BROKEN SYMMETRY: A Young Adult Science Fiction Thriller (20 page)

We slumped against the opposite wall, and the soundproof paneling pressed against my back, forcing my pelvis against his lower abs before I had time to tighten my legs. The shockwave jerked my body taut and turned everything in between into a quivering mass of throbbing nerve-endings. I melted into his chest, breathless
—
and my nails must have drawn blood because he jerked back, suddenly tense.

“Hang on.” He set me down, eyebrows knotted. No, it wasn’t my fingernails.

I followed his gaze to the mirror, still an open portal. The muted footsteps of police officers now climbing the stairs in the reflection. The beams of their flashlights crisscrossed the ceiling.

“This is the San Diego PD,” they shouted up the stairwell. “Come out with your hands behind your head.”

My God, they were quick this time.

I scampered to the red button.

“Blaire, hang on,” said Damian, kneeling at the laptop. “Something’s wrong. The file’s not transferring . . . it’s not picking up the infra red.”

He reached both hands back into the reflection.

***

I watched the doorway through the mirror, my palm poised over the button while Damian typed something on the laptop. “It’s not even recognizing the port.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Give me a sec,” He dragged the reflected stool and laptop closer so he could type better.

“Just grab the whole laptop, we’re out of time
—
”

“Not an option. We lose the data.”

I felt shame rising in my cheeks. We’d spent the last few minutes making out when we could have been solving this problem. “Damian, it’s too late,” I warned. “They’re
here
.”

The first officer darted into the room, his back hugging the wall. He gripped a flashlight in one hand and leveled his gun arm on the back of his wrist. His eye narrowed behind the sight.

The second officer rushed in. “Hands where we can see them!”

Damian ignored them, his eyes glued to the screen on the other side of the mirror. “Blaire, don’t press it yet,” he said, and he jiggled the external’s USB cable.

I could feel the button’s plastic under my palm, now moist with my sweat.

A bullet would crack the mirror.

“Don’t press it,” he said calmly. “Let me pull my hands back”

“Son, take your hands off the computer and step into this room,” the first cop ordered.

A door. They thought it was a door.

Damian inched his hands onto the keyboard and began tapping buttons again.

“Damian, hurry!” I moaned.

“Just
wait
. I can fix it
—
”

“This is your last warning,” said the first cop. “Hands off the computer.” His index finger edged onto the trigger. “I’ll count to three . . .
one
.”

They had been ordered to use deadly force if we didn’t comply . . . because of what Damian had done to the security guards at the Institute. They would shoot him right between the eyes, like he’d shot them.

“Two
—
”

“I’m pressing it,” I said.

“Blaire, listen to me . . . just
wait
—
”

I could see the officer’s skin paling under his fingernail. How many pounds of pressure before the gun fired?

“Three!” the officer shouted.

“No!” I flinched and slammed the button, and the shrill ultrasound tore into my ear drums. The mirror vibrated, but he was still in the reflection, fiddling with the external hard drive, trying to get it loose. I clawed at the button, but I couldn’t stop it. Horrified, I swiveled around to see it happen, fear driving needles through my heart. “
Damian
—
”

“Got it!” he yelled, jerking his hand back just as the mirror shattered and stumbling backwards. Relief flooded through me.

I hadn’t orphaned him.

It was only after I knelt beside him, my insides feeling like uncorked champagne, that I realized something was wrong, that he was twitching . . . holding his arm funny.

And then I glimpsed the blood pooling around him, staining his jeans, and the grimace twisting his face. I peered over his shoulder, and my heart stopped. His right hand was gone, perfectly severed off at the wrist.

My hand shot over my mouth. “I didn’t . . . I didn’t
—
” I couldn’t finish. I couldn’t breathe.

“Get Charles,” he whispered through his teeth, tears wetting his eyes, and when I didn’t budge, he screamed at the top of his lungs, “
Get Charles!
”

His voice echoed inside me and ripped my heart in two.

Chapter 18

Charles knew what
happened, that I had done it. The button was too far from the mirror for Damian to push himself. It had been designed that way as a safety precaution, to prevent exactly this.

To prevent slicing.

