Dirty Mirror

by R S Penney

  “And what did you say?”

  Soft laughter was Cara's first response to that. “I was a good Justice Keeper,” she said. “A bit out of step with my colleagues, sure, but I believed in what we stood for. You want to know my response? I spat in Slade's face.”

  “What changed?” Jack murmured.

  “They took me to a room where my own corpse was stretched out on the floor, its skin glowing as the Nassai I carried grew more and more desperate for a living host. I reached out to Bond the symbiont again, but Slade stopped me. He told me that if I chose to serve the Inzari, they would give me a much more powerful symbiont, but if I refused, I would be killed and my soul would be thrown into a void of endless darkness, cut off from everything I'd ever loved for all eternity.”

  Cara slumped against the wall, sliding downward until her bottom hit the floor. Then she drew her legs up and hugged them. “Do you understand now?” she asked. “The Inzari did nothing to coerce my obedience; they simply provided the right incentive.”

  It was…fascinating.

  Jack wasn't sure what to make of all this, but if Cara was telling the truth, it would confirm his suspicion that some part of the human consciousness continued to exist after death. He could already feel himself getting excited, and that was a bad thing. His mind could spin all sorts of hypotheses, but it was time to be a scientist, and a scientist would approach this whole situation with guarded skepticism.

  Biting his lip, Jack closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said with a nod. “Let's start with the obvious question. What makes you so sure the Overseers could make good on their threat.”

  “Because they're gods.”

  “I highly doubt that.”

  With her mouth agape, Cara looked up to blink at the ceiling. “I stand before you as living proof!” she insisted. “The Inzari killed me and then restored me to life. What else could do that?”

  Cassi sat forward with her hands on her knees, her face scrunched up in obvious disgust. “They didn't kill you,” she said. “They killed the original Cara Sinthel, and you are just a clone.”

  “Oh, you're very wrong about that.”

  “Really? Prove it.”

  “I have Cara's memories.”

  Rising gracefully with a soft sigh, Cassi paced across the room in high heels that clicked on the floor tiles. “So, they scanned Cara's memory engrams and then duplicated them. It doesn't prove anything.”

  “All of her memories,” Cara insisted. “Including the brief period where I was dead. I remember it quite well: the light and warmth, a feeling of absolute calm serenity. It was like nothing I'd ever experienced; I was connected to everything, and yet I was still Cara, still me. I remember feeling free. It was like I could see the universe in its entirety, know it completely from the moment of the Big Bang all the way through to its conclusion.

  “And then suddenly, I was ripped away from all that, trapped in a cramped little space that I didn't recognize as my own body. When I finally got my bearings, I thought it was all a vivid dream or some drug-induced hallucination, but my Nassai was gone…and they showed me my other body with a knife through its chest.”

  “That doesn't prove anything,” Cassi insisted. Jack couldn't blame her for feeling skeptical; even if Cara was telling the truth, there were a dozen possible explanations for what she had experienced. Still, it wouldn't be wise to jump to any conclusions.

  Pressing his lips together, Jack closed his eyes. He let out a deep breath. “Cassi, I think we should consider the possibility that she might be telling the truth.”

  His partner whirled around to look him up and down with a glare that could peel strips off his skin. “You can't be serious!” she snapped. “Jack, they rebuilt Cara's brain! They could have implanted any memories they wanted!”

  Backing away with his hands raised defensively, Jack stared at her with his mouth hanging open. “I'm just keeping an open mind,” he said. “We don't know enough about how the human mind works or whether there is some part of it that survives after death.”

  “So what? We should start worshiping the Overseers?”

  “I didn't say that!”

  Cara threw her head back with a peal of soft laughter. “See how easily you turn on one another?” She grunted as she got to her feet, dusting off her track pants. “It goes well beyond proof of life and death, Jack Hunter.”

  The tiny, silver-haired woman strode toward him with an expression that sent chills down his spine. “I serve the Inzari because they are morally superior to us,” she went on. “They bring unity instead of this divisiveness.”

  “What you call divisiveness, I call individuality.”

  Cara turned to face the window, unconsciously touching the collar that prevented her from using her powers. “Call it what you will,” she said. “But unity is the reason why my side will prevail in the end.”

  It was time to end this interrogation; never let the subject see that you were rattled; that was one of the cardinal rules. More to the point, Jack suspected that he couldn't get anything more useful out of Cara anyway. She had left him with a lot to think on.

  Could the Overseers really bring people back from the dead? It seemed impossible, but…No. Actually, it didn't seem impossible, and maybe that was the problem. Death was one of those things that people just didn't question. When you were gone, that was it. But Jack Hunter questioned everything.

  He had no firm belief in any kind of afterlife – just a niggling feeling that there was more to existence than what he could perceive with his physical senses – but he wasn't so opposed to the idea that he was willing to dismiss it out of hand.

  Maybe Cassi was right; maybe this Cara was just the clone of a woman who had lost her life years ago. A clone with brain patterns duplicated so precisely it reconstructed her entire personality. But maybe that wasn't the point. Maybe the totality of everything that was Cara included the woman in that cell and the woman who had died years ago and something else that connected both of them.

