I Know You

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. There was no electricity in a cabin this far out from civilization, but staying in some sort of shelter beats staying out in the rain. I looked around to the rest of my unit as they went about killing time while we waited out the night. Not much that can be done considering the sky above is dropping a lake on us tonight.

Corporal O’Leary was playing solitaire, she was always one to keep to herself, but no one is a more reliable shot on the team. Sergeant De’keele was looking over his supplies. Team medic, really nervous-type, but steadiest hands when the situation calls for it. Then there’s the newest member of the crew, Private first-class Rainey. They were a shining star of the Anomaly Suppression Sector’s inclusivity outreach program. They have an all-around skill set, making them useful in a multitude of situations.

The Anomaly Suppression Sector’s objective here is to capture what has been described as a lake monster. Locals describe it as some sort of bipedal fish man that lives mainly in the lake, but comes ashore when it needs to find extra food to feed its offspring. Every few years, there’s a massive influx of reports on these sightings, which seems to coincide with the idea of some sort of pattern. The reports started pouring in a month ago and if the previous pattern holds true they will dwindle down in another month or two.

This is the first time the new division has been able to properly act since it was a recently formed division of the burgeoning Liberty Corps of the United States military. All the members of the new division had to undergo an unorthodox training program. This helped establish ranks and hierarchy amongst the division. I was chosen to lead the most highly ranked recruits in what is considered our elite squad. There’s no practical data to back up our status yet, but we’re hoping to establish it with our first mission here.

The Sector had previously sent a more average-scoring team to this location already, but they never reported back, and every attempt at reestablishing communication has failed. In response, the big wigs at Liberty Corps command heightened the threat level of this case from code green to code orange. This puts the threat squarely in our wheelhouse as the most accomplished team of this new division.

“Captain, permission to leave to piss?” Corporal O’Leary speaks up.

“Permission granted, but not without a buddy. Rainey, go with her.”

Rainey lets out a playful sigh.

“Sending Rainey out in the rain, huh? I bet you think you’re so clever, Captain.”

De’keele snorted in response to Rainey’s jab.

I smile. “It’s the smartest move. Send my best shots to take care of any issues and keep the medic with me in case you all don’t make it back.”

“C’mon Rainey. I’ve gotta take a piss.” O’Leary blurts.

Private Rainey rolls their eyes and grabs their gear to join O’Leary out the cabin.

In the distance, I can hear a bit of their conversation.

“You don’t have to be so crass, Corporal.”

“I wasn’t. That’s how I was raised to speak.”

The rain soaks up the rest of their conversation as I am left alone with De’keele. I look over at O’Leary’s cards. She is one move away from winning.

“Hey De’keele?”

“Yeah, Captain?”

“What’s say we commandeer O’Leary’s cards, given we both outrank her?”

“I believe that would upset corporal O’Leary greatly, especially considering she almost never wins at Solitaire, sir.”

I nod my head, “Now, how do you really feel?”

De’keele smiles, “She emptied all my MRE nacho cheese into my pack on our last training mission, and I was harassed by every bird, bug and rodent imaginable. I think her victories will taste all the sweeter, the fewer there are.

I can’t help but laugh.

“Blackjack? Dealer switches every hand?”

“Sir, yes sir.”

I commandeer O’Leary’s cards, her Solitaire victory going up in smoke. I stack them into a deck and try my best at shuffling the cards. I was a member of the Marine Corps for 16 years before getting reassigned to this division following its formation after the Light City incident, so my senses are sharp, but my hands aren’t as dexterous as they once were.

De’keele and I played a few rounds of Blackjack. I won, then him 3 times, then myself again. De’keele’s brow furrowed, with each new hand.

“You don’t suppose something happened to them, do you?”

I groan out a reply.

“Well, sir, doesn’t it seem like they should have been back by now? We’re an elite military unit, not grade-schoolers. Bathroom breaks are an in-and-out operation.”

I check my watch and note that just shy of twenty minutes have passed since we’ve been using O’Leary’s cards. You’re not supposed to go that far when relieving yourself in unfamiliar territory and although this is a state park most of the year, right now it's an investigation for suspicious activity. I look over De’keele again, who is chewing at his thumbnail, a stress-induced habit from the jagged state of that fingernail. As a commander, I have no choice.

