Book I - ch 33. Myself and I

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Sarah was sure someone was dead right outside her door.

“Please don’t faint,” Robyn whispered.

Robyn’s words would’ve been funny under any other circumstances, because Robyn herself looked on the brink of passing out.

Was that even her sister? What reason could Robyn have for threatening her?

“Robyn, can we talk about this?” Pegasus’ voice surprised her.

“Why can’t I have a moment to think?” Robyn sounded both exasperated and angry.

“What do you need to think about?” Pegasus asked.

Robyn must’ve done something so she didn’t have to continue pressing the com button.

“Why are you doing this?” Sarah asked.

As soon as she asked the question, she realized the answer was easy if what Pegasus said was true. “Are you really not my sister?”

“Robyn, the least you could do is tell her the truth.”

“Really?” Robyn shouted, stepping back towards the com as if she could reach in and pull out Pegasus by the throat.

It was such a normal outburst for her sister that Sarah was even more confused.

There shouldn’t be a reason for Robyn to point a gun at her—unless said gun contained water. This one wouldn’t have anything as harmless. Water pistols didn’t need silencers.

Tears flowed from Robyn’s eyes. “I lied.”

“About what?” There had been so many lies already.

“When they first brought you in.” Robyn gave her an apologetic smile. “I told them you were my sister, my Sarah. You’re not… As much as I wanted you to be, you’re not my sister.”

Any possible response vanished into the turmoil of Sarah’s thoughts.

The gun, though no longer pointed directly at her, remained an obvious reminder of how insane it all was.

“You’re not my Sarah because I’m not your Robyn. But I wanted to be. I wanted so much to pretend that this could be real, at least for a little while.”

It didn’t sound like an explanation. It sounded like more nonsense Sarah couldn’t wrap her brain around. Maybe it was the meds talking. Or maybe someone dosed her instead of Robyn and she was the one hallucinating.

“Why the charade, Robyn, even now?” Pegasus asked, intruding on her theories. “Was it for our benefit? Or for hers? Was it for yourself?”

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Robyn said.

“I know you… At least part of you.” There was a gentleness to his voice that hadn’t been there a second ago. “I know this hasn’t been easy. It can’t have been. You can’t be so different a person and still fit in so perfectly in someone else’s life. Let us help you fix this. Please, it’s not too late. Not yet.”

Robyn laughed. At least Sarah thought she was laughing, her face was distorted like she was in pain. Robyn struck out and hit the com button with the butt of her gun.

She cradled the gun to her and supported her good shoulder against the wall. “Funny that they’d send him to talk to me. But not unexpected when he’s the one with the most hours in the crisis center.” She pressed the hand with the gun to her forehead, wincing. “Or was that the other one? It’s so hard keeping track of all this stuff, and the meds don’t help.”

“I think they sent him because he’s your friend.”

Robyn scoffed.

“He’s not your friend?” If she could get Robyn to keep talking, would something eventually make sense?

“They might’ve done better asking Gabrielle. But she’d just as soon shoot us both and be done with it.”

Confusion was feeling like a permanent state to her. “Who’s Gabrielle?”

“Scorpion, that’s her name. It’s weird, in my mind there was never any question who I was closest to… And here I find I’m supposed to have been torn between her and Pegasus. I don’t get it. Why would he be my best friend?” The com beeped, and Robyn shot it a murderous look. “It’s my life and I don’t recognize it.”

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” Sarah said.

Robyn smiled, which looked strange because she was on the verge of tears. “They chose poorly, that’s all I’m saying.”

“And what about me? Am I the wrong person to talk to you, too?”

“You’re the wrong version of you.”

The com insisted.

“Doesn’t know when to quit, does he? Never did.”

Sarah rose from her seat, but didn’t move any further when Robyn repositioned the gun.

“You talk about all these people like you know them. You talk about me and things only we should know, but Pegasus said you were an impostor. Are you Robyn or aren’t you? Are you my sister or not?”

Robyn laughed, dabbing at her eyes with the back of her hand. “I am Robyn, but whether I’m your sister is debatable.”

