The Imposter

A familiar face shows up at the office.

Welcome to Olympus City, where super-powers, physics-defying tech, and unearthly creatures are all possible now. Human nature, however, remains unchanged.

No one is born a perfect superhero, but a few strive to live up to the ideal anyway.

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Previously: Alyssa entered the mind of an old friend to try to pull him out of a coma. It did not go well.

The stink of failure followed Alyssa all the way back to Olympus City. No one else could smell it, but she could and she did—constantly. Alyssa failed her friend. She finally had a chance to put her telepathy to good use, in a way that required no special costume or absurd codename. And she failed to save Skyler. Failed to save him from himself. She hadn’t even suspected that he’d be his own worst enemy.

Some mind reader I am.

Work was just what she needed. Focus on other people. Clean their teeth with all the professionalism and thoroughness that patients had come to expect from her. Get back in the routine.

Routine? In Olympus City? Anything was possible, even that.

She arrived at Apollo Family Dentistry earlier than usual and went straight to her examination room to prepare for what she hoped was the most typical day ever, a day in which she would not dwell on her ineptitude.

She couldn’t even talk sense into one of her closest friends. All those heads she had peered inside, all those strangers, and even the familiar had fooled her.

Her co-workers trickled in. Alyssa resisted the urge to close her door and hide away until her first patient arrived. She was trying not to be that rude anymore, just as she was trying not to invade the privacy of other people’s minds without a damn good reason. Her telepathic self-control was improving. She couldn’t turn it off entirely, but the casual, surface-level thoughts of others, which had been so loud at first, had softened into white noise—a television someone was watching in another room. It was there, but easy to tune out.

“How was your trip, Alyssa?” Dr. McMillan asked.

McMillan was her boss these days, ever since a flash of otherworldly energy whisked Dane Reynolds out of this reality and into another. But that happened to Fantastic Man, as far as the public was concerned. To his colleagues here, Reynolds unexpectedly left to take care of a sick relative, and he never returned, never bothered to update the other dentists on when he might be back. Staff and patients alike had begun to assume the worst. A few even suspected the truth, at least as a remote possibility.

“It was … memorable,” Alyssa said as a compromise with honesty.

“Trips to the old hometown often are.” The balding dentist adjusted his glasses after they slipped too far down his nose. “Glad to have you back.”

One of the receptionists yelled down the hall, imploring him to come over. Her voice carried a weird urgency, so McMillan excused himself.

The background noise spiked. A cocktail of surprise, relief, and astonishment cut right into Alyssa’s head. The specific thoughts were a jumble. She tried to ignore them, but curiosity prevailed.

“What the hell?” she muttered. “No …”

Crystal, a fellow hygienist, poked her head in, her normally steady arms quivering in excitement.

“Alyssa, you will not believe who just walked through the front door.”

Alyssa did not believe it, because she couldn’t hear the man’s thoughts. But he appeared through the eyes of everyone in the lobby.

She rushed down the hall and found Dane Reynolds standing proudly in his scrubs, a big cheesy smile plastered across his face as he shook hands and apologized for his extended absence.

“—really am terribly sorry. While I was taking care of my aunt’s affairs, I caught the most dreadful virus and was laid up in the hospital. I had sent word to you all, but clearly you never received my messages, and for that, I simply cannot apologize enough.”

“We’re just thrilled you’re back,” McMillan said. “We were so worried.”

“And I feel just awful.”

So did Alyssa. Because that wasn’t Dane Reynolds. She never had any trouble reading Reynolds’s mind, but this one presented her only with static. She did, however, recognize the static, and there was no way it was a coincidence. She should have expected the brilliant idiot to try something like this.

“Oh my God, you’re alive!” Alyssa had no choice but to play along for now, as much as she hated it.

“Alyssa!” He approached and shook her hand, greeting her like a cherished colleague he hadn’t seen in far too long. She had seen him just the other week at Terrific Hall. “Been holding down the fort, I trust?”

“Absolutely, but we do have some things to catch up on, as soon as you can spare a minute.”

She couldn’t tell whether he took the hint. He grinned and nodded and went right back to chatting with the rest of the staff.

A long minute later, he started making his way back to Reynolds’s office. Alyssa followed.

“Really do need to talk to you,” she said, smiling through clenched teeth.

“Always got time for you to bend my ear. What’s on your mind?”

They entered Reynolds’s office, which no one had had the heart to clean out yet. Alyssa shut the door the second they crossed the threshold.

“What the hell are you doing?” The question exploded out of her.

“Professional courtesy, one superhero to another.”

“God damn it, Carey. Did you think this through? At all?”

“As a matter of fact, I have been thinking through it. Otherwise, I’d have darkened your doorstep here weeks ago. Took me a minute to study up.” He chuckled. “Heck of a lot more than a minute, come to think of it. I never realized the depth of knowledge that goes into being a dentist. I hadn’t reckoned with the complexities of the human tooth.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Alyssa’s hands tensed and shook, like she was halfway to strangling him. She lowered her voice after a glance at the closed door. “You can’t be Dane Reynolds.”

“Sure I can.” As if to prove the statement, he tapped a spot above his waist, revealing a high-tech belt and restoring his natural appearance. A second snap reactivated the holographic disguise, replacing Carey’s face and build with Reynolds’s. The illusion was seamless. “I’m just keeping his secret identity warm until he gets back.”