I shivered in the hospital waiting room while they treated him in the emergency room. All they could do was seal the wound and wrap him up. Reattaching the hand wasn’t an option; it no longer existed.

“I’m so sorry, Damian,” I whispered to myself, hugging my knees to my chest and rocking back and forth to dull the ache in my chest. I had just severed the hand of the boy who had my heart. “I’m so sorry.”

He wanted Charles in there with him. He wanted me out of his sight. I clutched my legs tighter, teeth chattering, and suffered the guilt leaching into me.

Later, Damian appeared in the doorway, his arm bandaged where it ended in a stump at his wrist. He stormed past me without meeting my eyes and kicked open the door.

Charles came out after him and tugged my sleeve. “Get up,” he said, an icy edge to his voice. “Time to go.”

I had maimed his most talented carrier, and he wouldn’t forget that.

***

“So . . . no footage,” Charles said the moment I took a seat in front of his desk the following afternoon. “Nothing.”

“It didn’t upload across the mirror.”

He sighed and rubbed his eyes, dislodging his glasses. “It’s every single time with him. He cuts it so close . . . it wouldn’t have taken
two minutes
to fix.”

I nodded. The two minutes we had spent making out. “I’ll run the mission again. I’ll do it myself this time.”

“I admire your courage, Blaire. I do. But I have to be honest with you
—
I don’t think you can handle the responsibility of crossing over right now. I’m going to pull you for a while.”

“Charles, I know this mission inside and out, and Damian’s not fit to do it. I’m asking your permission to recover the footage myself. If I screw it up or get myself killed, then you can send Damian in after me.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Charles. “You getting yourself killed. Yes, Damian is my best carrier
—
at the moment. But in the long run, you’ll be much more valuable to us than he is. With your two chromosomes, you’re the perfect carrier.”

Perfect. Valuable. I hated those words; I wasn’t valuable. I was worthless. “He’s been lying to you,” I said. “He’s addicted to crossing over. To the rush. His MRI was worse this time
—
Dr. Johnson said it was killing him.”

Charles gave a sad smile. “She told me,” he said. “I can’t stop him from crossing over, Blaire. I’ve tried. When I pull him from the missions, he just crosses over somewhere else. At least here in the office it’s safe.”

“It’s not
safe
.”

“Safer than the alternative. We have a system, here. Organization. Stability.”

“It’s
killing
him.”

“He just crosses over somewhere else, Blaire,” he said more forcefully.

“Just this time,” I said. “Please. Let me go instead of him. I don’t want to hurt him anymore.”

“I’m sorry, but I’ve already made up my mind. I was pushing you too fast. I’m sending someone else who’s better trained.”

“Someone else? Who else is there?”

For a while he didn’t answer. Then he lowered his eyes. “Recovering the artifact is the most important thing right now. I’m sending Amy instead of you.”

“
Amy?
” My jaw hung open. “But she’s expired.”

“They’re running the mission again next Wednesday. I’ve already discussed it with both of them . . . Blaire, I can’t risk sending you again until you’re fully trained.”

“I made a mistake. I’m sorry.”

“We can’t afford to make mistakes, Blaire. Not in this business . . . not with crossover.”

Before I could answer, the door burst open and Damian strode inside.

***

“Replantation,” he said, slapping a stapled packet of paper on the desk in Charles’s office, where I had just been suspended from crossover until further notice. “Reattachment of a severed body part. Doctor Johnson emailed me instructions for transporting the limb.”

“Go home,” said Charles. “You need to be getting rest. I’m dealing with Blaire right now.”

“Did you hear what I just said?” said Damian, still ignoring me. “I want to reattach my hand.”

“
What
hand?” said Charles.

I couldn’t help but stare at the gauze over Damian’s wrist, now spotted with blood . . . the part of him that was missing.

The hand that had lifted me into the air while he kissed me.

“I’m a perfect candidate,” he said. “Microsurgery is most effective when the amputation is clean, and there’s nothing cleaner than a sever
—
right, Charles?”

That word.
Sever
.

Charles locked eyes with him. “Is there something you’d care to explain to me?” he said. “Because last I checked, that hand is floating off in la-la land. It’s gone. Finito. End of story.”

“I’ll nab it from my reflection.”

