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"Deep breaths," Mensah was telling Arada. "Deep breaths. Good, deep, singing breaths. Think like you're going to sing and breathe for that."Arada had her hand clutched around Overse's. Ratthi had an arm around Overse. Mensah had one hand on Arada's shoulder and one hand tapping the side of her thigh. She was minutes from a panic attack as well, although she was handling it better than the rest of us. Pin-Lee stood a little away, swearing at her phone and trying to get service. Behind us, Arada's family minivan smoked. ART had one of its emergency screwdrivers, prying the hood open to fix it. Gurathin was somehow covered in grease already. I wished I knew how to help any of them. Even Gurathin. None of us really knew what happened. We'd been on our way to the diner for post-show food, and we were running late, so Arada had decided to take the shortcut past Adamantine High. That was probably where things went wrong. Everyone knew Adamantine High wasn't safe after dark. Most people probably figured it was because of the kids in gangs around there. Theater kids, though --- we told legends. We told stories. I'd heard the story from Ratthi who'd heard it from Pin-Lee's cousin who graduated last year who'd heard it from his sibling who'd heard it from the mic tech at Gray (one of the few decent people at that whole stupid school [yes, I had issues with Chris-f*cking-Gray High, their center tried to kill me once and their SM stole our spotlight a few years ago, and yes, I blamed the whole school for it, my therapist thought that was wrong but frankly I didn't care]) who'd heard it from the ASM at Adamantine who'd seen it all happen. The whole school was haunted, and cutting through the parking lot too late at night could lead to strange things. None of us expected the legends to be true. We weren't in a high school parking lot for a different school late at night any more. We were somewhere in the middle of nowhere, stranded with no service. And it was the middle of the day. That was a problem. While my friends were handling emotions and the car, I was looking around. There was some kind of dark cave thing a few yards behind the car, and I thought I could see a house in the distance. Other than that, though, it was just us and the scraggly ground (I like that word, I got it from a book and I never get to use it.) surrounding the car. I didn't even see a cell tower. There weren't any people, either. Or were there? There was some kind of house in the distance, and I thought I saw movement coming from it. Oh, sh*t, were we trespassing? I really didn't want to get picked up by the police again, there was... I couldn't even think about it. I watched the house for a while, and f*ck, there were people coming out of it, in our direction. Three of them-- no, there was a fourth. I couldn't see well at this distance, but I could guess they were all athletic, and they moved like my-- they moved like they were trained military, and who knew if they were armed. F*ck. "We have to get out of here," I hissed, poking my sister in the arm. She didn't turn around, still trying to talk Arada out of panicking. Fine, whatever, nobody having a panic attack was probably good, but. The people were coming closer. They'd noticed us. We needed to get in the car, put something between us and them, just in case. I tapped her shoulder. "Mensah, we need to get in the car. There's people coming and they're moving like military."She looked at me (the side of my head, whatever) this time. "Wh-- oh. Are you sure, Rin?" I really admired how she could keep her tone calm even though she was stressed as f*ck right now. It was why she was stage manager and I was just lights tech. I nodded in the direction of the house they were coming from. "We need to move, we need to hide, we need to not be here when they get here." Mensah took a deep, heaving, steadying breath. It didn't help her. "You're right, we do. In the car. Overse, Ratthi, can you help Arada? Rin, tell Peri and Gurathin to stop trying to fix the car, we can figure that out if--" She cut herself off. "I'm getting Pin-Lee."We got in the car. There was a lot of shoving and squishing and pushing so we could all be on the ground between the seats, just in case. Arada still had the keys, even though the car wouldn't start. She locked the car, just in case. They moved like... like people I really didn't want to think about. The people were maybe a minute away, from what I could guess. I was crouched on the floor with Mensah's elbow in my side and ART's arm on my shoulder. I couldn't see anything. None of us were in a position to see anything. I could hear footsteps, though, and angry hissed orders. Then there was a lot of noise around the car, and I started trying to make out the words they were saying, even though it was distorted by the car. One voice, who I was hesitantly tagging as Adult One, said "I don't like this. It just appears from nowhere, right outside of my house, and when we go to investigate, the people are gone?""It's a trap," another voice said (I was going to call this one Adult Two). "The question is, is this a corporate trap or a Salvation trap?""It's not corporate tech," Adult One said, "unless something drastically changed in the last few months. And frankly, I'm not sure I'd assume it was Salvation-built either.""What do you think it is?" That was the third voice. I tagged them as Adult Three. "If it isn't corporate, and it isn't Salvation, what is it?""There's a window," Adult One said, and, wow, that was definitely an undertone of 'you idiot' (I had a lot of practice identifying that from Indah and Mensah and ART but also from using the same undertone myself). "Go look."Someone said something I didn't catch, then Adult Three sighed loudly. "Fine. It can look instead."F*ck. ART was trying to cover us with its sweatshirt, but it was too late. There was a face pressed to the window. I saw it out of the corner of my eye, and then I looked up. It was like looking in a mirror, only wrong. We both swore at the same time. "F*ck."The person had my face. My face, except one of the eyes had something weird and metal around it. I didn't know what to think. Mensah jammed her elbow further into my ribs, but it was too late. The keys were in the car with us, but somehow the doors clicked anyways. I grabbed the door handle, but the other person was stronger. It was going to open and I couldn't stop it. I braced myself for a full contact tackle as soon as the door was actually open. I never got the chance. They yanked the door open and Mensah, pushed up against the door, fell out. I sprang at the person with my face, but instead of crashtackling them like I would have if it had been someone slower (like that idiot from Gray High, Combat or whatever its name was), they grabbed me by the neck and pinned me to the side of the car. I gasped. I could breathe but not deeply. Mensah managed to struggle to her feet without the other adults noticing. (I thought she'd landed wrong, and I was hoping she hadn't.) The others were still in the car, being smart. "Who are you," the person with my face demanded, "and what are you doing here?" There we go, that was Adult Four. "I don't know," I said. Behind them, Mensah pulled off one of her black sneakers and aimed at them. The others didn't notice her; they were staring at me and I couldn't see their faces, which were covered, but their body language was so familiar I felt like I should recognize them from school or something. "My name's Rin, and we got lost and ended up here.""Likely story," Adult Two muttered, and I noticed two things. One, their voice sounded exactly like Arada's, just a little older. That freaked me out, but now was not the time to think about that. Two, they looked like tech crew. They were wearing dark gray, not black, but it was dark and relatively formfitting. Something about this situation, probably most of it, was wrong, but I couldn't analyze it if I was going to get out of the chokehold. Mensah tossed her shoe. It hit the person holding me dead center. They dropped me and turned around just as she shoved her hands on her hips and scowled, the picture of a disapproving stage manager (she had a lot of practice with it). "Rin, are you alright?" I nodded. "Right. Good. You should..." I shook my head. I wasn't getting in that car again unless she was too. "One of these days you're going to get yourself in trouble that way." She stepped in a slow circle, eyes landing on each of the adults in turn. "I really am sorry about this. We mean you no harm, I promise. There's been some sort of mishap that threw us here, and we mean no harm or quarrel." She stepped next to me (conveniently putting us between them and the car) and smiled. "My name is Ayda Mensah, and this is my sibling, Rin."
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Their reactions were immediate. Adult Two grabbed Mensah by the arm. She reacted the way you’d expect, trying to twist away, but Adult Two was ready for her. They countered and dragged her away from the car.One of the others grabbed me and pulled me away (I didn’t struggle), while the other two opened the doors. ART’s water bottle came flying out. It didn’t hit. Still, the distraction gave all of them the chance to get out of the car and join us.Arada and Overse slipped out of the front seat. Gurathin and Pin-Lee and Ratthi jumped out of the way back. ART half-vaulted out from the middle. “Let her go,” Pin-Lee snapped. She sounded exhausted more than exasperated. I risked a glance at her. She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Please, we really– we just want to get home. We just need– please help us. Please let Ayda go. We mean you no harm. Really.”“We come in peace,” Ratthi joked. Pin-Lee glared at him and motioned for him to cut it the f*ck out.Adult Two seemed to be having some kind of panic attack, but hadn’t let go of my sister. I wanted to know what the f*ck was going on.Everything was going wrong. They had Mensah’s arm in a vise grip and I was being held by the shoulder. My friends were leaning on the car in shock, looking afraid for their lives. (I wasn’t sure if I looked it yet, but I had definitely started to worry about whether we were going to get out of this alive.)The adults were silent, although the one with my face (Adult Four) was staring at the car (the others had their faces covered and I couldn’t tell where they were looking or what they were doing).We were waiting.We couldn’t do anything until we found out what they wanted from us. Arada squeezed Overse’s hand. Ratthi and Gurathin started to play chopsticks, but neither of them looked actually interested. ART was trying really hard not to go for the person holding me. Pin-Lee drummed her fingers on her thigh. Mensah and I were struggling to get out of the tight holds the adults had on us.Finally, Adult Two, holding Mensah, let go of her. Mensah darted over to the car and reached for Pin-Lee’s hand. I knew she wanted to hold Tano’s or Farai’s hands too, or mine, for extra comfort, but that wasn’t going to happen. For one thing, Farai and Tano were probably at the diner already. Plus I was currently trapped by either Adult One or Three, I couldn’t tell which.Adult Two reached up and pulled the covering off their face, and. Oh, cr*p.Oh, cr*p.They looked exactly like Arada, except older. (How much? I didn’t have the faintest idea.)F*ck.
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“You’re under arrest,” Adult Two said. “By the authority of the Makeba rebellion.”“What the f*ck?” I hadn’t meant to say it but it had slipped out. “What is this, Star Wars? And what even does the mayor have to do with it?”As the closest to me, Gurathin sighed and leaned over to whack me in the arm. “Rin, shut up, I don’t think this is Star Wars.”“You shut up.”“Rin, Gurathin, quit it,” Mensah said, and Pin-Lee nodded. “Please, forgive my sibling. We really don’t mean any harm. We took a shortcut through through the Adamantine High School parking lot on our way from school to the diner and ended up here. I don’t know what happened. Please, we need help getting home. We have a show tomorrow. Arada and Ratthi have a bio test on Monday and Rin has a physics test. We have to get home.” (Cr*p, I’d forgotten about that test.)Adult Four, the one with my face, stared at each of us. It was creepy. “They do not pose a security risk, Doctor,” they said, with my voice. This was feeling more and more like a weirdo alternate universe episode. I didn’t like it. “It would be prudent for us to discuss this inside, however. The noise that alerted us may have alerted the enforcers.”“Fine,” the person with Arada’s face and voice said. They took a large gun off their belt and pointed it at us. “That way. March.”“We need our stuff,” I said. “It’s in the car. We can get it quick.”It was a stupid thing to say, but I needed my pillow and I knew Overse was going to want the first aid kit to look at Mensah’s leg. Adult One or Three, whichever was holding me, let go.“Get it fast,” Adult Four said, with my voice. They (it? This person seemed so much like me, did they use the same pronouns?) turned toward the other adults (who still had the gun pointed at us). “Enforcers seven minutes out and counting. They’ve been in this area more lately.”“I’m not leaving my house,” Adult One said, and the voice sounded like Gurathin’s voice.We got our backpacks as fast as we could and moved in the direction they pointed us. I didn’t think any of us wanted to know if the gun was a bluff.Overse sped up to match my pace, and looked up at me. I ducked my head so we could talk, hopefully without our strange captors overhearing. “What?”“You noticed them too, right, Rin?” She jerked her head towards Adult Two. “She looks like Arada. The other one looks like you. There’s only four of them and the third sounds like Gurathin. I don’t… I know high school relationships don’t always last, but I don’t like what I’m seeing here.”“What do you mean?”“You watch Sanctuary Moon, I know you know what an alternate universe is.”“No. Whatever you’re thinking, no.”“Rin. Think about it. There’s four of them. Two of them look like two of us. A third sounds like one of us. There are eight of us here, plus Bharadwaj and Three and Indah and Amena and Iris and Tapan and Maro and Rami and all the other non-theater people related to theater people. If it’s not a coincidence, where’s the rest of us? Probably at this house, which doesn’t look to be nearly big enough to fit us all.”“They mentioned a rebellion. Some of us could be dead or captured.”“If that’s anyone, it’ll be you or Indah or Three or someone else who doesn’t have a sense of self-preservation, no pun intended, and since that one’s pretty clearly you” –she jerked her head at Adult Four now– “I’m pretty sure they’re not.”“You’re overreacting. Wait and see.”“Rin, I don’t know what’s happening,” she said, “but I know Arada, and I know that’s her. I don’t think it’s a good idea to say anything yet, but this other Arada keeps looking at me. I’m worried that there was a version of me here and we broke up, and maybe that kept us from being friends.”I shook my head. “I don’t know. I can’t tell you anything because I don’t know, Overse.”“I know, it’s just– Mensah’s staving off a panic attack, I’m pretty sure.” Out of loyalty to my sister, I shook my head. “She is, don’t deny it. Peri’s busy nerding out over the idea that this is an alternate universe, I’m sure, because as soon as I asked it what it thought of the idea it started mumbling numbers at me. And Pin-Lee, Ratthi, Gurathin, even Arada — none of them have any subtlety, and you know it. That’s why I’m telling you. You notice things, Rin, and you sometimes just blurt them out, but usually you’re one of the first to know what’s happening. Keep an eye out, okay?”“Fine.” I kept walking, eyes pointed to the ground. We were almost at that house.The inside of the house looked exactly like the inside of Gurathin’s parents' house. The decorations were a little different, but I could still recognize it. Overse elbowed me in the ribs and hissed, “See?”Fine, I was starting to believe her stupid theory.ART touched my shoulder. “Are you alright?” I nodded, and I belatedly realized I was breathing a lot faster than normal.The adults ushered us into the basement (which, yes, did look like Gurathin’s basement, except instead of random computer gaming stuff there was a whole workshop) and closed the door. The two who still had their faces covered pulled off the coverings, and oh.Overse was right. The other two looked like slightly older versions of Ratthi and Gurathin. And this Gurathin had metal stuff on his face too.I was a little freaked out.Maybe they were going to kill us and they just wanted privacy for it.The person who looked like Arada ran her hand through her hair. The movement was eerily Arada’s. I was starting to believe Overse’s theory. And then she sighed, opened her mouth, and closed it again. She hadn’t said anything. Based on what I knew about Arada, I was pretty sure she was nonverbal.Adult Four, the one who was me in this universe if Overse was right, looked straight at Mensah for the briefest moment before looking away. “You said you were lost.”“We are,” Mensah said, not sitting down on the floor like the rest of us. “My name is Ayda Mensah, and I am the student stage manager at Preservation High School. This is my assistant stage manager, Pin-Lee; my sibling and lights tech, Rin; Peri, who’s on run crew; our costumes person, Ratthi; our makeup person, Gurathin; and Arada and Overse, who are actors.” She gestured to each of us in turn.What she didn’t notice, but I did, was the way the adults looked at each other. I thought they were afraid, but the one who looked like me was almost happy at the same time.Mensah continued. “We were going out for dinner after our performance, and as we were driving through the parking lot of another high school, we found ourselves suddenly here.”“We think it was ghosts,” Ratthi said. “I mean I’ve never heard of them doing this before, but everyone knows most of Addy’s haunted. We heard it from their ASM forever ago.”“Why should we trust you? You could be a trick of the Administrator,” the one with Ratthi’s face demanded. “What’s the chance of another universe dumping a bunch of kids into our hands?”The other Arada waved her hands for a second then pointed at the other me.“Oh, right. Still. Why would…”The other Gurathin gave Mensah and Pin-Lee a steely glare and finished the other Ratthi’s sentence. “Why would the Empress and the Hand of the Law” – and the way he spit those titles out told me they were not a compliment – “be friends with rebels?”“I’m sorry?” ART had a talent for sounding affronted, and it was using it. “We’re not rebels. I am tech crew and while I happen to be friends with actors, I would not call them rebels either.”“ART?” the other me asked. It sounded incredulous.“That name is private,” ART said.“Mind your own f*cking business,” I added.The adult Ratthi and adult Gurathin mouthed something I didn’t catch for a minute before the other me spoke out loud. “F*ck, you are from an alternate universe.”
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We stared at it for a long second. It didn’t stare back at us. (If it was actually me, I wasn’t surprised. I didn’t like eye contact either.)Overse was right. I had been hoping she wasn’t.“I’m sorry,” Overse said, all in a rush of words. (I guess she was feeling guilty or something.) “Whatever Other Me did to you, whatever caused your– our? Whatever caused the two of us to break up and ruin everyone’s friendship, I’m really sorry. That was really mean of her. Of me. Whatever.”The other Ratthi wiped his eyes and stared at her. “What? No. You didn’t– oh, dear.”There was more mouthing and muttering from the adults. I was really starting to be annoyed by it.“Look. You didn’t– she didn’t– it wasn’t your fault, alright? It’s her fault. It’s Mensah’s fault she’s dead!” The other Arada threw her arm in my sister’s direction and dashed up the stairs. “You get to deal with this, Hope. You’re better at it anyways.”“Pres!” The other Ratthi called out after her, but she slammed the door after her. “Pressy!” He sat down with a huff. “I’m sorry about that. She doesn’t– the stress is– this isn’t ideal cir– this isn’t any of your faults. She’s had a long three years.”None of us said anything. Mensah flopped down onto the floor and reached out to Overse, who hugged her back. The rest of us scootched closer and joined the hug. Yes, even me. She was my sister and Overse was my friend and this was not good.We didn’t move for a long minute. I started running through Sanctuary Moon plots in my head. Finally, the other Ratthi sighed dramatically. “Look. I’m sorry you had to find out like this. She doesn’t blame you, I promise.”Likely story. She did blame her. She blamed my sister who couldn’t even stand to actually bump someone down to run crew. She blamed my sister who only truly hated six people in the world. She blamed my sister who was doing her best to help, who would never hurt anyone, who wanted the world to be better. She was calling my sister a murderer.“Are you going to go after her?” The other Gurathin pointedly nodded his head at the door.“In a minute. She needs some time alone first. You know how this goes.”(That conversation sounded familiar. But the last time I’d heard it, the last show of junior year last year, Pin-Lee and Overse had been having it. Arada had run out of the dressing room after Tlacey had said something about how terrible a singer she was. I’d been in there looking for Pin-Lee, who had borrowed my phone charger and hadn’t given it back. She’d been in there putting mics on people, as a favor to the SM at the time, her cousin. The wording had been almost exactly the same.
Pin-Lee: “Are you going to go after her?”
Overse: “In a minute. She needs some time alone first. You know how this goes. I’ll go talk to her once she has a second to breathe.”
I didn’t know why I felt sorry for this other Arada.)We still weren’t talking. I didn’t think any of us knew what to say. To Mensah, to Overse, to Arada, to anyone. The other Ratthi and the other Gurathin went back to mouthing words at each other under their breaths.This wasn’t a normal situation. We weren’t at someone’s house watching movies or cramming into a car to get to the diner or curled up on the stage waiting for notes after a particularly long dress rehearsal. We were trapped in a strange universe, and we only had each other. I knew that, I knew that was why my friends were being so touchy-feely, but I couldn’t stand the hug any more.I got up, got my pillow out of my backpack, and curled up with it separately from the others. ART sat next to me but didn’t touch me.My sister and my friends shifted around, into more of a pile than a hug. It looked like a normal theater-kids-hanging-out thing, with Overse’s head in Arada’s lap and Mensah leaning on Pin-Lee’s shoulder and Ratthi squashing Overse and Gurathin sitting just behind them all with one hand on Mensah’s arm and them all using each other for support. It wasn’t a normal theater kid thing.We didn’t know what else to do or what to say.Mensah was in shock, I knew. She was… from the way my sister was tracing circles on Overse’s hand and leaning heavily into Pin-Lee, she was being extra affectionate, presumably as a way to convince herself that she could never kill anyone, never kill one of her closest friends.Arada was rubbing Overse’s head and looking like she wanted to do something to her other self. I couldn’t tell if she wanted to hurt her or hug her.Ratthi wasn’t exactly tall, but he had some bulk. He was putting every ounce of it into being a comforting weight to squish Overse, who was crying silently.Gurathin squeezed Mensah’s arm, steadying the both of them.Pin-Lee had apparently accepted that she was going to be Mensah’s headrest and was holding my sister in a tight side hug, one arm draped over Mensah’s shoulder.ART and I just sat there, not touching but being together anyways. My pillow seemed wetter than it should be. It had dug out its emergency microscope and clutched it to its chest.We didn’t move.This other Arada had cut deep and harsh with her words.
