by Beth Goobie
She got to her feet in stages, as if each small movement carried immense weight. Then, without looking back, she came slowly toward Nellie and stood stiffly before her. Silence rode the room, pressing its full weight down upon the girls. “So what do we do now?” the shorn-headed girl asked dully.
“There’s one more trap and then the exit,” Nellie replied, her voice coming to her as if from a long way off. “But sometimes there are stray drones. Walk ahead of me and do what I say, and maybe I can get us both out alive.”
The girl’s eyes flicked toward Nellie’s gun. “I’ll walk behind—”
The fine bright lines holding Nellie together finally exploded and she jabbed the girl’s chest with the gun, following her as she backed away. “I don’t know who you are, or why you stepped out of my dreams,” she hissed. “But don’t think I’m going to let you fuck with my head. I know this place like I know every nerve in my body. You listen to me and do exactly what I say, or you’ll be as dead as your boyfriend.”
The shorn-headed girl’s eyes slitted and slid briefly across Nellie’s face. Again her shoulders sagged, and Nellie could feel her fighting an urge to turn back to the boy’s body. Then she hugged herself tightly. “Over there?” she asked, pointing to the exit.
“Yup.” Keeping her gun trained on the girl’s back, Nellie followed her through the doorway. Two left turns, she thought grimly, double-back, trap, and we’re out. And then they can do whatever they want with this bitch. Sending her mind down the passageway and around the next curve, she probed carefully but came up blank. Her focus was shot. Two left turns, she reminded herself, double-back, trap. Two left turns—
“We came here to rescue you,” said the shorn-headed girl.
“Ssssst,” Nellie hissed, shrugging off the words. She had to stay focused.
“Didn’t you hear what I said?” The girl turned slightly, giving her a contemptuous look. “Deller and I came to rescue you, and you killed him.”
The words sank in. “Rescue me?” Dumbfounded, Nellie de-manded, “From what?”
Her eyes raked the girl’s face, searching for meaning, the reason the Goddess had brought the two of them together in this maze. Sullen, the tears sliding down her face, the shorn-headed girl stared back. Nellie took a small quick breath, her eyes blinking rapidly. This stranger looked so much like her that she was almost a mirror image. Her face was a bit broader and her hair so short they would never be mistaken for each other, but the resemblance was uncanny.
“Look,” she said tersely, cutting off the shorn-headed girl as she opened her mouth to reply. Up in the Masters’ Room, someone was sure to be watching. Wasting time in conversation would count as points against her final tally. “We’ve got to get out of here,” Nellie snapped, prodding the other girl with the gun. “C’mon, get your ass moving.”
For a moment the shorn-headed girl stared at her, eyes slitted, then turned and started forward. “Left,” said Nellie when they reached the next fork, and “Left” again at the one after that. “Okay, there,” she said, pointing to a curve just ahead. “It should double-back, and then we’ll be at the trap.”
The girl nodded without looking at her. “There’s a door in the wall right there,” she said, pointing to the left. “It’ll take you around the double-back into another tunnel. That tunnel will take you past the trap to the exit.”
Astounded, Nellie gaped at her. “How d’you know that?”
The girl shrugged. “I can hear vibes. A door sounds different than a wall.”
Once again Nellie found herself gaping at the other girl. A door sounds different than a wall? Was that possible? But even if it was, why would the shorn-headed girl tell her something helpful? Besides ... Nellie scowled, shifting her feet. Just the thought of sneaking through doors in the maze walls, off the path and disobeying orders, gave her the creepy-crawlies. And she had to complete every trap to get full points.
“Get moving,” she said, prodding the shorn-headed girl again with her gun. With a shrug, the other girl complied. Carefully they proceeded through the double-back, and when the holograph of the multiple car crash hit them Nellie was ready, waiting for the drones that came crawling, beheaded and missing limbs, from the wreckage. Blood oozed everywhere. Hooking an arm around the shorn-headed girl’s neck, Nellie pulled her in against her own body, using her as a shield as she fired at oncoming drones. Rocks flew at them, then bottles and broken car parts, and for once Nellie was completely protected as she picked off the enemy one by one. Finally the holograph faded and she counted the drones collapsed along the corridor. Eight. Not bad, considering she’d had a hostage to control. Sliding her arm free of the shorn-headed girl’s neck, Nellie gave her a shove.
