17.
When I wake up to a sliver of morning sunshine warming my face, I'm not where I was when I passed out.
Correction. That makes it sound like my usual parlor tricks at work, like I teleported of my own volition and reappeared somewhere else just as easily as I do all the time, save the last five years of my life.
No, for me to have teleported, I would have to be in the same body.
I know as soon as I wake that I'm not the same person I was before, at least not physically. Hard not to, when I immediately recognize that the contents of my jeans are not quite the same equipment that I'm used to. Also, there's the fact that I'm wearing jeans in the first place.
It's not the only change. I realize as I sit up that I'm not in the laboratory of the Rafters anymore, or even in the building itself. I'm in a dimly lit bedroom I don't initially recognize, the long curtains drawn mostly shut, the maroon bedding rumpled underneath my denim-clad legs. Someone dumped me on top of them, not even bothering to tuck me in or even toss a loose throw blanket over my legs. I've been abandoned asleep in someone else's bed.
More specifically, in Nate's bed, if the well-settled scent of his cologne mingling in the bedding was any indication. I wouldn't know. I love Nate, but not in the sort of way that's ever made me want to venture anywhere near his bedroom.
Pushing myself up into a sitting position, I hold up my hands, my jaw dropping at the butter-soft surfaces of my larger palms and the pale unblemished skin.
Oh, no. No, no, no.
I'm in Nate's body.
I allow myself a moment to silently panic, my gaze darting in frantic skips and hops over every visible surface in the room. We didn't touch anything. We didn't even touch each other, for heaven's sake. We'd just been standing there, minding our own business, when we were suddenly jostled around like the bent cards in a game of three-card monty.
It suddenly strikes me that I'm alone in the room, and a bone-deep chill settles in my chest.
So if I'm in Nate's body –
“Then where the hell is mine?” I say.
The vibrating call which shakes the cell phone lying on the nightstand an instant later startles the life out of me.
My heartbeat doesn't even flutter a bit.
I press my palm against my hard chest, more than a little disconcerted not to be resting my hand over a not insignificant pair of breasts. It's so odd to recognize the difference that for a brief moment I put the cell phone out of my mind, somehow managing to ignore the demanding whirr of the vibrations that skitter it across the surface of the nightstand like a dancing cockroach.
My forced ignorance doesn't last long.
“Nate?”
I jerk my head up as Shadow's voice carries through the room. It takes a moment for me to realize it's coming from the phone, now sitting still on the nightstand. Brigade-issued phones answer whether you pick them up or not. I mentally debate abandoning it and allowing her to simply think I'm ignoring her or fast asleep or whatever it is Nate does these days to avoid responsibility. But it dawns on me that regardless of the unsettling situation I'm currently wading through, walking around with Nate's handsome face allows me a tempting advantage.
Being Nate is one hell of a cover.
“Nate,” Shadow says once again, low but demanding.
I snatch up the phone and hear myself bark, “Yeah, don't get your panties in a wad, Noor. I'm comin'. Can't you give a guy a chance to wake his sorry ass up?”
I bite back the urge to smile as Shadow makes faint irritated grumbles on the other end of the line. Nate's the sort to wear a bit thin on anyone remotely serious. While Noor al Salimah isn't exactly a mind-numbing drone, she's no sly joker, either. Work is work, and Shadow is no-nonsense about what she does for a living.
“Get down to the Rafters as soon as possible,” she orders, then hangs up on me.
I don't have the time for investigative reports on the rest of Nate's down-home bachelor pad or a quick shower or even a bite to eat. As soon as I rustle up a pair of his boots from the mangled chaos of his floor, I tug them on, snatch up his keys, wallet and phone, and snag a cowboy hat from the coat rack in the living room before darting out the front door.
The city swells with life when I exit Nate's apartment building from the rear entrance. The architectural damage from the robot attacks still scars a number of buildings nearby, and elaborate scaffolding already spiderwebs its way around at least three complexes I can see on my walk over to the Rafters. The Rafters employs the SLB's exhaustive reconstruction crew to fix any destruction from alien attacks or mislaid bombs. The rest of the city just has to fend for themselves on that count.
By the time I arrive at the front steps of the Rafters, Noor's simmered down from what I can only imagine was a barely restrained boil. She stands at the top of the front stoop with her arms crossed and her cowl already tightly in place, shielding her hair and most of her face from view. The rest of her muted black uniform fits in a loose style, boosted wholesale from a modest design for Muslim swimwear. Some things never change, it seems, even Noor's fashion sense. When Noor joined up, the two of us debated the style of her costume for hours one afternoon, arguing form and function and religious need, before settling on the flowing jumpsuit.
I'd mention it, but my physiological digs aren't exactly what they normally are at the moment, and Nate wouldn't know that precise bit of Fairness Brigade trivia.
Her frown matches just fine with the concern of her light brown eyes, offsetting the softness of her lightly accented voice with more gravity than I'm used to. “Anything you'd like to tell me, Nate? Or did your alarm simply give up the ghost for the forty-seventh time in a row?”
I could tell her the truth easily enough. I could admit that there's been some horrible mistake, that Nate and I have switched up, that my body isn't here and I'm not sure where in heaven's name it's gone.
I could … except.
Except this is a chance to sneak a peek at my father without him knowing it's me.
Whoever it is, I have a gnawing suspicion he doesn't have quite the deft grasp on Dad's abilities as he would like. He didn't clear the smoke from the penthouse during the party. He magically appeared at the top of a tumbled robot in a way that made it look as though he'd been the one to take it down, when there's no way he could have gotten out of the rubble of Swing in time to defeat it. I can only imagine that Mom beat him to the punch and let him soak in all the glory, although the why of it is still a mystery. In any case, he's pulling whatever strings he can to impress upon the fawning masses that he's still the mighty Wavelength, and it's working.