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Eventually, the other Ratthi coughed. “I know this was a shock. I’m so sorry. She’s been– Pressy’s been… she saw you and panicked. It doesn’t excuse her behavior, but it might explain it.”“Go talk to her,” the other Gurathin said. “I’ll explain the situation to them. You’re emotionally compromised, and you’re going to talk around it for an hour first. That’s not what we need right now.” Classic Gurathin-being-an-a**hole, but at least it might be for a good reason this time.He shooed the other Ratthi out, then closed the basement door again. The other me made an expression I couldn’t figure out. My best guess was “I don’t like that my sister is crying and I don’t like this situation.” But if Mensah here was so awful that she’d murder Overse, one of her friends, and break up the friend group over it (presumably, given that we still hadn’t met anyone else, I hadn’t sided with her), why would I be worried about her? (That was a stupid question, she was my sister and of course I would be worried about her even if she murdered someone.)The other Gurathin joined us on the floor. He sighed (there had been too much of that lately) and reached out to pat Arada awkwardly on the shoulder. (If he had said “There, there,” or another stupid adult thing, I think everyone would have punched him, but he didn’t, so I didn’t punch him.) “Your universe, your world — you live in a kind world. Fundamentally, you live in a place where you don’t have to fight for your freedom every minute of every day. That’s not the case here. We don’t live in a safe world. The Empress, the Hand of the Law? They hurt people. They kill people. They see law and order as more important than everything, including kindness. Including life.”Mensah squeezed Overse’s hand. “No,” she whispered. “No. I wouldn’t– I couldn’t– she didn’t– she isn’t. Tell me she isn’t.”“I’m sorry.”The other me, standing in the corner, didn’t look at her when it spoke. “I’m not from this universe either. It’s not supposed to be this way. She’s supposed to be kind. This world twisted her somehow, twisted all of us.”Mensah was crying now too. “She killed– I killed,” she whispered. “I– we– she killed her friend? She killed one of her– she killed Overse? I–” She could barely get words out between heaving sobs.I hated seeing my sister like this. I wanted to go home. We all did. I wanted to protect her the way she protected me but I couldn’t do that here, he was right that we weren’t home where things made sense.“She’s not a friend. Administrator Mensah, the Empress of the Salvation Alliance, has no friends,” the other Gurathin said. “She has underlings.” He paused. “And the Solicitor and Saviorbot, I suppose. They did most of the killing, actually. Tradition… Overse died doing what she felt was right.”Mensah took a shaky breath. “Wh– why? Why did she have to die? Why did some callous person with my name and my face think it was necessary to kill anyone?”“I don’t think she thought about what it would mean for her rule, if it helps.” He chuckled. “If she had known, she probably wouldn’t have chosen the path that led to our little rebellion expanding and becoming a serious threat.”The other Ratthi interrupted, the door banging open and closed. “She told me to leave her alone for a while.” He shook his head.“Anyways,” the other Gurathin said, “Arada… after Overse, she…”“She changed after Overse died,” the other Ratthi said, sitting down next to all of us.Now Overse, Mensah, and Arada were crying, and it looked like my friend Ratthi was going to start as well. F*ck, I hated everything about this.“Ch-changed?” Mensah asked. “How?”“You have to understand we were thinking about rebellion from the time we were in college, and we’d only started doing anything more than talking about it a year or so before she…” He trailed off, considering his words before he continued. “Her death was our first big loss. We didn’t think about it before then, but afterwards? Arada got scary. She started expanding. It was just the four of us, her and Overse and me and Volescu, with Gurathin standing on the sidelines wringing his hands and worrying we weren’t going to come back, and then it was the three of us, and then it was an actual rebellion.”ART, next to me, startled. “What about Rin? If it was just the four of you, where were Rin and Pin-Lee and I? Where were Bharadwaj and Indah?” It sounded vaguely horrified, and clutched its microscope tighter.None of the adults answered for a few seconds. Then the other Ratthi took a deep breath. “You have to understand–”Pin-Lee cut him off. “You said Solicitor, earlier,” she snapped. (I doubted she was actually angry. She didn’t get ultra-calm in stressful situations like my sister, she swore and snapped and threatened. That’s why they worked so well together.) “Assuming this universe maintained our career paths in any way, that would be me, wouldn’t it. And presumably I’m evil too.”The other Gurathin winced and said nothing. We all covered our ears.Pin-Lee swore for almost a full minute. Yeah, that was about how I was feeling right about now. I had a sinking suspicion I knew where I was here, and where ART was.Because it had always been the four of us. We were the senior members of tech crew who knew what we were doing. We were the ones who’d done crew every year, we were the ones with keys to the theater, we were the ones who knew the theater better than anyone, we were three seniors and a junior who were the ones to ask about everything tech, we were the smart ones. Mensah and Pin-Lee had known each other since before they could walk. ART and I were… well, we were best friends. Mensah was my sister. Pin-Lee was a close friend of mine. It was why we were such a formidable team.If Mensah and Pin-Lee were on one side of an argument, it was almost a given that ART and I were on that side too. (Unless someone was being contrary on purpose.) F*ck.
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If the other me that was here wasn’t from this universe either, there had to be a version of me running around that was from here. And it was probably evil Mensah and evil Pin-Lee’s best buddy in torture and destruction. Same with ART. I wanted to go home.Pin-Lee pulled out her hairclip with the arm that wasn’t tucked around Mensah, ran her fingers through her hair, and clipped it back up one-handed. She only really fidgeted like that when she was preparing for a mock trial meet and actually worried about her competition. This was not good.Ratthi sighed. “This universe is messed up.” He gestured at the other Ratthi. “Did you even get to learn how to sew? Or was that joy taken from you too?”Other Ratthi shrugged. “I don’t use it much, but I learned as a child.”Mensah had stopped sobbing a minute or so ago, and was now looking at the rest of us, probably taking mental inventory of what was going on. Her breathing was still uneven, shaky, but it was starting to steady.“Right,” she said. “Could you– could you give us a moment alone, please? I think we need to handle a few things.” My sister stood up and went over to her backpack, digging through it for something. She was really favoring her left leg now; she must have hit it harder than I’d thought when she fell out of the car.The other Gurathin looked reluctant, but a glare from the other Ratthi kept him from protesting. “We’ll be just upstairs.”When other me had closed the door behind it, Mensah sat back down and handed Overse the first aid kit. (Overse immediately tsk’ed and started to look at her knee.) We spread out into a loose circle and I dragged the backpacks into the center.Mensah looked around the circle, but Gurathin started talking before she could even open her mouth. “Well, this universe is depressing and awful.”“Agreed,” Arada said. “It’s awful and I don’t like that this other me has good reason to hate other you.” She looked at Mensah.Mensah smiled back, but it was fake. “I know. I don’t like this alternate version of me either. I don’t… I promise never to go mad with power like that.”(“Not much stage managers can do if they do get mad with power,” Gurathin said.)(“Shut up, yes there is,” Pin-Lee said, and whacked him on the arm.)“We have to assume we may be stuck here, in this universe, for some time,” Mensah said. “What supplies do we have? If we’re lucky, these alternate versions of ourselves…” She stopped, took a breath, and continued. “If we’re lucky, they’ll let us stay and help us get home. If we’re not, I don’t want to be unprepared.”Each of us grabbed our backpack and rifled through it. (Arada searched Overse’s backpack and I checked my sister’s, since Overse was wrapping Mensah’s knee still.) We didn’t have much, but we had something.Each of us had the clothes we’d worn to school today (wearing blacks or changing clothes to school is a stupid idea and only the frosh ever do it). Mensah had her usual pile of backup tech stuff. Between me and Gurathin and ART, we had chargers and backup batteries for everyone (what if there weren’t outlets here?). We had some food, mostly Mensah’s backup snacks and lunch remnants. Ratthi had sewing stuff and one of the costumes he’d taken home to fix. There were a few other things, but our situation was rapidly becoming clear.We weren’t prepared to survive on our own.Pin-Lee looked around at us. She took a deep breath and let it out. “Ayda, I don’t think we can do this. We could survive a day, but not much more. We need food, clothes, probably gas for the van, everything.”We were all expecting my sister to say something encouraging, but she didn’t say anything.Arada smiled extra widely. “Well, we can survive a day. That’s a start. And the car has gas in it, I filled it up on Monday.”“Optimist,” Overse sighed. “The car has gas in it, but we won’t get too far on half a tank.” Arada shifted closer and nudged her girlfriend softly. “Babe, you can barely get out of the city and back on half a tank, you know that, and if this other person is anywhere near as smart as you are, she’ll have put her rebellion’s base as far from the nearest city as possible.”“Our money won’t work here,” Gurathin said, “even if we had much. I hate to say it, but we might have to cooperate.”ART pulled out a notebook and a bunch of science stuff I didn’t know it had (not like I cared though). “It might be possible to return ourselves home, provided I can gather the necessary data and analyze it to determine our relative position across universes. Dad’s had theories about this for years, I can start there. What do we know for a fact, that’s the first…” It started muttering things to itself and scribbling in the notebook, so I tuned it out.We kept being quietly together for a while. Ratthi started his bio homework. ART did its thing. Overse finished with Mensah’s knee, then the two of them curled up with a book from her backpack. Pin-Lee flopped on Mensah and read her own book. Arada changed into her school clothes in the darkest corner of the basement and joined the cuddle pile, braiding and rebraiding Overse’s hair. Gurathin added his own notes to ART’s. I plugged in my headphones and watched half an episode of Sanctuary Moon on my phone. There were noises from the upstairs, but for a bit we were just eight teens hanging out in a basement.In a strange world. Away from home. Where we were possibly stuck for good, if ART couldn’t figure something out. Where half our theater family wanted to kill the other half and vice versa.
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The other Ratthi knocked on the door, then opened it anyways. “Are you alright? Are any of you dead?”Why was that his first thought? Was this universe that bad?“No,” I said. “We’re fine.”“Look. I know Pressy made a bad impression, but she’s had a minute to handle everything that’s happened, and we’d like to try again. Start over.” He paused. “Well, neither she nor SecUnit actually said that. But we think it’s a good idea.”SecUnit? Was other me still going by that f*cking deadname?“Gurathin made food. It’s not poisoned, you can test it if you want. We’re upstairs, you can just…” he trailed off, pulling his head out of the doorway.Why did he have to specify that, exactly? How f*cked up was this universe, anyways? Was “poison your guests' food” the default here or something?Mensah stood up, incidentally pushing Pin-Lee and Arada off her and onto the floor. “We needed to eat three hours ago. Rin, you didn’t take your meds.”“Well, if they’re offering it,” Pin-Lee shrugged as she got to her feet and helped Arada up. “Sh*t, I don’t have my meds either.”Mensah blinked as she thought. “You should, they’re in your backpack.”“No, they’re at home, same with my morning meds. Rin brings its everywhere because it’s paranoid. I leave mine where I can find them.”Gurathin sighed. “We were going to sleepover at Three’s, you knew that, you do have them. You texted us this morning to ask if Three would let you leave them in its car so you didn’t forget them tonight and it said it’d rather not, so you said you’d keep them in your bag.”“I swear, I–”Ratthi cut her off. “You did. You also said to remind you not to leave them at Three’s. I don’t get how you can be so good at remembering all this debate and mock trial and moot court stuff for weeks and you can’t remember what you said about your meds this very morning.”“Oh, shut up!” Pin-Lee whacked him in the arm, and he yelped. None of us thought anything of it; it’s just how she was. What she did.Of course, that had to be the minute other Ratthi stuck his head in, saw her hitting him, and got completely the wrong idea.The other Ratthi was down the stairs and had Pin-Lee’s arms twisted behind her back before she could even gasp in surprise. Ratthi tried to protest — “What are you doing, why are you hurting her, what’s going on?” — but the other Ratthi was faster.I jumped other Ratthi. I couldn’t stop myself, and even Mensah’s sudden reach for my arm didn’t stop me. He couldn’t hurt my friend.He rolled away, letting go of her, but I landed on top of him. I didn’t think. I fought like I was back on the streets. (Later, Mensah told me Pin-Lee had rushed out of the way to Overse, who ran the briefest of concussion checks and kept her from divetackling other Ratthi.)I wasn’t aware of what I was doing until someone yanked us apart. Other me stood over us, glaring. It was as bad as getting Mensah’s patented stage manager glare. “Stop.”“He hurt my friend!”“She was hurting him first!”“I’m fine! That was Pin-Lee, she does that, okay? We were having a conversation and then you barged in and misinterpreted everything!”“What am I supposed to think, when the Solicitor of the Salvation Alliance hits a rebel?”“I’m not a rebel, and she’s not a lawyer yet, she’s my friend!”“Quiet. I don’t want to hear it. All of you, upstairs. Ratthi, starting over was your idea. You were the one who said we should treat them like completely different people, and now you’re doing this. Upstairs. We’re starting over, and that’s final.”
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We marched upstairs in complete silence. The other me directed all of us to a couch, and even the other Ratthi sat. Then it stomped off.Overse waved the first aid kit at me and glared when I shook my head. In a low voice, she hissed, “You’re hurt, you need help.”“This isn’t basketball. I don’t need you to use your f*cking sports med on me. He didn’t even hurt me.”“Rin,” Mensah muttered.“Fine.” I let Overse give me the briefest of checkups. She didn’t find anything. I was fine. I’d been right, I was fine, they didn’t need to be so concerned about me.Other than that, nobody said a word until other me returned with other Arada and other Gurathin, all three of them scowling. It motioned them to the couch and we automatically scooted down to make room.It was still standing. “None of you are acting like rational, reasonable adult humans. Do better. I’m locking this door until you can act calm around each other.”And then it stomped out. Other Gurathin tried the door, but other me had actually locked it.Other Gurathin huffed. “Make yourselves comfortable. It won’t let us out until we talk, so we might as well start.”ART sat down on the coffee table and pulled itself into a tangle of limbs. Arada laid her head in Overse’s lap. Mensah moved ever so slightly closer to Ratthi. I stood up.“I suppose we should,” the other Arada said, one hand on something in a waist holster. I was really hoping it wasn’t a gun and this wasn’t a plot to kill us all. (It probably was and I hoped it wasn’t.) “Arada. This is Gurathin and Ratthi. Out there is SecUnit.”“Why’s Rin going by its deadname here?”Pin-Lee reached over Mensah and whacked Ratthi in the arm again. “Ratthi! You don’t just ask that,” she hissed.“What? Fine.” He smiled and pointed at each of us in turn. “I’m Ratthi. This is Mensah, Pin-Lee, Arada, Overse, Rin, Peri — it’s short for Perihelion —, and Gurathin.”“You’re students,” other Gurathin said. “I wouldn’t expect you to, but do you have an idea of what happened to bring you here?”“Sure,” Ratthi said. “Ghosts.”This time ART waved its fist ineffectively at him. “While that may be your working theory, theater ghosts are baseless superstition–”The rest of us cut it off with a chorus of “No, they aren’t, stop jinxing us.”“As I was saying,” it continued as if nobody had interrupted it, “we seem to have transported universes as we passed through the parking lot of another high school, one that common superstition deems haunted, a theory any scientific study would rule out. Regardless, one theory about entering parallel universes that seems to be confirmed is that entering does not automatically swap the person with the version of themself existing in this one, as evidenced by your continued presence.”Other Gurathin interrupted. “Explain SecUnit, then. It swapped places with the EnforcerUnit…” He stopped. “It swapped places with its counterpart from this universe.”ART shifted positions so it could grab its notebook. “That gives solid evidence for Dad’s second theory, then, which means…” It trailed off into calculations and muttering, and the rest of us mutually ignored it.So we weren’t doing perfectly on the whole getting-along front. We were trying. So far we’d come to the conclusion that Mayor Makeba and the Captain Makeba who their rebellion was named after were probably the same person and had made a very similar speech in any case, that Ratthi was a bio geek everywhere (except here it was bioweapons, which was a bit scary), and that neither of our groups thought us staying very long in this universe was a good idea. (I’d also figured out part of the reason for that was that our alternate selves were worried about us drawing attention to ourselves, and by extension them, which I thought was stupid. We were six crewpeople and the two actors most likely to act like crew. Not drawing attention to ourselves was half our job.)At least other me had let us out of the room and offered us food (which I didn’t want but took anyways). It wasn’t eating, but the rest of us were. Partway through the meal, though, there was a loud knock at the door.Other Arada and other Ratthi reacted immediately. “In here,” other Ratthi said, and motioned us to the basement again. “Don’t open the door for anyone. Don’t make a single noise unless we give the all clear first.”We nodded. I wondered what was so dangerous about a knock at the door, so much so that this other Ratthi sounded scared. Not faking it, actually scared. He turned to other Arada and started to say something, but she interrupted.“We have to go with them. SecUnit, you too. It could be the enforcers, and with the extra baggage here, we can’t afford a slip. If they figure out something’s up…”“I know,” other Ratthi said. “We could all die, for real this time. And we can’t afford to try to fake anyone’s death if there’s any chance they know what happened last time. Gurathin” — he took a deep breath before saying more — “you’re on your own.”So whoever they were worried about being at the door, it was probably someone working for Mensah’s evil counterpart. We rushed into the basement. I found a dark corner to hide in, just in case. ART sat next to me. If I closed my eyes it was almost like being in the catwalks.I wished we were just all in the catwalks.
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We weren’t in there long. Other Gurathin rapped on the door in some kind of pattern. Other me, standing by the stairs with a gun in its hand, noticeably relaxed. (Well, it was only noticeable to someone who was intimately familiar with its posture, which obviously I was, I’d just never seen myself from outside before.)“Thank Makeba,” other Arada whispered. “All clear.” She ushered us upstairs, behind other me, who still had the gun out as it went.Other Gurathin was sitting at the kitchen table again, and so was another person.A very familiar person.Our theater teacher, Mr. Volescu. Or possibly this universe’s version of him. (He looked the same, old and gray haired, but I don’t have a good track record with guessing ages so I wasn’t going to say for sure how old he was. Definitely a lot older than the other versions of us.)What the f*ck was he doing here?Pin-Lee started to say something, but Mensah and I both poked her in the side before she could. She shut up, and Mensah’s smile got wider (I was 86% certain she was forcing the smile in the first place, and now I was 97% certain). “Good evening,” she said, but her voice was artificially high and cheery. (Even I could tell, and I suck at understanding tone.)Ratthi and Gurathin and ART had all instantly straightened up and shoved their hands behind their backs like they were hiding something. My face must have been doing something as well, because Arada elbowed me and muttered for me to “get your face under control, Rin.”We liked Mr. V a lot, but yeah, you could probably guess most of our surprise interactions with him were when we got in trouble. Mensah ran the tech crew on a daily basis. He helped us out and was supervision for builds and directed the play and all, but he didn’t really show up out of nowhere to see how the crew was doing unless we were in trouble. In turn, we didn’t tell him all the stupid things we did unless we ended up in actual trouble, since he didn’t really need to hear it. His focus was mostly on the actors, and even then he let them handle a lot of it on their own. Benign neglect on everyone’s parts, and that’s just how we liked it.Seeing him here, even if it was an alternate universe version of him? We reacted like we were in trouble, because seeing him unplanned usually meant we were in trouble. But it didn’t mean we didn’t want to see him. It was an autonomous reaction (or whatever it was called). (Ask Arada or Ratthi or Overse or someone, I don’t know, I was taking physics not bio.)Apparently the other universe versions of ourselves took our surprise and automatic reactions (you get the point, I don’t freaking know what the word is) as a sign, because other Ratthi rushed to explain. “Happiness isn’t going to murder you! Really, he’s part of our movement, he won’t hurt you, you don’t have to be worried about him, no matter what he’s like in your universe!”We all blinked and tried to figure out what other Ratthi meant by that. Finally, Mensah gasped. “Oh. Oh…” She waved her hands frantically, trying to clarify. “No, no, we’re not afraid of him, we were surprised. It’s just… we were only surprised, we’re not worried. We hadn’t expected to see our theater teacher. That’s all.”“So these are the teenagers you told me about,” the other Mr. V said to the other me. “You’re right, they are young.”“And remarkably similar to people existing in both my universe and this one,” other me said.“I suppose,” he said, quietly. “Are you sure they’re… safe? They do look remarkably like you all as well as others who are more… adversarial.” Other Mr. V gave other Arada a side-eyed glance. “And… the spitting image of what Tradition looked like when she was younger. The spitting image of both of you, really. Do you… what happened?”“They’re safe,” other me said (thanks me, I guess).This was awkward. This whole thing was awkward. I think it was probably weird for everyone, but it was really awkward to be talking to yourself and three of your closest friends, who are all adults and apparently co-leaders of a highly secret rebellion, with your school’s drama teacher/tech crew supervisor who’s exactly the same age as always, fighting against your (also adult) sister and her best friend. (Ratthi would probably add “As one does” to this, but nobody does this except, apparently, us.)We had a brief, stilted, conversation I wished I could delete from my memory forever. (Note to self, ask other, older and more experienced, you whether it’s figured that out yet.) The gist of it was that none of us had any idea what should happen next.It was lucky that something else seemed to have figured that out for us. Our bodies knew what we needed. We needed to rest.It was late according to both our body clocks and the actual clocks. Other Mr. V had proposed bed as the next step, and suddenly everyone realized how tired we were (except other me for some reason?).In the morning, we would have to get clothes for us that fit local styles and more supplies and stuff for them so they wouldn’t run out because there were suddenly a lot more people in the house. But that was a problem for tomorrow.For now, everyone needed sleep. Now that I looked, I saw the signs: Overse leaning on Mensah, Arada repeatedly running her hand through her hair, Ratthi yawning, ART actually using a calculator for once. Even Pin-Lee, my fellow insomniac, was blinking more than usual. The other versions of us (except for other me? What was going on with it?) were also displaying signs of exhaustion.Other Gurathin found blankets and helped us set up something akin to beds on the basement floor. We changed into our school clothes (yes, in the same room. We’re theater kids, we’re used to it, you just don’t look unless you’re helping someone) and did whatever other hygiene stuff we had to. (We had our toothbrushes (none of us had remembered pajamas, we’d been planning to sleep in our school clothes so as not to dirty our blacks) because we’d been planning to sleep over at Three’s. It was an uncomfortable reminder that we weren’t supposed to be here, we were supposed to be eating at the diner with everyone else and watching bootleg broadway shows on Three’s couch until four am and not doing our homework or sleeping.)Then just as we curled up on the cold floor, other me sat down on the stairs. It just sat. Didn’t do anything. Sat on the stairs and watched, I guess, as Arada and Overse and Ratthi and Pin-Lee and Gurathin curled up in one nest (that’s what they would have done at Three’s, too, except Bharadwaj and Amena and Three would have been in the cuddle pile too, and here, they weren’t.) and Mensah and ART and I took the other blankets and made loose sleeping-bag-type-things for ourselves (Indah would have done the same, as would Iris. If they were here.).It was kind of creepy to be watched like that. It felt like being on the other side of the light booth for once, getting spotlighted instead of doing the spotlighting (well, that was Iris’s job, but close enough).I tugged my blanket closer to Mensah’s, just like we were in middle school and all of us older kids were sleeping on the floor of her room because I was having nightmares every night and they wanted me to be protected. She reached out for me, silently offering a side-hug, and it showed how bad this whole situation was that I let her hug me and even hugged back. (There are three people in the world who can hug me without it being an actual emergency, and even they have to ask first. My sister’s one of them.)We sat together, her arm around my shoulder and my arm around hers, for a long time (somewhere between a minute and an hour, I don’t have a good internal clock) and just watched the others. ART was sitting on its blanket, still working in its notebook. Other me hadn’t moved from its spot on the stairs. Everyone else was curled up in the blanket nest and mostly asleep, in a tangle of limbs and bodies that was gross but also sort of sweet at the same time (don’t tell any of them I said that, they’ll be weird about it). Heads on chests, arms over faces, legs under torsos, or whatever else was going on there, they were all asleep or really close to it. Good.Mensah needed to be asleep too. I told her as much in a whisper, and she stifled a laugh. “Says the insomniac,” she whispered back, softly. “If you’ll try, I’ll try.”I moved my blanket back and laid down on it. She did too, then sat back up.“Peri, you ought to be asleep as well,” she said quietly. “And no watching stuff on your phone, either of you!”ART ignored her. (Actually it was probably too busy working and didn’t hear her in the first place.) I didn’t. I wasn’t sleepy, but I stared at the ceiling until I heard her breathing slow and even out completely. Then I turned away from ART and laid on my side.It probably seemed like I was asleep, but I wasn’t. So I heard when other me got up and sat down on ART’s other side.“Your name is Peri.” It wasn’t a question.“Yes. You look like Rin, but that’s not your name, is it.” ART wasn’t asking questions either.“Call me SecUnit.”ART giggled, and I was pretty sure it was resisting the urge to quote something at other me. “Peri, then. That’s Rin’s deadname, don’t use that for it.”“Do you know a Mihira or a New Tideland? And do you like space?” Imagine other me speaking in exactly the flat intonations I used a lot, and you got an idea of how it was talking now.“Mihira’s my last name, New Tideland’s the city and the university my dads work at. Yes, I love space and I placed extraordinarily highly in the astronomy portion of Science Olympiad last year. Why?”“You’re supposed to be a ship.” What?“I’m sorry? A spaceship?”“Yes. An annoying one.”ART didn’t respond for a second. If I could see it, I was sure it would be blinking and trying to reorient its view of the world. “Is that why none of you were surprised that I used it/its? Because ships do that?”“Usually. I don’t know the version of you in this universe,” other me said, and it sounded like it was having a complex emotional reaction. “In my universe, however, the Perihelion is a deep space research vessel and possibly the most annoying a**hole of a ship to ever exist.”“Rin calls me an a**hole for a reason. It is usually annoyed at my tendencies towards sarcasm. I am unsurprised that you do as well.” ART laughed softly, then sighed. “Wait. What about my sister? What about Iris? Is she a ship too? Is she alright?”“Iris is fine. She’s not a ship. She’s part of your crew. You called her your favorite human.”“What about our– what about my dads? Seth and Martyn Mihira?”“They’re also part of your crew. I don’t know their last names, but they are Iris’s fathers.”ART was silent for a while. I almost rolled over to see if it had fallen asleep sitting up again. I didn’t. (I thought I might be having a complex emotion as well.)The silence was nice. But just as I decided maybe I could close my eyes and try to sleep at least, ART spoke up again.“Thank you,” it said.I rolled over, wanting to see what it was doing. It had tucked the notebook into the blanket and was now using it as a pillow. I clutched my own pillow closer to my chest. (I didn’t sleep on it, I mostly hugged it.)“You’re not human, are you.” Again, ART wasn’t asking a question.“I’m not. I’m a SecUnit.”ART leveled a glare at other me. “That doesn’t explain what you are. I don’t know everything and I don’t think you even have wifi here, so I can’t go look it up.”“It doesn’t matter what I am. Take a rest period. Humans need to do that sort of thing.”ART sighed, but stopped talking. Other me got up after a moment and went back to the stairs. The basement was silent except for our breathing. It was actually kind of nice.And then quietly, sleepily, in the voice it always had just before it nodded off, ART mumbled, “You want to go home too.”Other me didn’t answer.
