Mirror's Edge: Impostors 3, page 19
We open fire, all four of our shuttles blazing with pinpricks of light. Both drones spark and shatter, tumbling into the trees below.
The two Diego craft above us fall back, trying to keep the dreadnought away from our convoy. But X is right—they’re outgunned.
‘In front!’ comes a wind-torn cry from the next shuttle.
X and I spin around—another flight of drones is coming at our little fleet, dozens of microcraft the size of dinner plates. Too small to carry weapons, they’re trying to ram us.
Our autocannon smash them like skeet.
The sky lights up behind us, the warcraft exchanging fire in earnest now. One of Diego’s ships loses its stabilizers and goes whirling away into the dark.
‘Uh-oh,’ I say.
Moments later, the other Diego craft lifts up and out of the battle, leaving nothing but empty air between us and the Shreve dreadnought.
‘A pity,’ X says. ‘We almost made it to the wild.’
The dark gap in the border is just ahead. But the dreadnought can destroy us just as easily out there.
Maybe X simply doesn’t want to die in a city.
The Shreve ship draws closer, stately and unhurried in its pursuit. A miraculous orbital strike might take it out, but at this range, we’d all be pulverized together.
‘Boss,’ I say, my heart sinking. ‘We have to surrender.’
X sighs. ‘You may regret it, Frey, once you’ve been in a cell for a few weeks.’
I wonder if I’ll even last that long, but I can’t tell X about the dose of radiation I took—he’ll want to keep fighting for me.
He startles, his lupine ears twitching.
‘Did you see that?’ He peers into the darkness at our left.
Something flashes past in the corner of my eye.
Then another, and I recognize the shape …
People are tumbling from the sky.
Someone falls past right beside us, and we lean over the edge of the shuttle. The body doesn’t hit the ground—retrojets flash to life, bringing it to a soft landing in the trees.
‘Those Diego Specials,’ X says. ‘Were they wearing jump armor?’
‘Yes.’ Somewhere overhead, they’re abandoning ship.
I look up, just in time to see the wounded Diego hovercraft hurtling downward at us.
No—at the dreadnought.
Whirling end over end, its stabilizers blown to pieces, it somehow manages to spiral its way toward the Shreve craft. If they all jumped out, it must be the Diego AI itself flying, all those thousands of processors calculating wind speed, fan angle, lag time, and the air resistance of a thousand jagged, spinning surfaces.
I imagine the avatar at the controls, her face utterly blank in the hurtling, empty craft.
The two ships hit, the smaller breaking into pieces, the dreadnought’s armor buckling at last. The shock wave hits us, hot and full of stinging debris, knocking me backward like a fist.
I skid across the shuttle’s metal deck, sliding for a moment down the angled sides. My hands grasp a window frame, bringing me to a halt.
The lifting fan screams just below me—the hurricane of its airflow drags at my body, trying to pull me in. Maybe I should let go, and drop onto the grill protecting the blades.
Only instinct keeps me from releasing my grasp.
Then I look down—the mechanics removed the grill when they repaired the fan. Nothing’s underneath me but naked metal spinning a hundred thousand times a second.
If I fall, there’ll be nothing left of me but slush. I’ll probably wreck the engine and bring the whole shuttle down.
My fingers cling in the cold, fighting the downdraft. The dreadnought’s rolling crash is still underway, hurling out smoke, splintered trees, and shuddering air.
Caught in the shock wave, our shuttle starts to slew again. It spins into a slow turn, the angular momentum lifting my feet out into midair.
There’s a meshed-over window just in front of me, one of the prisoners staring out of it. Face-to-face, we contemplate our imminent destruction.
Then the woman looks over my shoulder, her eyes widening.
What now?
Shouts come—impossibly—from behind me. Then I hear the buzz of smaller lifting fans and feel gloved hands grabbing at my arms, trying to peel me off.
I fight, kicking backward, clinging to the metal. Some furious part of me doesn’t want to be captured, even if escape means tumbling into the spinning blades below.
