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  Imposter

  Book two of the Live Once Trilogy

  By Chanda Stafford

  Imposter: Book 2 of the Live Once Trilogy

  Copyright ©2015 Chanda Stafford

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the written permission of the author. Nor can it be circulated in any form other than that in which it is published without the written consent of the author.

  Published by Kindle Direct Publishing

  Edited by Red Adept Editing

  First Kindle Edition: April 2015

  ISBN-13: 978-1505381184

  ISBN-10: 1505381185

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  http://www.chandastafford.com

  Table of Contents

  Dead

  Please Forgive Me

  The Only One

  We’re Finished Here

  Slipping

  Every Step

  Up to the Task

  A Learning Experience

  Red-blooded American

  Terrified

  Good Graces

  Crazy

  Just a Little Closer

  Out of Time

  Nothing at All

  Not the Only Way

  The Wrong Questions

  Worthless

  Too Much

  What I Wanted

  We’re the Monsters

  The Mad Hatter

  From The Beginning

  A Treat

  What You Want

  The Man Who Killed Her

  Get Us Both Killed

  Should Have Listened

  I Was There

  Trust Me

  Enlighten Me

  Just Keep Him Alive

  This Never Happened

  Their Memories Are My Memories

  Enough

  Your Love Isn’t Worth Very Much

  Little Girl

  Everyone Knows

  Long Shot

  Let Mira Go

  Enough for Me

  Torn

  A Job To Do

  Helpless

  Watch Me Die

  The Worst Of Them All

  Alive

  Coward

  Heroes Always Do

  Dead

  Will

  Only a single pane of glass separates us. It’s so clear that if my breath didn’t fog it, I could almost forget it was there. But I can’t, just as I can’t look away from the girl on the other side. As still as a corpse, she rests on a metal medical exam table. Fitting, I suppose, given the outcome of this heinous act. After a few seconds, her hands start to tremble, and she takes a deep breath. She wanted this, Will; remember that. She chose to give her life so Socrates might live and help free our people.

  Dressed in varying shades of green, orderlies and doctors buzz around the room like flies on a carcass. Despite all the people, Mira lies unattended. Alone and so, so fragile, wearing a paper-thin hospital gown and a freshly shaved head. Where is that fiery-eyed fighter who swore she loved me? A painfully stark vision of Mira swims before me, so calm and courageous as she told me that this was the right thing to do, but I refuse to let it take root. Right now, she’s more like a terrified gnat of a girl, too innocent to understand this enormous sacrifice. An agonizing pain rips my chest in two. I should have found some way to save her.

  Socrates, the old man who came in with Mira, settles himself on the hospital bed across from her and closes his eyes. His head is shaved too, but he still wears a scraggly, white beard. His hands are liver-spotted and frail. His skin is so transparent that it might tear in two, even with a gentle touch. He says something to Mira, but the speakers aren’t turned on, so I can’t hear his words.

  Mira nods, almost imperceptibly at Socrates’s statement. A curly-haired orderly approaches, and her muscles tense. At his whispered direction, she tries to relax and places her hands at her sides, but her eyes widen in terror as he fastens fabric cuffs to her wrists and ankles.

  Unable to bear the fear in her eyes any longer, I contemplate leaving. Why am I here? I know what happens next. I turn away, but the audience arranged in red velvet chairs, sipping champagne out of thin, long-stemmed glasses, sickens me almost as much as what’s going on beyond the glass. As their laughter fills the room, bile rises in my throat.

  They disgust me. How would they like it if it were their son or daughter lying there on a table, petrified and alone? Would they still swirl bubbly drinks and smile at jokes that were never funny in the first place? Or would they be like me, staring through a thick pane of glass, angry and breaking in two?

  My gaze travels back to the scene before me. A fine sheen of nervous sweat glistens on Mira’s brow. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.

  The same orderly that tied her down presses a small injector to the back of her hand, and she winces as the needle finds her vein. It’s not a sedative. That’s illegal because it jeopardizes the procedure’s success, but it will help keep her calm. She opens and closes her other hand, searching for comfort where there is none. I flex my own hands in response.

  The man whispers a few words to Mira. Is he telling her everything is going to be all right? Liar.

  Mira gulps and tries to relax her muscles. Once he secures the IV patch, he covers her up to her chest with a thin white blanket. A doctor attaches little pink pads around the top of her skull. After he finishes his macabre preparations, he leaves her alone and turns his focus to Socrates.

  Unlike Mira, the old First is not tied down. I guess you don’t have to worry about a corpse falling off the table. They attach the same pink pads and IV patches they did to Mira. Socrates wrinkles his eyes in merriment at something one of the doctors says. He replies, and they both smile. A fiery rage kindles deep within me.

  Laughter behind me ricochets off the walls in the small room. How can they make jokes or laugh while a teenage girl dies in front of them so an old man can live another lifetime?

  Mira bites her lip as the orderly who inserted her IV patch returns with a shiny metal helmet. As he settles the cold steel frame on her head, Mira’s gaze searches the glass. Is she looking for me?