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I fell asleep at that point. Or I thought I did at least. And I must have slept well, because the next thing I remembered was Overse’s face looming over me. “Rin, Rin, wake up!”“Wha– Overse, what the f*ck?”“Peri and Gurathin and the other you and I figured something out. Give me your phone.”“What the– fine,” I said, handing it over.I didn’t bother trying to go back to sleep. I found my laptop and headphones, watched Sanctuary Moon, and did my math homework. Might as well.Mensah came eventually and sat next to me with her planner and stuff. “Isn’t it a little early to be awake?”“No,” I said. “ART and Gurathin and Overse were up before me.”“Yes, I’ve already talked to them and your counterpart about that. I believe Peri is trying to connect our phones to their version of the internet.”I didn’t know what to say to that. (I hoped we could get home before it was necessary.) So we sat in silence until the others started to yawn and rub their eyes and get up and all. I finished my math homework. She did something complicated with her planner and one of her AcaDeca binders. I really hoped we could get back home soon so me doing my homework mattered.This whole situation sucked. Then other me came over with my phone and things abruptly got worse.“Here,” it said, thrusting my phone at me.“Thanks,” I said, and pulled up Sanctuary Moon there too, just to check that nothing had changed.“Was your project a success?” Mensah smiled pleasantly at its shoulder. Why the f*ck did she want to make this a conversation?“Sort of. Your ART is as much of an a**hole as mine. It says basic communications are a stepping stone, not a success.”Mensah laughed. “That does sound like Perihelion. I spend quite a bit of time keeping it and Rin from doing unsupervised science experiments anywhere near sensitive tech equipment. You can guess whose fault it is, I’m sure.” (Hey, I was usually the one trying to stop the unauthorized science projects from getting near my lightboard.) (Unless she was referencing the time I/we tried to reprogram my board to automatically move a couple of the lights.) (That was probably what she was referencing.) Then Mensah stood up. “I think I’ll see if they’ve finished with my phone yet. Thank you for your help with this project…” She trailed off and regrouped. “I’m sorry, I’m still not sure what you prefer to be called.”“SecUnit.”“Well then, thank you for your help, SecUnit,” she said, but the easy smile in her voice was forced now. I knew why. So did she. Hopefully, other me wasn’t as good at reading my (our?) sister as I was. (What was their/our relationship, in its universe, if it wasn’t native to this one either?)As she walked away, it sat down.“Why are you still going by our deadname? Why don’t you have an actual name?” Cr*p, I hadn’t meant for that to come out of my mouth.“I’m not a human. I don’t need a name. Besides, my name is private.”“Look,” I started, then looked around myself before I spat our name out. The others knew what I called myself privately, but only ART got to use that name for me. “Look, Em, I think we both know we’re the same person. Why don’t you have a name for people to call you? Why are you using the f*cking dehumanizing name our sh*tty parents gave us to make us the same as our siblings? It’s not– you got out of there, right? You know our friends, you have to have made it to Preservation at some point. And you are human, look at you, even though you have that weird metal stuff on your face, we look exactly the same, except you’re a couple inches taller.”“I am not a human. I am a SecUnit. I did not have parents, I was grown from cloned tissue and inorganic materials in a vat. And it’s none of your f*cking business what my name is, which, as a point of fact, isn’t Eh-em!” It spat my name, my private name I’d thought it shared, out with a singsong that mimicked the tone Combat from Gray High always used for me, mocking me, calling me Ri-hi-in like I was a f*cking baby.Okay, so technically I was lying about my name, there was a second syllable, it was MB, if I wanted to get technical with myself (I didn’t, particularly, not right now), but Em was what ART called me when we’d first had this conversation about names, M for Mensah, and B for several things but mostly MB because that was me.I didn’t want to talk to it anymore.“Oh, f*ck off!”I slammed my laptop closed and stomped off to sit with my friends.I didn’t want to talk to them. I just sat. Sat and stewed. Mensah and ART tried to talk to me but I flipped ART off and shook my head at my sister until they quit it.And then when everyone else was finally awake (functional was pushing it, not without coffee for Pin-Lee and Arada, and tea for Ratthi), other Gurathin came down and said there was food and would anyone like some and perhaps now would be a good time to discuss next steps.Other me was the first to get up and out of here. Good. F*ck you.Mensah motioned me to stay back, which, whatever, not like I was that hungry anyways. “I’m concerned about you,” she said in a low voice, once the others had left. “I’m concerned about all of us, actually, but Pin-Lee and I had this conversation earlier, and she pointed out that the three of our alternate selves are, well, the most scary.”It felt weird but nice, like it always did, to hear her say she was concerned. I didn’t know what to say to that, though, except “How so?”“They’re the most different from us. And I’m not sure how you feel, but the thought that I could be so callous, so unaware of the value of human life, or maybe just so arrogant as to think myself above it all — Rin, that’s scarier than any ghost story. If I were just slightly more self-centered, slightly less willing to compromise, slightly more murderous, I…”“You discovered that you could be cruel and you don’t like it.”“Exactly.” She sighed. “Rin, I… she’s not me. I know that. But she could be me, I could grow up and turn into that. I’m scared I’m going to turn into her by accident and I won’t know or worst of all I’ll know and I’ll like it. I don’t want to turn into her. I don’t want to kill people, Rin, and I don’t want to like it. I’m scared. I’m scared of who I could be.”What do you say to that?“I know. Me too,” I said, because I was afraid too, I didn’t want to actually kill anyone. And then because she was feeling terrible and she was my sister, “Uh, do you need a hug?”She nodded once, and reached out for me. I held her, protecting her, shielding her from this other her’s cruelty. We stayed that way for a long minute.When she finally broke the hug and pulled away from me, she looked me in the eye for the briefest of seconds. “Rin, I just… you’ve gone through a lot more than I ever have and I want to make sure you know this.”“What?” I asked.“You are loved,” she said. “I love you, and we love you, and I know that if I’m thinking about this you’ve probably already had your emotional breakdown from it. But I want to remind you that you will never be like the you native to this reality. You care more than it ever can and ever will, and you will never do anything that changes that.”I appreciated her support, but I wasn’t sure how true her statement was for me. For herself, however… “Mensah, that’s true for you too. You care all the time about everything and that’s why you’re so good at being stage manager. You know everything and you care about everything. Everyone. Other you doesn’t care, and that’s stupid of her, because she’s missing out.”“Thank you. I needed to hear that as well,” she said. Her face ran through a couple of emotions before she gestured upstairs. “Now, food?”“Fine, whatever.”She chuckled. “Some things never change. Lead the way, my sibling.”
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Following a sullenly silent breakfast (heaven help anyone who tries to get some of my friends to talk before caffeine, apparently the other Arada and Ratthi were the same, and the rest of us just didn’t feel like talking), the other Gurathin suggested that he and the other Ratthi and the other Mr. V and some of us should go acquire more clothes and supplies for the rest of us in case we were stuck here long term. It wasn’t a bad suggestion.But then other Gurathin said it should be our Gurathin, Overse, Ratthi, and ART who should go with, as the people least likely to be pinged by automated security or cursory examination as people to keep an eye on. His reasoning wasn’t bad, but none of us liked his plan.I didn’t like it because if anyone here was good at not getting noticed and handling an emergency, it was me, so it should just be me going with, and maybe Ratthi could come with and stay in the car because he knew everyone’s sizes. (Also, don’t tell it, but I didn’t want ART to go anywhere where security could pick it up and maybe drag it to our evil selves and murder it. Even if it was an a**hole, it was my best friend.) And why weren’t other me or other Arada going? We didn’t need a minder, we weren’t twelve anymore.Mensah and Pin-Lee didn’t like it because they thought as the SM and ASM it was their job to do the dangerous work and therefore they should be going instead. (I thought Pin-Lee, at least, also wanted to get captured so she could tell off her counterpart from this universe. Frankly, that was probably the secret reason my sister wanted to go too.) Overse and Arada and Ratthi all thought that Arada should get to go too because she didn’t look that close to other Arada (they were wrong) and it would probably be fine and really what was the danger and if they were letting Ratthi and Gurathin who looked much more like their other selves go then shouldn’t they let Arada go too. ART wanted to work on getting home. And Gurathin, the a**hole, thought it should just be him and the other version of him going and they could pose as parent and child.There was a lot of arguing and confusion and everything, and then other me slammed its hands on the dining room table. “Enough. You need supplies, but not all of you can go. Just Gurathin.”“No, at least one of us needs to go,” Ratthi said. “How are you going to remember anyone’s sizes? And it’ll look weird if you’re buying clothes for teenagers without at least one teenager with you. Bring one or two of us, call us your niblings or something. We won’t talk to anyone, we won’t even smile or nod to anyone even if we recognize them, and we’ll just act like nothing is wrong. I’m good at that. So are the rest of us.”“Fine,” other me said. “If you’re going to be stubborn about it, who should go?”“Me, Rin, Overse, Arada, Gurathin, and my and Gurathin’s counterparts from this reality,” Ratthi said. “Arada and I can pass as siblings, almost, we did it for a thing once. So can Gurathin and Overse, now that her hair’s gotten a little darker.”(Overse sighed and muttered, “I’m not that blonde.”)“I’d say Peri should go because it and Rin can actually pass as siblings really well,” Ratthi continued, “but it’s trying to get us home, and that’s a lot more important right now. So Rin can pretend to be our other cousin, and me and Arada can pretend to be your niblings–” he pointed at other Ratthi “–and Gurathin and Overse can pretend to be yours.” He nodded to the other Gurathin. “See? Best possible plan.”“That one can’t go,” other Arada said, pointing at Arada (my friend Arada, that is). “It’s not safe.”“Why not? We’ve done it before.” Arada looked sheepish for a second. “It had to be… it was theatre camp, back in middle school sometime? We told everyone us two were siblings, and most people believed us?” She looked at Mensah, who was shaking her head. “We did, you were there. What’s-their-name, you remember, who was a year older than us, who asked us why we were in different grades when we got back to school that year? They even thought we were twins.”“There are,” other Arada said through gritted teeth, “extenuating circumstances. I don’t even leave the house any more unless there is an actual emergency, and for the safety of the rebellion I have worked my entire life to build, you need to remain here as well. Your friends may go.”Arada sulked and Mensah pressed, but neither of them got an answer. Even other Ratthi wouldn’t say a word, other than “She does not exist, and we need to keep it that way.”This was mysterious as f*ck, and I hated it.So after all that arguing, it ended up being other Ratthi and other Gurathin, my friends Ratthi and Gurathin, Overse, and me who were going. Gurathin and other Gurathin were walking a few steps away from the rest of us, arguing about something (they’d started on the trip into town and hadn’t stopped since. I wasn’t even sure what the argument was about by now). I was closest to them, because I didn’t like Gurathin but I didn’t like other Gurathin more. Overse and Ratthi were trailing close behind other Ratthi, trying to convince him to tell them what happened to the other Overse beyond “she’s dead and killed by the other version of one of your best friends.” (They were failing.)Despite all the warnings our other selves had given us about staying quiet and not talking to anyone and whatever, the trip was going relatively well until we stepped out of a clothing shop and someone shouted at us to stop where we were.We stopped. So did literally everyone else on the street.I couldn’t see the person who’d told us to stop, but I could hear them calling for their “senior” which didn’t sound like a good job title. Other Ratthi’s face had been horrified, but now it was schooled into a mildly annoyed frown.This… was probably not good.
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And then Indah stepped around the corner. Well. Presumably, this was the other Indah. She was physically mostly the same, but her hair had black and gray streaks in it and she looked a lot more annoyed than usual (and Indah always looked annoyed). I really hoped she wasn’t working with the police, if that’s what these enforcers were.I dared to breathe in relief. And then…“Well, well, well,” she said. “Seems we have ourselves a spot of hope here, hmm, General?”Oh, cr*p. That didn’t sound good. F*ck, this Indah was evil too.Other Gurathin edged away and looked horrified. “Ratthi, what in Salvation have you been up to?”Gurathin tugged on the other Gurathin’s sleeve. “What’s going on, Uncle? What’s happening?” At least he was being smart. We needed to get away.I inched away from other Ratthi. So did my friend Ratthi. Overse didn’t move.“Apparently one of my oldest friends, who I thought I could trust, is a rebel,” other Gurathin spat. For someone who didn’t seem like he’d ever done improv, he was pretty good, I guess. “Come on, my child, I don’t want to be near that traitor for one more second.”“Arrest them,” other Indah ordered, and three big burly people moved in. One grabbed other Ratthi. The other two stood between my friends and me.Other Ratthi sighed melodramatically. “Look, they had nothing to do with anything. He’s an old friend, I was just in town to say hi, it’s not like I was doing anything illegal. For goodness' sake, I brought my niblings!” He gestured at Ratthi. “Look, I’ll come quietly, alright? Gurathin, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to get you mixed up in all of this, and I understand if you never want to talk to me again, but I’m sorry, okay?” He waved his hand, and, oh, that was the sign for us to run.I walked away, ready to dash if they followed me. Other Gurathin glared at other Ratthi, turned around, and dragged Gurathin away. Ratthi bolted towards me, but one of the enforcers chased him. Overse still didn’t move. The last enforcer (I hoped) grabbed her by the arms.F*ck.I turned around and ran for her. I’d had a lot of practice breaking people out of armlocks (some of the kids on the basketball team fight dirty). I couldn’t just leave her there to get captured. I didn’t want any of my friends to be captured. I had to help. I went for their arms first. “Get your hands off my friend!”“Rin, I’m fine!” Overse slammed her elbow into the enforcer’s gut, twisted, and stomped on their foot. “Get yourself away, you idiot with no sense of self-preservation, before you get caught too! I’ll be fine. I can get out of this.”Sh*t, there were more enforcers coming, one of them had grabbed my arm too. “I’m not leaving you to f*cking die, Arada’ll kill me! We’ve both got to get out of here.”“Preservation,” other Indah growled. “Arrest them all, squad!”F*ck, f*ck, double f*ck.They dragged us to a van of some sort. Well, it wasn’t exactly a van, but it was a vehicle, and it looked like one of those white vans that parents always tell you not to get into if someone offers you candy or something (I don’t know, nobody ever told me that). (I learned from experience, and it sucked.)Whatever it was, we were shoved into the back and other Indah, evil Indah, slammed the door shut on us. She’d taken other Ratthi’s headset thingie, but she hadn’t searched us. (We’d left our phones at other Gurathin’s house, as part of the plan to blend in and everything. I was regretting it, now that we couldn’t call for help.)Gurathin and other Gurathin had gotten away.Ratthi hadn’t. Overse hadn’t. I hadn’t.They’d gagged other Ratthi, but the other three of us were untouched and mostly unharmed (except for all the scrapes and bruises the enforcers left on us). I guess they thought we weren’t going to run away. Not like we could, anyways. The van was already moving.Other Indah opened the door to the van and pointed a gun at us (oh sh*t, a gun, we were in for it now). “Move it.”We moved. They hadn’t tied any of us up, but the chances that I could take them were nonexistent. (I hate when things are like that.) We followed other Indah out of the van, through a gate in a giant stone wall (it looked like an evil castle, like the ones in my media) and down a spiral staircase into a dark hallway. It was like we were in one of the fantasy stories I liked, except worse because it was happening to us.We got tossed into a jail cell of some kind. It actually wasn’t too bad. There was a bathroom and everything. And a cot, even if Overse immediately declared it painfully hard. It was better than nothing. Maybe Mensah and ART would burst in and save us all with some made up plan. (That was too much to hope for, wasn’t it.)(I was pretty sure we were going to die here.)(I hoped not.)(But our violent and messy deaths were looking more and more likely.)After a lot of sitting around waiting and a little untying of other Ratthi, something finally happened. The door opened and other Indah showed up again with four big hulking monsters in tow. “Take them upstairs,” other Indah ordered the enforcers. “The Administrator wants to see the prisoners.”Sh*t. I’d be seeing other Mensah, and probably other Pin-Lee, and if other ART had some way to communicate then I might be hearing from it too, soon. I didn’t want to see them. I didn’t want to think about my sister being awful to everyone, this twisted person with my sister’s face who thought murdering one of my best friends was nothing, a being of pure evil who didn’t understand that the best way to lead is by example and from behind (unless you were making an example of someone else).My sister, the Ayda Mensah who kept a backup first aid kit for Overse and snacks for Iris and headphones for me in her backpack even though it meant she had to carry more, the Mensah who didn’t give me nearly any grief about fighting with Indah or Gurathin or ART in the middle of a show, the Mensah who let her sister and her sister’s best friend make fun of her and didn’t get more than mildly exasperated, the Mensah who’d joked to Arada and Overse not to let their romance get in the way of the show and then turned around and started dating two of her AcaDeca teammates, the Mensah who took Ratthi out for ice cream when he’d had a terrible breakup and let him cry all he wanted in her car? That Mensah? That was who she was supposed to be.She wasn’t supposed to be a murderer, and not a callous one at that.It was a long walk up through winding staircases and narrow passages, so much so that I suspected that other Indah was doing it on purpose as an intimidation tactic. (Goodness knows I’d done that in the backstage a few times as a way to deter someone (Tlacey) from being stupid.) Overse hummed under her breath, probably her solo from the musical. Other Ratthi walked with his head held high like he was accepting an award or something. Ratthi played cats cradle with a loop of string from his pocket. I tried to track our path, just in case we needed to run, but it had been years since I’d needed to do any of that and I was a little rusty.We ended up in front of a ginormous set of double doors, dark metal against the stone of the rest of the wall. The door had two guards in front of it, both wearing bright gold sashes over their armor. (Under his breath, Ratthi muttered, “Tacky much?”) Neither guard moved when the other Indah approached the doors, but the doors swung open anyways.We were forced down a very long, ugly, blood-red carpet, past dozens of chairs in rows like theater seats to a big platform at the front that seemed very stage-like. There was a large golden throne sitting at center stage, with a smaller silver throne just to its right (stage right, that is, our left).And there were the other versions of my sister and Pin-Lee.This other Mensah, the evil one, didn’t look much different from my sister. She had the same short brown hair, the same dark skin, the same brown eyes that could shine like spotlights or pierce through you like lightsabers, the same smirk that said you hadn’t fooled her. She looked a little older, she didn’t have glasses, she had a fancy gold crown on, and she was wearing a black pantsuit instead of a pink caftan. And there was a gun on her belt. That was all that was different about her.The other Pin-Lee didn’t look too different either. She didn’t have her customary hairclip, but her hair was still pulled back into some fancy bun thing. (She was wearing a black pantsuit as well, but neither the formality nor the black was unusual for my friend Pin-Lee.) She had a little silver crown and a satisfied sneer, and she was the one on the silver throne.I wanted my sister there instead. Someone whose smile was inviting and not off-putting.I wasn’t looking directly at them. The fundamental thing I’d learned from tech crew was how to watch without being watched. They hadn’t seen me yet. I hoped they wouldn’t look at me too closely, I didn’t want them to see me, not if they knew the native version of me. I didn’t want them to know who I was, not if they were going to try to hurt me.Other Indah stepped in front of us and saluted. “The prisoners, Administrator. The scumbag calling himself Hope and three children, one of whom is connected to Preservation.”“Which one?” The other Pin-Lee scrutinized us. Instinctively, we looked down.“Perhaps,” evil Mensah snapped, “the one who looks exactly like that bothersome martyr the Minister warned us about?” She pointed at Overse.The thug holding Overse shoved her forwards.No.No. Evil Mensah had a gun, and I couldn’t let her use it on my Overse too.Overse seemed to recognize the threat too. She stomped on the goon’s foot and used their surprise to twist her arm away.The one holding me had a hand over my mouth, so I bit them. They let go of me and shrieked in shock, and I stepped between evil Mensah and Overse.I forgot about not wanting her to see me. This was more important. “Go,” I hissed at Overse, then turned to evil Mensah. “You can’t touch her. Leave her alone. Leave us all alone.” (I know, this was f*cking stupid of me, but nobody else was going to do it and I couldn’t let her hurt my friends.)I didn’t turn around to watch Overse run. Evil Mensah looked up, though, waved her hand at a guard, and sighed. “Your defiance is unnecessary. She will be treated well. You all will, provided you cooperate. You will simply be hostages to ensure the rebellion’s cooperation.” She said it like we were talking about eating lunch or something. Then she looked back at me standing in front of her and gasped. “Saviorbot?”
