Scott Westerfeld - Impostors

Rafis speech was perfect. Clever and gracious. Unexpected and funny, like when she tells stories in the dark.

The dignitaries loved her.

I listened from the sidelines, hidden, wearing the same dress as her. Everything identicalour faces because were twins, the rest because we work hard at it. I have more muscle, but Rafi tones her arms to match. When she gains weight, I wear sculpted body armor. We get our haircuts, flash tattoos, and surgeries side by side.

I was standing by to step in and wave to the crowd of randoms outside. Sniper-bait.

Im her body double. And her last line of defense.

The applause swelled as she finished her speech and headed for the viewing balcony, the brilliant daughter stepping in for the absent leader. Hovercams rose up in a multitude, like sky lanterns on our fathers birthday.

We were about to make the switch when the assassin opened fire.

I crawl out from behind cover.

The air is thick with the hot-metal reek of barrage pistol. The rich scents of roast beef and spilled wine. The assassin fires again, the roar thrilling my nerves.

This is what I was born to do.

Another table between me and the assassin is still upright. I crawl through chair legs and dropped silverware, past a spasming body.

On my back, looking up at the splintered table, I feel wine dripping through bullet holes onto my face. Its summer berries and ripe heaven on my tongueonly the best wine for our fathers events.

I squeeze the knife, sending it into full pulse. It shrieks in my hand, buzzing and hot, ready to tear the world apart.

I shut my eyes and slice through the table.

Our father burns real wood at his winter hunting lodge. All that smoke trapped in a few logs, enough to rise a kilometer into the sky. A pulse knife at full power shreds things just as finemolecules ripping, energy spilling out.

A swath of oak, dishes, and food dissolves into a haze of fragments, a thick hot cloud billowing across the room. Sawdust glittering with vaporized glassware.

The assassin stops firing. He cant see.

Me either, but Ive already planned my next move.

I scuttle out from beneath the halved table, lungs clenched against the dust. At the edge of the stage, I pull myself up, still blind.

A grinding sound fills the ballroom. The assassin is using the cover of dust to feed his barrage pistolthe weapon uses improvised ammunition to make it smaller, harder to detect.

Hes reloading so he can shoot blind and still kill everyone.

My sister is out there in the dust.

The taste of sawdust fills my mouth, along with a hint of vaporized feast. I set my pulse knife to fly at chest height. Hold it like a quivering dart.

And the assassin makes a mistake

He coughs.

With the slightest nudge the knife flies from my hand, deadly and exuberant. A millisecond later comes a sound I recognize from target practice on pigs carcassesthe gurgle of tissues, the rattle of bones.

The sawdust is cleared by a new force billowing out from where the knife hit. I see the assassins legs standing there, nothing above his waist but that sudden blood mist.

For a grisly moment the legs stand alone, then crumple to the stage.

The knife flits back into my hand, warm and slick. The air tastes like iron.

Ive just killed someone, but all I think is

My sister is safe.

My sister is safe.

I drop from the stage, cross to where Rafi still huddles behind the table. Shes breathing through a silk napkin, and hands it to me to share.

I stay alert, ready to fight. But the air is filling with the buzz of security drones waking back up. The assassin was wearing the jammer, I guess, so its mist now too.

Finally, I let my knife go still. Im starting to shake, and suddenly Rafi is the one thinking straight.

Backstage, little sister, she whispers. Before anyone figures out theres two of us.

Right. The dust is clearing, the survivors wiping their eyes. We hustle away through an access door beneath the stage.

Weve grown up in this house. Playing hide-and-seek in this ballroom with night-vision lenses, I was always the hunter.

My comms ping back up, and Nayas voice is in my ear:

We see you, Frey. Does Gemstone need medical?

This is the first time weve used Rafis code name in a real attack.

Shes cut, I say. Over her eye.

Get her to the sub-kitchen. Good work.

That last word sounds strange in my ear. All my training up to this moment might have seemed like work. But this?

This is me, complete.