“Get moving,” she said again. “We’re out of here.”
Whimpering, the shorn-headed girl stumbled and almost fell. Blood poured from a gash in her forehead, and her arms and legs were covered with cuts. Nellie’s eyes narrowed as she considered, one hand hovering over her belt. Should she? But what if there was a surprise attack at the exit and she needed the adrenalin capsule herself? On the other hand, bringing in the hostage upright and walking on her own could add points to her total.
“Don’t worry about the blood,” she said gruffly, pressing the button on her belt that released the capsule. “They’ll fix you with the Flesh Healer when we get out of here. Take this. It’ll get you going again.”
Her eyes on the capsule, the shorn-headed girl hesitated, then reached for it. She swallowed, and Nellie counted off seconds, watching her come back to life. Shoulders straightening, her breath evening out, the shorn-headed girl stood staring at the wounds on her arms as if unable to believe she could no longer feel them. For the moment she appeared to have forgotten the dead boy in the tunnel behind them. A slow grin crept across Nellie’s face. Whatever was in that capsule, it did the trick every time.
“Feel better?” she asked.
Giving her a sideways glance, the other girl nodded. Then they proceeded, the shorn-headed girl ahead, Nellie following, toward the exit.
Twelve
NELLIE SAT IN THE observation booth, watching the shorn-headed girl on the monitoring screen. At her elbow lay several cafeteria trays loaded with dirty plates and utensils. She’d been here since breakfast doing the staring thing, and now it was early evening. Wistfully, she glanced at her watch. Over in the Advanced unit, cadets would be piling into the Common Room for movie night, punching up throw pillows and getting settled. With a morose sigh, she laid her head on the desk and watched her hand languorously spin a pen.
This was the third day in a row that she’d been summoned to K Block and ordered to sit and observe. Every four hours she was given two meal trays and told to deliver one to the shorn-headed girl in the next room, then return to her post behind the monitoring screen. There was a log book for recording her observations at fifteen-minute intervals, but after the first few hours all she’d written was “ditto.” The shorn-headed girl was a mind-numbing bore to observe, lying absolutely still hour after hour, curled on the bed with her back to the screen. Not that there was much else to do in the small room except use the toilet, which stood fully exposed in one corner, but the shorn-headed girl didn’t even get up and walk around. She didn’t even shift on the bed.
Sweet Goddess, thought Nellie, grimacing. That girl could be dead and there would be no way of telling. No matter how bad things got, she would never lie down and give up like that.
A burst of static erupted from an intercom posted in the wall to her right and a voice barked, “Cadet Kinnan, come in.”
Eagerly Nellie leaned toward the intercom and jabbed the speak button. “I’m here,” she said. “This is Cadet Kinnan, I’m here.”
“Yes,” observed the intercom. “You certainly are, cadet. No need to bash the speak button like that. Sets off static at this end.”
Nellie’s cheeks burned. “Yes, sir,” she said crisply. “I’m sorry, sir.”
“How’s your subject?�
� asked the voice after a minute pause. As far as Nellie could tell it belonged to Sgt. Drump, a tall lean man who’d given her initial instructions three days ago. She hadn’t seen or heard from him since.
“The same, sir,” she said quickly. “Just lying on the bed.”
“Huh,” Sgt. Drump grunted. “All right, cadet. Go in and talk to her.”
“Beg your pardon, sir?” Disbelieving, Nellie gaped at the intercom.
“You heard me, cadet,” Sgt. Drump said irritably. “Go in and talk to the subject.”
“But what should I say?” Nellie’s eyes darted to the still form on the bed.
“That’s up to you, cadet,” snapped the sargeant. “Your task is to get her up and moving around, interacting with you. We’ll have you under observation in case you need back-up.”