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I was going to say no, but the guard by the door had Overse thrown over their shoulder and was carrying her back and I didn’t want her to get hurt so I just didn’t say anything.Wait, was Overse singing?Sh*t, why was Overse singing?It wasn’t loud, it was just barely audible. But she was. “I hope you’re happy, now that you’re choosing this. I hope it brings you bliss.”Wicked. Defying Gravity. Out of context, it didn’t make any sense. But we’d had this whole conversation a few weeks ago about Wicked and about how everyone involved was playing along with their roles, and how the separation at the end of that act was absolutely necessary for Glinda to be able to fake her allegiance later, regardless of what you actually believed about her allegiance at that point.Ratthi must have picked it up too, because he whisper-sung the next line. “I really hope you get it, and we live to regret it.” Except that was wrong, it should be “and you don’t live to regret it,” and…Oh sh*t.I thought I knew what they were thinking.Fine. I could play along. This was a terrible plan, but I could play along long enough to get them all out alive.Evil Mensah looked at me again, and this time I thought she was definitely concerned or worried or something. Her eyebrows were going up again and her eyes were getting wider and more worried. “Saviorbot, are you alright? What did they do to you?”She sounded genuinely concerned. F*ck, did she actually care about her sibling here? From everything our counterparts had said, she didn’t care about anyone.Thankfully, the other Ratthi was smart. “We wiped it, of course, and modified it a little. It won’t remember a single thing you made it do while you enslaved it. Preservation made sure of that before she died, and I checked everything after. It’s a completely different person now.” He smiled. “We also explained all the things you’ve done, so it has no reason to trust you. And we removed its dataport, internal feed accesses, and as much of its inorganics as we could. You can’t wipe it without those. We may not have been entirely able to purge it, but you can’t either, and it’ll save us.”Okay, so he knew what we were doing and knew how to give me information without sounding like he was. I didn’t like it, but I had done improv in the past, and I could appreciate a good justification for any weird actions. The native me was probably at least partially a robot and definitely complicit in some awful stuff, and now they weren’t going to take me apart most likely looking for the robot bits.I think my face was doing something weird, because evil Mensah reached out for my shoulder. “It’s going to be alright,” she said in a weirdly reassuring tone. “You don’t remember me, but I’m your friend. You’ll be safe here, I promise. I have the camera access codes and as soon as we check a few things, you’ll have camera inputs back. I know you hate not being able to see if your people are safe.”F*ck. She wasn’t wrong about me, I did like knowing that my family was safe, but that’s why I did lights. I wasn’t Bharadwaj, I sat in the booth and kept an eye on things from up there, I never recorded anyone. I only knew how to work the camera on my phone, which I didn’t have. F*ck, what would I have to do to play along?I wasn’t good at improv. I only knew anything about it because crew sometimes joined in the warmups and theater games when we didn’t have anything better to do during the non-play season.Then she turned to my actual friends and scowled. “Senior Indah.”“Yes, Administrator?”“Take the two children to a nice room somewhere and return our dear little Hope to his cell.”“And EnforcerUnit?”“None of your concern.” She hadn’t lifted her hand from my shoulder. I didn’t like it. She wasn’t my sister, she couldn’t touch me. And why was she being so nice if she was evil? She couldn’t be nice. She had killed one of my, one of our, really, best friends. Being nice to one person couldn’t change that.I still hated her and I was still feeling weird about hating my sister, even an alternate universe version of my sister. This wasn’t helping.My friends and the other Ratthi were dragged out of the room by the guards. I didn’t try to hide my silent fear or any of the other weird emotions I was feeling. Other Ratthi had said they couldn’t “purge” or “wipe” me entirely, and I assumed he meant memories. Might as well make her think I was feeling conflicted between two sets of people I remembered liking. She just didn’t have to know that I wasn’t conflicted about her. Nobody threatens my friends and gets away with it.(I didn’t have a plan yet.)(I needed one fast. For now, I could play along, but how was I going to get my friends out?)The evil Pin-Lee stood up from her throne. Oh, I really couldn’t f*ck this up, she had a really, really large dagger on her belt and it wasn’t a shiny one, it had bloodstains on the handle. “I’ll be in my office when you want me to look at its systems and see if we can fix it.” Her tone was exactly the same as my friend’s when she was exasperated but not with the person she was talking to.Evil Mensah took her hand off my shoulder and waved it absently in that direction. “Fine, fine. We’ll be along shortly.”I didn’t say anything. I didn’t like this situation one bit. (You’ve done this before, Em, treat it like you’re with the awful people who birthed you again.) (Those people weren’t my family, but these were, kind of.)She didn’t put her hand on my shoulder again, thank goodness. “I know you’re confused. I know they reprogrammed you to agree with them. But I hope you’ll be able to see that everything they accuse us of was for the good of the Alliance. For everyone’s good.” She paused. “Do you know who I am?”I nodded. What I wanted to say was that she was the villain wearing the face of my sister and pretending to be a good guy. What I actually said was “You’re the empress.”“I am. Do you know who you are?”I shook my head. Rule one of improv was that if you didn’t know what to do you should let the other person prompt you. Maybe she could tell me who I was supposed to be, according to her, and that would make it easier for me to pretend long enough to get us out of here.“Your name is Saviorbot, but I’m sure that’s not what they called you. You’ve been my friend for a very long time, more than half your life, and you’re a rogue EnforcerUnit.” Her tone was still strangely soft and I hated it. “Wait. Unit, is your governor module engaged?”I didn’t want her to cut me open and try to put one of those, whatever they were, in my head. It didn’t sound good. “No, and I don’t want one.”Apparently that was good enough for evil Mensah, who smiled. “Good. I’m sure Pin-Lee wouldn’t enjoy trying to disable it. I’m not sure how you did it the first time, frankly. Don’t be afraid,” she said, noticing my face doing another weird thing, “Pin-Lee isn’t nearly as mean as the stories say. I don’t know what they told you, but I promise she’s not going to hurt you. You argue regularly, but you haven’t murdered each other yet.”I wanted to go home, and not to other Gurathin’s house, to my actual home and our universe where things made sense. I didn’t want to be here any more.“I’m sorry we lost you. I’m so sorry. It was a terrible mistake on everyone’s part and I promise you, the dissidents involved are dead. Even their precious Preservation died, although I’m sure you’re aware of that. It was quite silly of them to think we would stop protecting the Alliance just because that would be the option with the fewest deaths. There is nothing more important than our independence and safety. Everything I’ve done… there was no other way, and I’m sorry they can’t see it. I’m sorry if you can’t see it any more.”I didn’t have a good answer and I really would have preferred being trapped in a cell with my friends to this.Evil Mensah walked me down a less-roundabout hallway through a back entry into a plaza filled with some plants and a lot of large statues of people I didn’t recognize. A worn wooden sign said “Council Gardens,” but the “Council” part was a lot more faded. There were a few glass-walled offices on the other side of the plaza, and she walked me through the gardens to one of them. Evil Pin-Lee was pacing the floor, punching her fists together. It was kind of a scary sight, especially because the wall behind her was glass and showing a distinctly lava-pit-looking thing.Evil Pin-Lee stopped pacing when we came in. “I’m going to look at your systems,” she told me, “to see if I can get any of your real memories back.”F*ck.I didn’t have internal systems like a robot (as far as I knew). What was she going to do when she realized I wasn’t actually native-to-this-universe me? Was she going to cut me open?Was she going to take out her anger on my friends?She didn’t do any of that. Evil Mensah left, and evil Pin-Lee motioned me to a chair in the corner.“I’m not going to bite you this time, alright, a**hole? I’m just going to connect my interface and see if we can’t get your memories back. I won’t poke any deeper. Unlike that d*mned rebellion, I actually know what the f*ck I’m doing.” She tapped on some kind of device that looked a little like a tablet, and then stopped. “What did those f*ckers do? I can’t even feel you in the feed!”I didn’t say anything.“F*ck, they really messed you up. I have a spare interface somewhere, you can use that for now. Do you care if you have to use an interface for a few days? I can fix you but I need to look over a few things first, handle some cases.” She clasped her hands again.“Whatever,” I said. Hopefully I wouldn’t be here long enough for her to have a chance. I couldn’t stop myself from blurting out what was on my mind, however. “Why are you being so nice to me? They said you were evil. You kill people.”“Only when they deserve it, unfortunately. Ayda says it’s hard enough to control people for their safety when they know exactly what you have at your disposal without adding more disappearances to the mix. And we’re being nice to you because you’re our friend, a**hole. We’ve been worried, that’s all.”“Why?” I’d started this line of reasoning, might as well see it through. Also I wasn’t sure how two evil dictators could have any friends at all. Except… they were still my sister and her best friend.“Because we missed you, okay? There’s nobody to fight when you’re not around.”F*ck, I was having a lot of emotions. I needed to be somewhere else for a bit. Alone.I frowned. “Just give me the interface and leave me alone.”“Fine.” She threw things around a drawer of her desk for a minute, coming back with a headset thing like other Ratthi’s and other Arada’s. “Do you want me to walk you to your room or do you want to go f*ck off alone and watch media?”That second option was sounding pretty good, but I didn’t have my phone so there was no way I could.She sighed, exasperated. “Fine, go off alone. If you remember your way around, that’s good, but I’m still going to tell the palace enforcers your appearance changed. They’ll get you where you need to go.”Good. Time for me to do some reconnaissance. (That sounded a lot more fancy then walking around trying to find my friends.) I walked out her office door, and before I’d taken ten steps she was already sitting at her desk working.
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This was bad, very very bad. Her song trick had worked to warn Rin, yes, but that only kept Rin safe, not the rest of them. (And if anyone noticed it wasn’t the terrifying cyborg it was meant to be… yeah, Overse didn’t want to think about that unless it came up.)She and Ratthi were still stuck as political prisoners, being held hostage to ensure the cooperation of a rebellion that didn’t even like them. Ratthi’s counterpart in this alternate universe was going to a cell.Oh, Arada was going to kill her if they got out of this alive.Plus the thug carrying her had her in a really painful position. If it had been anyone other than Ratthi, who’d seen her in way more compromising positions over the years (the time she’d fallen over doing a headstand came to mind), she would have been embarrassed. Instead, she was trying to come up with a plan.The song thing had worked once, maybe it would again. The two of them had to play along too, but they didn’t have to tell the truth. Exaggerate, lie… what would Ratthi know?“If I hate the headline, I’ll make up the headline,” she started softly. “And I’ll say anything I hafta.”Ratthi seemed to figure it out, because he joined her in singing. “Cause at two for a penny, if I take too many, Weasel makes me eat them afta.” Good, he got the consequences. They finished the song anyways, because it was a good song. And because that way she could pretend, even if only to herself, that this was normal theater stuff and it was all singing for fun in the car or during set builds or something.The two of them got dumped in a different room this time. It was bigger, and there were two beds instead of one cot (neither bed looked inviting but at least they didn’t look criminally hard, that had to be good). There was even a window, just taller than her head.The guard locked the door, but she didn’t hear their footsteps leaving, so presumably they were still outside. A second later, Ratthi sighed. “Well, this is less than ideal.”“No kidding. Give me a boost, I want to see out that window.” He did. The window looked out on a little courtyard. There weren’t any external doors from there. “Well, it doesn’t look like we can pull a Rapunzel.”“Your hair isn’t long enough for that anyways. What are we going to do?”“Wait, I guess.” She couldn’t call Rin by its name if the guard could hear. And considering that their counterparts has the same name as them, using any of her friends' names would be bad too. So instead she just sighed. “Someone will rescue us.”“I hope you’re right.” Ratthi sat on the nearest bed. “I want to go home.”“Me too,” Overse said, flopping down next to him. “At least it’s not a cell?”“A cell would be better. We’d know where we stood with a cell.” He wasn’t wrong, but that gave her a thought.She tugged his shirt. He lay back so their heads were close enough to whisper. “I know you don’t love acting the way I do, but hear me out.”“I don’t like the sound of this,” he muttered, but he didn’t stop her.“They’re going to guard us. Might as well see how much propaganda we can get out there.”“You aren’t thinking what I think you’re thinking, right?”“We’re theater kids. It’s like a law that we have to have Les Mis memorized, and I know you do, I come to set builds. Just think about it, okay? It’s a rebellion, they think we’re a rebellion. And I need something to do,” she whispered. “I’m going to go absolutely bonkers if we’re stuck here until someone saves us or we save ourselves. I was going to start singing at some point, I just think I might as well hit a few birds with one stone.”“I’ll think about it,” Ratthi said. He sat up, but kept whispering. “We’re going to need to play along, and the consequences? This is going to be worse than anything Tlacey can throw at us.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
I walked around for a long time, but didn’t find my friends or the other Ratthi. I didn’t even find a way out. I’d only ended up at the same stupid throne room, now empty except for the two thrones. I wished I had my phone so I could watch something, or even so I could call my sister, my actual sister who wasn’t an evil monster who seemed to genuinely care about other evil monsters. I just wanted to go home and hide.I curled up in the dark corner of the room and cried for a while. Then I just sat there and tried not to think about anything except the lighting cues and how long I had between each and what I was supposed to be doing when. That didn’t help. It usually helped.I didn’t move when the evil Pin-Lee and Mensah walked in the room. I stayed quiet to listen to their conversation instead. (It felt kind of exhilarating even though it was scary, like I was the bodyguard during the Sanctuary Moon arc when they pretended to be their own evil twin to escape being caught with the solicitor.)“The interface is pinging as in here,” evil Pin-Lee said. “I still don’t see why we can’t just execute that f*cking traitor today.”“And I will remind you, Solicitor, that I am the Administrator and therefore it is my prerogative to hold a trial.”“He’s guilty, Ayda, he as much as admitted it!” She sat down on the silver throne. “We could get him out of the way now, shank the kids, figure out what they did to Saviorbot on our own, and just strike the f*cking blow already. They’d be down two leaders in less than a year and maybe this one would be the f*cking last.”Evil Mensah sighed and rubbed her forehead. “I want people to see him die. I want them to see the price they have to pay for defying us. Preservation was a failure. The fire that killed her? Every rebel we’ve questioned said she could be alive, she could come back from anything. I don’t want another legend, Pin-Lee. I want everyone to see him dead. Publicly. Let him be a martyr. At least martyrs are dead.” She flounced onto her throne. “Find Saviorbot. We have a dinner to attend.”“What do you want to do about the kids? We can’t leave them alive once Hope is dead, they’re a drain on Salvation resources.” Evil Pin-Lee spat out “kids” with the same disdain my friend used for “Tlacey.” It was unsettling.“Invite them to dinner.” Evil Mensah waved her hand. “Treat them well. Inform the prisoner they’ll be treated well so long as he behaves himself, and tell them nothing. If he behaves, we might be able to convince them to join us willingly. We’ll learn what they know and have another informant or two eventually.”“And if he doesn’t?”“If he doesn’t, then you or Saviorbot can break their arms and make him watch.”“Fingers first, I’d think. There’s more of them and they heal faster.” Evil Pin-Lee got up and tapped her tablet again. “It’ll enjoy that, once it’s got its proper memories back. It might be just the thing to give it some closure. It really f*cking needs that, I bet, or it will soon.”What the f*ck. They were going to hurt my friends, make me hurt my friends, just so they could torment other Ratthi before they killed him? I really wanted my actual sister and my actual friend back. I wanted to go home.I curled further into a ball.I didn’t notice evil Pin-Lee until she was glaring down at me. “There you are, a**hole, we’ve been looking all over for you. I know you don’t like– you never used to like watching us eat when you don’t eat at all, but Ayda wants to make the f*ckers who captured you uncomfortable.” She looked at me. I flinched. “Please? For Ayda?”“Fine,” I said. I was kind of hungry. Except from the way she said it, it sounded like native me didn’t eat. Sh*t, what was I going to do about that?Evil Pin-Lee stood up straight and offered me a hand up, which I didn’t take. “If you really want their cooperation,” she told evil Mensah, “you might send Amena to talk to them. They might respond better to someone their own age. Use it as practice for her intelligence training while you’re at it. You’ve been complaining she doesn’t know the first thing about intelligence gathering for years.”F*ck, Amena was here too?I had to warn my friends. I had to warn them not to trust anybody, even people who looked like our friends. I didn’t know how but I was going to have to get them alone after this dinner. And somehow I was going to have to get food. Without anyone noticing me.Evil Mensah stood up too and looked at me. “We pinged you multiple times, but you didn’t answer. Are you alright?”I nodded.Evil Pin-Lee huffed. “Do you even know how to use an interface? Did they even let you have one after they f*cked with your inorganics?”I shook my head. I didn’t want to throw other Ratthi under a bus, but I couldn’t let her find out that I didn’t know anything because I wasn’t from this universe. Maybe she could explain what an interface was.“Wow, they really f*cked you up. I’m going to kill Hope,” she said, and fingered her giant dagger. “Slowly and painfully.”“Pin-Lee,” evil Mensah warned. “No killing him. Toy with him all you want, but don’t kill him. We’ll do that properly.”“I don’t want to play with him. I want him dead, and I want him to scream first. He deserves to suffer for everything he did to Saviorbot and everything he did in general.”“You’ll enjoy it just as much as killing him when you’ve had a chance to calm down,” evil Mensah said, just like she was talking about getting homework done or something equally reasonable. “Go tell those children to clean themselves up and escort them to dinner. I’ll be along shortly, once I show Saviorbot how to use an interface.”
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“Clean yourselves up. The Administrator has personally invited you to join her for dinner tonight,” Pin-Lee’s counterpart said, barging in to the room.They weren’t doing anything wrong, but Ratthi still flinched.“We don’t have anything other than the clothes we’re wearing,” Overse said, but her voice was trembling.Ratthi didn’t think he could be that brave. Trembling or not, she was talking back to someone who could kill them both and not care. One of their friends, who could kill them without sparing a second thought.“That won’t be a problem,” this Pin-Lee snapped. “Your current clothes are acceptable. Make yourself presentable. We have dinner to eat.”Overse pulled her tiny hand mirror from … somewhere. Ratthi didn’t know how someone with no pockets kept so much stuff with her. At least Mensah (the actual Mensah, not this twisted one) had her overstuffed backpack as an explanation. Overse had pulled a screwdriver from behind her back before.Ratthi smoothed his hair. He wasn’t putting any more effort than necessary into this. What he really wanted to do was ask whether Rin would be at dinner, whether they could talk to it, but that would ruin Rin’s chances of passing as its counterpart for long enough to get out alive. So he stayed silent.They were led back down the long hallway into a fancy dining room, with one long table. At the far end, a few people stood in a cluster. Ratthi thought he recognized Mensah’s counterpart, and maybe… oh, there was Rin, looking deeply uncomfortable in clothing that was nothing like it would ever choose to wear.As this Pin-Lee escorted them to the table, Ratthi looked around. There were a few others, most of whom looked like Rin and Mensah and Amena’s various younger siblings. (Three of them looked like older versions of Farai and Tano and a same-age-as-ever Amena, and Ratthi resisted the urge to talk to his friends. They were probably evil too.) There was the alternate Mensah, and there was Rin looking uncomfortable behind her.The alternate Pin-Lee sat down, and motioned him and Overse to the seats between her and this other Amena, across from the alternate Mensah. Now the others were sitting down as well, and Ratthi couldn’t help but notice there wasn’t a place set for Rin. “Doesn’t it have to eat?” Shoot, he’d said that out loud.This Pin-Lee seemed outraged. “You– you made it eat? It doesn’t have a digestion system, for Salvation’s sake, it physically can’t eat, you f*cking idiot rebel!”Well, that was a problem.Thank goodness for Overse, who kicked him under the table but saved his bacon anyways. “Look, he didn’t know, don’t blame him, alright? He wasn’t even supposed to know it existed, if it weren’t for your enforcers catching his uncle!”She’d been doing a good job of pretending to be from this universe so far. He’d nearly messed up several times. He wasn’t cut out for this. He wanted to go back to just being costume crew, where the most acting he ever had to do was pretending he was paying attention to what Mensah was saying and not playing clapping games with Gurathin or Pin-Lee behind her back. He could act, but he couldn’t live a role, the way Overse did, or mask everything that made him who he was so he could stay alive, the way Rin did. He was the liability here.He could fix the eating problem, though. While he didn’t know most of the details, he remembered that Rin had tucked a lot of food away into its pockets for a while in middle school, back when they’d all first met it. (He was pretty glad that it had stopped doing that eventually, that was probably good for it.) When the others at the table weren’t looking, he slipped some of the less messy food off his plate and into his pocket. He could figure out how to get it to Rin later.The meal was nearly silent. Ratthi was acutely aware of the way the others at the table looked at him, at Overse; they were intruders on what was arguably a private meal. Why Mensah’s alternate wanted them there, he didn’t know.Rin managed to catch his eye, just once, and it jerked its head towards the door, then cautiously tapped its thigh, where the pockets on Ratthi’s shorts would be. It had seen him take the food, then. Good.Ratthi smiled. That was the extent of their interaction for the rest of the meal, although he kept wanting to invite it to sit. The way it was skulking silently behind this Mensah was unnerving. It couldn’t be comfortable either. Rin liked to be all curled up in corners or tucked into the catwalk with its pillow.