  I place a hand on the barrier. No one notices, and the clamor of the audience’s voices and the tinkling of their glasses continue behind me without faltering.

  The doctor who put the pink patches on her skull pushes one of the red buttons dotting the helmet, the one positioned over her left temple. I steel myself for what comes next.

  Mira jumps as a long needle drives into her skull, piercing flesh and bone. Her mouth opens in a silent shriek, and she jerks against the restraints. Even though I can’t hear her cry out, I can feel it. A deep red rivulet streams from the wound, and the orderly carefully wipes it away.

  The audience behind me quiets. The show’s just getting started.

  Pain lances through my head as the doctor pushes the rest of the red buttons one by one. Mira jolts again, but after the orderly says something, she forces herself to remain still.

  I bunch my hand into a fist. From the corner of my eye, I see a white-haired man’s gaze dart to mine as though surprised by my reaction. What are you staring at? Are you afraid of me, a Texan? He must be a former president or politician, or someone who flaunts his power so fully that no one can get a sliver of freedom without his approval. He should be on that table, not Mira.

  Unable to watch what they’re doing any longer, I focus on the man who wants her dead. If I didn’t know what was happening, I might think the old
First’s drifting off to sleep until the doctors rouse him long enough to fit him with his own metal helmet. When they push the first button, Socrates flinches, but it’s just the barest of movements. He forces his face into a sea of calm. I hate him. He deserves to have the same thing happen to him that he’s doing to Mira.

  At the thought of her name, my gaze finds its way to her. Mira, much quieter than before, rests on the bed. Faint pink smudges dot her skull around the wounds from the needle probes. A tear trails down the side of her face. I lift my other hand as if to wipe it away but stop when my fingers graze the glass. My gut clenches in a tight knot. She doesn’t deserve to die on this table.

  Mira’s orderly connects thin wires from her helmet to the computer in the center of the room. Similar metal threads wind their way from Socrates as well. One of the doctors stands at the machine in the middle and presses a seemingly random array of buttons until it blinks red then yellow then green. Fury rises in my throat with the sick, acidic taste of bile.

  Another person enters the room. He has pale hair pulled tightly back in a ponytail. He can’t be a doctor; he’s probably only a couple of years older than I am, even though he’s wearing one of their uniforms and the others treat him like their peer.

  He strides across the room to Socrates’s side and murmurs something to the old man before squeezing his hand. My anger expands to him, too. That monster doesn’t deserve comfort and kind words while Mira lies there alone on that table.

  Mira’s frightened gaze meets this new doctor’s, and he offers her the slightest smile. An orderly hands him a syringe that he pockets. He lightly touches Socrates’s helmet, checking the probes and connections.

  When the doctor monitoring the computer gives him a command a moment later, he pulls the syringe out and injects it into the clear line leading to Socrates’s arm. Another one does the same to Mira. As the drug seeps into her system, she starts to shake. The wounds on her head leak dark red blood, a stark contrast to her pale skin and frightened eyes.

  An orderly rushes over and holds down her shoulders while another wipes at the blood. It doesn’t help; it just keeps flowing despite their frantic attempts to stop it. Are they trying to sanitize the horror? Clean it up so the audience doesn’t realize just how wrong this is?

  I shove my fists into the pockets of my tunic to keep from punching something or someone. Rage blinds me, yet I can’t look away.

  Mira takes a deep breath and relaxes. Her eyes drift shut, and her chest rises, then falls and doesn’t rise again. No! I imagine crashing my fist through the glass, breaking it. Come on, Mira! Live, dammit!

  The doctor monitoring her says something to the one in the center, who bobs his head up and down in response. That’s it. That’s all she gets for her bravery, her loyalty, her will to live.

  My shoulders sag as the doctor in the center pushes a button. At the same time, the one standing next to Mira injects something into her IV line.

  Across the room, an orderly pulls a light blanket over Socrates’s head. That must be it for him then. The oldest of the Firsts is also dead, and they do nothing for him other than cover his head. Oh, that’s right; he’s not actually dead. His mind will now take root inside the body of a seventeen-year-old girl.

  Mira’s body lies still on the table. If only her chest would rise just once, I could almost believe she was asleep. But she’s not. I study her face for the barest signs of life. Is she in there somewhere? It’s happened before, and I can’t imagine anything worse, except death, of course.

  One of the doctors approach Mira’s body. Her fingers twitch, and I glue my gaze to that barest of movements. Please let it be her. We’ll make it work somehow. We’ll figure something out. Failures do happen, even though they’re rare.

  Working in tandem, a couple orderlies remove the needle probes from Mira’s skull. As they lift the helmet away, they press healing patches to the wounds. After the patches fully adhere to her skull, they lay her head back down and wait. A high-pitched electronic sound beeps in the theater, and the audience zeroes in on the speaker.

  “We will now commence with the first test. Although other, more accurate, tests will be performed in the recovery room, this first assessment must be passed to determine the initial success of the procedure. As the audience, you are all privileged to bear witness to this historic occasion.”

