But The Stars by Peter Cawdron

Author:Peter Cawdron [Cawdron, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-03-26T22:00:00+00:00

Lies

“So who is it?” Mags asks.

“Who’s lying?” Zoe asks.

“Don’t assume it’s just one person,” Dante replies, thinking through the weight of her decision. She double-checks medical records, wanting to be absolutely sure before she says anything. She doesn’t like this. She doesn’t like the conclusion she’s been drawn to, but she has to make a decision. Maybe she’s right. Chances are, she’s wrong. Damn it. She wants to be right. All she knows is saying nothing is definitely wrong. For better or for worse, she has to tell the crew what she’s figured out.

“Vichy, Mac and Benson.” Dante pauses, seeing the hurt in Vichy’s eyes, knowing it’s only going to get worse. “Step away from Cap.”

Zoe’s eyes go wide. Her eyebrows raise in alarm.

“Wait a minute,” Angel says, coming to Cap’s defense before he can say anything. “You can’t be serious. This is Cap we’re talking about.”

Dante speaks with cold deliberation.

“You can stand there with him.”

Vichy and Benson look at each other.

“No,” Mags says, but not out of defiance so much as shock and disbelief.

“Me?” Cap says, pointing at himself. “You’re calling me out as one of them? That’s ridiculous.”

Dante fights to hide her trembling hands, balling them up into fists. She stares deep into his eyes, looking for any glimmer of the man she once knew.

“Are you sure about this?” Mags asks, appealing for reason.

“How can she be sure?” Naz says. “It’s just one question.”

“This is wrong,” Angel mumbles, taking her place by Cap’s side. “This is all so very wrong.”

“Explain yourself,” Cap says, addressing Dante and commanding authority. It’s an interesting tactic as it assumes he’s still in command, but the power dynamic has shifted in a way Dante’s sure he never expected, with the crew looking to her for direction.

“It’s fake,” she says, holding up the flex with the arrows on it. “It’s not an illusion. Both arrows are exactly the same length. There’s no right or wrong answer.”

Mags is confused. “You lied to us?”

“Of course, I lied. I told you I was going to lie, didn’t I?”

“But?” Zoe says, pointing at Cap. “If all this was fake, how do you know it’s him?”

“It wasn’t the answers I was looking at, it was your reasoning, your response, your emotions. I was looking for the internal conflict you felt at the prospect of getting this wrong.”

“And Cap?”

“Either he’s an alien or a psychopath—take your pick.”

“Wait a minute,” Cap says, shaking his head in disbelief. “So you have nothing to go on? No proof?”

Dante points at the rest of the crew. “They thought this was real, but you didn’t, did you? You knew it was fake all along. How? I’m betting you have access to our psych records. You knew this was a game. You knew there was no such illusion—that there’s no way to distinguish between whether someone is right or left handed. You knew I was faking it, but you didn’t understand why.

“You saw Vichy sweating over his answer because he’s left handed. He’s the only one that might see something different, but not you.

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