The intercom clicked off, leaving Nellie staring wordlessly at the monitoring screen. Go in and talk to the shorn-headed girl? Why in the name of the Goddess would K Block want her to do that? She wasn’t Westcott, trained in psychiatric creepy-crawlies. In fact, this whole place gave her the creepy-crawlies, with its lab-coated doctors scurrying around and drones delivering children here and there. Whenever she saw other kids in the hall, Nellie’s eyes hit the floor. On her first day here, she’d made the mistake of peeking through a window in a door she was passing. She’d seen children in that room, wired to various machines. As she’d watched, stunned, a child had metamorphosed into a figure of bright light.
With a shudder, Nellie shook off the memory. The creepy-crawlies, K Block was loaded with them. The sooner she was out of here, the better. Getting to her feet, she walked to the door that opened onto the shorn-headed girl’s cell. At her approach it slid open, and she passed into the brightly lit room. As soon as she was through, the door swished shut behind her. And shut it would remain, Nellie realized, fighting the urge to glance back at it, until Sgt. Drump or someone else decided to let her out.
Taking a deep breath, she looked around. Painted off-white, the cell contained a bed, toilet and sink, and a few yards’ walking room. Overhead, a wired-over bare bulb glowed beside a security alarm. Nellie sent a brief scowl at the alarm. That damn sound again. All she had to do was close her eyes and it would place her anywhere in Detta — a classroom, a bedroom, even the cans.
We came here to rescue you. Unbidden, the words came to Nellie’s mind and her eyes settled thoughtfully on the shorn-headed girl. Crossing to the bed, she perched at the foot.
“Y’know how you said you came to rescue me?” she asked, trying to speak casually.
Curled tightly on the bed, the shorn-headed girl gave no response. Dead, Nellie thought. She might as well be. “Well,” she said, plunging on grimly. “It was a weird thing to say, and I’ve been wondering ever since what you meant.”
She paused, waiting, but again there was no response, not a shift in position, not even a change in breathing. A scowl crossed Nellie’s face, and then she straightened and tried to infuse her voice with bright cheerful interest. The Westcott routine.
“Y’know,” she said, “I’ve lived here for four years now. And it’s great, it really is. The meals are yummy, the cadets are fab friendly, and I get to learn lots of interesting things. And the best thing is that I don’t have to bother with the stuff normal kids get stuck with, like family and school and stupid clubs. You must know about that, don’t you? I mean, you were stuck doing that crap, weren’t you? Living with a mother and going to—”
“Fuck off,” said the shorn-headed girl.
Openmouthed, Nellie stared at the figure on the bed. The shorn-headed girl’s back had shifted slightly with her words, but otherwise she remained curled into herself, with her face to the wall. “Excuuuuuse me?” Nellie drawled, holding herself carefully in check. Sgt. Drump hadn’t mentioned anything about pounding the shit out of this kid.
“You bore me,” mumbled the shorn-headed girl. “You’re probably exactly the same in all your levels. Fixed. And stupid. The one thing I never figured was that you’d be stupid.”
With that she fell silent, leaving Nellie wheezing in stunned amazement. “I could take you,” she spluttered, clenching her fists. “I know ten ways easy to kill you with my bare hands.”
“Like you took me last time?” muttered the other girl.
Fury had Nellie up and dancing on tiptoe. “If I was given the order,” she hissed, “I’d do it now. I would, I would.”
“I know you would,” the shorn-headed girl said to the wall. “It has to be the implants that did this to you. I’ve been thinking and thinking about it, and that’s all I can come up with.”
Nellie stood riveted with rage. “Everyone,” she bellowed, “has implants.”
“Not like you do,” said the shorn-headed girl. “I’ve seen your file.”
“How would you see my file?” Nellie shrieked.
“It was right behind mine,” said the shorn-headed girl. “Alphabetically you come right after me. That’s because we’re twins, identical almost, except your face is skinnier. That means we were one egg once. The same person.”
“Twins?” Dumbfounded, Nellie gaped at the other girl’s back. No one had ever mentioned a twin to her, not even her mother. At least, she couldn’t remember her mother mentioning a twin. “Okay,” said Nellie, her eyes raking the other girl’s back. “If you’re my twin, what’s your name?”