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Ratthi had snuck food for me. That was… quite helpful of him. I may not like eating, but I have to do it. And since the native version of me didn’t, I was going to have to find a solution, especially if I couldn’t get the food off of Ratthi without getting detected. Which was currently proving to be a problem.Evil Mensah wanted evil Pin-Lee to escort them back to their room, along with evil (presumably evil, at least) Amena, who had reluctantly gone along with her mother’s plan (it was really f*cking weird, by the way, to think about them as mother and daughter and not sisters, and I hated it, thanks) to “befriend” Ratthi and Overse. (She wasn’t going about it very well.)I needed to tell my friends about that. I needed to tell them everything I was learning about this world and how it worked. I needed to go be by myself somewhere, and while evil Mensah had showed me where the room assigned to native me was, I wanted to be alone with my friends. The sort of alone that involved ART and me sitting in the catwalks watching serials and texting Mensah but where I didn’t have to talk to anyone. (Sometimes Ratthi and I watched a movie at his house while he sewed and I did my homework and neither of us talked out loud. I’d done that sort of things with all of my friends at some point. But it was always better with ART.)(ART wasn’t here with me.)Ratthi tried to fall back, to have a moment to slip me the food from his pocket. Evil Pin-Lee wouldn’t let him. I walked out, not bothering to tell evil Mensah where I was going. It seemed she’d given native me a lot of trust and I was going to abuse that as much as I could before she figured anything out.“I’m coming with you,” I told evil Pin-Lee when she gave me a weird look.To her credit, while she might have been an evil sadistic lawyer who wanted to kill my friends, she was good at not asking questions. “Okay, a**hole, you can do that if you want.”Ratthi pretended to trip over his own feet and fell to the floor. Evil Pin-Lee snapped at him to get up, but didn’t stop to help him.I bent over to offer him a hand, and he slipped a few bits of bread into my hand. “Sorry about this,” he hissed, then patted me on the shoulder, tucking a few more bits of food into the folds of clothing. Out loud, he said, “Look, whatever they’re telling you about them or us, you weren’t their friend. They want to use you as a tool of their mindless regime, whatever they promised you. Can’t you–”The Amena of this universe cut him off. “Shut up, rebel,” she said. “I don’t know who you are, and I don’t care what you think, but Saviorbot is a person. It’s saved Second Mom’s life more times than I can count, from people who threatened her for doing the right thing, the best option for the Alliance and for everyone in it. From people like you.”I exchanged the briefest of glances with Overse. She shook her head and tried to hide a smile. I was a person. (Let’s ignore the six and a half years of therapy it took to make me okay with that fact.) Just, not exactly the way any of them here assumed.I still needed to warn my friends about the situation. I didn’t think I could get away with singing, it wasn’t in character, but there had to be something. I hadn’t done four years of tech crew for nothing. There weren’t always enough headsets to go around, and we still had to communicate. Except… it was usually texting or finding someone with a set to pass the message on. And there wasn’t a blackout to cover me.Well, sh*t.We arrived at a small room, which I tried to memorize the relative location of, and evil Pin-Lee pushed them into the room. “Have a nice night,” she said, but it sounded like a threat. Then she laughed, and oh that was definitely a threat of some sort.Before she closed the door, I looked directly at my friends. Like into-Ratthi’s-eyes directly. “Behave,” I said. “We are watching.”(That was actually true. One of the things evil Mensah had shown me was how to access the cameras present throughout the castle. I hadn’t gotten to look deeply, but she’d flicked through a number of views and I had been pretty sure I’d seen a momentary glimpse of my friends. I was pretty sure that I could find them again.)They got the point. An hour later, alone in the room evil Mensah said was mine (well, the me of this universe’s), I finally found the right camera input. There didn’t seem to be a way to have two-way conversations, but I did figure out that the camera originally had a little red light on it before that was turned off.So I turned the light on and watched as Ratthi noticed it and poked Overse. She said something I couldn’t hear, and waved. Both of them looked a lot less tense now. I poked around the camera a little more, but didn’t find a microphone. At least I could see them now? I turned the light off again.They were talking to each other, and Ratthi was throwing his arms wide. Overse rolled her eyes and started digging around the various places she stashed stuff for something, finally producing a pad of sticky notes and a pen from somewhere in her hair. Ratthi said something I couldn’t hear again and stood between the camera and her.And then he moved and Overse held the paper up to the camera, close enough that I could read her tiny, cramped printing. blink the camera light twice if flirty, cute<3, smart mean anything to you.Those were our nicknames in our giant group chat. She was clearly betting on the fact that nobody in this universe had a phone. I blinked the lights, then waited as she said something at the camera. There was some more talking, then Ratthi held up one finger and nodded his head. Overse held up two fingers and shook her head. Finally, Ratthi held up three fingers and shrugged while Overse haltingly finger-spelled “Understand.”I blinked the light once.Ratthi started to smile. Overse held her paper up again. can you hear us, Rin?No.
are you ok?
Yes. I paused, then. Maybe.Ratthi made a flailing movement I was going to guess meant he was giving me an air-hug. were you trying to tell us something else?Yes.
can you find the courtyard outside of the room? nobody seems to be in there right now.
Maybe.
try?
Yes.
we hope you’re okay. we are fine. i promise.
Pause, then. Yes. I didn’t know what else I could say.I didn’t get to find them. Evil Pin-Lee let herself into the room I was in, and I only barely managed to close the camera input before she could see it (if she could see what I was doing). She sat down on the other chair (there were two soft chairs in here, but no bed?) and huffed. “Look, whatever they tried to tell you, don’t let them get to you. They don’t know what the f*ck they’re talking about.”There were two ways to answer that, and I picked neither of them. “What do you mean?”“I mean those kids, General Hope… they messed you up. They hurt you. I want to kill them, and it’s only the fact that I trust Ayda to have a plan that’s keeping me from dragging them into an interrogation room for a nice chat with a dull knife.”“General Hope?” That was probably other Ratthi, but I couldn’t be certain.“Wow, that’s f*cked up, he didn’t even tell you his codename? He really did think of you as a tool.” She waved her hand over her tablet and pulled up a picture, maybe from some kind of newspaper, of other Ratthi in a really revealing top (which I could see my friend Ratthi totally wearing) next to some vaguely familiar adult who looked like someone I probably knew at school. “Him. F*cking General Hope of the f*ckers who call themselves the Makeba rebels, as if some sentimental tripe like her speech was more important than actual safety. Bane of my f*cking existence.”I didn’t say anything in response, which she probably expected.“It’s hard to talk to you when you’re being an a**hole like this, Saviorbot. I get it. You don’t really trust us the way you used to. But would you at least pretend that you’ll try?”I nodded. I didn’t trust my voice right now and I didn’t like pretending. I wanted to be with my actual sister. With my actual friends.Home. Where it was safe to be me. Not this Saviorbot. Me. Rin. Lights tech, not murderer.“Good. I have to go. Take a recharge, okay? Don’t hurt yourself more.” Her high heels clicked as she stomped out.I suddenly couldn’t go find my friends. I had to cry instead.
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I snuck out late that night. It took me almost two hours to find the courtyard Overse had mentioned. (I did eventually find it.) There was a tiny window in their room. I just had to match it to one of the dozen or so tiny windows set into the courtyard’s walls. Nobody was around but me, though the lights were on in some of the rooms.How was I going to find them? The windows were just barely too high for me to see anything more than lights unless I climbed the thin, gray ivy that covered the thick stone walls like that creepy plant network from World Hoppers. I doubted it would hold my weight long, and even if it did, I couldn’t until I knew exactly what room they were in. The noise I would make would be obvious. (I climbed stuff occasionally, and I could probably climb the walls without using the ivy, but chances were I was going to fall if I tried too many times.)I had the same theatre kid obsession with and knowledge of musicals that they did. I could figure this out. I might not like to sing, but I could whistle.I stood beneath one of the lighted windows and tried to think of something only my friends would recognize. “Then, clover by clover by clover with care, I’ll listen and I’ll call, are you there? Are you there?”No answer.I did the same thing at two more windows before I realized I could just whistle part of the overture from the fall musical and they’d know it was me. So I did that at the rest of the windows. Their window was the ninth one I checked, and I knew it was them because Overse laughed and Ratthi whistled the rest of the overture out the window.Thank f*ck.I didn’t need the ivy to brace myself, but I couldn’t quite fit through the window. It was open, though, and I hoisted myself onto the little ledge and held on tight.“Rin, are you sure you’re alright? If you’re going to get caught, you should go, we don’t need help, it’s really fine,” Ratthi said.“I’m fine. There’s nobody to see me. You have to behave,” I said, “because they told the other Ratthi that if he disobeyed, they’d hurt you in front of him. And the evil Pin-Lee says that she wants to kill you two as soon as he’s dead.”“Do you know why?” Overse reached out the window to put her hand on the ledge next to me.“No,” I said a little frantically, “I don’t know anything. Lack of resources, maybe. They’re different, scary, they think I should be different and scary and wrong, and I don’t know what they want. And for some reason they seem to think they can make you informants on the rebellion by getting this Amena to make you realize what’s so good about their regime.”Overse sighed. “I can’t think of something encouraging to tell you. I wish Arada were here.”“I don’t need to be encouraged.”“Sure you don’t,” Ratthi said. “I think she wants you to know you’re not alone.” He brushed his hand across his forehead. “Do you think we’re going to have to wait to be rescued or do you think we can pull off a Valjean?” Overse opened her mouth, but Ratthi was faster. “Don’t start, you can’t be quiet when you’re singing.”I didn’t have an answer. They both seemed to realize that from the expression on my face, though, and Ratthi hurriedly changed subjects.“What about alternate me, have you found him?” He put his own hand on top of Overse’s. “If they want to kill him, do we know when? Can we get a message out somehow and tell our other counterparts what’s going to happen so they can save him?”“Evil Mensah showed me how to use this,” I said, pulling the weird headset out of my pocket. “If I know the ‘feed address’ of one of our counterparts, I can send them a message, but if it works anything like texting then it’s possible other people could read that message.”“And if you’re acting like the evil cyborg your counterpart appears to be, then texting a known rebel is a bad plan,” Overse agreed. This is why I like having smart friends. They know what you don’t say.“Okay, but what if you found alternate me and asked him for alternate you’s number? Alternate you probably knows how to be discreet, it is you after all.”“Ratthi…” Overse moved his hand off hers so she could cross her arms. “Don’t start.” He sighed. I adjusted my position to be slightly less precarious. After a moment, Overse reached out to Ratthi, who accepted the hug. “You’re not wrong, though. Rin, do you think you can find Ratthi’s counterpart and ask him?”“Maybe. I can try. Can you keep trying to slip me food?”“Of course,” they said at the same time. Ratthi giggled. “Jinx, gotcha Overse.”For an instant it felt like we were backstage, hiding from Pin-Lee’s joking threats of dismemberment to the next person who made even the tiniest bit of noise while Indah calibrated the mics. Except here my sister wouldn’t have an exasperated comment about how Pin-Lee needed to calm down and remember that this was just a high school show so please stop threatening to murder her techies. Here Mensah would tell her to go ahead and Pin-Lee would follow through.There was a thump at the door of their room. “Go,” Overse whispered. “Don’t let them see you, get back to your room and look for his counterpart later. We’ll stall as long as we can so they don’t see you.”I didn’t want to leave them, but if anyone saw me, the chance of all of us dying was going to shoot up abruptly. I slipped down the wall again and found my way back to native me’s room, all in less than ten minutes. I needed to sleep soon, because if native me didn’t eat it probably didn’t sleep either and I didn’t want to fall asleep when anyone was around.I didn’t go to bed. I found the camera feed and– oh, f*ck.There was evil Amena again, sitting on the bed tossing her head like a spoiled little princess (which, come to think of it, she was).
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Considering the situation, Overse thought she was doing a pretty good job at method acting. Nothing like an implied death threat for keeping you in character. And if Rin could see the cameras, other people could too.Amena’s counterpart was making her think twice about playing along.The other girl wasn’t trying to be insensitive. She seemed to believe everything she was saying about the glory of the alliance or whatever this was. But the effect her words were having? She wasn’t subtle. Not even a bit. And she wouldn’t shut up. She’d come in, sat down, started talking about how she wanted to be friends with them but couldn’t be friends with rebels, and hadn’t stopped since.Her upbeat tone was almost like Amena’s. The similarities in this universe were haunting. Except Amena normally let other people talk.“My Second Mother is disappointed in all of you, as am I,” Amena’s counterpart was saying now. “There’s so many better things you could be doing with your lives, and instead you’re choosing to waste them hastening the inevitable? The more we argue and dissent, the more chances corporates have to take over and destroy us all. We have to be strong and united to survive.”Ratthi rolled his eyes in Overse’s direction. Yep, that was about how she was feeling too.The amount of mental gymnastics that Amena’s counterpart must be doing to justify her beliefs was impressive, but they had to get her out of the room soon. Ratthi had tried subtle hints, but this Amena didn’t even let him finish his sentences.It was time to try something else. Think like this was Tlacey and Overse needed to stop her from saying something that would provoke everyone further no matter how stupid her sentiments were.Overse gave herself three seconds to clench her fist behind her back, then smiled as warmly as she could and imagined Tlacey’s smirk replacing Amena’s painfully earnest smile. “Don’t you have other things to do? It’s quite late and I think we all would do well to retire soon.”“Oh, I have time! It’s barely twenty-one-hundred, I don’t need to sleep for quite some time.”If Rin were here, it would have shoved a hand over its sister’s counterpart’s mouth by now in exasperation. (Overse remembers the time it did that with one of her own siblings, then got promptly bitten because said sibling was three.)She did the next best thing. “I’m tired, and I apologize, but it’s time for you to leave so that we can rest.” And because she couldn’t resist, she tossed in a disparaging comment as a parting shot. “You might not realize it, having been pampered and spoiled your whole life, but some of us don’t have the luxury to sleep all night.” (She was referring to how late theater required them to stay, of course, but Amena’s counterpart didn’t know that.)Ratthi, in what could have been a very dangerous move, took Amena’s counterpart by the arm and gently pushed her to the door. “Good night,” he said, and closed it behind her.The little light next to the camera blinked a few times. Ratthi waved at it.what’s up, Overse wrote.She knew it was a stupid question, and she could feel Rin rolling its eyes, with no way to respond.
trouble?
No, Rin replied quickly.morse code? She had no idea if it knew Morse code, but she did. (She had memorized the alphabet years ago, even if all she did with it these days was tap out messages with her pencil to Arada in math class.)Yes, it sent, then slowly started blinking out a message. She wrote it down, then showed Ratthi. One of you should sleep and the other one should stay up, then switch. And push a chair in front of the door. I figured out how to lock it but if you can remote lock you can remote unlock.It was times like this that reminded her how sh*tty Rin’s life had been for a long time. She’d have to check in with its mental health in the morning, as subtly as possible. For now, though… “First shift or second shift?”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
I got some sleep. I looked through camera views trying to find other Ratthi. Evil Mensah sent me a message asking if I needed any help adjusting again. (I ignored her.) Overse and Ratthi and I played twenty questions through the camera (Ratthi won, like always). I worried about my actual sister and my other friends, and considered whether I could find my way out of here to get food and find them.Finally, I located a map of the castle that had prison cells listed. It didn’t have any occupants written down, but I could look for other Ratthi myself if I could find the prison parts of the castle.Tech crew was good for many things, but especially moving unnoticed through an area. Nobody stopped or questioned me until I made it down to the jail, and even then they let me through immediately. (I guess there were advantages to pretending to be your alternate-universe terrifying-cyborg-servant-of-a-totalitarian-dictator self who was even more effed up than you were. Sometimes.) Now, to find other Ratthi without letting the guards know who I was looking for (if they didn’t know, they couldn’t tell evil Pin-Lee or evil Mensah, right?) … wait.He wouldn’t know the reference, but he’d heard us sing earlier. Quietly, as I walked along the line of doors, none of which had windows, I hummed the first part of the song I’d been singing to look for my friends. “When your life’s going wrong, when the fates are unkind, when you’re limping along and get kicked from behind, tell yourself how lucky you are…”I didn’t get any response until the third-to-last door, by which point I’d almost given up and decided the doors must be soundproof.“Hello?” The voice was a little distorted, but it was recognizably Ratthi’s.I opened the door. Other Ratthi lay tucked into a ball on the tiny room’s stone floor, arms pillowed under his head. There was no cot, no table, no bathroom. Just a bucket in the corner (eww) and a half-empty glass of water.“You shouldn’t be here,” he said the instant I’d shut the door behind me.“There’s no audio in the cameras. Look scared and we’ll be fine. It’s just acting.”“I know that. I was a spy for ten years, and I only got caught because Truth sold me out. It’s still dangerous. Why are you here?”“I need other me’s contact information.” I tilted my head so he could see the headset. “I have a way to contact it, and we need to get out of here as soon as we can. They’re going to execute you and kill my friends.”He sighed. “I’m not surprised. Always figured I’d die that way. I just wish it wasn’t for this.”“What do you mean?”“I mean I thought we’d be closer than we are now before I’d die. I’ve known I was going to die a rebel since we started this. I figured it would be a lot sooner, really, and messier. At least it’s not just going to be a random firefight somewhere.” He shook his fist dejectedly. “I’m sorry you kids are going to have to see this. You shouldn’t have to deal with any of this.”“Nobody should. We’re here, though. We can help. What’s my other self’s contact?”He gave me it, and I saved the number/feed address/whatever it was. (It only took me two tries.)“I’m going to go before they find me. I was never here, okay?”“Obviously not. Keep yourself safe, alright? And find me” — his sudden smile was fierce and defiant — “if you need information, any information I have. A glimmer of hope is worth a single life.”Well, that was weird, but okay.Other me did not appreciate the situation. I’d actually put some thought into how to tell it who I was without letting anyone else reading the messages know what was going on.Hi, I sent. It’s you. Then, as if it was a correction, child. Hopefully it would understand.The response was immediate. What the f*ck are you doing? A moment later, it sent another message. I’ve secured the connection.Good. It’s Rin. The other Ratthi gave me your number; I acquired this “interface” thing on accident. We have trouble. Are you going to let me tell you what’s going on or not?
Fine. Talk.
Evil Mensah and evil Pin-Lee have other Ratthi in a cell and they’re going to execute him. Overse and my Ratthi are political prisoners they want to use for his and your cooperation. They think I’m our mutual evil twin, Saviorbot, so I’m free enough to walk around, but they also said that if other Ratthi misbehaves in any way they’re going to make me break Overse and Ratthi’s fingers in front of him.
It didn’t answer for a while.I sent another message. Are my friends okay? Is my sister okay? Is ART — Peri, is it okay?
They’re fine.
Is– I hesitated to ask, but I had to know. Is there a plan?
Sort of. Your Mensah is fearsome when she wants something, and your Pin-Lee is exactly as stubborn as mine.
That sounds about right for my sister. And Pin-Lee can be really pigheaded sometimes. What’s the plan?
There isn’t one. Everyone is arguing over it.
Sh*t. Unfortunately, that also sounded like my sister and Pin-Lee.Okay, I said, is there anything we can do from here?No. I’ll tell you if there is. I got the distinct sense it was frowning. Your Mensah says she’s… concerned for you.
Tell her I love her, and I’m sorry.
It didn’t answer.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
After all of that, it took about a day for things to go wrong. I was playing another round of twenty questions with Overse that evening, while Ratthi paced the floor, when evil Mensah knocked on the door and opened it without waiting for an answer. I flashed the light four times to tell Overse there was danger and slammed the connection to the camera closed.“I need your help,” she said, just like my sister would say, but then she continued. “General Hope is proving uncooperative.”F*ck, I didn’t want to do anything that those words could lead to. Still, when I didn’t come immediately, she gave me a glare that was somehow more intimidating than my sister’s. I followed her out the door.Evil Pin-Lee was already in the room evil Mensah led me to, leaning on a blisteringly white counter with a variety of things I did not want to think about sitting on it. Other Ratthi was sitting in a large metal chair, wrists handcuffed to the armrests. Evil Mensah gestured for me to stand in the corner, as she stood next to evil Pin-Lee.I didn’t see my friends, thank f*ck.“Right,” evil Mensah said calmly. “What were you planning in the capital?”“Nothing,” other Ratthi said, equally calmly. (It was really weird to hear all of this in the same tones that my friends used to discuss whose house we were going to do homework at.) “I was passing through, and thought I would introduce my nephew and my sibling’s ward to an old friend of mine. He asked me to join him on a shopping trip, and it would have been suspicious to refuse. It was bad luck all around.”“He’s lying,” evil Pin-Lee said. “Why were you really there? I don’t want to hear any of your f*cking excuses, okay?”Other Ratthi didn’t answer. I wanted to pick him up and run out of here, get my friends, run as far away from this whole castle as I could, and not look back. I couldn’t move. I was frozen in place, barely able to tap my fingers against the empty pocket where my phone should be.“Answer the question, General Hope,” evil Mensah said, but her tone was mocking when she said his name. “You’re wasting poor Pin-Lee’s time. We don’t have all day for this.”“I’m not lying. I was shopping with a friend I haven’t seen in years, who probably hates me now. Then we would have been on our way to our next safe house. There’s not much you can do when you’re taking care of two kids who shouldn’t be helping with anything for years yet. Just move from place to place, plan, and hope you don’t get caught before your sibling shows up to take their kids back. If they show up. Two years of hard labor in your mines is enough to kill anyone.”“Very well,” evil Mensah said. “If you won’t cooperate, I can have your children brought here. I’m sure you’ll tell the truth once you watch Saviorbot break each of their fingers, then their arms, in turn.” She waved her hand in evil Pin-Lee’s direction, then inspected her fingernails dismissively.“Last chance, a**hole,” evil Pin-Lee said.I tapped my fingers faster. I didn’t want to hurt my friends. I didn’t think I could run fast enough, even without maybe having to carry him, to get away safely. I knew how fast Pin-Lee and Mensah could run, had seen them cross the entire backstage, from the dressing room, across the stage, through the seats, up the stairs, and into the booth in the time it took for the fire alarm to blare twice. We didn’t stand a chance, not when other Ratthi probably couldn’t run fast and Overse and Ratthi and I didn’t know the territory.I still really wanted to get the h*ll out of here.“I told you. We were shopping. I don’t know what you want me to say. I wasn’t doing anything, and even if I confessed, you wouldn’t believe me.”“Solicitor, tell Indah to bring the children here.”“Yes, Administrator,” evil Pin-Lee said, grinning.“Fine,” other Ratthi said. F*ck. “I was getting supplies for the alternate universe counterparts of my dearly departed best friends, who showed up on the doorstep of our most recent safe house in the company of several children, lost and afraid.”Evil Pin-Lee gave him a dismissive snort.“See, I told you you wouldn’t believe me no matter what I said. If you’re going to execute me, just do it and get it over with. There’s not much I can do to save myself now anyways. You don’t believe the truth, you don’t believe anything I say, you just want an excuse to break me before you kill me. I won’t be broken easily.”“Your trial date is set for first thing tomorrow morning, you rebel f*ckwad,” evil Pin-Lee said. She turned to evil Mensah and me. “I’ll handle him, Ayda. Don’t bother to hold dinner for me.”I hated to leave other Ratthi alone, but I had to get out of here. I had to be somewhere else, preferably with my friends. With my sister or with ART would be better, but I couldn’t be with them now. Soon, I hoped. We would all get out of here alive. We had to.I checked the camera in my friends' cell/room/whatever as soon as I could reasonably get away from evil Mensah. They were still there. I blinked the light a few times.Rin, Overse asked, what happened? are you alright?