“How much of his secret identity?”

The question confused Carey. “I beg your pardon?”

Alyssa marched up to the desk and pointed at the framed picture that sat upon it. One adult woman and one teenage girl.

“Are you going to be Dane Reynolds to them?”

Carey shrugged. “He’s divorced, so there’s no need to contact Penelope.”

“How do you even know her name? How do you know any of this? We never told you.”

“I was poking through the Terrific Trio database and stumbled upon Dr. Reynolds’s personal computer. From there, it was just a matter of connecting all the dots.”

Alyssa was hardly in a position to judge anyone for invasion of privacy. But there was plenty else to judge here.

“His daughter. What if Natalie shows up?”

“That’s hardly likely.”

“Is it impossible?”

“Improbable enough that I’m comfortable tabling it until we cross that bridge. Now I believe we’ve got patients to serve, so let’s get to it.”

Carey started for the door. Alyssa blocked it.

“I have patients to serve. Dr. McMillan has patients. We adjusted the appointments for your—” She wanted to smack herself. “—for Dr. Reynolds’s absence."

“Then we’ll divvy up the labor, and I’ll pitch in where I can.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No! What is your problem? You think because you memorize a bunch of facts and knowledge that you can substitute for another man’s life?”

“A substitution is all we’re talking about here, and just enough to allay any suspicions about the good doctor’s absence.”

“How can you substitute for a man you don’t even know?”

His confident smile was nothing like Reynolds’s. It was at once more organic and yet completely out of place on the other man’s image. “Well, I kind of feel like I do know him, all that time I spent studying him.”

Alyssa took a long breath. “Then tell me why he became Fantastic Man.”

Carey scrunched his face, as though hesitant to trust the apparent softball question.

“He got powers, so he decided to use them for the benefit of humanity,” he said.

“But why?”

“I’m not following.”

“Of course you’re not following. You’ve never been inside a head that wasn’t your own.”

Carey wagged a finger. “Now that’s not true. Back on my Earth, there was this unfortunate body-swapping incident—”

Someone knocked on the door. Alyssa pointed to herself and silently mouthed that she would be doing the talking.

She opened the door, and McMillan stood on the other side.

“Sorry to interrupt, but we also have some catching up to do, Dane. Patients will be arriving any minute now.”

“So sorry, Dr. McMillan,” Alyssa said. “We’ll be just another minute. I promise.”

“Okay, but—”

“I’ll be right with you, Matt,” Carey said. “We’re almost done here.”

A suspicious glint crossed McMillan’s eye, and Alyssa confirmed it before she could stop herself. He was wondering why Alyssa, one of the newer hygienists, would have so much to discuss with Reynolds. Could there be something to their relationship beyond the professional?

Alyssa slammed the door harder than she had intended. She wanted to rinse the thought out of her brain.

“You need to leave,” Alyssa said. “I don’t know what the hell excuse we’re going to come up with, but if you’re really so brilliant, you’ll think of something.”

“Frankly, I’m a bit surprised at how bothered you are. I’m doing your colleague a favor.”

He really is from another reality. “No, you’re making a mockery of him. You’re reducing him to a caricature. Let me tell you something about the human brain, Mr. Perfect Superhero. It is dark and scary in there. And lonely. It is so lonely inside everyone’s mind. We’re all on our own, all trying to figure things out, all making really stupid decisions at so many points along the way. And we’re all unique. I’ve visited a lot of heads, and no two are ever alike. We’re all lost and flailing in there. Dr. Reynolds was too. But then you show up, prancing around without a care in the world, no awareness of anything he’s ever gone through—no respect for it.”

“Alyssa,” Carey said, his confidence loosening, “you’re crying.”

She was. She had no idea when it started. Wiping away the tears, she continued as if it never happened.

“Dr. Reynolds could be dead. What you’re doing is disrespectful. Get out. Come up with some other lame excuse and get out.”

Carey’s posture slackened as he released a long breath. “I was just trying to help.”

“Help by finding him and the others. Don’t copy him. You can’t copy a person when you don’t even have a soul.”

He bristled at that. “Now that is not fair. We’re built a little differently on my world, but we do have souls. They’re just a bit more straightforward than the ones around here.”

Alyssa winced at herself. “You’re right. I’m sorry. But you really do need to leave, and I need to get to work.”

“Are you sure you’re up to it? Something’s troubling you, and I don’t think I can accept all the blame.”

Another tear broke free. She ran a knuckle over it, obliterating the pest.

“I’ll be fine. Go.”

Carey nodded. “I always keep a few excuses handy. I’ll be out of your hair before you know it. Sorry for the bother.”

“I know you meant well, but this isn’t your world.”

The statement saddened him. “No, it most certainly is not.”

He left the room. Alyssa knew she couldn’t linger. She didn’t want to. Hanging out in Reynolds’s office while he was God-knows-where creeped her out. But she needed a moment to pull herself together.

No. That wasn’t what she was doing. She was pulling herself within, hiding her grief, fears, and disappointments behind the façade of a professional smile. Smiling seldom came naturally to her, but she had practiced enough to pull off a convincing one, even if she herself didn’t buy it.

She breathed in, then out, and she exited the room as little more than a caricature of herself.

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Next: The Faceless Man

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Read The Silver Stranger to witness Alyssa’s earliest days of telepathy and her brief career as a costumed vigilante. (Thank you to all who have already read it!)