Except for me, it seems.
“No,” I blurt out. I lower my hands so I don't look quite so ridiculous and add in Nate's signature sweet-as-peaches drawl, “No, I'm just dandy all over.”
Shadow's eyes narrow, but she doesn't question what I can only imagine is Nate's odd behavior. I'm not him, after all, and I'm a lousy actor, no matter how well I may have done in Subversion Techniques 201. “Then you might want to get here at the start of your normal shift for a change,” she says. I can't see her mouth while she's in costume, but I can picture her lips pursed into a tight frown. “We can't very well make use of you in the field if you're still asleep on your couch.”
“No, I can't imagine you would,” I murmur as I jog up the steps.
Shadow pauses halfway through turning towards the open front door. For a moment she's so painfully still I wonder if she hasn't frozen in place. I plaster on what I'm hoping is Nate's most charming smile. The moment passes, and her gaze softens somewhat. “Come along,” she says, and heads off into the building.
I breathe a quick sigh of relief.
Well, that's one hurdle jumped.
I shake out the last vestiges of Vera – my hesitance, my stubbornness, my desire to be anywhere but here at any given time – and try to relax and get comfortable in the Nate suit I'm wearing. Nate dares to be wild and unpredictable at all times, leaps from rooftops with abandon and lures in whichever shy awkward miss catches his eye from the sidelines. He's a whirlwind in a ten-gallon hat, a hundred pounds of charm in an indestructible five-pound bag. He's sly and playful, my best friend no matter how much time may go by between one conversation and the next.
I can be Nate. I can
do
this.
At least, I think I can.
I readjust the ten-gallon hat on my hairless head, feeling absurdly like I can't abandon even that useless token of Nate's third-rate costume, then sprint to catch up to Shadow, who's already woven her way towards the secondary stairwell to the lower level garage. The throbbing call to arms still cries out for attention, the siren a low bleat waiting for the team to leave until it will shut down. I'm suddenly reminded just how very much I haven't missed that infernal noise in the last five years. “So, what's the problem?”
“If you'd arrived when you were supposed to as I've ordered you to do on several occasions rather than oversleeping due to staying up late in order to catch football scores or sweet-talk girls over the internet, perhaps you wouldn't have to keep asking such silly questions.”
There's something about the tone of her cool steady voice that's changed in the past five years, and it takes me a moment to realize what it is. When I do, I nearly stumble as I follow her to the bottom of the stairs and the comforting embrace of the open space in the garage.
“You're in charge?” I blurt out.
I'm terrible at hiding my surprise.
Shadow turns on me once again, and it's the first time genuine anger flashes in her eyes. “Is that a question?”
“Oh, no, ma'am, not even a little bit,” I bust out, and it's not. Noor is a dozen different kinds of sharp and observant, a quiet woman my own age. She trounced an entire army of Bigfoot monsters from another dimension all by herself and saved the city from one of the Scribbler's nefarious schemes while everybody else suffered through temporary blindness. I'm not sure why nobody else in the Brigade is all that keen on taking up the helm, but Noor's certainly got the chops.
The thought briefly drifts through my head to wonder if Nate's earned that sort of defensive reaction, and I resolve to smack him upside the head whenever I find him and swap back if that's the case. Or perhaps I should leave that to Noor.
She shoots me a dismissive look before she ascends the steps into the obscene orange luxury van that serves as the Brigade's official transport. I used to jokingly refer to it as the Juice Box, until it became blatantly apparent an overabundance of mocking wouldn't persuade the SLB to issue us another less glaring color to identify our transportation with.
Not that it mattered much to me, of course. If one can teleport, one doesn't have to ride in a tricked-out shaggin' wagon the same color as a brand-new traffic cone.
If only that were true right now,
I think wryly.
I climb in after Noor only to be confronted with a sea of annoyed faces hidden behind masks or cowls or, in the case of Thunder, some fairly elaborate face paint in garish lemon yellow and royal blue presumably meant to distract from his spindly arms and stick-figure legs. The conceit didn't work when I was still a member of the Brigade, and it hasn't aged well since then. He's still a spindly creep whose power can be shut down with a durable muzzle or a strong case of laryngitis.
“How nice of you to join us, Nate,” Mom says. She sits by herself in the seat behind a new SLB-employed bus driver I've never met before. She still somehow manages to fill out her skintight uniform precisely the way she did when she was my age, her legs and arms crossed in a silent shutdown.
The seat beside her remains empty.
I smile and try desperately not to think about my missing body as I flop down into the seat beside her. I ignore her groan of disgust as the bus peels out of the garage, up the ramp and into the street without so much as a lick of warning to the normal traffic. Pretending everyone else isn't glaring at me as well is harder than it appears. “Where'd Everett wander off to? 'Cause you folks know damn well it ain't my turn to watch him, right?”
Mom doesn't have the energy to be annoyed by my carefree nature today, turning to the window to track our progress through traffic with narrowed eyes. “He volunteered to go ahead and scout the area.”
“Oh, he did, did he?” I'll just bet he did. I have an uneasy feeling that's not why he arranged to place himself at the head of the pack. Whoever is in Dad's body, he's done an awful lot of arriving or vanishing at the most opportune moments and separating himself from the pack just so lately.
Location, location, location,
I think bitterly.
“Well, the one we usually send in first decided he preferred an extended nap,” Shadow says from the seat across the aisle.
Somebody chokes back laughter a few rows back.
“That guy doesn't sound very reliable,” I say to Shadow. “Maybe you should fire his sorry ass.”
“Don't tempt me.”
I let loose with a Cheshire grin, unable to resist that definitively Nate expression, and relax somewhat when a soft buttery laugh emerges from underneath her cowl.