But my muscles are spent, and I’m pried off, pulled away from the astonished prisoner staring at me through the window.
My feet hit a hoverboard deck, and strong arms wrap around me. I can’t move.
‘We got her, Boss!’ the person holding me cries out.
‘Get clear!’ answers X’s voice.
As we swerve away, I smell animal skins.
The air around me buzzes with hoverboards. I finally see them all swarming through the dark gap in the border.
The sky is full of rebels.
The city of Shreve is open, and my big sister is here.
48. REBEL ARMY
They take me to see Boss Frey.
She’s down among the trees just beyond the border, surrounded by her rebel army. They swirl around us, hundreds of them, priming weapons and swapping out hoverboard batteries before the final push on Shreve.
Her name—my name—is on all their lips.
Rafi is the radiant center of the storm, her eyes alight. When she spots me and my escorts, confusion flashes on her face, as if she’s forgotten my camo-surge. But a moment later, she reconciles my new and old selves, grabs me, and spins me in an ecstatic dance.
‘You made it! You’re going to be with us for the end!’
I pull away. ‘How are you here? I thought you were a thousand klicks away!’
She smiles. ‘We started mobilizing the moment you left, silly. Did you think I’d let you walk into Shreve without backup?’
I look around. This is too many soldiers for an extraction, and they’re armed with city-wrecking weapons from my sister’s secret cache—pulse bombs and plasma rifles.
‘This isn’t a rescue party,’ I say.
‘Well, I knew something would happen.’ Rafi laughs, as happy as I’ve ever seen her. ‘And it did, Frey, thanks to you!’
My real name sends a start through me. At least a dozen people are in earshot, but everyone’s too busy to notice.
Or maybe it wasn’t a slip.
My voice drops. ‘Riggs found out about us switching places. Did she tell anyone?’
‘First daughter, second daughter.’ Rafi waves a hand. ‘I don’t care what people call me.’
‘It matters to me. I want my name back!’
‘It’s yours, Frey. But you’ll need your old face for it to stick.’
There, in her words, it hits me again—my dysmorphia by proxy. I’d gotten used to my camo-surge, but Rafi makes me feel like I’m in the wrong body again.
Maybe she always has.
‘Don’t look so glum, little sister,’ she says. ‘What matters is that Shreve is open and waiting for my army. The only birthday present I wanted, and you got it for me!’
Her fingers touch the rings on my right hand. Her deadly gift.
‘I was only trying to get those people out of Shreve. I didn’t even know you were here.’
‘Stop pretending, little sister.’ She gathers me into another hug, whispering in my ear, ‘I’m always with you.’
It feels safe, here in my sister’s arms. But her buoyant mood is almost wild, at the fragile borderline of manic. Maybe it’s just that her lifelong dream is coming true.
Rafi steps away and gives me a long look, full of sympathy for my bedraggled state.
Then she does something sweet and simple—she hands me a canteen from her belt. I take a grateful drink of water.
‘We can end this together.’ She speaks quietly, like we’re littlies sharing a secret. ‘Tonight.’
Her words almost disappear into the roar of lifting fans overhead, and I look up. It’s my shuttle, repaired again, the last of the prisoners headed out into the safety of the wild.
Rafi follows my skyward gaze. ‘Don’t worry—Col didn’t go. Your whole crew’s coming with us, plus a bunch of Diego jump troopers we found in the woods. We can trust them, right?’
‘Yes. It was Diego who opened the border.’
Rafi narrows her eyes. ‘They also kept you in prison for a month.’
‘For my own protection.’ I decide to change the subject. ‘Speaking of trust—this whole time, you knew who our spy was, didn’t you?’
Rafi’s fevered smile returns. ‘How’d you guess that?’
‘She called me by my real name.’
‘Ugh, of course. Demeter’s my best friend, but she’s not the sharpest knife in the block.’
Best friend. I take a step back.
‘We’ve been plotting for years, since we were kids,’ Rafi says.
‘You never told me about any of this!’
