Iapetus Shift

Chapter 5

Estha showed up just minutes after he'd sat down on the squeaky bed in their room. After a short but spirited Q-and-A session to confirm his identity, she lugged in their meager amount of equipment and sat next to him. He gave her a brief account of the detective following him.

"That's weird," she said, scrunching up her brow. "But it doesn't matter, now that you've changed. And if he does recognize you somehow later, you can just change again, right?"

"Yeah," said Olan. "Just change." That seemed to be how he solved all his problems. And it worked well, too, except for one thing: each shift crushed and stretched his DNA, bringing him closer to a mutation that couldn't be repaired. He fingered the syringe in his pocket—the only thing keeping him alive.

Estha must have picked up on his thoughts. She gave him several increasingly guilty looks, then finally spoke up. "I . . . I heard something the other day, about that doctor."

Olan snapped to attention, his eyes wide. "What?" That doctor—the mystery man working on the new model of nanobots that would cure his DNA damage.

She held up her palms. "Now, it's still just rumors, but—"

"Tell me."

Estha sighed. "He's supposedly on Earth, in Singapore somewhere. The story is he's being funded by a company or person with lots of money to spare, letting him do whatever it takes to build the nanos."

Olan got up and paced. "His name?"

She shook her head. "Don't know. Olan, these are just rumors, you can't focus on them right now."

"It's my life!" Olan snapped. "How can I not focus on it?"

"I just mean we have to get this job done first," said Estha, looking hurt. "That's all."

Olan ran his hands through his hair—his hair? He'd lost track of what was his and what was borrowed long ago. "The first thing we're doing after this job is finding a way to Earth to hunt this guy down."

"Okay," said Estha placatingly.

She unpacked for a while as Olan peered into the blue liquid in his syringe, holding it up to the light.

"Olan?" Estha said. "What do you look like?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean," she paused, "you, you know? What do you look like when you're not . . . anyone else?"

Olan frowned. She'd never asked about that before. He wondered at her motivations and if she was still observing him, researching him after all, trying to see how he'd react to this personal question. Whatever her purpose, the question hit him. How long had it been since he saw his own face? Those first few years of running, he didn't think much about changing back to his own shape. By the time he found the urge to do it, it was too late; his own DNA was mutated beyond repair. Was it blonde hair he'd had, or light brown? Green eyes, or maybe blue?

"I don't remember," he said. He got up and went into the bathroom, shutting the door on her.

Olan rolled the syringe back and forth in his palm. A flickering bulb lit his new face in the smudged mirror. He tried to feel some connection with it, just to see if he could. But the strong jaw and heavy brow were foreign. The healthy olive skin felt like a mask.

He looked again at the syringe. This was the price of constant shifting from persona to persona. Despite the freedom it brought, he was still tied to those meds. And it was a cost he seemed able to pay only with more shifting.

He was trapped in a cycle of damaging himself for a cure to the damage. It was a deadly balancing act, and the only chance to get off the wire was likely to be nothing but a rumor.

Olan sighed and looked into his new, grey eyes. "Nice to meet you," he said, then tapped his arm and slipped the needle into a vein.