“Won’t have it either.”

“The failsafe.”

“No. I need the failsafe intact.”

Failsafe
. Another word I didn’t know, another entry in the long list of things they hadn’t told me. The calmness of Damian’s voice raised hairs on the back of my neck. “I’ll nest the crossover.”

“And multiply the damage?” said Charles. “What would you do, anyway? Kill your own reflection? You overlap, for God’s sake.”

My eyes darted between them as I listened, horrified.
What have I done?

Damian held up his severed wrist. “I’m not going to live like this, Charles
—
either reprogram the fingerprint scanners for my left hand or give me the master keys.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t.”

“Fine.” Damian stood up straight and stepped toward the exit. “You win.”

Charles watched him leave. All at once, his face paled, and he sat forward, eyes wide. “Damian, wait
—
” He reached into his pocket, detached a key from his keychain, and tossed it to him. “That’s for room B,” he said. “Just . . . just be safe.
Please
.”

Damian didn’t answer. He closed his fist around the key and slipped back into the hall. Not once did he meet my eyes.

***

I needed to stop him. I grabbed his shoulder outside Charles’s office, but he ignored me, his eyes passing across me like I didn’t exist.

“Damian, don’t do this,” I moaned. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Please don’t do whatever you’re about to do.”

With his left hand, he yanked out his gun, cocked it with his teeth, and took aim at the wall, balancing the weapon between his left hand and his right forearm.

Blood trickled down his forearm from under the gauze. The gun wavered, his aim unsteady.

He lowered the weapon, taking slow, pained breaths . . . defeated. Clenching his jaw, he holstered the weapon in his jeans, wiped tears from his eyes, and brushed past me to room B.

***

“What’s the failsafe?” I demanded, back in Charles’s office. “Where is he going . . . and why didn’t you stop him?”

Charles cradled his face in his hands. “I can’t stop him, Blaire. He has to do this.”

“What’s the failsafe?” I repeated.

He dragged his hands off his cheeks and knotted his fingers together. “It’s a mirror we keep at another location,” he said. “It’s something we started a while back . . . in the case of mission failure.”

“Another mirror . . . for what?”

“It’s not just a mirror anymore,” he said.

Then I understood. “A mirror you kept open,” I muttered, “a mirror you crossed over but didn’t break afterwards.”

He nodded. “A mirror with broken symmetry. As of this morning, it’s been open for two months and two days. It contains a parallel symmetry that diverged two months ago.”

I stared at him. “Why?”

“Theoretically, it contains a reflection of things exactly as they’d be if we hadn’t meddled,” he said. “It’s meant as a hideout. That way if we blow our cover on a mission in the source, we can hide in the failsafe while things blow over. It’s the perfect hiding place . . . a whole universe the size of a mirror. But it’s messy, and it’s not a permanent solution, which is why it’s only meant as a last resort.”

“But we didn’t blow our cover,” I said. “We can run the mission again.”

“He’s not running the mission,” said Charles, his blue eyes sparkling behind his glasses. “He’s harvesting a limb.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“The failsafe contains a reflection of Damian with both hands. In fact, it’s the
only
reflection of him that still has his right hand.”

“He’s going to cut off his own hand,” I said, mortified.

“And get it replanted to his source. He’s done worse than that. Look, I never meant the failsafe to be a supply of severed limbs, but he’s the best we have
—
and I agree with him; he needs his hand back.”

“Why does he have to nest crossovers?”

“Because I need the failsafe intact.”

“What if it kills him?”

Charles swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “In this case, I think the risks are acceptable.”

“So your rule against nesting crossovers is what . . . a
suggestion?
”

“Blaire, I couldn’t stop him,” he said softly. “He’d crossover in a Macy’s dressing room if I didn’t let him use one of ours.”

Charles was right, of course. I collapsed into the chair opposite his desk and ran my fingers through my hair. “It was my fault,” I said, through a lump in my throat.

“No one blames you,” he said.

A lie.

I pictured Damian packing a gauze-wrapped bundle in ice, his dying reflection begging for mercy at his feet. The image made me queasy.

***

Damian was gone all that day. And the next. For a whole week. We didn’t know if he was still in a reflection, dead, or recovering back in the source.