She takes my hand, drawing me near again. ‘You were part of it, Frey. Remember when you watched my parties? I said it was to make you a better impostor. But it was so you’d warn me if the cameras ever picked up us saying anything suspicious. You were protecting me, even if you didn’t know it!’
‘You mean, you trusted your bubblehead friends more than me?’
‘Daddy watched you closer. He was scared of you, not them.’
I take a deep breath. What Rafi’s saying isn’t completely logic-missing, but it goes against my whole understanding of our childhood.
We kept secrets from the rest of the world, not from each other. We were the secret.
‘Rafi, the night before I left for Shreve, you said not to trust the spy. Why, if she was your best friend?’
‘Because I didn’t want you talking to her and getting yourself confused.’ Rafi turns away from me, dismissing my anger. ‘But I’ll admit, you were perfect. You created chaos beyond my wildest dreams.’
In confirmation of her words, a distant rumble shakes the sky.
I take another drink from the canteen, and the mineral taste of Rafi’s mountain lair curls on my tongue. All the logistics of this invasion unfold in my head—water, food, weapons, batteries, everything needed to fly hundreds of rebels half a continent across the wild and then throw them into battle.
She must have been preparing for this trip for weeks.
‘You’ve kept a lot from me, Rafi. You never even told me about you and Riggs.’
She raises a single eyebrow, the one gesture of hers I’ve never managed to imitate. ‘How did that come up?’
‘She thought I was you, just for a moment.’
‘How deliciously awkward.’ Rafi’s tone changes all at once, sending a chill through me. ‘But you’ve kept a secret from me too, little sister.’
‘What secret?’
‘The free cities want you to rule Shreve,’ she says.
49. BETRAYED
My anger twists in on itself.
Suddenly I’m the hidden sister again—curtsying wrong, tying a scarf badly, forgetting someone’s name on a receiving line. Shame rolls through me like it’s spilling from my feels.
‘It wasn’t my idea,’ I say.
Rafi nods. ‘But it was in your head somewhere. All those years in my shadow—maybe you wanted to be me?’
‘No, it was Diego’s idea! When I was their captive, they tested me, to make sure I’m not like Father—and they couldn’t test you. That’s the only reason they wanted me in charge. I only agreed so they’d help us fight him!’
But this whole mission, I’ve been studying Shreve. Preparing myself to lead.
Rafi seems to see the doubts in my heart.
‘You never told me, though,’ she says.
The reasons for my silence fly through my head—Rafi’s tantrums when she was little and didn’t get her way. Her terrifying certainty, from age seven, that she’d one day kill our father.
But all those explanations sound like attacks on her.
She steps closer. ‘You thought I wouldn’t trust you, little sister? If we’re going to kill Dad tonight, we have to trust each other.’
‘I always trusted you, until …’ Something becomes clear to me. ‘Until you stole my name. It was all I had.’
‘Ah.’ She puts her arms around me. ‘I’m truly sorry for that, Frey.’
There, in her embrace, the last few days come crashing down. Not only my exhaustion, but the weight of the dust always watching. The city pressing close against my skin. Its voice, so like our father’s, in my ears.
‘You were right—it was hard, coming home. He’s everywhere.’
‘Not for long.’ She squeezes me tighter. ‘Not if we do this right.’
‘You can have the city, Rafi. Shreve was always supposed to be yours.’
‘Thank you, Frey.’ She releases me at last. ‘But just so you understand—who do you think told me about your agreement with Diego?’
My brain spins through the possibilities. It must have been one of the other cities in the alliance. ‘Someone who wants me and you fighting each other so neither of us takes over?’
‘Clever Frey,’ Rafi says, a smile playing on her lips. ‘Now look for a pattern.’
A pattern. Of course.
‘Diego told you,’ I whisper.
She nods.
Everything the city has done—testing me, offering me Shreve, changing my face—all of it was to drive a wedge between me and my sister. They admitted as much after my camo-surge.
‘Everyone wants to divide us,’ Rafi says. ‘Because together we’re unstoppable. Now come and see.’