  But he was sure of one thing.

  The Overseers were not gods.

  He had no solid argument to back up that position. Just a feeling. A feeling that said anything that claimed the mantle of godhood should be above the disgusting displays of violence he had seen from the Overseers. Besides, it wouldn't matter if they were. If the only way to get into Heaven was to violate his conscience, then Jack Hunter was going straight to Hell.

  Chapter 19

  A long lunch in which she'd fielded questions from Tesia – you couldn't be blamed for thinking the woman wanted to be a reporter more than she wanted to be a baker – left Melissa feeling even more tired than she had been that morning. She was burned out, and that made the prospect of having yet another difficult conversation less than appealing to say the least. But she owed her friends this much.

  Melissa was beginning to suspect that they might have pieced some of this together on their own. Director Andalon had been kind enough to e-mail her a summary of what they had learned from Brinton. A shiver went through her when she thought about it. Just two weeks ago, she would have insisted on being part of that interrogation, but after the incident at the university, she was more than happy to avoid Brinton whenever possible. Still…The Overseers could bring people back from the dead? And duplicate people? That would explain Isara.

  When she pushed the front door open, she saw, on her right, the staircase that led up to the second floor. The hallway that ran alongside that staircase to the kitchen at the back of the house was being vacuumed by a small robot about the size of a footstool.

  “Is everyone here?” Melissa called out.

  “In the kitchen!” her father responded.

  She shut the door with a deep breath and braced herself for a dozen questions that she probably couldn't answer. But her father more than anyone else needed to know what she knew. He had loved Jena.

  “Sorry I'm late,” Melissa said, stepping into the kitchen. “I got caught up with someo
ne who…Does everyone on this planet idolize Keepers?”

  “You don't want to meet the ones who don't,” Anna said.

  She sat on the kitchen table with her knees together, smiling into her own lap. “I'm sure you'll get used to it soon enough,” she said. “So…Your dad said you had something to tell us?”

  Jack slouched in a chair with his hands on his thighs, blinking as he stared up at the ceiling. “I think she just wanted to have a party,” he teased. “Station Twelve crew unite! Can I get a what-what?”

  Her father had his back turned as he stood over the counter, stirring a cup of coffee. “Very Nineties, Jack,” he said. “Good to see you're still listening to your father's music.”

  “My father's music was Fallout Boy.”

  “Still, it's-”

  Closing her eyes, Melissa took a deep breath and then stepped forward. “Isara isn't Jena,” she interrupted. “They may look the same, but they are two different people. My Nassai doesn't remember doing any of the things Isara did.”

  “Well, at least there's that much,” Anna said. “So, what does that mean in terms of our investigation?”

  Jack exhaled slowly. “It means we have to consider an unappealing possibility.” He slid his chair back over the floor tiles and stood up with a grunt. “Maybe The Overseers can create duplicates-”

  “Are we sure the Overseers made her?” Anna asked. “Leyria has had cloning tech for over two centuries now.”

  “True, but who else would-”

  Melissa tuned them out, allowing them to discuss the matter among themselves. This wasn't an argument she wanted any part of; it didn't matter where Isara came from. What mattered was that someone had violated the form of a person she had come to love like a part of her own family.

  Someone had taken the face of a woman she looked up to like a surrogate mother and made it into the face of an enemy. That was something she couldn't forgive. Melissa was a person of faith, but she had never been offended by religions other than her own. She had never been threatened by Allah or Vishnu or the Leyrian Companion. But for the Overseers to call themselves gods in light of all they had done? That sickened her.

  She made her way to the living room, where the pastel-blue walls looked a bit off in the gray light of an overcast afternoon and the glass coffee table reflected a window that displayed a cloudy sky.

  Melissa fell onto a comfy couch, setting her elbows on her thighs and covering her face with both hands. Is this what it means to be an adult? she wondered. Feeling strung out all the time.

  “You're upset about Jena.”

  She looked up to find her younger sister standing at the foot of the stairs in green jeans and a black t-shirt. Claire wore her dark hair up in a bun. Dear Lord, she was only ten and she was already starting to look like a teenager. She still had the body of a child, but there were little things.

  “How do you know that?” Melissa asked.

  Claire folded her arms and marched into the living room with her head down. “I'm not stupid, you know,” she began. “I hear you and Dad when you talk. There's someone who looks like Jena?”

  Pressing the heel of one hand to her forehead, Melissa groaned. “Yeah,” she said in a strained voice. “It's the same woman Anna fought a few months ago in Tennessee. She's very dangerous.”

  “How come they look the same?”

  “I don't know.”

  Claire plunked herself down on the white carpet and stretched out her legs. The girl wore a lazy smile as she shook her head. “Do you ever think that maybe if you guys just leave these aliens alone, they'll leave you alone?”

  Melissa sat back against the couch cushions, turning her face up to the ceiling. “All right, Claire,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Think long and hard and then tell me why that's a bad idea.”

  “I don't know.”

  “Where are we?”

  “Home?”