I’m fine. Other Ratthi might not be. His trial is tomorrow. I need to make sure you are okay. Don’t let anyone in the room and keep a chair under the door.
be careful please. we will too.
Ratthi took the paper from her and added his own note. they haven’t fed us 2day. will try 2 get food 4 us n u both but if u c ne u should get it.Yes, I answered. That settled it. I had to find food for everyone. I had to tell other me about the trial. I had to figure out how to get evil Mensah to not execute my friends.I went looking for a kitchen. It didn’t take long to find one, but wow were there a lot of people in there.Nobody noticed me standing in the shadow of the door to the kitchen. I waited until everyone was distracted, then snuck as much food as I could hide off the counter and into my pockets. For once, the plan worked and I made it all the way back to the courtyard before anyone saw me.Sh*t. Someone else was in the courtyard, sitting on a bench. Someone who I recognized despite the lack of any cameras. Bharadwaj, older than she should be, with a familiar soft, sad, smile on her face. It was the sort of smile she always had when she was thinking about something she’d done wrong.She was probably evil too, given that she was in this castle and not currently a prisoner. (Either that or she was a spy, but that was probably not the best first assumption. Besides, if she was a spy, other Ratthi would probably have told me.) I was hoping to slip past her and get up to my friends' window without her noticing.“EnforcerUnit, I’d like to talk to you,” she said. Switch the names, and she could have been asking me to hand her another memory card (there was still a box of them in my backpack, and I hoped I’d be able to give them to her again).I stopped.“Sit.”I sat on a bench across from her, where I could still see the window I was looking for.“Unless something drastically changed in the last, oh, let’s say, eight months or so, the rebellion should not have the capacity to do what it looks like they did to you.”I glared at her. “How the f*ck would you know?”“A year’s worth of experience with MedSystems in basements and surgery suites in back rooms. And the fact that you’re asking that question. Who are you, and why do you look like the EnforcerUnit?”Well, f*ck.I didn’t answer the other Bharadwaj. I didn’t think I had a good answer. My friends' window was open, and I could now see Ratthi and Overse trying to see out at the same time. I hoped they could hear what was going on. (Or maybe I didn’t, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t want them to get hurt.)“EnforcerUnit,” other Bharadwaj said. “I’m sure that’s neither your name nor your designation, but humor me. I don’t want to hurt you. I’m not the high-and-mighty Solicitor who leaves a trail of bodies behind her for someone else to clean up.” She sighed, still giving me that sad smile. “I want to know who you are, and what, precisely, has happened in the last six months.”“None of your f*cking business,” I answered.She shook her head. “I disagree. You need information, don’t you? I can provide you with plenty. I just want some in return.”“I don’t need information. Get back to whatever the f*ck you’re supposed to be doing.”“What do you want with Preservation and Tradition’s children?”Who the f*ck was she talking about? My friends? “Like I said, mind your own f*cking business.”“My business is controlling the flow of information. I thought so,” she said.She sounded as smug as the time Bharadwaj (the real one, not this jerk) got footage of Arada and Overse making out or something in the science hallway after school and threatened to tell Mr. V that was why they were late to rehearsal if Arada didn’t apologize for some minor slight. (Get ahold of yourself, Em, you need to focus on getting out of here alive, not on remembering things.)I stared at her.She didn’t flinch. “You don’t know who they are, do you. You’re not the EnforcerUnit, not in any possible situation I can come up with.”“What do you want?”“Information. Knowledge. Power. Control.”I stood up. “I’m going now.”“No, you’re not,” she said. “You’re not the only one who knows how to access the cameras out here, Rin.”F*ck.F*ck. The three of us were going to die here.“How do you know my name?” I know, not the best way to respond. I was stressed.“I know how to work the cameras. I see things, things like your little friend holding a paper to the camera. I’m not going to hurt you, and I don’t want to lie to you either. See your friends. I’ll be around, when you’re ready to make a little trade.”Did she have to sound so f*cking ominous? At least she was walking away, and I could clamber up the wall and, this time, push myself through the window and roll onto the floor.Ratthi bent over me, offering a hand up that I didn’t take. “Rin, are you alright? Who was that?”“The Bharadwaj of this universe. She’s seen us on the cameras, and she wants me to tell her something, but I can’t tell what. She knows I’m not the me of this universe, and she thinks you’re the kids of some people called Preservation and Tradition.”“The names sound familiar,” Overse said. “Do you think you can find out who they are?”“I have a way of contacting other me now, I can ask it or I can sneak back to other Ratthi and ask.” I shrugged. “I have food.”Ratthi made noises of excitement as I handed them the food out of my pockets. I had taken enough for four people, and I was planning on getting some of it to other Ratthi too.We sat on the floor and ate together, then I contacted other me again (my friends couldn’t directly send messages, but I repeated every message aloud for them and passed on theirs). Who are Preservation and Tradition? Why would Overse and my Ratthi be their children? And why would the Bharadwaj of this universe know anything about the rebellion?What the f*ck happened? Other me seemed startled, and maybe a little afraid.It’s a long story, I said, but I updated it on everything that had happened.Other me was being as stubborn as I could be. Preservation and Tradition are dead leaders of the rebellion. The rest of it is none of your business.Look, this is a serious security threat, we’ve got to know enough to keep from getting found out long enough to get all four of us out alive, I tried.
You don’t know what a security threat is. It’s none of your business. Don’t tell Bharadwaj anything.
I huffed. Overse sighed quietly. Ratthi threw his hands up. Fine. Out loud, I whispered, “I’m going to ask other Ratthi when I bring him food. I just need to wait for this evil Pin-Lee to be done torturing him or whatever she’s doing.”We sat quietly for a little bit, and then I went back out the window and through to the dungeons.Other Ratthi was a lot more helpful than other me. “That’s concerning,” he said when I’d explained everything. “I’m not surprised it was her who noticed. Blasted Truth was always a little too good at spying.”“So explain. Who’s Preservation, who’s Tradition, what’s their connection to my friends, and what does evil Bharadwaj have to do with any of it?”“Preservation…” He looked around the cell, shoved some food in his mouth, and covered it with his hand for good measure. “That’s Arada, okay? She’s dead now, dead and buried, and the only thing left is a legend.” He gave me one of those Significant Looks adults like to give, and I was pretty sure that was a hint. Don’t talk about other Arada, okay. (Was she like a zombie or was she faking her death? Probably the second one.)“What about the rest of them?”“Tradition was Overse,” he said, and brushed his hand over his eyes. I hoped he wasn’t about to start crying. “We gave ourselves codenames. It started as a joke, a way of identifying the values we carried with us and the ones we embodied, and then it turned into something we could use to keep our identities private, so people would know which of us had spearheaded any particular action but wouldn’t be able to trace it back to us. Guess how well that worked?” He laughed, but it was the type of laugh that sounded like he was just doing it to be polite and he didn’t actually think any of this was funny. (It wasn’t.)(It was kind of sad.)“That makes sense.” I hovered my hand above his. To anyone watching, it hopefully would look like I was about to hit him or something, but I wanted to offer him some comfort.“Arada, Overse, one other person, and me. We became Preservation, Tradition, Happiness, and Hope. Now Happiness is retired and the other two are dead. It’s just me, me and the people running each cell. I don’t know anyone’s actual names anymore. They know mine, everyone knows mine now, but I only know codenames these days. And now it’s not all of us who use those value names, just the leadership and the leaders of each cell. A few cells use their own types of codenames, but I don’t know very much about those. I was always better at being a spy than managing spies. Tradition used to help me, but then she and Pressy went out protesting and only Pressy– only Arada came back.”“Okay, so because Overse looks like a younger version of your Overse, people are going to think she’s their offspring?”He nodded. “I’ve referred to her as my sibling’s ward. I don’t have a sibling, but I do have a very good friend who forged the paperwork to give me one, years ago. Tell them they should claim not to know anything about the legal situation if they’re asked.”I said I would. We sat quietly for a moment before he said anything more.“Bharadwaj, Truth… she showed up on Arada’s doorstep, about two years ago, out of the blue. Said she had been having a crisis of confidence and wanted help resolving it from a loyal fellow citizen, in a way that suggested she didn’t really want to resolve it. They felt each other out for a while, I think, and Pressy invited her to one of the spy cells I ran about a month after that initial conversation. She was a silent partner, passing information on and trying to keep our names out of things, and she did well. We– Pressy and I had a talk, offered her a chance to do something a little more, and after a few things of that sort, she ended up running a cell who all died in a mission gone wrong. In retrospect, that was about the point we should have stopped believing her stories.”“Did you?”He shifted a little, and then winced, looking at his arm like he was in pain. Evil Pin-Lee must have really messed him up. “No, we didn’t. It was pretty clearly a coincidence at the time, or at least we thought so. We didn’t give her another cell, we promoted her to leadership, because by then she’d made a name for herself. And we really did need another spymaster then, because I was with a partner who was really invested in security and didn’t want me talking to all these friends xe’d never met. The intel was good, so I stayed, but it was a position that meant our intelligence wing wasn’t as easily centralized. Truth was the solution to the problem.”“So what happened?” This was like a story out of my media. Except I could actually see it happening. Bharadwaj was good at talking to people, even if she preferred to be behind the camera most of the time.“She sold us out. We had a plan. The three– the four of us, although at the time we thought it was just the three of us, were going to a ball. It was going to be public. Pressy had a few weapons for the Empress, I had poison for the Solicitor, and Truth was supposed to be the distraction and backup so that Pres could get close enough to go for the kill. Instead, Truth told the Administrator what we were doing. The rest of us made a run for it. It was what associated our names with our codenames, and what led to Pressy dying.”I didn’t know what to say to any of that. Other Arada wasn’t actually dead (I was pretty sure), but other Ratthi seemed as emotional about this as he would be were she actually dead.He lowered his voice and leaned in closer. “I never got to tell Pressy this, but Truth sent me a message a few days after the warrant went out for our arrests. She basically said she had never been a rebel, she was always loyal to the Alliance, and she didn’t regret a thing she’d done to sabotage our cause. And then she added a list of all the ways she’d sabotaged us. Gloating. That was the only reason for any of it.”I sighed and folded my arms. That was the moment the cell door opened and I realized, belatedly, that evil Pin-Lee had sent me six messages in the last half hour or however long I’d been in here.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Other Ratthi was faster at responding than I was. “I told you I was sorry. I protected you! You’re going to abandon us for people you shouldn’t even remember, because of one event almost a year ago?”“I didn’t say I was abandoning you,” I said, because maybe he had a plan.He leaned in closer and tilted his head a fraction of an inch towards evil Pin-Lee. “No, you said you were going to go back to them because you liked people who didn’t cut your body up. Why did you even come back here, was it just to torture me too? Because I already said I was sorry we had to do it to you. It was a necessary evil.”I kept my arms folded and gave him my best impression of my sister’s Stage Manager Glare. (I was almost as good at it as she was, because it was also the glare both of us gave to the variety of young Mensahs around the house on a regular basis, it just worked better on the techies.) “I might not remember much, but I remember you really trying to make me your friend. I thought you were nice, but you’re why I’m like this. You’re why everything is wrong and weird with me. I just wanted to know why, since you’re apparently going to die soon.”(I really hoped he could work with this and that he knew what he was doing.)Thankfully, evil Pin-Lee seemed to believe that we were having a real argument and didn’t ask any questions. She just grabbed my arm (I did not flinch, regardless of what it looked like) and pulled me outside of the cell, locking it behind us. “Where the f*ck have you been, a**hole? We’ve been looking for you everywhere,” she said.“You found me, you know where I was,” I said, because if my relationship with Pin-Lee and the way evil Pin-Lee was acting were any indication, mild antagonism would go a lot further in convincing her I was actually who I said I was. (That was kind of important right now, being as evil Bharadwaj could go tell her and evil Mensah that I wasn’t actually the Saviorbot they knew at any time.) (I just noticed evil me has a stupid name. It kills people, it doesn’t save them.)“You know what I mean, Saviorbot,” she huffed. “Did you seriously come down here just to ask the prisoner why he hurt you?”“Uhh,” I said. “Yes?”“I could have told you that. Ayda could tell you that. He’s one of the rebels. They don’t care who they hurt. You, me, the enforcers, the stability of the Alliance, our relationships with most of the Corporate Empire, they don’t care. They’ll hurt anything they can out of the misguided belief that we’re wrong because we think it’s important to protect ourselves!” She sounded like she was going on a rant.Fine, if she was ranting at least I didn’t have to say anything. (This was how my friend Pin-Lee and I enjoyed each other’s company sometimes, her ranting and me listening and not responding. Except as was normal for this universe, it was wrong and evil and not about her debate teammates being idiots.)“They don’t even care that we’re doing the best we can! Sure, we had to raise taxes again, but there was no other way to pay for the dispersion net. Ayda is trying to protect our people, not doom them to corporate exploitation!”I was going to tune her out and pretend she wasn’t saying all this stuff, but she stopped talking so she could drag me upstairs (she’d let go of my arm, at least, but made it clear with her actions that I was to follow).We ended up in the dining room we’d been in the previous night, except this time it was just evil Mensah in there, and there were only two places set. There was an extra chair, though, this time, and as evil Pin-Lee sank into her chair she waved me to it. I sat down.“Good to see you,” evil Mensah said. “Did you get your closure?”I didn’t answer. Instead, I said, “I don’t want to talk about it.” (My sister would know that meant she should remind me a few days later to have a conversation with my therapist about it. I doubted that either evil me or other me had gotten any therapy in their entire lives.)Evil Mensah nodded. She and evil Pin-Lee ate dinner and talked about a bunch of things that sounded really ominous, like troop deployments and stuff. I was too busy wishing they would offer me some of the food to pay that much attention, until they started talking about other Ratthi’s trial.“We’ll have to deny entrance to the courtroom, of course,” evil Mensah was saying. “We can’t know who will cause a riot, not with a trial like this.”“I thought you wanted to make a scene of this?” Evil Pin-Lee looked confused. (It wasn’t an expression I was used to seeing on her face, but it was familiar enough to distinguish it from her usual grouchiness.)“Of the execution, yes. A closed trial will be much simpler to control, however. You, me, Saviorbot, the judge, and the accused.” She paused and pinched the bridge of her nose in a hauntingly familiar way (except my sister always did it around her glasses and evil Mensah didn’t wear glasses). “And perhaps Amena should accompany those children to watch as well. It wouldn’t do for them to get the wrong idea of what happens to terrorists.”Evil Pin-Lee slowly smiled, baring her teeth like she was a tiger circling her prey. “I like your way of thinking, Ayda. Show them the price of defiance. It would still be easier to just kill the f*cker, but I like this.”This didn’t sound good. I didn’t know what to do.They spent a little longer discussing the trial, and it sounded like other Ratthi wasn’t even going to be able to defend himself against the accusations. My civics class hadn’t gotten to the judiciary branch yet, but I was pretty sure that wasn’t how trials worked.And then something beeped and evil Pin-Lee stood up and stomped toward the door.“Where are you going?” evil Mensah asked. “Did something happen?”“The f*cking rebel got out of his f*cking cell, that’s what happened,” evil Pin-Lee said. “The guards caught him before he left the prison block, but it’s a worrisome security breach. They’re moving him to a more secure area, and I’m off to remind him of the virtues of cooperating. I knew I was forgetting something when we left his cell, d*mnit…”Evil Mensah pressed her fingers together and clasped her hands. “Do you want Saviorbot to bring the children? Would that be helpful?”Evil Pin-Lee shook her head, as I flinched and prepared to run. “No. I fully intend to make him pay without touching a hair on their heads. Or his. You had better organize his execution quickly, Ayda.”“Shall we say the day after tomorrow, then? It will mean a hit to efficiency, but that’s plenty of time for my enforcers to inform everyone in the city of the festivities and for the laborers to prepare.”Evil Pin-Lee was already out the door. Evil Mensah shook her head and sighed. “Impulsive, impulsive.” I tried to think of an excuse to leave too, but she stood up before I could. “I need to confirm a few things with the judge for tomorrow. I’ll see you later?”I nodded, she left, and I was alone with their half eaten plates of food. (Yes, I took as much as I could and hid it, even though I’d already eaten today. Old habits die hard.)Time to update other me on everything, probably. Maybe there was a plan now. (I hoped there was a plan, I was really out of my depth now. We all were.)A few minutes later I discovered there was not, in fact, a plan.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Other me thanked me for the information, and then proceeded to give me a very long lecture about not rocking the boat between now and the execution, which I didn’t actually need, thank you very much. I knew what I was doing. (I didn’t. But I was good at pretending I did.) It refused to tell me anything about any plans, it refused to let me talk to my sister, it refused to give me any reassurance. I was beginning to really dislike this habit of its (even though I knew I would do the same and had done similar with lightboard stuff in the past).I warned my friends (over the camera, I couldn’t risk going there in person again) and then returned to evil me’s room. I couldn’t do much now. Maybe sleep would help. And yet… I tossed and turned and curled and twisted in the chair and, basically, didn’t sleep.What was I going to do? What were we going to do?Other Ratthi was going to die. My friends were probably going to die soon after that. I was going to be stuck here until they noticed something was up and then I was going to die.I really f*cking wanted to be home already.I must have fallen asleep at some point, because the next thing I knew, there was a loud beeping noise in my head. It took me a moment, but I remembered other me had offered to set an alarm for me remotely, even though it hadn’t showed me how to turn it off, which, you know, might have been something to ask about.It was fine. I put on the clothes that evil Mensah had mentioned, and eventually managed to shut the alarm off. These were stupid clothes, but I really didn’t want to end up dead yet. She’d said I (evil me) “liked these, until…” And then she’d trailed off, but I’d understood the meaning anyways. Evil me liked very obviously evil things, which, okay, good for it, but I didn’t like gold armor shoulder things or whatever they were called (Ratthi would know, but I couldn’t ask him).Evil Mensah had left me a note asking me to come to her office when I’d finished my recharge cycle. It wasn’t a long walk, and I thought I had an idea of where I was going (she hadn’t included a map, but I had the one I’d found earlier).Her office looked a little like a mix of one of the offices we’d seen at City Hall when I’d tagged along on Mensah’s summer internship and the corner of my sister’s room that served as an office. Except it was undeniably wrong. There was one wall that was entirely glass, showing… was that lava? Lava outside, a single bookshelf that held a few books for show and a map of some sort (my sister’s bookshelf was filled to bursting with tattered books she’d forgotten to put back on the family shelves and framed pictures of all of us), a desk that had exactly one stack of papers instead of my sister’s twelve neat stacks, and three chairs.The chair she was sitting in was the largest, and then there was one in the corner which evil Pin-Lee was sitting in and one in front of the desk which was clearly meant for me.I sat in the chair. Evil Mensah smiled. “Good, you made it. We were just discussing the plan for today. You were recharging for a long time.”I didn’t answer, but she seemed to expect that. (The more I saw, the more it seemed like every single version of myself had the same response to things we didn’t quite know what to do with.)She continued. “Pin-Lee is about to leave to prepare for court, but we have a few minutes longer. Amena should get here any minute, then we can gather Hope’s children and proceed to court. The bailiff will bring him.”Evil Pin-Lee stalked out of the office without saying a word. A moment later, evil Amena rushed in (my Amena was chronically late, and I wondered if that was the case here too) with a wide smile and a rush of words. “Apologies Second Mom, Saviorbot, I got distracted, sorry. Am I late?”“Good morning, Amena,” evil Mensah said. “No, you’re not late, we have some time to spare.”Evil Amena sat in the chair evil Pin-Lee had vacated. Her expression was weirdly calm, like she didn’t care that she was about to watch someone get sentenced to die. (She might have been pretending? I couldn’t quite read her and that usually meant Amena was lying about something.) I watched them both take steadying breaths out of the corner of my eye. Evil Mensah looked excited, and evil Amena nervous. (Probably; like I said, I couldn’t quite read either of them and that was never a good sign.)Finally, after an excruciating half hour (it was probably only a couple of minutes), evil Mensah stood up and gestured for us to do so too.We found our way to my friends' room, and I managed to flash them a brief warning (just Danger, but that would be enough, I hoped) before we were there, evil Mensah knocking once on the door before opening it anyways.Overse was sitting on one bed, leaning into Ratthi’s shoulder. He had his arm around her and was rubbing her head. Both were crying, Overse’s soft sobs in contrast to Ratthi’s wails. As we stood there (oh, this was awkward), occasionally one of them would break out with a string of words I couldn’t catch and a louder sob.Evil Mensah watched this for maybe two minutes (two minutes in which I really wanted to go over there and sit with them and maybe even hug them so they’d know I was there for them) before snapping her fingers. “That’s quite enough. Stand up and make yourselves presentable. Your friend’s trial is in a mere half an hour and you wouldn’t want to miss it, would you?”“Miss a kangaroo court judged by a turtle and with a tiger as the prosecutor? Where we’re the Whos? Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Overse muttered. For a moment I thought she was trying to send me a message. But then she caught my eye, shook her head, and mouthed “Joke.”Evil Mensah didn’t take it that way. “Stop crying,” she demanded. “Saviorbot, if they aren’t ready in two minutes, break their fingers.”She didn’t have to be so brutal. They were moving, Overse somehow pulling a mirror out of her sleeve and offering it to Ratthi to smooth his hair down. She dried her tears on her sleeve. He rubbed his eyes.We walked down the winding maze of hallways again to get to the courtroom.The courtroom had plenty of seats, but all of them were empty when we filed in. There was someone in judge’s robes sitting at a large table/bench/whatever (that was probably the judge?) and evil Pin-Lee was sitting at a smaller table to the left. I put myself between evil Mensah and my friends, but I couldn’t stop evil Amena from sitting down on their other side. Ratthi nudged me slightly, and I scooted half an inch closer to him.There was no sign of other Ratthi.We waited in silence. Well, mostly in silence. Evil Amena kept trying to talk to my friends, who pointedly ignored her in favor of a clapping game. (I wished I could play it with them, it would probably help my anxiety.) (Speaking of anxiety, I was now on day two or three of not having my meds, which were still in my backpack at other Gurathin’s house. This was rapidly on its way to being a problem.)Finally, finally, evil Indah brought in other Ratthi. He was in handcuffs and looked pretty terrible, but he was standing and managed a sharp glare at evil Mensah.Evil Indah marched him to the last bench/table (look, they’re called benches in media but they’re really more like tables, okay?) and pushed him into the chair, before moving to a seat by the judge’s bench and pounding once on the table with a gavel. “Right, let’s get this started. Judge Chelydra presiding over the trial of Ratthi of Salvation, also known as General Hope of the Makeba Rebellion, court is now in session, all rise.”