“Unless you’re saying one of us is adopted, I don’t get it.”

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Sarah should be more wary of the gun, but she still couldn’t believe her sister would ever shoot her. And she couldn’t see the person in front of her as anyone but Robyn.

Even the way Robyn looked at her right now was exactly what she’d expect of her sister.

How could she be Robyn and not be?

“Lift up your shirt, show me your stomach,” Sarah said before she thought it through.

“Are you looking for the scar?” Robyn asked, pulling up her shirt to reveal what had once been a gash right above her navel. “I got this that weekend we went to aunt Ruth’s and that boy with the strange hair pushed me off the deck. You were almost six.”

Sarah’s mouth opened, then shut again. She felt like a broken record, saying again and again that she didn’t understand. But she didn’t.

Another complaint from the com sounded and Robyn relented, pushing a couple of buttons.

“Robyn, please don’t do that.” There was an edge to Pegasus’ voice.

Robyn looked like she was about to stick her tongue out at him. “Fine, but we’re having a conversation here and you’re interfering.”

“And you didn’t answer my question.” Sarah clenched her fists, squeezing the towel. “Are you my sister or not?”

Robyn shook her head. “But I’m close enough.”

“What does that—” A memory of her questioning Pegasus about their excessive security measures came to mind. A place where fingerprints or iris scans could be fooled. Where proving your identity included detailed questionnaires about your life.

Did they really have a reason to be afraid of doppelgangers? Where would one even come from?

It hadn’t escaped her notice that Pegasus kept calling the supposed impostor by her sister’s name.

Alien body snatchers, shapeshifters, evil twins, parallel dimensions, clones…

If she was going into the realm of the impossible, what where the options?

“You were better than the last one, I’ll give you that,” Pegasus said.

“I don’t know anything about that.”

“Are you working with the New Nation?”

Robyn laughed. “You do love that question. But you forget I know you. I know that stupid question is just that.”

“And what about the attacks going on right now, do you know anything about that?”

“It’s chaos, isn’t it? Bombs, fires, natural disasters, they’re all the same in the end. And the New Nation is exactly what you take them for, narrow-minded little insects… But they are great at chaos.”

“Is that what you want? Chaos?”

Robyn met Sarah’s gaze. “No. I want everything to be okay.”

She muted the com again, cutting off Pegasus’ reply before he’d gotten more than a syllable out.

Sarah wasn’t sure which was worse, if her sister was a traitor, or if this woman was not her sister. She acted and sounded like Robyn even now, so how could she be anyone else?

Sarah blinked away tears she hadn’t noticed. Could her sister be on the side of the bad guys?

“I really don’t understand.”

Robyn sighed. “You were never supposed to understand. You were supposed to be dead.”

Sarah didn’t think the words had the appropriate impact. Sure, she forgot to breathe for a moment, and she couldn’t speak even if she tried. But she thought the words should have felt more like ripping her heart out in one fell swoop than the insidious sensation slowly squeezing out more tears.

It felt surreal, like watching a storm on the other side of a window. Everything would be fine as long as the glass didn’t break.

Robyn was shaking her head, as if replaying her own demons in her mind. “You’d be dead, and I’d be here. It wouldn’t matter that I was heartbroken. And I would’ve been perfect… in the perfect position… But you had to sit down on the couch, didn’t you?”

“That was you at dinner?” The sister who told her it was her turn to answer the phone? “How long has it been you?”

“That was the day of the switch,” Robyn confessed.

“Before dinner? Before the attack?” Sarah wiped at her eyes. “They said you almost died.”

“It was a necessary gamble. And you surviving did help. They were so focused on you being alive, on you being the target, that they took me in their stride. And I guess I was glad you survived. I thought it’d be okay as long as I wasn’t around you much. But you had to go and say something to Pegasus, didn’t you?”

What did she say?

“Why would you even tell him that much?”

Pegasus started acting weird after she let slip what Robyn told her about how they met. Was that it?

