If Jared were to have taken a moment to question who he was, standing there silently in the lift and waiting for his level, he would have come to the startled realization that he wasn’t exactly sure. But he hadn’t; on a day-to-day basis people don’t question their identity. Jared knew that being green wasn’t right, his lab was three levels down from where he was, and that his daughter Zo? was dead.
The lift reached Jared’s level; he stepped out to a wide hallway. This level of Phoenix Station had no candy stands or commissaries; it was one of the two levels of the station given over primarily to military research. CDF soldiers stood every hundred feet or so, monitoring hallways that led deeper into the level. Each hallway was fronted by biometric and BrainPal/brain prosthesis scanners that scanned every individual who approached. If that person was not allowed down the hallway, the CDF guard would intercept them before they made it to the hallway itself.
Jared knew that he was supposed to have access to most of these hallways, but doubted that this strange body would have clearance for any of them. He set down the hall, walking as if he had a purpose, toward the hallway he knew held his lab and his office. Maybe by the time he got there he’d figure out what to do next. He was almost there when he saw every CDF guard in front of him in the hallway turn and look at him.
Crap, Jared thought. His hallway was less than fifty feet away. On impulse he sprinted toward it and was surprised at how fast his body took off toward his goal. So was the soldier guarding it; he whipped up his Empee but by the time it was up Jared was on him. Jared shoved the soldier, hard. The soldier bounced off the hallway wall and fell. Jared sprinted past him without breaking his stride and ran to his lab door, two hundred feet down the corridor. As Jared ran, sirens blared and emergency doors slammed shut; Jared barely passed the threshold of the one that would have separated him from his goal when it shot out from the corridor sides, sealing the section in less than half a second.
Jared reached the door to his lab and thrust it open. Inside were a CDF military research technician and a Rraey. Jared was struck immobile by the cognitive dissonance of having a Rraey in his lab, and through the confusion came a knife-like frisson of fear, not of the Rraey, but from having been caught doing something dangerous and terrible and punishable. Jared’s brain surged, looking for a memory or explanation to attach to the fear, but arrived at nothing.
The Rraey wiggled its head and came around the desk at which it had been standing, and moved toward Jared.
“You’re him, aren’t you?” the Rraey said, in strangely pronounced but recognizable English.
“Who?” Jared asked.
“The soldier they made to trap a traitor,” the Rraey said. “But they couldn’t do it.”
“I don’t understand you,” Jared said. “This is my lab. Who are you?”
The Rraey wiggled its head again. “Or maybe they did, after all,” the Rraey said. It pointed to itself. “Cainen. Scientist and prisoner. Now you know who I am. Do you know who you are?”
Jared opened his mouth to answer and realized he did not know who he was. He stood there dumb and openmouthed until the emergency doors flew open a few seconds later. The woman soldier he had talked to earlier stepped through, raised a pistol, and shot him in the head.
::First question,:: General Szilard said. Jared lay in the Phoenix Station infirmary, recovering from his stun bolt, with two CDF guards stationed at the foot of his bed and Jane Sagan standing by the wall. ::Who are you?::
::I’m Private Jared Dirac,:: Jared said. He did not ask who Szilard was; his BrainPal ID’d him as he entered the room. Szilard’s own BrainPal could have as easily ID’d Jared, so the question wasn’t a matter of mere identification. ::I’m stationed on the Kite. My commanding officer is Lieutenant Sagan, who is over there.::
::Second question,:: General Szilard said. ::Do you know who Charles Boutin is?::
::No, sir,:: Jared said. ::Should I?::
::Possibly,:: Szilard said. ::It was his lab we found you standing in front of. It was his lab that you told that Rraey was yours. Which suggests that you thought you were Charles Boutin, at least for a minute. And Lieutenant Sagan tells me that you wouldn’t respond to your name when she tried to talk to you.::
::I remember not knowing that I was me,:: Jared said. ::But I don’t remember thinking I was anyone else.::
::But you got to Boutin’s lab without ever having been there before,:: Szilard said. ::And we know you didn’t access your BrainPal for a station map in order to find it.::
::I can’t explain it,:: Jared said. ::The memory of it was just in my head.:: Jared saw Szilard glance over at Sagan at that.
The door opened and two men walked through. One of the men stalked over to Jared before his BrainPal could identify him.
“Do you know who I am?” he said.
Jared’s punch sent the man to the floor. The guards raised their Empees; Jared, already coming down from his sudden surge of rage and adrenaline, immediately put his hands up.
The man stood up as Jared’s BrainPal finally identified him as General Greg Mattson, head of Military Research.