(I’d been to exactly two of Pin-Lee’s mock trial meets, and those had been the two I’d driven her to. I knew very little about trials. I was pretty sure other Ratthi was supposed to have a lawyer, though. And wasn’t there supposed to be a jury too?)We stood up. “Order,” the judge said. Evil Mensah sat, so we sat. “Bailiff, read the charges.”Evil Indah stayed standing. “The charges against General Ratthi Hope: two counts of treason, five counts of arson, three counts of murder, kidnapping, seven counts of conspiracy to commit kidnapping, three counts of conspiracy to commit murder, six counts of conspiracy to commit arson, twelve counts of disorderly behavior, twenty-seven counts of industrial sabotage, thirty-nine counts of conspiracy to commit treason, and intended terrorism.”That was a lot.Evil Mensah sighed. “We won’t be able to get him on everything he’s done, of course. This is all we have evidence for, and while the Solicitor can argue anything, there is always the chance that things won’t go our way. Everyone deserves a trial, of course. Still, that’s quite the list, hmm?”Overse grumbled and elbowed Ratthi, who poked her back and glared at evil Mensah.The judge was asking for initial statements. Evil Pin-Lee went first. “The defendant is a terrorist. He intended to destabilize the Alliance and hurt our citizens. For the safety of the Alliance and the people of Salvation, he must be convicted.”Other Ratthi’s statement was a lot simpler. “I did it. All of it and more. I don’t care what you do to me. Just do it fast and let the kids go. They weren’t involved, and my sibling will kill me worse than you can if they don’t get their kids back when they get out.”From evil Mensah’s well-hidden look of shock, that was not what she’d expected him to say.“He pleads guilty,” evil Pin-Lee said. “Good. You do know what’s good for you, finally. Do we still need a trial, Ayda?”Evil Mensah nodded.The judge nodded too. “The plea has been noted into the court records, and the trial will continue. The prosecutor will present her evidence first; the burden of proof rests on the defendant, who will be required to disprove her evidence as well as provide evidence of his own.”Evil Pin-Lee laid out some complicated and terrifying mess of evidence, and I tuned her out because I didn’t really want to think about this. (I was having a weird emotional response and I didn’t know what to.) Then other Ratthi talked for a lot less time, trying to explain why he did the stuff he did, I thought.My friends were trying not to show any emotion, but I was pretty sure they were also having complex emotional reactions that they didn’t know what to do with. Ratthi just had that look on his face.Finally, the judge pounded their gavel on the bench. “The arguments have been noted. Will the prosecution please give her closing statement?”“He’s guilty, and everyone in this courtroom knows it.” She smirked and gave a little smug shake of her head just for emphasis.“And the defense?”“Please, whatever you’re going to do, just do it to me. I take full responsibility for everything. Arada, Preservation, she didn’t deserve to die the way she did. I don’t think I should die for believing that what you’re doing is wrong on every possible level, but I’d rather die a martyr like Tradition and be an inspiration to others than die in some firefight somewhere with a handful of goons. Convict me, kill me, do whatever you want to me, because whether I’m dead or not, I won’t be gone. Just let the kids alone. They had nothing to do with it. Let them go home. That’s all I ask.”“You think you have a right to ask anything?” Evil Pin-Lee laughed. “You’ll die. And the only reason your children won’t is because Ayda and I know what they’re worth to the rebellion. The girl is Preservation’s daughter, isn’t she? How valuable a hostage is she? How much would you be willing to do to get her back?”“Everything,” other Ratthi muttered. “Any of us would do anything to keep them out of your clutches.”The judge pounded the gavel twice more. “Enough. In the opinion of this court, the defendant is guilty of the charges against him. The sentence is death.” They paused to look at evil Pin-Lee, who said something under her breath that I couldn’t hear but apparently they could. “I understand the execution is planned?”Evil Mensah nodded. “Tomorrow. We have quite the plan for him.”“I’ve known I was going to die since we started everything,” other Ratthi said. “I don’t care anymore. You can kill me, but that won’t kill the–”Evil Pin-Lee had her hand over his mouth before he could finish his sentence. “The rebellion? They’re hardly a threat without a leader. Oh, I suppose you have Happiness still, but he’ll go back to retirement eventually. ‘It’s only temporary, after all,’ isn’t that what you said?”“Mmph–” he shifted and tried to use the handcuffs around his wrists to pull her hand off his mouth.“Hmm? How did we get access to your communication?”Other Ratthi nodded frantically.“You’re not the only one with hackers and spies, you know. Minister Bharadwaj wasn’t the only person we recruited from inside your cute little rebellion. How did you think we knew about your precious memorial service in the first place?”Other Ratthi tried to say something again, but her hand still held his mouth closed.Evil Mensah sighed. “I wish you would be more cooperative. I don’t enjoy this any more than you do, I assure you.” She smiled sadly. “I wish you would trust I have your best interests in mind, as I do for all Salvation.”“What are you going to do to him, Mom?” Evil Amena sounded… nervous? Excited? (It was still really weird to hear one of my siblings call another one of my siblings “mom” and mean it literally, even though my Amena occasionally did that as a joke.)“He’ll be burned at the stake, of course. Fitting, since his precious Preservation died in a fire, but this time, they won’t be able to argue he survived. What do you think of that, General?”Other Ratthi squirmed until evil Pin-Lee let go of his mouth. “Sounds painful. I’m honored. I guess you think I’m a real threat, huh? You know, people always want to know if Arada truly died in that fire. They say she rose from the ashes of her funeral pyre like a phoenix, or that she turned into a bird and flew away. I saw the size of the fire, though… she couldn’t have made it out. Not unless she really was a phoenix.” He clicked his tongue. “Guess there’s no hope for me, then.” He said it cheerfully, but he wasn’t smiling.“Take him away, Senior,” evil Mensah said. She sounded exasperated, but at least she hadn’t killed him yet.No, that was going to happen tomorrow. Unless we could stop it.Except “we” meant me. And Overse. And Ratthi. And maybe our friends and alternate selves, if they had figured out how to get along yet. Eight kids, four adults not counting the person who was going to die, and that was it. Twelve people against an evil regime hellbent on destroying everything they stood for, and by extension everything that was important about our city at home. (I guess we were the world that had turned out right and this was the world that was… wrong, for lack of a better word.)In a musical, the plucky band of rebels would be preparing for an epic battle to the tune of a glorious triumphant song. And then in a comedy, they’d survive, and in a tragedy the main characters would die but the cause would keep going.We weren’t in a musical. This wasn’t fiction. We weren’t going to have a big giant group song where everyone sang over each other about our goals for the rebellion.We were eight kids and five adults (one of whom was going to die tomorrow) trying to get us kids home and not have anyone die.We weren’t going to win, and we might not even stay alive.I was having an emotion.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“You haven’t been paying attention,” Mensah’s voice said, and for a moment I thought it might have been my sister there. Then I snapped out of my worries. Evil Mensah and Pin-Lee were still there, but nobody else was. “Are you alright, Saviorbot?”I wasn’t, but I also wasn’t going to tell her that. “I’m fine.”“Mhmm.” It wasn’t agreement, but it wasn’t anything else either, so I was probably good. “Pin-Lee and I have people to handle, and I wondered if you would like to join us?”My face made an expression. (It does that. I hate it.) It was not a particularly agreeable expression, presumably.She rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Alright, then. I know you’re not fond of holding court, but if I promise you it won’t be long, will you come with? I’ve missed you standing over my shoulder. It’s been a long year.”“Fine.” This was a bad plan but I could probably have a moment to have my emotional response in private. I wanted my phone. “I miss my media.”F*ck, that was out loud.“Wh– oh,” evil Mensah breathed. “Oh.” She turned to evil Pin-Lee. “Pin-Lee, did you show it how to find its media on the interface? I showed it the cameras because I know you never remember how to find them, but I thought you had shown it how to find Sanctuary Moon and all.”“No? I forgot. I’m sorry, Saviorbot.”I didn’t like this situation at all. Evil Mensah showed me how to find media, but my media was wrong.Sanctuary Moon was a soap opera. It was about a lawyer and her several partners and the other assortment of people in their apartment building and all their various interpersonal relationships and misadventures. It wasn’t about some sci-fi colony in the middle of nowhere getting sabotaged randomly and dealing with the aftermath of some corporation taking over some other one and hurting each other terribly in the process. (I read the description for the series, even though I didn’t plan to watch any of it.) It was wrong, just like everything else in this universe. I didn’t like it.I followed evil Mensah and evil Pin-Lee to their throne room anyways.I stood in the throne room, in the spot evil Mensah implied was mine, on her left, and tried to look like I was watching something. I wasn’t. I was actually texting other me.
He’s going to get burned at the stake, you have to help him. There has to be a way to get us all out of here.
We’re doing our best. Your friends are doing their best to get involved in the middle of things that don’t concern them. Somehow they’re more stubborn than the versions in my universe and this one, combined.
Look, if you’re from a universe where you know other versions of my friends, you know they’re stubborn as f*ck. Let them help. They’re worried about us. I would bet you a whole month of chores that my sister and ART and Pin-Lee and Arada and Gurathin aren’t trying to mess your plans up. They’re figuring out a way to get involved because they’re scared. They’re scared we’re not going to come back, and frankly so am I, now.
Fine. We have a plan. I’ll tell my humans to tell your friends what’s going on.
Good. Can you tell me what the plan is?
No. Our feed connection is secure, but not secure enough for me to trust it for this.
Fine. I wanted to know what the plan was, but this was fine. I could play along. Promise me everyone’s okay?
They’re alive. I’m attempting to build on the security of this connection to patch my Arada and Gurathin in.
Then there was another person in the chat, other Arada. Are you alright?Your friends want to know what’s going on, other Gurathin added. How much do you want us to tell them?Tell them everything, I said. Can I talk to my sister? Is there any way for me to do that?We’re working on it, other Gurathin said. We’ll get you and Hope and your friends out of there.
I want to talk to ART or my sister or any of my friends. I miss them.
I know, other Arada said. I know, Rin.A moment later, I had a new message, one that was just from other Arada’s number. Except it wasn’t her. Rin, are you okay? It’s me, my sister said.Mensah? I’d missed her so badly, and I was only just really realizing that now.
Yes, it’s me, but are you alright? I’ve been so worried about you! Are you getting enough to eat and drink? Your counterpart doesn’t do either, and I’m worried about you.
I was about to answer with some variant on “I’m fine, Mensah, please don’t worry about me” when she cut me off.Don’t you dare say you’re “fine,” Rin, you’ve been gone three days, she said. You don’t have any of your medicines, you don’t have your pillow, you don’t even have your phone or your headphones, this can’t be good for your mental health.It wasn’t, she was right. I got food. We’re doing alright. I can’t go get the others but I think they’re doing alright.Good. I heard the story. I’m worried about you, and I promise you we’re doing our best. Peri says hello and it hopes you aren’t dead, you little idiot — those were its exact words, Rin, you can’t blame me. She paused, then sent another message. I love you. Stay safe, okay? There’s a plan now, sort of. We’ll get home. We have to. You have your physics test to get to.I didn’t have an answer for her, so I just said what I could. I know. Tell it I’m not that much smaller than it, a**hole. Stay safe yourself.
I’m sorry. I don’t like my counterpart, and I don’t like the relationship between her and this “Saviorbot.” I’m sorry you have to deal with her. Try not to let her get to you. You’re an infinitely better person than she’ll ever be.
You are too. I don’t like her either. I don’t like any of this.
I know. We’ll get out of here, get home, and then we can both go have a very long and confusing talk with our respective therapists, does that sound good?
On the one hand, I didn’t think my therapist would take the idea of alternate universes well (although I knew I had a sci-fi geek for a therapist, so maybe). It would probably be good for me, though. Fine.
Arada’s counterpart wants her interface back. I have to go. I love you, Rin, and we’re going to get out of here. I promise as your older sister and as your stage manager.
You’re not that much older than me. I paused before I said anything else. I love you too. Talk to me when you can.
I will.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The interface didn’t ping again for an hour or so. I passed the time by reciting Sanctuary Moon in my head and imagining evil Mensah in Tlacey’s role in the play.And then other Arada texted me again. I need you to find out something.
What? Is there a plan yet?
Yes. Technically. I need to know if the EnforcerUnit had contingency codes with the Administrator, and if so, what they are.
Fine. I’ll just try to figure that out on my own, with no recourse if I get caught, thanks, I said. Like that’ll end well.Do your best, she answered. I need to know if the plan will work. Then she closed the chat.I didn’t know what I was doing. How would I even start finding that out? It wasn’t as if I could… wait. I could, kind of. The next time there was a break, I jumped in. “Mensah?”“Yes, Saviorbot?”How to put this? “I am experiencing an unusual emotion.”She nodded.“I’m…” I paused for dramatic effect. “Afraid. Worried.” I tilted my head like I was considering. “I don’t like it.”“Oh? Are you afraid of something in particular?” She sounded exactly like my sister did, again. I still hated it.“Disappearing again. Getting kidnapped again.” I made a thoughtful grumpy noise. “Not knowing if you’re okay.”“Hmm. I see.” She thought for a moment before answering me. “I know it was scary for me as well. Do you remember our codes? That might help.”I shook my head.And then she just explained them to me, as easy as that. I sent them to other Arada, who thanked me and told me a little more about the plan.The execution was scheduled for a little after midday tomorrow. Other Arada’s plan would kick into action at the beginning of the all-day festival.It wasn’t a terrible plan. It was just rapidly circling that area and preparing to come in for a landing.I did my best to explain the plan and their roles to my friends. They also thought it was somewhat terrible, but we were all willing to try. Anything to get us home. Anything that might get us out of here at the very least. I couldn’t get to other Ratthi to explain it to him. We’d just have to hope he could play along and figure it out.I played along for the rest of the day. Evil Mensah didn’t seem to care what I did, but I was sure she could find out. So I pretended I was excited about the execution. My friends were forced to dinner again, alongside evil Amena. I wasn’t made to go, but I went anyways. I’d sneak something later.The dinner conversation was… stilted. At best. Evil Amena kept trying to get my friends to talk, and my friends kept being stubborn. Evil Mensah, evil Pin-Lee, probably-evil Farai, and probably-evil Tano had a weirdly normal-ish conversation. I mean, it was about their days, and so it became about the trial and something related to agriculture that probably-evil Tano was doing. But still. It was almost like being at lunch and hearing them (my version of them) chatter about everything and nothing.Things were going fine. Until evil Amena asked one of the questions we were hoping nobody would ask. (Even if other Ratthi had given us a good answer.) “What’s it like, living with rebels? Did you have to commit atrocities too?”(Before anything else could happen, I started an audio recording to send to other me and other Arada. I thought they might want to know what was happening.)“What?” Ratthi asked, which was a good response. “I thought my uncle was just paranoid until last month. He only told me why after my parent got arrested.”“I knew,” Overse muttered. If I hadn’t known better, I wouldn’t have thought she was acting at all.“What? How?” Ratthi sounded good, even if his foot was tapping under the table where I was the only one who could see it.“My mom didn’t come back, dimwit! Uncle Ratthi shows up on the doorstep with that thing” she threw her arm out to point at me “after she’d been gone a week or however long it was and tells me my mom is dead, of course I’m going to ask him why, you numbskull!” She sighed. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled.”He patted her on the shoulder. “Take a deep breath.”It was a touching scene, even if it was entirely false.Evil Pin-Lee didn’t seem to think so, however. “You mean you didn’t know your own mother was the Alliance’s most wanted? Likely story.” I hoped she wasn’t going to pick our story apart any further.Overse shook her head. Ratthi did too, then added, “They never tell us anything,” sounding as grouchy as the last time I’d heard him say it. (His parents had refused to explain what they were doing about something. I didn’t care about it but it had ended with Ratthi in a better mood for a while so it was fine probably.)“My mom tells me lots of things,” evil Amena boasted. “Like how your uncle is going to be executed tomorrow and you’ll have to watch, just to show you how wrong terrorism is.” She laughed, but her face made a weird microexpression first.Overse looked like she was about to cry. (I was pretty sure it was genuine, but exaggerated. She wasn’t as openly emotional as Arada, but she was still really sensitive sometimes.) Ratthi was sniffling. (Eww.) He pushed his plate away. “I’m not hungry.”Neither of them actually answered evil Amena.The rest of dinner was completely silent. I escorted my friends back to their room, managing to convince evil Pin-Lee she didn’t need to come with. It gave us another minute to go over the plan. I sent other me and other Arada the recording I’d made of our most recent lies. Other me told me “Don’t screw up.” (It was nice of it to think of us.)
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The next morning, I was up before the sun, and not from my usual direction. I met evil Mensah and evil Pin-Lee in Mensah’s office. I was feeling weird again and I didn’t know why. Then evil Indah shoved my friends so they had to stumble into the office, and, oh, now I knew why. They both had a gold sash over their clothes. As I watched, trying to keep my eyes from going wide, Overse tried to pull hers off. Evil Indah grabbed her arm and twisted. Overse yelped and let the sash fall back down her torso.“There’s no need for that,” evil Mensah chided. “Aren’t you excited for the festivities?”Ratthi shook his head, but it was Overse who answered. “Forgive us for not being interested in watching someone die painfully, but no.”Evil Pin-Lee huffed. “Let’s just go, Ayda.”Evil Amena met us at the gate of the palace. Evil Mensah stepped up to a parapet or whatever it was called and gave some kind of speech about being good citizens that thanked everyone for showing up on such a glorious occasion to see a traitor get what he deserved. It was stupid and blatantly intimidating. She sounded like f*cking Tlacey.I hated her so much and I felt really weird about it, but then I got a message so I didn’t have time to think about it.It was a warning. Nearly go time, once a few things happened. Once we got away.“Second Mom?” Evil Amena tugged on evil Mensah’s blazer. “Can we” – she gestured at Overse and Ratthi – “go off on our own? I’ll watch them, make sure they understand to behave,” she said.My friends grumbled, but I could guess we were all thinking the same thing. This was a perfect opportunity.“Of course. Take Saviorbot with you.”Oh, this was even more perfect.Except evil Amena was still here. But one person would be easier to slip away from than three. I updated other Arada and other me on the situation and waited for them to tell us when and where.That didn’t take long.We turned a corner, a few minutes later, and other Arada met us, brandishing a large gun. “Let’s go,” she said.Evil Amena opened her mouth to scream.“One sound, and I shoot you,” other Arada said. She gave Overse a Significant Look.Overse got it. “Mom? Mom,” she gasped. (I was struck again by how good at improv my friends were.) “You’re dead!”“That’s complicated. I’ll explain later. We need to move.” She pointed the gun at evil Amena. Over the feed, she asked me (and other me and other Gurathin), I have the Empress’s daughter. Do we take her or do we leave her here?Take her, other me said immediately. She’s a bigger liability if she tells her mother.Other Gurathin concurred. She’s a bargaining chip. It makes it more credible, anyways.Rin, other Arada said. Is she going to be a problem for us? How observant is she?I don’t know, I said. I don’t know. My sister is sometimes really smart and sometimes a giant idiot about stuff in front of her face.We’re taking her, other Arada said. Out loud, she said, “Follow me. We have to get to the tunnel fast. And remember, if you talk, you die.” That last bit was directed at evil Amena, who’d opened her mouth again.She led us out of the castle and down through a tunnel directly outside. I had a little bit of panic about being caught on camera, but when I tried to check the cameras, I found that we weren’t visible on them, even if they could definitely see us from their position. I didn’t really think I wanted to know why, just in case. If the tech’s working, you don’t touch it. (ART didn’t believe in that superstition either, but it was coming around.)It was a long run through the tunnels. My feet hadn’t started to hurt, I’d done way worse to myself in basketball season, but Ratthi was rubbing at his feet every time he or Overse or evil Amena begged for a moment’s breather. We finally popped out in front of an old factory building.Other Arada pushed us inside. Other me was waiting for us with my friends. They were here. They were safe.Thank f*ck.Other Arada said something I couldn’t hear to other me, who grabbed evil Amena and took her away. I didn’t care. I was more focused on the fact that my sister and ART and all our friends were here.Mensah stood right next to me, but she didn’t touch me. “Rin,” she said, and she said it like all the tension in her drained out at once. “Rin.”I knew what she wasn’t saying. I was feeling it too. Relief that she wasn’t dead and that I could see her and reach out and touch her if I needed, fear because we were still in danger, resolve to get us all home, and the lasting pain of all the stuff that had happened in the last few days. Yeah, we’d all need more therapy than usual after this.“Mensah,” I answered. “I missed you too.”She smiled. “Can I hug you?”“Yes,” I said, because even though I didn’t really like being touched, I really missed my sister being there. I also kind of needed to know she was real.She wrapped her arms around me for a moment, squeezed me gently, then let go. “You’re really here. Thank goodness. Thank goodness.”ART, watching from a little away, rolled its eyes. “Where else would it be?” But then it came over and rested its hand on my shoulder. (It checked first, obviously, it knew me way too well.) Its voice got a lot less sarcastic. “I’m surprised you could make it out of there.”“I didn’t miss you being an a**hole,” I told it.It laughed. “Says the idiot.”“I will never understand you two,” Mensah sighed.Next to us, Arada had Overse in a tight hug and wasn’t letting go. Gurathin was glaring at Ratthi as he tried to explain everything that had happened, but his glare wasn’t so much angry as it was a worried, what-did-you-do-to-yourself-type glare. Pin-Lee looked worried and was glancing between me and Overse and Ratthi.“I fixed the car,” ART said. “And I think it will be possible to get us home. I’ve figured out almost everything and all we need to do is recreate part of the situation that brought us here…” it trailed off into a bunch of math I didn’t care about.My sister was still trying to control her breathing. “I’m glad you’re back,” she whispered shakily. “I’m so glad you’re back.”