“What is it about this one that’s so special? There’s not much difference from the one I know, but then how can he get under your skin so easily? I don’t see it, I really don’t.” Exasperated, Robyn tossed an annoyed look at the com when it beeped.

Sarah stared at the gun. It didn’t matter who this person was. It didn’t matter that she’d tried to kill her. There was something else there. “You don’t wanna talk to him, that’s okay. Talk to me. Tell me what you’re doing.”

“I’m stalling.” There was just sadness in her voice this time.

“Why are you stalling?”

She smiled a little. “Because it’s the only thing I can do.”

“What are you getting out of stalling?” Sarah imagined some attack where Robyn would’ve interfered with their defenses or maybe planted a bomb somewhere in the building.

Robyn blinked and a tear ran down her face. She looked as if she wasn’t going to answer, struggling to go through several words before something came out. “You’re so much like my sister.”

Sarah tried not to falter in the face of another piece of incongruent information. It didn’t matter, she insisted, taking the admission at face value. “Tell me about her?”

“I don’t wanna do that.”

A short burst of interference came through the com.

“Robyn, don’t shut us out again,” Pegasus warned. “If you don’t talk to me, how are we supposed to move forward?”

“Maybe we don’t,” Robyn said.

“Don’t you want to find a way out of this? A way that doesn’t end badly for everyone involved?”

“There’s no way out.” Robyn kicked the wall with the heel of her foot as if she’d taken the words literally. “Wasn’t that the point of building this place in a bunker?”

Robyn focused on Sarah, apparently finding her confusion funny. “You didn’t think they’d actually built this place to house a glorified paramilitary force, did you? This was designed for the military during the war. Alternate control center or something like that so they could pick up the pieces and carry on while the world above them burned. I always liked that idea.”

Robyn waved the gun randomly at the walls. “They modified the initial plans when the war ended and there was no end of the world in sight. The joke’s on all of us, I guess. There’s always some war to fight.” She pressed her head to the wall for a moment. “What were we talking about?”

“About finding you a way out,” Pegasus answered.

Sarah had forgotten he was listening in. “You were saying there was no way out. But that can’t be. There’s always one.” She wasn’t sure she believed that. Her current way out rested heavily on whether they’d released hallucinogens into the vents about an hour ago and she was imaging all this.

“Sarah’s right,” Pegasus said.

Robyn shook her head.

“Why not?” Sarah asked. “You can stop whatever it is you’re doing. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

Robyn kept shaking her head. “No way out. No way home.” Her gaze returned to the shadow underneath the door. “I was never going home.”

Sarah followed her gaze. She could no longer pretend that wasn’t blood. Pegasus hadn’t mentioned anything, but surely he knew about it if he’d been outside the door.

Was she a bad person for being relieved that it wasn’t Pegasus dead out there?

“You must know something that can help us,” Pegasus said. “Something worth it.”

“I don’t know half as much as you’d think.”

“If I ask you who you’re working for, will you tell me?”

“Now that’s a tricky one.” Her eyes drifted shut for a moment. “Who do you work for?”

“The W.R.O.”

“And where else would I work? Where else would any of us work, and fight, and die?”

But if Robyn was taking her orders from the W.R.O., how could they be on opposite sides?

Sarah shifted her feet, trying not to draw attention to herself. Since Pegasus was getting some answers, she didn’t want to get in the way.

“Did they tell you to infiltrate us?” he asked.

“Desperate times, desperate measures and all that crap. The puppeteers, as you so fondly call them, are no easier to beat when they stop hiding behind the New Nation.”

“Can you tell me anything about them?”

“Nothing that would help.”

“Robyn…” There was a silence, as if Pegasus were holding his breath on the other end. “You’ve seen it, haven’t you? You must have. The passageway?”

Passageway? To where? Or from where?

Robyn’s eyes stared into the distance, unfocused.

“What does it look like?” Pegasus insisted.

Sarah had given up on hearing a reply when Robyn’s lips parted, her voice hoarse and filled with awe: “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen… And utterly impossible.”