The Pretender (The Soren Chase Series Book 2) (21 page)

She didn’t give him a chance to respond, but opened the door and walked inside. He followed. They got a table nearby and waited.

Soren tried to size up the men whose identity he might steal. They both looked around twenty-five. One had blond hair and blue eyes and was a little on the short side, but was built with muscles that made it clear he worked out. The other was tall, with black hair shorn in a military-style buzz cut. He had a thick five o’clock shadow. Soren supposed both men would be considered handsome. Whichever one went to the bathroom first was going to be his target.

“You could talk to me, you know,” Friday said, drawing his attention. “And you might want to stop staring. You don’t want them to notice you.”

Soren turned in her direction.

“I’m just nervous,” Soren said. “I’m trying to get a sense of what I’m walking into.”

“It’s better if you don’t,” Friday said. “It’s sweeter that way. Each
aussenseiter
is his own unique experience. Don’t spoil it by trying to guess what they will taste like.”

“Once again, you’re making it sound like we eat them,” Soren said. “It’s a little gross.”

“But in a way, we do,” Friday said. “We eat the very essence of what they are. All their hopes, all their fears, everything that makes them human—we gobble it up.”

Soren leaned in and looked at her. “Who are you really?” he asked. “I’ve seen you as Sharon, Jeanine, and now Helen. You act different, you sound different. Who’s the real Friday?”

Friday leaned in close to him. For a moment, he feared she might kiss him.

“Do you want to know a secret?” she asked. “Identity is a lie. There is no ‘real Friday.’ There is no real you. There is no real anybody.”

“You mean pretenders don’t—”

“Not just doppelgängers,” Friday replied. “Aussenseiter,
too. Identity is a myth. Everyone is a collection of feelings and memories that in a particular moment make you react a certain way to individual stimuli.”

“That’s not true.”

“Isn’t it? All we ever are is a set of circumstances at any given moment. There’s very little continuity. Identity is malleable, changeable—and completely fictional. It’s just a story you tell yourself to explain your impulses.”

Soren thought about that, wanting to deny it further. But another question nagged at him.

“You said we’re vulnerable when we’re in the—what did you call it? Mind palace?”

Friday nodded.

“So what happens if we’re hurt or killed?” Soren asked.

Friday frowned. “If you’re hurt, you’re hurt while inside the mind palace. It’s not permanent damage; you’ll just experience pain. But I’ve never heard of one of our people getting killed inside an aussenseiter unless that person was already dying. Remember—we were created to do this. The aussenseiter
are sheep and we’re wolves. How many times has a sheep hurt a wolf?”

He opened his mouth to ask more, but one of the men he’d been watching—the blond, muscled one—stood up and walked toward the men’s room. If he was going to do this, now was his moment. Soren became aware that his palms were sweating. He felt physically ill.

“Showtime,” he said, and stood up.

“Good luck,” Friday replied.

His target pushed open the bathroom door at the end of a hallway, and Soren hurried to catch up.

He told himself he wasn’t going to think too much about it. He would just jump right into it. But once inside, he realized the bathroom was small. There was one stall with a toilet inside—currently unoccupied—and a urinal that his target stood in front of. The man was whistling to himself as he peed.

Soren almost turned around and walked out. What was he doing? This was everything he despised. He didn’t want to be a pretender. He didn’t want to abandon being Soren Chase. If he stole this identity, how would he ever explain it to Sara? She’d know the truth about what he was and what he’d done.

The man turned around and zipped up his fly. He must have noticed Soren staring at him because he gave him a wary look.

“Gotta problem, dude?” the man asked.

Soren shook his head and forced himself to smile.

“Uh, sorry,” he said. “I totally zoned out there. Just waiting to pee.”

The guy didn’t seem like he quite believed Soren, but he crossed to the sink and turned his back once more. Still, he kept an eye on Soren in the bathroom mirror.

Soren was going to lose his chance. He could feel it slipping away. But he had vowed to do everything he could to save Alex—and that included taking this step.

Without thinking any more about it, he stepped up behind his target and jammed his fist into his neck.

