“I can see where you’re going,” Sandra said. “Yes, they were close. No, I don’t think either of them are capable of the crimes you suspect them of committing.”
Though she wondered. Not whether they would intentionally kill. She was certain they wouldn’t. But a ten-dimensional explosion? It had to have been done by someone—or something—with a deep understanding of quantum physics. Alex and Dad wouldn’t have been so stupid as to try to bring back the varcolac, would they? Could they actually have been so foolish as to tamper with those forces again, after it had nearly killed their whole family fifteen years ago?
“If you had to guess where your sister is, if you wanted to find her, where would you go?”
Sandra shook her head. “I honestly don’t know.”
It wasn’t exactly true. She didn’t know where Alex was, but there were places she could look, places from their history. But Alex was her flesh and blood. More than that, really. Alex was her, what she might have been if things had been different. There wasn’t anyone else in the world who shared the same kind of bond that they did. She couldn’t just betray her.
And yet, Sandra was a police officer. It was her duty to report what she knew, sister or no. She felt angry at Alex for putting her in this position. If she was innocent, why had she run? And if she was guilty, why should Sandra cover for her?
Fifteen years ago, Alex had very nearly given her life to save Sandra’s. Alex had been in a wheelchair for months, and ever after, Sandra had felt the imbalance between them. Alex had saved the family when the varcolac would have killed them all. In truth, she had always resented Alex a bit for it. For the special bond she had formed with their father during that time, for the hero status she had enjoyed ever since. For the sense of inferiority Sandra always felt. It sometimes seemed like Alex was the real daughter, while Sandra was just a fluke of nature. A mistake.
Even so, she stayed silent. She owed Alex, and she couldn’t rat her out, not even if it meant her job. On the other hand, she knew the resources the police could bring to bear to track down murderers, and this case would be their first priority. Alex would be caught eventually, whether Sandra helped or not. If she was innocent, it was better for her to come forward and tell her side of the story. If not… Well, if she wasn’t innocent, she would have to accept the consequences.
A sharp knock on the door made Sandra jump. Three men in black suits came in, wearing serious expressions. Two of them were just what Sandra would have expected: tall, well-muscled, dark-suited, with bulges that spoke of lethal weaponry. The third was skinny and balding, with a pockmarked face and an easy, salesman’s smile. Messinger seemed profoundly irritated that they were there.
The third man introduced himself as Sanford Liddle. “Everything I’m about to tell you is classified and protected under the Espionage Act,” he said. “As a United States citizen, you are bound not to share this information with anyone else, no matter what their nationality. Failure to obey this law is punishable, depending on severity, with sentences up to and including life imprisonment or death. Do you understand this restriction?”
Sandra nodded numbly. She wondered if that would actually hold up in court, or if it was just something he said to intimidate people. If so, it was working.
She heard a ping, indicating that Agent Liddle was trying to share a view to her eyejack. She accepted the view, and suddenly she was in a building like a huge warehouse, watching her sister tearing guns out of soldiers’ hands and diffracting bullets around herself. She gasped. She knew that technology, had seen it fifteen years ago, and had thought it destroyed. Was Alex working to revive it? Was she out of her mind?
Then she saw her sister firing into the crowd. What was she doing? She saw a blur that at first seemed like a problem with the video, but no. She had seen that before. Her sister’s bullets tore into the Secretary of Defense and he toppled, but at just that instant Sandra could see his face in the light reflected from the more brightly lit demonstration area. He had no eyes.
By the time the clip was over and her awareness returned to the room around her, Sandra was tight with anger. “She didn’t murder anyone. She probably saved all those people’s lives.”
Liddle held up a hand. “We’re inclined to agree with you,” he said. “But there are two points against her. One, she ran. That doesn’t look good. Two, we’re dealing with technology that not many people understand.” He shrugged. “And your sister appears to be one of them. Whoever made this happen must have been one of those people, and the list is pretty short.”
The two big agents stood on either side of the doorway, flanking the exit. Messinger still sat with her arms crossed, a mutinous expression on her face. She didn’t like her interrogation being taken over.
Liddle sat down across from Sandra. “We have some pieces of the puzzle,” he said. “We know your father was involved with the illegal use of similar technology fifteen years ago.” Sandra tried to protest, but Liddle held up a hand. “And we know that before your fourteenth birthday there was no record of a girl named Sandra Kelley living in your home.”
The silence stretched. Sandra finally broke. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll tell you the whole story. But it’s going to take a while.”
“I’ve got all day,” Liddle said.
Sandra sighed and cleared her throat. “Alex and I aren’t really sisters. We were born as Alessandra Kelley, the second daughter of Jacob and Elena Kelley.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We’re not twins,” Sandra said. “We’re the same person.”
CHAPTER 8
They abandoned Alex’s car at the Dunkin’ Donuts. Alex climbed into the green electric next to Dr. Oronzi, who gunned the little engine back toward I-95. She would have been forced to ditch the car anyway; the police would be looking for it, and she wouldn’t last long if she were still driving it. She worried about security cameras in the parking lot; if there was a record of her getting into Dr. Oronzi’s car, then this escape would be over quickly. For that matter, the fact that Dr. Oronzi had left the building before the police had arrived would put him under suspicion. She wondered if it had been wise to go with him.
But what other options did she have? It wasn’t like she had planned ahead for this. There was a friend of her uncle who sometimes helped abused women hide from the men who had hurt them, but it wasn’t a great option. Even if the friend had been willing to help her evade the authorities—which was a big if—the US government was a lot harder to fool than one angry husband.
The little engine whined as Oronzi coaxed it up to speed. Alex noticed that the speedometer, odometer, and fuel gauge were independent devices, bolted, and in one case duct-taped, to the dashboard rather than integrated as part of a single instrument panel. Wires showed under and behind the steering column. In fact, very little about the car seemed to have been designed to fit together, at least not in any aesthetic way.
“What did you do, build this car from a kit?” she asked.
Oronzi pulled an unfamiliar lever to his left, and the car jerked into a slightly higher rate of speed. “Nobody sells car-building kits,” he said, apparently oblivious to her sarcasm. “I built it from the ground up, from first principles.”
She couldn’t hide her surprise. “Seriously? Why?”
He stole a glance at her before returning his attention to the road. “That sleek little computerized bullet you drive—do you know how many moving parts it has? With every independent component, the probability of failure multiplies. Thousands of parts, each from a factory production line. And who was on duty when your part was audited for quality? What was his IQ? Was he having a bad day? Was it his first week on the job and he was afraid to make a fuss?”