“C’mon, let’s gear up,” I ordered.

De’keele stacks up the cards and sets them aside before quickly grabbing his gear and overlooking his medical pack one more time. I sling my pack over my left shoulder, feeling the strain of years of combat and training scenarios dig into my nerves. Rainey’s probably just pulling one of their famous pranks. I reach for the door handle, but before my palm could grasp it, the door swings up fiercely. On the other side is a panicked O’Leary. Her short-cropped blonde hair is matted to her face from sweat and grime. Her green eyes are darting all around. The color in her face is a little drained. She is clenching her gun, hands shaking.

“Sir! We have a major situation! I’m talking about some major FUBAR shit.”

I reel back. O’Leary is famously toilet-mouthed. It has gotten her in trouble all throughout her enlistment, but when we formed this unit, I just told her to keep it out of official business and everything was fine. What could have shaken her composure? De’keele speaks up before me, nerves overtaking him.

“Where’s Rainey? O’Leary – why didn’t you come back with Rainey?!”

O’Leary knocks De’keele upside the head.

“That’s the whole thing, shit-for-brains. Rainey is gone.”

I finally spoke up, “What do you mean gone?”

O’Leary looks behind her and then steps inside the cabin while shutting the door behind her.

“I mean, when I got done taking a piss, Rainey was nowhere to be found. Naturally, I thought that little shit went on their own to-do something weird considering how unusual they are to begin with, so I went looking for them.”

I examined O’Leary thoroughly as she talked. I watched for the way her expression would change. The way her lips moved while pronouncing certain words, how her eyes moved when she was describing the situation. I’ve spent a lot of time with this group. I’ve had a lot of intimate exchanges and even spent my off time examining video reels of their performance and pacific points in their career to acquire a fuller picture of every one of them. Sad to say, I know their mannerisms better than my own mom or dad - even more than my kid’s. But I’d do anything to help me accomplish my mission as a part of the United States military.

“It's dark, so I took out my pair of night-vision goggles and started scanning the immediate area. I was just taking a piss and can piss faster than most of this unit.”

De’keele is the fastest. I’ve had us all recorded so that way I can plan our missions better.

“After a few minutes of searching, I thought about coming back here-”

“So we need to find Rainey?” I posit.

O’Leary’s expression darkens in the low light of the candle-lit cabin.

“No, sir. I think we have been compromised entirely. I believe it would be in our best interest to eliminate Private First-Class Rainey.”

“E-Eliminate? O’Leary, why would you even suggest that?” De’keele chimes in.

“Well, shitbrains-”

I make note of how unusually mean O’Leary is to De’keele.

“I was looking for Rainey when I finally caught the outline of a humanoid shape in the distance. I brought my gun up immediately and started proceeding with caution. I was ducking behind trees following the shape in question until eventually, I had caught up. It was standing still amongst some trees.”

O’Leary’s voice quivers a bit.

“It was, I dunno, seven feet tall? Scales all along the back of its body, all the way from its feet to the top of its head. It had dark, rubbery dolphin-like skin on what I believe the torso of its body was. I saw it lurch down and pick something up off the ground. A small animal and just twist its body and rip it in half.”

O’Leary starts hyperventilating while she describes this. I’ve never seen her so panicked. It’s…strange.

“Then this thing distended its jaw and just popped both halves, bones and all, into its gaping maw. Rows of sharp teeth protrude from its open mouth. After it was done gorging, it wiped its face and grinned. Then it looked my way. I can’t say it rightly saw me because I wasn’t pursued coming back here. But it felt like it was looking right through me as it smiled. A wide, unnatural grin. Something a creature like that shouldn’t be able to make with that kind of face.”

I stopped her for a second. “What’s this have to do with Rainey?”

O’Leary loses her barely stapled-together composure.

“THAT THING TURNED INTO RAINEY.”

Both De’keele and I’s eyes were wide. I let De’keele speak up first.

“Like, they turned themselves into Rainey? So it can shape-shift?”

“You see, I thought that at first too, but No. Nononononono. That was Rainey. I know it. They picked up their pack and started making their way back to where I was peeing. I followed them back. I saw them look around for me and then walk off.”

“If you believed that was our target, then why didn’t you take a shot?”