But when Soren’s hand connected with the man’s neck, it didn’t go inside it like Friday’s had into Helen. Instead, it just kind of bounced off, exactly like a normal punch.

The man yelped and turned around.

“What the fuck?” he said.

Soren looked at his hand like it was an alien thing.

“Sorry,” he said. “Something else was supposed to happen.”

Before he could say anything more, the man punched him in the nose. Soren’s head snapped back, and he reached a hand up to feel blood spilling down his face.

“I’m going to beat your ass,” the man said.

He threw three more punches, but this time Soren was focused and dodged them all easily. He moved so quickly that it was almost like watching the man in slow motion. Whatever else Friday had done, his senses and agility had sharpened as a result of his training. But he still had no clue what was supposed to happen next.

The target in front of him opened his mouth and drew in a breath. He was going to shout—and Soren couldn’t allow that. Soren couldn’t explain to police why he’d punched a man in the back of the neck. Worse, if the police found him here, it could get back to Rakev that he was still alive.

Soren ran forward, ducking under another punch, and jabbed a hand at the man’s mouth. He reached him in time, covering the man’s mouth before he could start shouting. The man tried to knock his hand away, but Soren put his strength into it and didn’t budge.

He didn’t know what his plan was—all he was trying to do was stop his opponent from screaming—when suddenly the man went slack. Soren’s hand had melted into his target’s face. The man’s eyes unfocused, and he stopped struggling.

Soren was still staring at his own hand in horror when the world around him faded away. Suddenly, he wasn’t standing in a bathroom anymore. Instead, he found himself standing on a football field. The man he’d been tracking was standing there, too, looking out in wonder.

“It’s my high school,” he said, talking to himself. “I heard they turned it into a parking lot.”

The man turned and seemed to notice Soren for the first time.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

Soren didn’t know what to do. This was apparently the mind palace Friday had mentioned, the place where pretenders took control. He was supposed to be looking for some type of talisman, an object that represented the person. But how the hell was he supposed to know what that was?

He noticed, however, that the answer was literally right in front of him. The man was cradling a football in his arms.

“Uh, can I have the ball?” Soren asked.

The man responded by stepping forward aggressively. He threw a meaty fist in Soren’s direction. Soren reacted without a second thought. He dodged the blow and decked his opponent, sending him sprawling onto the field.

When the man hit the ground, Soren looked around as if there was someone else there to see what he’d done. But no alarms went off, and there was nobody in sight. The man was unconscious in his own mind. Soren crept forward and leaned over. He pried the football out of the man’s hand. He had a moment to examine it, noting how old and worn it looked, as if its playing days were long behind it.

But after a second, the world dissolved around him. Soren was once again standing in the bathroom. The football field had disappeared, and so had the ball. Soren’s arm was still holding the blond man up, his hand melted into his mouth.

All at once, a torrent of memories came at Soren, hard and fast. There were so many that Soren found it hard to process them. Almost as soon as he thought that, they became more organized.

His name was Ron Davis, his parents divorced when he was eight years old, and his father raised him. He went to school in Colorado. He was a champion skier. He was raised Catholic but was now an atheist. He had his first kiss on a cruise off the Bahamas that his grandparents arranged. She’d stuck her tongue in his mouth and he’d been both excited and repulsed. He didn’t even know what French kissing was.

After a minute, it was like being inside a museum of Ron’s life. Soren found that he could pick and choose the memories he wanted, ranging from critical to completely unimportant. They were all there, like items on a shelf. But there were so many that he just kept picking and picking, unwilling to stop.

With some sense of alarm, he noticed that the real Ron’s body was beginning to jerk and buck. That hadn’t happened when Friday had taken Helen. He wasn’t sure what to do; he didn’t even understand what was wrong. And then he did—Ron couldn’t breathe. Soren’s hand was blocking all his air.

Soren yanked it out, and Ron slumped to the floor. He had time to look at his hand, which was grossly misshapen, and then the flesh on it started to bubble. He wanted to scream as he saw the bubbles travel up his arm, but before he could open his mouth, it had overtaken his entire body. In a moment, he was completely blind as it passed over his face.