“Nellie,” said the shorn-headed girl.
“That’s my name,” Nellie snapped.
“Yours is Nellie Joanne. I’m Nellie Joan.” Still curled into herself, the girl didn’t even glance at Nellie.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Nellie said flatly. “You don’t call both twins the same name.”
“You do if you’ve got special plans for them,” said the shorn-headed girl.
“What special plans?” Fear surged through Nellie’s gut.
“I dunno,” said the shorn-headed girl. “I think Mom wrecked them when she took me and escaped to the Outbacks. Otherwise, who knows? I might’ve been stuck here like you.”
“Mom?” asked Nellie, suddenly intent. “What’s her name?”
“Lydia,” the shorn-headed girl said softly. “And she’s dead. Too.”
A soft ooze rushed Nellie’s legs. It was true then — this girl was her twin. They both had a mother named Lydia, and that was too much of a coincidence. Lydia Stella Kinnan. With all the things Nellie had forgotten about her mother, she did remember her name. But the shorn-headed girl said she was dead. A cold emptiness opened in Nellie, but she brushed it away. So what if her mother was dead? Lots of people were dead.
“Anyway,” the shorn-headed girl continued quietly, “I’m telling you the truth about the implants. You’re loaded. I could’ve been like that too, I guess, but Mom got me away in time. Here, I’ll show you.” Rolling over, she sat up. Crease marks lined her pale face and her eyes were red and bleary. With a sigh, she pressed her hands to the top of her head and flattened the stubble that covered her scalp. “C’mere,” she said tersely.
“Why?” asked Nellie, suddenly uneasy.
“Just c’mere and look,” said her twin. “Don’t worry, I don’t have a bomb in my head. I just want you to see the scars from the operations where they put the implants in my brain.”
“In your brain?” repeated Nellie, aghast. She knew about ID implants, of course, and there was the birth control implant every cadet received at the age of thirteen. Other than that, she’d heard of tracking devices for family pets and criminals on parole. Mothers were encouraged to have these devices inserted into their children in case they were lost or kidnaped, but the implants were placed in the leg, not the brain.
“Would you hurry up and look?” demanded her twin, still sitting with her hands pressed to her head. Reluctantly Nellie stepped forward and peered at her scalp.
“Nope,” she snapped and stepped back quickly. “Can’t see a thing. Nothing, nothing at all.” Her heart thundered deep and slow, like a storm brewing underground. T
his was giving her the creepy-crawlies, it really was.
“Then feel it,” said her twin, still pressing down her hair. “Run your finger over the top of my head. You’ll feel the scar, thick and wide, like a worm.”
Rooted to the spot, Nellie simply stared.
“Look,” her twin said impatiently, not looking up. “They doused me for lice before they put me in here. They even stuck things up my insides, checking me out. You won’t catch anything, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
A flush hit Nellie and she swallowed. “I am not,” she huffed, “worried about lice.” But still she remained frozen, unable to move toward the bed. What was it about this conversation that had her so uptight? So what if her twin had scars running across her head? No big deal, it could happen to anyone. Swallowing hard, Nellie leaned forward and ran a finger over the top of the other girl’s scalp. Her stomach heaved once, a dense oily wave. The scar was there all right, thick and wormy, just like her twin had said.
“There’s one on the side too.” Grabbing Nellie’s hand, the shorn-headed girl traced her fingertip along a slight ridge that ran the left side of her head. “And the back.” Mercilessly she yanked Nellie’s hand to the back of her head and made her feel another thick ridge.
“Okay,” said Nellie shakily, jerking her hand free. “So you’ve got bumps on your head.”
“There were supposed to be five.” Lifting her head, the shorn-headed girl stared intently at Nellie. “I think that’s when the implants really kick in. With three it doesn’t work so good, but I can feel them doing something.” She gave an uneasy glance around the room. “Ever since I got into this place, it’s as if half my brain isn’t working.”
“Yeah?” croaked Nellie, taking a step back. “So?”