  Melissa gestured to the window, where she could see the front lawn and the houses across the street under a thick blanket of clouds. Aside from the fact that the architecture was a little different, it might have been any neighbourhood on Earth. She still marveled at that. The similarities… “Be more specific,” she said. “Where are we?”

  The girl frowned as she looked down at herself, her brow furrowing. “Do you mean Leyria?” she asked. “The planet?”

  “The planet,” Melissa said. “Which the Overseers specifically terraformed to be a near-perfect copy of Earth. They moved our people across the galaxy and settled us on dozens of worlds. Do you really think they'll just leave us alone?”

  “I didn't think of that,” Claire said.

  Melissa stood up, heaving out a deep breath, and carefully maneuvered around the coffee table. She made her way over to the window. “Well, it's my job to think about that stuff now,” she said. “Like Jena did.”

  “Why would they copy Jena?”

  Closing her eyes, Melissa let out a soft hiss. “I don't know,” she answered. “They seem to be trying to mess with us. Maybe they think that we wouldn't be willing to fight someone who looks like one of our own.”

  With spatial awareness, she could perceive her sister sitting on the carpet behind the coffee table. Claire was tense. In fact, something in her posture reminded Melissa of the time her little sister had insisted on watching The Lady in the Window only to have some pretty terrible nightmares later.

  “It's gonna be all right.”

  “I know,” Claire said petulantly.

  Bracing her hands on the windowsill, Melissa hunched over. She shook her head with a sigh. “You know, you could let me be a big sister just once,” she said. “It wouldn't kill you.”

  To her surprise, Claire got up and came toward her. Melissa turned around just in time to let her slam into her with a fierce hug. “You are a big sister,” Claire said. “You're the best big sister.”

  “Thank you.”

  Mere moments later, Jack came out of the kitchen and paced through the hallway between the living room and the staircase. “We'll go over it tomorrow,” he said, glancing back over his shoulder.

  Harry came out behind him with arms folded, frowning and shaking his head. “The pair of you are going to drive me nuts,” he said. “You realize that we don't have time for whatever it is you're fighting about.”

  Jack said nothing.

  He just went to the door, pulled it open with a violent twist of the knob and left. Melissa had a sinking feeling that she had missed something important. She absolutely hated it when her loved ones fought.

  Harry turned around. “Well?”

  Anna emerged from the kitchen with her head down, her cheeks flushed to a faint shade of pink. “Well what?” she snapped. “You can't force emotions to just line up the way you want them to, Harry.”

  Her father had his back turned, but Melissa could easily imagine the glare that he directed at Anna. She had been on the receiving end of it a million times. “I'm aware of that,” Harry said. “But you two shift uncomfortably and barely acknowledge each other's presence. I made it a point to let you sort out your own drama, but we have much bigger problems, and I need you two to work together.”

  Oh no…

  This was one of Harry's cop speeches. Tuck in your shirt, and do your job. He was famous for giving them to officers of the Ottawa PD who failed to live up to his lofty expectations. They usually went hand in hand with one of his glares. Melissa could recall the many times she had received a lecture just like this one; they almost never produced the result Harry was looking for.

  To her credit, Anna didn't snap or snarl. She just looked up at Harry with hard blue eyes, and somehow – despite the fact that she was barely five-foot-three – she seemed a giant. “I'll thank you to let me sort out my own personal life, Harry.”

  It wasn't cold; it wasn't mean.

  It was just a simple statement of fact.

  Harry stepped aside.

  As soon as he did, Anna rushed down the hallway to the door. She paused
there for a moment, taking hold of the knob. “It'll be all right,” she said almost reluctantly. “Jack and I will sort it out…somehow.”

  She left without another word.

  Harry stood in the hallway with his shoulders slumped, closing his eyes as he let out a deep breath. “Kids,” he muttered. “How did I end up with four of them?”

  “What happened?” Melissa asked.

  “Neither one has been very forthcoming with details,” Harry replied. “What makes you think today would be any different? I know pretty much what you know. They were in love, one of them rejected the other…”

  Melissa felt her mouth tighten as she looked down at the floor. “Yeah,” she said, nodding. “But it's so obvious how they both feel! Someone needs to sit them down and make them sort this out.”

  Her father squeezed his eyes shut and grunted his agreement. “What do you think I was trying to do?” he exclaimed. “It was stupid of me to think I could change anything. They have to work this out on their own.”

  “Yeah…”

  “So…” Harry said. “Wanna help me make dinner?”

  “Sure.”

  As she walked into the Science Lab, Larani found Dr. Atero standing so that she saw him in profile, frowning at the screen on the wall that displayed schematics of the cloaking technology. With any luck, the man had called her down here because he had found something useful. A countermeasure or a way to duplicate the technology.

  The work table along the sidewall was clear, which surprised her. She would have expected Atero to be tinkering with the cloaking devices, but he seemed to be focusing on their design specs instead. “I trust you have those things under lock and key,” she said.

  “Yes, ma'am.”

  Larani blew out a breath, then reached up to scrub fingers through her thick black hair. “All right. What do you know?” she asked. “Do we have anything solid on where these damn things came from?”