He felt intense pressure in his arms and legs and he staggered backward, collapsing on the floor.

Sara tried to push the shirken away, shoving against it with her right hand. But as she did so, her hand became trapped in the monster’s body. It was like pushing against a wall of quicksand. Her hand was quickly swallowed up inside the creature’s torso, and she couldn’t yank it free.

The creature’s face split into a wide, toothless smile, bits of flesh hanging down from the top of its mouth. It moved closer to her, pulling her wrist into its body. It didn’t cause Sara pain, but it did make her panic. She kept straining against it, but the more she did so, the deeper she was pulled inside. The thing’s head leaned toward her, its mouth opening wider.

Sara pulled her head as far back as far as she could, aware that once the thing got its mouth around her head, she wouldn’t be able to free herself.

She tried to think of options. She couldn’t kick the thing, knowing it would just pull her legs inside itself. But she couldn’t break free by pulling against it, either. Each second she did so, the thing inched closer to her, its demented, misshapen smile growing closer.

Sara tried to think of anything that would hurt it, but her only weapon was out of bullets. She was still holding it tightly in her right hand, which was stuck inside the thing.

The shirken inched toward her again, and Sara watched as she was pulled in up to her right elbow. The shirken leered at her, its face drawing nearer as she held herself as far away from the thing as she could. Her left hand and arm were free, but she knew trying to hit it would only trap them as well. Sara started to really panic.

Look at its eyes.

The voice in her head was as jarring as it was insistent. It didn’t feel like her own internal voice.

Look at its eyes, Mom.

The voice was clearer then, even louder in her mind. She was still straining away from the shirken, but it was inching closer to her, its mouth just inches from her face. She must be delirious, thinking of her son in her final moments.

Mom, it’s the only way to beat it. You can hurt its eyes.

She stared at the shirken’s eyes. They were small, black dots, the size of checkers. They seemed to be gleaming as the creature pulled her farther inside.

She put her fingers together and drove her left hand into one of the thing’s eyes. She must have caught it off guard because it tried to dodge too late. Her hand connected with the eye, piercing it. She tore at the thing’s face, and although it mouthed a scream, she couldn’t hear it. Its flesh felt different here. Instead of quicksand, she felt like she was ripping paper.

The shirken stumbled back, releasing her arm. Black liquid oozed from its left eye, and it collapsed on the ground.

She didn’t wait to see if it was dead, but hobbled past it, fleeing into the mist and hoping the shirken couldn’t pick itself off the ground anytime soon.

She was breathing hard, her pulse racing as she realized she wasn’t out of danger. The office around her was still blanketed in fog, and arguably even thicker than before. She clipped a cubicle wall as she walked, and then tripped over a chair. She cried out, but made no sound. Slowly, with her leg hurting her more, she managed to stand up again.

The police must be here by now, but perhaps they too were lost inside the office. The idea was insane, even laughable, and yet somehow the place felt far larger than it had before the attack started.

A hand suddenly shot out of the fog, grabbing her arm. She yanked away and stepped back into a defensive position. But the figure that emerged from the mist was Ken. He was bleeding from a cut on his face, but the wound looked shallow.

Ken pulled Sara into an embrace, hugging her tightly. He pulled away after a second and started talking to her, but she couldn’t hear him. She shook her head at him.

Ken gripped her arm tightly with his left hand, and held out his gun with his right. She still held her own weapon but beyond hitting somebody with it, she wasn’t sure what good it would do. Still, holding it made her feel slightly better.

Ken pulled her to the right, and Sara didn’t resist. She had no idea which direction was the correct one anymore, and hoped he had preserved his sense of direction better than she had.

She caught a hint of movement out of her left eye, but when she turned there was only mist. Then she saw it again on her right side, past Ken. By the time she turned her head, however, it was gone again.

Sara felt something cold on her foot and pulled her leg up, letting out another silent scream. She looked down to see a thin, black tendril wrapped around her ankle. It felt cold and clammy, exactly like the fog. The tendril withdrew as soon as she moved, but by the time she put her leg back down, another tendril had wrapped around her right ankle.