I lay awake at night, missing him. At school, I drifted through my AP tests like a zombie. At work, every minute of his absence carved out more of my heart. If he did return, he would never trust me again. He would never forgive me.

On Wednesday, a week and a day after the
sever
, the sun bled into the horizon, the last of its dying light piercing the blinds.

Damian sauntered through the front door of ISDI and sat stiffly on the couch, setting his laptop on the coffee table.

My heart gave a nervous jolt. I followed his right forearm to a brace around his wrist, and
—
I rolled my chair back to peer around his laptop’s screen
—
his right hand. Reattached. 

I was happy for him, until he started typing. He leaned forward and pivoted his right arm at the elbow, angling his whole hand in an attempt to line his fingers up with the correct keys. He let the weight of his forearm depress the keys, wincing in the process. The effort of concentrating knit his eyebrows. I loathed myself for causing his suffering.

He gave up and slammed his laptop shut.

“It takes time,” I said, perching myself on the couch’s armrest.

He stared at his wrist brace, his stiff fingers poking out. “I don’t have time.”

“Damian, if I could go back and switch places with you, I would in a heartbeat. I was trying to save you
—
”

“I told you to wait, Blaire. I told you not to press the button.”

“They were going to shoot you.”

“They
never
shoot.”

I felt my sinus tighten with pressure between my eyes. “So you blame me?”

“Entirely,” he said coldly. And without missing a beat, he called out to Amy. “Get your prelims done, Ames. We crossover at midnight. We’re stealing footage of that goddamn artifact if it kills us.”

“Roger that,” she said, perking up at her desk, clearly giddy to crossover again with Damian.

I swiveled away from him and blinked the moisture out of my eyes. “Did you overlap?” I asked. “When you did it?”

“You bet. It was a real blast killing my reflection and feeling like I was getting killed at the same time. But who cares? I have a hand again, right?”

“Are you sure it was worth it?”

“Blaire,” he finally spun and glared at me
—
and for the first time since he sat down, I noticed the veins around his eyes were black and inflamed, “I don’t know if any of this is worth it. Just leave me alone, okay? At this point, you’ve been nothing but bad luck for me.”

I stared at him and felt the cage only he had the key for close permanently around my heart.  “I’m sorry I meant nothing to you,” I said, my voice hollow. I turned away and slipped out of the office into fresh air.

When I returned, I found Amy leaning against Damian on the sofa, holding his right hand.

“Can you feel that?” she asked kissing the top of his hand.

He shook his head.

“How about this?” she said, and while I watched from the doorway, she leaned over and slowly sucked on his finger.

I averted my eyes and felt my lip curl in disgust. She straightened up when she saw me.

“Oh,
you’re
back,” she sneered. “Damian and I were hoping you’d quit.”

“You’re expired,” I said. “You shouldn’t be crossing over tonight.”

“You should have thought of that before you severed his hand and left us no choice,” she said.

***

I arrived home a little after ten to find a red light blinking on the home phone. A message. Wow, someone out there was still using a landline. I pressed the play button.

“Hi Blaire, this is . . . ah, Officer Pruitt from the San Diego Police Department. Wanted to let you know that your father’s personal effects are available to be picked up. We have a pair of loafers, khakis, shirt, undergarments, a white lab coat . . . and a diary. Feel free to come down to the station and grab those at any time. We’ll be open until ten.”

It only took them five weeks.

In my bedroom, I collapsed onto my bed, too emotionally spent to care. Should I just quit ISDI?

Clearly I did more harm than good. I had injured the one person I cared most about, I had hurt him . . . just by being me. Charles was right; I couldn’t handle the responsibility of crossing over.

Besides, I already knew my dad’s fate. He had been orphaned in a reflection.

So why didn’t I just quit?

I rolled over and buried myself in the folds of my comforter. I already knew the answer.

I was a carrier. I had nowhere else to go.

***

My eyelids sprang open some time later, and the sight of a spindly shadow snaking across my ceiling drove my palpitating heart up my throat.

Just a tree branch, its silhouette cast into my bedroom by the moon reflecting off a parked car. I peered out at my dark neighborhood to confirm, then tugged my comforter over my head.