Alien in the Family

New York and some out of Los Angeles. The media centers?” His snark was on full. “You know, you’ve worked with us for a year, you’d think you’d know that.”
    “But you base out of Area Fifty-One and Dulce.”
    “I’m on Alpha Team.” He looked at Martini. “Can you explain it to her later?”
    “Sure, but she’s right. It’s more than one.” Martini sighed. “They imitated his voice, too, which is hard.”
    “Not really,” Reader said thoughtfully.
    “Why so? I sound that average?” Christopher clearly didn’t find this amusing.
    “No. But recording devices are easy to come by. And what orders did they give? Something you would normally?” Reader was playing with his phone.
    “Apparently I said to pull all field imageers away from their empathic counterparts. I’d never give that order. I never have given that order.”
    Reader nodded. “But you’ve used all those words at one time or another. If girlfriend’s right, and we all know she usually is, then whoever’s doing this has been around for at least six months. Plenty of time to get everyone’s voices recorded.” He flipped open his phone and hit a button.
    “Pull all field imageers away from their empathic counterparts.” It was Christopher’s voice, and not tinny at all.
    Reader closed the phone. “The prosecution rests.”
    That sat on the air for a while. “Um, if that’s the case, then they can impersonate any one of us.”
    “How long can a strong imageer keep up that kind of facade?” Chuckie asked.
    “Depends.” Christopher shook his head. “Not long enough to fool someone who knows the person well.”
    “What do you mean?” Chuckie’s voice was getting the knife in it again. He didn’t like the delays one-sentence answers provided.
    Christopher sighed. “Okay. I’m the strongest imageer on the planet. Maybe whoever’s infiltrated is stronger, but let’s just go with the idea that they’re not, at least for the moment.” Everyone nodded. Christopher’s eyes narrowed and all of a sudden, I saw Chuckie sitting there, next to himself.
    “Wow, you’ve been practicing.”
    “Yeah.” It was weird hearing Christopher’s voice come out of Chuckie’s mouth. “No one else on my team can do anything to this degree, but I figured if you could think of it, I should probably make sure I could do it well and that we knew how to counter. Imitation seemed like the obvious extension to drawing on the air.”
    “Thanks, I think. And, I have to say, it’s kind of creepy.”
    “Glad you think so,” Martini said quietly.
    “I can’t do Reynolds’ voice,” the Chuckie that was Christopher said. “But, okay, it looks like they’re two of us here, right?”
    “Right.”
    Christopher stood up. “Come with me for a minute,” he said to Chuckie. They both got up and walked out of the room. A few seconds later they both walked in and stood in front of us.
    I got up and walked to them, and Martini came with me. I pointed to the Chuckie on the left, Martini to the one on the right.
    “This is the real Chuckie.”
    “Yep, because this is Christopher.” Martini grinned. “The heartbeats are a giveaway.”
    “I’m more interested in how Kitty knew who was who visually,” the real Chuckie said.
    “Because he doesn’t walk or stand like you. Close, but you saunter and Christopher doesn’t, so he had to imitate your movements, and he was good but not quite right. Same with how you stand.”
    “Fine, but you’ve known me a long time.”
    “Yeah, but I think Christopher’s point is made. I still had to study you two. If he’d just walked in as you, I wouldn’t have questioned right away.” I looked up at Martini. “But now the test is, how easy is it to tell two identical A-Cs apart?”
    The image of Chuckie shimmered, and Christopher was there again. “Harder, because of heartbeat signature.” All of a sudden, I was looking at another Martini. Christopher jerked his head, and the two of them disappeared into the bedroom.
    “This’ll be a fun test for you,” Chuckie said under his breath.
    I’d been thinking the same thing. “Yeah.”
    Two Martinis walked out. I had to remind myself that having a fantasy about this wasn’t going to make the real Martini happy with me, since he knew who was impersonating him.
    But it was harder. Christopher had spent his entire life with Martini. There were no differences in walk, stance, or even expression. They were both grinning at me, and they weren’t