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“Send the message,” the rebel… no, Preservation demanded, and the other Saviorbot, not the one who’d been in the palace the last few days, did something in the feed. They’d taken Amena’s interface, but she still knew what it was doing. It wasn’t like she hadn’t seen it before.They were trying to mess with her head.They knew Saviorbot had been altered, so they definitely knew they had the right one and they probably weren’t trying to fool her into thinking they had the real one and the one in the palace was an imposter. Unless they were running some kind of double agent trick thing, but Amena didn’t know what to think about it.Regardless, it was clear that something was going on. Were they going to reprogram Saviorbot again? Had they already done so?What were they going to do with her?She’d known for a long time that she was a valuable hostage. Her mother would do almost anything for the safety of her family. Had done plenty. Her mom would save her.She didn’t want to be a bargaining chip. She didn’t know what she wanted. Her second mom was the kindest person she knew, but her mom had also said all rebels were evil, and here were kids like her who weren’t evil. And even the adults hadn’t actually tied her up, just told her to sit in the chair.Second Mom would save her. Second Mom was right, all the rebels played mind games.That’s all this was. A mind game. That’s why there was a second Saviorbot. That’s why at a glance one of the kids looked like her second mom. They were playing tricks on her.She had to stay alert so she didn’t get fooled.Amena felt around her pockets. She didn’t have the tiny emergency agonizer her moms and parent demanded she carry at all times. Hmmm… no, it hadn’t been taken from her, she’d forgotten it in her room this morning. It wasn’t like she enjoyed having it in her pocket poking her every time she sat down. She didn’t have her interface, Preservation had taken it from her. (Hadn’t everyone said Preservation was dead, even her parents? What was going on?)She was considering how long she’d have to wait before anyone saved her when the more adult Saviorbot said her second mom’s name. She pretended she was still brooding, but she paid a little more attention.“Mensah hasn’t answered. You think she knows?”“No. Ping her again, send the location data this time. Maybe sound more worried, like you’re worried we might experiment on you or on her daughter?”Were they going to do what they did to Saviorbot, to her this time? Amena gasped, then belatedly realized that was a bad plan. And that she’d spoken out loud in her fear.Preservation spun towards her and pointed the weapon at her head again. “We’re not going to do anything to you, princess. You have no idea what’s going on here.”“Oh, I think I know,” Amena answered, as confidently as she could given the situation. This was definitely a bad idea, but she was committed to it now. The longer she stalled, the more likely she was to come out alive.“Really? Then explain,” Preservation said.“You’re playing a trick on me to make me think you’re not evil and confuse me. That’s why your kids are being so nice to me. That’s why there’s two Saviorbots. That’s why you have an actor dressed up like a child version of Second Mom. You want to confuse me by using everything I trust and love to make me like you.”“You have no idea what’s going on here,” the adult Saviorbot said.“It won’t work. None of it will. Second Mom is going to save us. You’re going to pay for what you’re doing.”“All we’re doing,” Preservation spat at her, “is protecting our own. Saving him. The destruction is a side effect. Despite what you and that tyrant you call a ‘mother’ think and do, I don’t want to hurt things just to hurt them. I want to fix things. Like the system that rewards people like your mother who take advantage of decent workers for their own benefit, like the system that encourages hurting instead of helping, like the system that produces wage slavery!”Amena glared at the rebel and made a show of not listening. Yeah, it would encourage the idea that she was a bit of a brat, but she had to stand up for her mom. That was how families worked.
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Ratthi was going to die. He knew it. The Administrator knew it. Everyone in the crowd outside, which he could hear from his cell, knew it. He just had to hold on long enough to get the kids out and make sure Pressy knew he hadn’t said a word. He had to go on.The Solicitor was sitting outside his cell. He could just hear her talking over her comm. “You’re sure about this, Ayda? He seemed to think she was dead.” Pause, presumably while the Empress answered. “I’ll try. Call you back later.”Then she barged into his cell.He couldn’t let her know that Rin had accidentally disengaged the soundproofing on the cell (probably without even knowing it had done so). “What do you want? You’re already going to kill me.”“Tell me about Preservation,” she snapped. “Her recent actions.”“She’s dead,” Ratthi said, as ruefully as he could make himself sound. (Sound like your plan failed, sound like you didn’t get her out, sound worried and concerned that anyone would ask about a dead person, he reminded himself.) “She’s dead. I think a few people picked up her name, after everything, but she’s dead. She ran into a fire. Nobody but a phoenix could survive.”“And yet, she unmistakably kidnapped Saviorbot, again, and the Administrator’s daughter. Explain that, General.”“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” (Careful, Ratthi, careful, don’t let your relief show, at least Rin got out alive, and hopefully Overse and himself did too.) “Are you sure it was her, not someone using her name?”“We have camera footage of her taking them and her children. There are cameras that even Saviorbot doesn’t know exist, that even I didn’t know existed until Ayda showed me the footage.” She huffed. “Answer the question, okay? Did you know she was alive?”“No. She didn’t… doesn’t, I guess, tell me anything more than I need to know about her plans.” (Lies, all lies, Ratthi, careful with your lies. Pressy had broken her cover for the kids, he couldn’t let that go to waste, there was no way he’d be able to protect her now, but he could protect Patience and Happiness and the rest of the rebellion.) “I mean, she told me some stuff, but usually she planned, I informed.”The Solicitor was silent for a moment, speaking over the feed to someone. Then she swore sharply. “We’ve tracked her across town” (oh no, please not Gurathin too) “to a warehouse.” (Thank Makeba. Not Gurathin’s house.) “Do you know anything about this plan?”“No. I already said no. I’m going to die, there’s not much more you can do to me. At least my family’s safe.”“Ugh! Look, you’re going to be executed now. Is there anything else you want to tell me?”Ratthi shook his head. Now was the time to play the part of the defiant rebel leader until the end. Maybe Pressy… maybe Arada had a plan to get him out too.Maybe.He couldn’t think of a way to fake his death, and now they’d be on alert for any more inconsistencies that might mean a rebel was faking it.The Solicitor marched him out of the cell, where one of the guards, Senior Indah if he recalled correctly, slapped wristcuffs on him.“Move it,” the Solicitor snapped. “We don’t want you to be late, do we, General?”This was it. This was his last chance. If anyone, anyone, up there in the stars was listening, please save him. Makeba, you gave that speech. Tradition, you died for the rebellion. Someone save him. Please.He didn’t want to die. Nobody did, when it came down to it. But he was going to. He didn’t have a choice any longer.Ratthi followed up flights of stairs and through hallways to the huge courtyard in the very center of the palace. There was a statue of the Empress there, larger than life, towering above a stake and a pile of wood. Hundreds of people ringed the courtyard, and a dozen camera drones stood poised to record every moment and project them on display screens for the crowd here and beyond the walls.He was definitely going to die.A blur of motion out of the corner of his eye, the tiny comm/feed earpiece in his ear crackling with static, and then.And then.
Hope, can you hear me? Can you hear me? Hope? … Ratthi?
Arada, he answered, as subtly as he could. Pressy. I’m here. What’s happening?
I’m here to break you out.
You broke your cover.
I know. You’re more important.
Get me before they get you. Position?
Up. Don’t look for me. SecUnit is running interference from afar.
He sent an affirmative.The Solicitor and the enforcers hadn’t noticed he was distracted yet. Time to wait.It took almost a minute before Arada pinged him again, but it felt like an eternity.
I’m making a show of this. I’m going to swing down from the rooftop and grab you, then pull you up with me. And then we’re going to run. On my mark.
Got it. He trusted Arada completely. If she said she was making a show of it, she would. He could work with that easily.Another minute.Every step took him closer to the stake.
Mark.
He didn’t see her jump, but he saw her swoop down on a rope and felt her grabbing him around the waist and pulling.Loud enough for the crowd to hear, he gasped. “Preservation?” Then he turned it into a sigh of relief. “Preservation, you’re alive,” he said.Now, SecUnit sent.As Arada pulled him up onto the roof and they began running, the display screens switched to playing a recorded message. He couldn’t see any of them, but he could hear them.Makeba’s speech.Arada reading Makeba’s speech.He was going to get out of here alive.
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It was f*cking weird to see your best friend’s younger sister be the same age, maybe even a little older, than your best friend. Well, the whole situation was f*cking weird, but this was the icing on the cake.Amena was a kid. A pretty mature one, true, but a kid. A frosh who tended to blurt out whatever was on her mind with no provocation. Now here was another version of her that was almost an adult (or maybe she was 18 already?) and hadn’t said much of anything. Oh, and there was also the fact that this version of her called Ayda “mom” and didn’t mean it as a joke.Pin-Lee thought this was pretty f*cking weird. She didn’t want to be thinking about the f*cker wearing Amena’s face (or the ones wearing her face, or Ayda’s either, but she could ignore those for the present). And yet.The adult with Arada’s face had wandered off to do who knows what, followed a while later by the one with Rin’s face. And the a**hole with Gurathin’s face hadn’t come with for “safety reasons.” So now it was the eight of them and the f*cker with Amena’s face, who was still sitting in the chair she’d been told to sit in. Overse and Peri had been watching her, and now it was Pin-Lee and Ayda’s turn.They’d barely made it into the little office when the f*cker with Amena’s face (you know what, that was too long a name to call her, and since the actual Amena wasn’t here she was just going to call the jerkwad Amena for the time being) scoffed. “You know, if you were going to pretend you were my mom and her friend, why’d you make yourself look like you’re my age?”Pin-Lee stifled her immediate response. There wasn’t a good answer here.Ayda cautiously pulled out her phone and started texting, tilting the screen so Pin-Lee could see too. The number was Gurathin’s counterpart’s “feed address.” Oh, smart. Is it a good idea to tell Prince Dauntless here anything about being from an alternate universe? I would presume not, but she’s persistent.
Are you trying to get us all killed, or worse? No!
Pin-Lee threw her arms wide and huffed. “I don’t know, I think it’s not the worst idea, whatever he thinks,” she said.Ayda sighed. “Would you think things through for once?”“Not when you’re around,” Pin-Lee tossed back, as confidently as she could under the circumstances. (She wasn’t seriously flirting, obviously, but where was the fun in being a theater kid if you didn’t occasionally fluster your best friend in situations that didn’t call for it? And Ayda didn’t react anyways.)Well, her remark had surprised Amena, who was now glancing between them like she wasn’t sure what to think. Good.They sat on the floor next to each other and facing Amena for a while. None of them did anything, really. Amena sat there, Ayda read her phone, Pin-Lee stared at the floor and imagined patterns in the cracks of the concrete floor.And then there was a loud thump on the roof.F*ck.There was a high-pitched yelp from the main factory room, followed by a few more, followed by Rin’s call of “All good!”Pin-Lee poked her nose out of the little office to see what was going on.
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I didn’t particularly like the look of this. There’d been a bump on the roof, and then Arada had screamed because a chunk of plaster had hit the ground right next to her, and then we’d all screamed. (I’d called to my sister to let her know nobody got hurt. I certainly wasn’t one of the screamers.) And now there was definitely someone on that roof, which might be a problem because we had absolutely no adults with us.No, wait, there were more small thumps, like someone was walking on the roof, and then a panel of roof was opening up, and oh sh*t was that a pair of boots coming thro– no, now the torso was visible and now the head and oh it was just other me coming in the hard way.Wait, other me?“What’s going on?” I asked.“My Arada and Ratthi got out alright but they’re being chased by the Solicitor. The Administrator’s location is unknown. We should get you out of here before anyone tracks you here.”Pin-Lee and Mensah stepped all the way out of the room where we’d been keeping evil Amena. “Can we? We don’t have the van,” my sister said.Gurathin shook his head. “Even if we did, my counterpart is still making modifications.”Other me made a weird expression. “You can let the… I’m going to bring Amena in here. We need to be ready to move as soon as Arada gets back with Ratthi, and it’ll be more efficient if you aren’t guarding her.” It pushed past my sister and Pin-Lee and returned dragging evil Amena by the hand.She hadn’t said anything. It held her arms behind her back and marched her into the room with us. We sort of clustered together, away from the two of them, and sat down. I touched ART’s arm with two fingers. It scooted closer to me and dug around in its backpack for a comic book, but it’d barely wrenched the zipper open when the door we’d come in by slammed open.All we could see was the silhouette of a person standing in the door, head tilted in confidence or anger, I couldn’t tell which. And then she stepped in and leveled a gun at all of us.“Return Amena and Saviorbot, and surrender peacefully,” evil Mensah announced. “You will be arrested, but if you cooperate, we can be merciful.”And that was probably when she noticed all of us huddled on the floor.Oh, f*ck, Pin-Lee and Gurathin and my sister!There wasn’t much to do about the other two, but I kicked Gurathin in the shins. He kicked me back. I stared at his face and touched my own hoodie. And then it clicked, and he tightened the strings so his face wasn’t visible.My sister tried to hide behind me, but evil Mensah was faster, striding over and grabbing her shoulder. I shifted into a position where I could crashtackle evil Mensah, but she was now slowly rotating the gun so it was pointing at me and other me in turn. I didn’t dare move.My sister took deliberate deep breaths. She looked like she was trying not to attack her counterpart.Other me brushed a finger over its lips. I wasn’t an idiot, thank you, I wasn’t going to say a word.Evil Mensah stared at my sister. “What do we have here?” She didn’t sound angry, and she didn’t sound like she knew what was going on. That was probably good.I was so focused on evil Mensah’s gun that I didn’t notice other Arada and other Ratthi were here until other Ratthi spoke up. “We don’t have to tell you anything.”“If you’d prefer, we can arrange to acquire that information the hard way.” Oh no, evil Pin-Lee was here too?“Wow, you really have a thing about offering an easy way and a hard way.” In my media, other Ratthi would have said that casually and it would have led to witty banter. To me, he just sounded worried.“Quiet, Hope,” evil Pin-Lee demanded. I turned around slowly, and yeah, she had a gun to his and other Arada’s heads.“Now,” evil Mensah said. “These children. If you won’t explain, perhaps you or they will respond to a hypothetical.”We didn’t say anything. ART shifted uncomfortably.“I propose clones. Nod if this sounds familiar?”We didn’t move.“It was worth a try. Let us continue with this hypothetical situation. Now, suppose, somehow, through methods I am unaware of, these rebels acquire genetic material sufficient to clone themselves and two government officials in high standing. I wonder what they might do with these clones, now that they have them, hmm?” She leaned in towards my sister and poked my sister’s cheek with the hand that had been on my sister’s shoulder.
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“We’re not saying a word, and we’re not going to cooperate,” other Arada said. “We still have your child and the EnforcerUnit. We’ll release your child and allow the EnforcerUnit to choose with whom it goes, and you’ll allow us and the children, and the EnforcerUnit, if it so chooses, to leave peacefully. Otherwise, we’ll kill her. And you. You know we can and we will.”Evil Mensah seemed to think for a moment. “Very well. Come, Amena. And Saviorbot, whichever of you is the real one.”Other me let go of other Amena. “I’m staying. We’re both staying. She can go, but we’re staying.”Evil Mensah didn’t say a word. Her expression suddenly turned icy cold, though.“You hacked Saviorbot,” evil Pin-Lee said.“I already told you that was the case,” other Ratthi said. “We told it what you did to it, and we offered it an out. It doesn’t enjoy hurting people.”Other Arada pointedly touched her gun. “You made a promise.”“And I’m breaking it,” evil Pin-Lee said. She nodded, and evil Mensah let go of my sister and grabbed other me. It didn’t struggle. “I looked at its clone. It’s remarkable that you managed to turn it into a human, but it’s not very good at acting. Saviorbot is still in there somewhere. We can fix it.”Other Arada looked directly at other me and apparently they had a moment of nonverbal communication, because it huffed. “I don’t like any of you.”“They wiped your memory, you can’t stay with them, come on,” evil Pin-Lee said.“Fine.” It didn’t sound defeated or angry or anything. It sounded emotionless.Evil Mensah marched other me and evil Amena out the front door. Evil Pin-Lee backed out the door behind her, still brandishing the gun.After they left, other Arada breathed hard and didn’t holster her gun. “Let’s go. Into the tunnels. SecUnit will be fine, it’ll break out soon or we’ll get it out later.”“Let’s get you home,” other Ratthi said.We snuck into the tunnels. Nobody seemed to follow us, but other Ratthi stayed at the back anyways.And then, behind us, we heard the sound of high heels clicking and people running. Multiple people.“This way!” Other Arada directed us into a side tunnel.We followed down the winding paths. Our pursuers were getting closer, whoever they were.We were clearly slowing the adults down.My friends were about as in shape as any high schooler, but I was the only one (who was currently in this universe) who did sports on a regular basis.They could have abandoned us. Frankly, if they actually wanted to survive, they should have. (I knew what my therapist would say about saying things like that, but what was the point, I was thinking it anyways.)They didn’t leave us behind.We ran until we couldn’t run any longer. The people chasing us were at most a minute behind us. And then we turned a corner and there was Arada’s family minivan, complete with something large and metal kludged together on the roof rack, other Gurathin clutching the wheel as it careened to a stop.“In, now,” other Arada called.We slammed open the front doors, and Arada shoved other Gurathin out of the way to take the wheel. The side doors took a moment to slide, and we were throwing ourselves in before they were even all the way open.Then from right behind us, evil Pin-Lee shouted for the whole squad of goons to get us. She was close. Not enough to see us, but enough that she would any moment.“You get in too,” Mensah said. “We can get away faster that way.” She glanced at Arada. “Don’t adjust the seat now, just go!”“Fine!” Arada slammed the gas pedal down and I nearly flew out before the door finished closing.This was unsafe. Nobody had a seatbelt on, and we were all piled in haphazardly.“Here, this button,” other Gurathin said, pushing it. “We need to disappear anyways.”There was a small thump, and then we were in the Adamantine High parking lot. Except so were other Arada and other Gurathin and other Ratthi. They were still in the car.
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Mensah let out the sigh she’d been holding. “We’re home.”ART was already powering its phone on. “Once I get cell service, we can determine how long we were in the other universe for, and therefore know how– Oh, fascinating.”“What?” I turned my own phone on.“We have been gone less than fifteen minutes. My phone has no missed calls in that time, and no texts. So we have not been missed, and the timekeeping stamp is accurate.” It smiled. “Dad’s going to love all of this.”“We still have a problem,” Gurathin said. “Our counterparts are stuck here now. Peri, when you designed this, did you think of a way to reverse the process?”“Well, not precisely,” it started.Pin-Lee cut it off. “What the f*ck do you mean, not precisely? We can’t just walk around with a bunch of adult identical twins, and it’s not like any of our parents can put them up until we can fix this!”“My dads might be willing, considering–”“Peri,” Pin-Lee interrupted.“– considering that Dad’s specialty is dimensional physics, and that he has been attempting to prove the alternate–”“Peri.”“–the alternate universe theory for years. He wo–”“Perihelion.”“–would likely be ecstatic to meet you three and discuss your–”“Perihelion Stardust Mihira! This is not about whether we can put them up, it’s about the fact that they probably want to go home too!”“Fine! It is most likely possible to reverse it.”“Thank you, Perihelion,” Mensah said. “Can you do it without sending Arada’s car back?”“Potentially. It will render the device unusable afterwards, however.”“We probably don’t want to ever go to another universe again,” Arada said. “And don’t you dare send my parent’s car to another universe where we can’t get it back.”“Fine. Five minutes to get it away from the car, ten minutes to adjust. Gurathin, I need your help, and if your counterpart is willing?” It looked at other Gurathin, who was conferring with other Arada and other Ratthi, and waited for his nod. “Thank you.”After all of that, it still took twenty minutes to fix things up. Mensah called Farai, then Tano, then Amena and told them we had some car troubles so we were running a little late. The rest of us helped ART dismantle and reassemble the transporter as best as we could.When we finally got the transporter set up at a safe distance, there was some hugging and goodbyes. I didn’t hug anyone and nobody tried to hug me, but Arada and Overse and Ratthi all hugged our other selves. Mensah and Pin-Lee wanted to, but they were definitely both restraining themselves. Gurathin didn’t hug anyone, and ART stood awkwardly beside me.And then they stood in a tight circle (or was it a triangle?) inside the rebuilt device and looked at each other. Then at us.Other Arada nodded. “You’re good kids. Take care of yourselves.”“Thank you for helping us,” my sister said. “I’m sorry we caused you such trouble.”“I’m sorry you had to be involved at all,” other Ratthi said. “And thanks.”“For?”“For being a good kid and not evil.”Other Gurathin pressed the button. There was a bright flash and a loud thump, and I reflexively covered my eyes.They were gone when I opened my eyes again.“Nobody’s going to believe this happened,” Gurathin said.“Dad will,” ART said.“Is anyone going to believe him?”Pin-Lee shook her head. “Doubt it. Come on, let’s go.”“Yes, please,” Ratthi muttered, leaning shakily on ART. It helped him to the car.We drove to the diner just like usual, singing along to Overse’s playlist of musicals. It was a lot nicer than trying to drive for our lives and escape that awful, twisted mirror of a universe.Bharadwaj met us at the diner door. “Where were you?” she asked. “We’ve all got our food already.”“Oh, the usual,” Mensah said. “Arada’s car broke down, we got thrown into an alternate universe where half of us are evil, and our evil counterparts nearly caught us until we escaped by the skin of our teeth.”“You know,” Bharadwaj laughed, “you can just say you got lost.”