  The young doctor leans over Mira’s bed and scrutinizes her face. “Sir, wake up. Can you hear me? Can you hear me?”

  Mira blinks once, then twice, and then touches her head and winces.

  “There you are.” The young doctor smiles. “Open your eyes again, please.”

  Mira makes a noise, more like an animalistic grunt of pain than anything else, and tries to move as the orderlies gently release her straps. An orderly dabs at her forehead with a folded piece of white cloth.

  “Is everything all right?”

  Mira struggles to sit up. The color drains from her face.

  “Slowly, please; we don’t want you to black out.” The doctor wraps his arm around her shoulders and helps her to a sitting position.

  She swings her bare legs over the side and shivers. She’s so young, so innocent, that anger and injustice bubbles up in me all over again.

  “My name is Dr. James Scoffield. I’m here to help you.”

  The doctor standing at the computer glances over at them. “Everything checks out, Dr. Scoffield.”

  “Good,” the man says. “Okay, sir, this is important. Do you remember what your name is?”

  Mira doesn’t respond.

  My harsh laugh echoes through the silent auditorium. A couple of the rich patrons glare at me, and one man who weighs close to five hundred pounds harrumphs at my insolence.

  “My name is Socrates.” Mira’s voice are so quiet that I almost miss it.

  Something cold and hollow forms in the pit of my stomach. I spin around on my heel and blindly rush for the door. It’s over. He’s won. Mira is dead.

  Please Forgive Me

  Mira

  “Soc?” From my hospital room doorway, George Eliot, Socrates’s wife, stops as though frozen and studies me. “Oh, God.” Stark tragedy darkens her face. Even though I haven’t said a word, she can tell I’m not Socrates. She knows he’s gone. She wipes away the tears threatening to fall. “What happened? What went wrong?” she whispers, her voice so quiet that at first I’m afraid I must have imagined it.

  Nerves clench my stomach in a tight, painful fist. They kill failures, right? At least that’s what Socrates said before the Exchange. They dissect them, take them apart, and try to figure out what went wrong.

  I shift on the uncomfortable bed and clutch the light blue cotton blanket to my chest. “Eliot?” I bite my lip but don’t voice my fears. Here at the Smith, the former Smithsonian Institution that houses our nation’s capital, one never knows who is listening. I peer around her, but don’t see Socrates’s former canine sidekick. “Where’s Ben?”

  “I sent him home with some of our luggage. There’s no reason for him to be here any longer,” she says, her voice flat.

  Sorrow pinches the lines on either side of her mouth, deepening them into creases that make her appear far older than her middle-aged years. She shuts the door behind her and sits down on the chair next to my bed.

  I flatten my hands on the thin sheet, smoothing it out. An apology perches on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t say anything to make it better. Her husband of two hundred years is dead. There isn’t anything I can say to comfort her.

  From her pocket, she pulls a small, folded piece of paper, opens it, and studies it as if it holds the most important secret in the world.

  Why doesn’t she say anything? I ball up the blanket in my lap.

  A tear tracks down her face as she stares at the note. “It all makes sense now.”

  My attention piqued, I point at the piece of paper. “What’s that?”

  Eliot jumps, startled. “It’s a note you wrote. Don’t you remember? You sl
ipped it into my pocket before the Exchange.” She emphasizes the word “you” as she peers around the room in an exaggerated fashion, reminding me that we may have listeners.

  The wounds from the probes start throbbing, and my eyes burn. I take a deep breath. I have to be strong now. Socrates would want that. “I’m sorry. I can’t believe I forgot that I wrote you a note. Things are fuzzy right now.”

  She pats my knee. “I’m not surprised. The time immediately following an Exchange can be jarring. Don’t worry, my love, your memories will come back to you in time.” She takes a shaky breath and lets it out, the pain deeply engraved on her face.

  “What does it say?”

  The sadness in her expression makes me want to suck the words back in as soon as they leave my mouth. I have no right to ask. It’s a private message for her from Socrates. Maybe it’s something they do every time one of them has the procedure, just in case something goes horribly wrong. Like me. I gulp.

  She drags her gaze from the little scrap of paper and a sharp laugh escapes her. “Nothing, really.” She hands me the piece of paper. “Maybe that’s why it’s so important. It’s what you didn’t say.”

  I carefully pluck the note from her fingers and hold it up to decipher the strange, scribbly handwriting.

  Please forgive me.

  I turn the paper over. The other side is blank. “That’s it?” Was Socrates apologizing for going through with the Exchange? Or was this his plan all along?

  Eliot holds out her hand, and I give her back the note. She studies it once more and chuckles, an empty, strangled sound that seems far more broken than she intended. “That’s it. Just those three simple words.”

  The words bubble up before I can stop them. “What happened? During the Exchange, I thought…”

  Eliot’s expression grows stern, and I snap my mouth shut. “I know this has been a rough transition for you, Socrates…” She winces as she says his name. “But you need to remember where you are and more importantly, you need to remember fully who you are. I know it’s difficult, but you need to try.”