O’Leary goes to speak, but before she can, a gunshot rings out. O’Leary takes the hit in the shoulder and falls down in front of us, bleeding. De’keele goes down to help her, but before he can, Corporal O’Leary appears out of the distance.

“Because you’re talking to a fraud.” She states.

Now, in front of my eyes are two Corporal O’Learys. One confident, rolling up from the wooded area beyond, and another, quivering on the ground and bleeding out.

“You see, most of what she said was true. The part she left out is that I did try to engage her.”

I look at the new O’Leary, accusatory, “Then why didn’t we hear YOUR gunshot?”

“I was still following stealth protocols. Didn’t know how many more there could be since intel says they could be spawning and now that I knew they could shape-shift I wanted to avoid this exact scenario.”

The O’Leary from the ground pipes up. “It’s LYING. Look at it? How could you believe that thing is me? Is she even the right height? The hair is parted to the wrong side. It's all WRONG.”

I look toward the gun-toting O’Leary for an explanation. All the while examining her as thoroughly as I did the grounded O’Leary before.

“You know I can see better out of my right eye, so I parted it over to get the best shot I could.”

That’s true, I go to breathe a sigh of relief before stopping part way. My eyes narrowed into slits, looking toward the gun-bearing O’Leary. There’s a hole in her story.

“Then why did you miss?”

The gun-toting O’Leary seems a bit shocked.

“What do you mean?”

I directed De’keele to help the wounded O’Leary. His nervous demeanor melts away as soon as he gets to work immediately on the injured person in front of him. The grounded O’Leary gives a breathy ‘Thank You’.

“I was…snuck up on and knocked out briefly. The intel seems to have been correct about there being more than one.” O’Leary barely managed to get that statement out.

“Seems like an important detail to miss telling.” I step forward, gun drawn.

The standing O’Leary lurches back but doesn’t lift her gun to retaliate.

“Captain. It's me. It's O’Leary.”

I point my gun directly at O’Leary. The standing O’Leary still doesn’t point hers at me.

“You know, I would’ve bought your story just now if it wasn’t for one key detail.”

“C-Captain. You’re not thinking clearly. Just slow down and think this through again.”

I ready the rifle. “Your acting is top-notch, your reactions are very believable, but in the end you let it slip that you can’t be O’Leary.”

The standing O’Leary makes a mad dash for some nearby trees. I fired upon her with no hesitation. Bark from the trees goes flying into the night as O’Leary tries to dodge around my gunfire. I observe her movements. She is darting from tree to tree to cover herself while she tries to get closer to The real O’Leary and De’keele. If this thing is what took out the other unit, then it might have explosives. Maybe it will even take them hostage. I have to end this quickly.

I breathe in. Then exhale. The moment comes in a blur, but the time moves at a snail’s pace. I can see the fake O’Leary as clear as day. The real O’Leary would have made such a rookie mistake. I fire a few rounds and in no time flat, the fake O’Leary is dropped to the ground. Bullet wounds pierced her through her temple, torso, and thigh. The light of her eyes shines for one last indignant moment at me.

“The real O’Leary wouldn’t have missed such an important shot. You did, besides if you were her, you would’ve aimed for the head.”

Some coughing noises emit from the fake O’Leary’s body. And then, the light leaves her eyes.

“Rot in hell.” I walk back to De’Keele and O’Leary.

“De’Keele, how’s combat medic duty going?”

“She’s stable. We should let her get a little rest.”

I rub my chin.

“Yeah, we still need to find Rainey. So maybe just an hour. They’re trained, but I think the pressures of a real mission hit differently based on what happened with O’Leary here.

“They don’t hit differently if you have anxiety about everything.” De’keele quips.

I laugh. It felt like the first good laugh in a long time, but it's only been thirty minutes since O’Leary left to use the bathroom. Funny what stress can do.

I decide to rest my eyes while O’Leary is recovering. At some point, she wakes up, and De’Keele hands her the deck of cards and apologizes for using them while she was away. She hesitantly forgives him.

“Play some solitaire. Might help you relax after all the craziness.” De’keele recommends before going to fiddle with his now used medical supplies.

About twenty minutes pass before O’Leary announces she’s won twice now.

I smile, if O’Leary was able to win two games in a row, maybe things were looking up for the rest of us.