whole time Izzi spoke, I watched Xander’s eyes move from Nate to the quarter. He looks at me once, then quickly looks away. I watch Izzi too; when she finishes speaking, she glances at the quarter.

  “No, Thunder doesn’t have the kind of access the mole has, besides, we think we know who the mole is,” Nate says.

  “Who?” Izzi asks.

  “We think it’s Marissa.”

  “Marissa?! Nate you don’t mean―”

  “―I don’t like it either, but just think about it. Her family is FBI, so who knows if they’re the good FBI or the bad side. She has the skills and probably the training to go undercover, and she has access to everything the Metanites can access. She’s intelligent, she’s capable, and she’s got us wrapped around her finger.”

  The whole time Nate explained his theory about the mole, I watch where Xander’s eyes go. He glances away from Nate to the quarter again, and clenches his jaw as he swallows saliva. His eyes flick up to me.

  Gotchya.

  We stare at each other without moving, daring the other to move first.

  “Nate,” I say without breaking my eye contact with Xander. “Marissa’s not the mole. They are.”

  “Wha―” Nate exclaims, but he’s cut off when Xander shoots a mild explosive from his hand, hitting Nate in the chest. Nate bounces backward into the large, wooden altar. I spin my head to see if he’s alright, when Izzi pulls out a gun and fires two shots into Warnock’s chest. Warnock’s eyes widen and freeze, his mouth opening slightly with no words or groans coming out. His body pulses backward, rippling once when each bullet sinks into his black sweater. He takes a step back, then his body crumples to the floor; his hand still grips the quarter.

  “Na― NO!!” I cry.

  I take a step toward Warnock when Xander grabs my arm. I swing my arm at him, punching him in the jaw. I see Izzi and the gun pointing at me and am able to shoot at her before she can shoot at me. The nuclear energy hits the gun, creating a much bigger bomb than expected, and Izzi flies backward into the empty pews. The gun falls to the ground by Nate’s feet.