She leads me through the trees, her hand in mine, like we’re littlies off to play a game. At the edge of the forest, we reach the border zone, where our father’s defenses once bristled. Now it’s a line of impact craters the size of radio telescopes, the awesome footprint of Diego’s bombardment.
A fine ash covers everything.
Parked along the nearest crater’s edge are dozens of hoverboards. Rafi leads me to one, sleek and black, and we stand on it together.
She snaps her fingers. We rise into the air.
Before us, Shreve’s skyline still shimmers from burning fires and the last patches of fighting.
‘A rebel army at our command, an open border, Shreve in tatters,’ she says. ‘This is the best chance we’ll ever get.’
‘Yes.’ My throat goes dry again. ‘One problem—Father’s turned his tower into a dirty bomb.’
‘So I’ve been informed.’
I look at Rafi. ‘You’re going to lead your rebels into hand-to-hand combat—inside a nuclear waste dump?’
‘They know the risks. They’d rather face the nightmare now than let Dad fling it at some other city next week. There’s a thing about rebels—’
‘They love suicide missions,’ I say softly.
A smile. ‘You’re starting to understand.’
I turn away from her pleased expression. Does Rafi think her rebels are expendable?
But she’s risking herself too. Maybe she’s become one of them, with that same death wish as X and Seanan. Anything for the cause, even if her own cause is more personal than planetary.
One fact cuts through all these thoughts—my sister is in danger, which kindles something old and pure inside me.
‘Don’t worry, Rafi. I’ll protect you.’
She squeezes me. ‘I know.’
50. SUCCESSION
The hoverboard gently descends, and a minute later, we’re back in the thick of preparations.
A shout of ‘Boss Frey!’ comes from the trees, and she heads off to handle something, leaving me alone in the whirlwind’s center.
It’s hard to stand up straight. Maybe it’s the awesome fact that my father’s life might end tonight, or maybe it’s simple exhaustion—or that dose of radiation taking hold at last.
I wonder if there’s somewhere to lie down, even for a few minutes.
‘Need any gear?’ asks a familiar voice.
It’s Riggs, a pair of shoes in her hand.
I slip off the shoes I took from Terra, half a size small and coated with shame. Too bad there isn’t a fire to throw them in.
Then I see why they hurt so much—
There are burns on the soles of my feet.
We both stare. The skin is red and blistering. The worst spot is the side of my left foot, which was closest to the fissure at the bottom of the crater.
‘See a medic,’ Riggs says, but too softly for anyone else to hear. She knows what my choice will be.
‘Tomorrow.’ I slip on the new shoes.
They’re grippy, night-camo black, designed for hoverboarding. They fit perfectly.
Riggs watches me put them on. ‘We’re all marching into a nuclear bomb, I guess. You’ve just got a head start.’
She offers me a pair of ceramic greaves and shoulder pads.
I shake my head. ‘If my father blows up his tower, body armor won’t do much.’
‘You’ll regret it.’ She looks around to check that we’re alone. ‘Just so you know, I didn’t tell anyone your real name. Didn’t want to cause trouble before a battle.’
‘I don’t think she cares,’ I say.
Riggs nods. ‘Your sister will have what she wants, and I’ll get back my crew.’
‘Still, thanks for keeping our secret.’ I offer to shake. ‘And for the shoes.’
Riggs stares at my hand a moment, hesitant.
‘Least I could do,’ she says, ‘after the shame thing.’
‘The shame thing …’ Then it hits me. ‘You.’
She looks away. ‘After I left you and Col last night, I heard some Futures talking. They said that girl, Terra, lent you her shoes. So I tracked her down and told her that you wanted to be reported for theft. A little extra drama.’
‘And she believed you—that I wanted to get shame-cammed?’
‘Didn’t take much convincing.’ Riggs finally meets my eyes, chuckling a little. ‘I don’t think Terra likes you.’
‘You risked the whole mission, just because you were mad at Rafi? What went wrong between you and her?’
