“And?” Mouse asked expectantly.
“I’m not an expert, but I can make out enough differences between them to say that they’re not a match.”
“Expert or not, you’re right on that point,” Mouse declared. “Now, back to the issue of magic being involved. Typically with a spell that’s intended to mimic another person’s appearance, you need to infuse the enchantment with something that embodies their physical characteristics.”
“DNA,” I said in summary.
“Right,” Mouse agreed. “Something as simple as a strand of hair will serve, and if done right, you can create a spell that will seemingly replicate a person right down to the cellular level.”
I nodded, already aware of this information. When Kane had cast the glamour on me before, it so effectively duplicated the other person’s appearance that I was able to pass a retinal scan (which was why we had resorted to magic instead of my shapeshifting ability).
“So the gist of all this is that if magic were involved you would expect the fingerprints to match,” I concluded.
“And the face as well,” Mouse added. I gave him an odd look, causing him to expound. “As with his hands, I did the same photogrammetry on our mystery man’s face, and it doesn’t square up with yours. However, we’re talking minutiae – things that are essentially negligible, like eyes that are a billionth of a millimeter farther apart than yours. It’s nothing you can tell with the naked eye, but it’s another indication that this isn’t you.”
“Maybe,” I mumbled, unconvinced. “But I’m not certain that any of this is enough to sway anyone who sees that footage. The simple truth of the matter is that I’m a shapeshifter, so the fact that my eyes aren’t as far apart, or my cheekbones aren’t as high, or I have loops instead of arches in my fingerprints isn’t going to carry the day. Plus, I’m just having trouble making sense of all this.”
Mouse frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that on the surface, it looks like a frame job – like someone’s setting me up. But why go through the trouble of mimicking my face if you’re not going to change the fingerprints to match? Any shapeshifter worth his salt can do that. The fact that this person didn’t just confuses me – it’s like a shapeshifting amateur hour. All it does is create doubt about who’s in that video, and doubt about who you are is something shapeshifters try to avoid.”
Mouse seemed to chew on that for a moment. “Maybe it’s someone who only recently developed that ability.”
“Then I wouldn’t expect him to be that good at replicating faces. I’d expect…”
I trailed off as my mentor’s statement took my thoughts in a new direction.
“Do you think the SuperStore could be open again?” I asked after a few seconds.
A look of grave concern crossed Mouse’s face, and empathically I could sense that my question had jarred him a little.
“I suppose,” he replied a moment later, “but who would be crazy or desperate enough to transact with them?”
I nodded, conceding his point. The SuperStore wasn’t an actual store or a physical location, but a black market where super powers were bought and sold. Sounds cool – until you realize that it’s not a regulated area of commerce, none of the merchandise is warrantied, and it comes with a fair degree of risk. Case in point: some wealthy hedge fund manager thought it would be awesome to have the power of atmokinesis – that is, the ability to affect the weather. (Apparently he dealt with weather derivatives in the financial markets, and thought atmokinesis would give him a leg up on the competition.) It’s unclear what process he underwent to obtain his purported powers, but the end result was not to his liking: every time it rained, he would get struck by lightning.
There were lots of similar stories – some comical, some horrifying – about the experiences of shoppers at the SuperStore. Ultimately, an international task force shut them down, but there were rumors that the marketplace was simply driven further underground – not out of business.
Bearing all the facts in mind, I would wager that Mouse was right, and I admitted as much.
“So, assuming it’s not the SuperStore,” I said, “where does that leave us?”
“Back to where we were before,” Mouse replied. “Trying to get a lead on this guy who not only looks like you, but mimics your powers.”
“Sounds good,” I said. “I was so focused on his appearance that I practically forgot that he has powers similar to mine, like telekinesis and teleportation.”
Without warning, Mouse suddenly got an odd glint in his eye. Recognizing the look, I knew that something new had occurred to him. He then spent a few seconds hastily tapping on his tablet.
A moment later, Mouse glanced at the laptop, which was now frozen on the image of the fake me, then gave me an intense look. “Jim, could you have done this?”
“What?!” I exclaimed, aghast that he could even ask that question.
“I don’t mean whether it’s possible that this is you,” he clarified, pointing to the screen. “I mean, physically, could you have done this? Could you have teleported back and forth between the party and this…facility?”
“I suppose it’s possible I could have done that, but there were people with me all night. I was always in the presence of someone.”
“Well, can you go back and forth between two locations such that it seems like you’re in two places at once?”
“You mean go back and forth fast enough that no one can tell?”
“Yeah,” Mouse answered.
I thought about it for a second, then shook my head. “I don’t think so. I still need a moment to visualize where I’m teleporting to. Trying to go back and forth like you’re suggesting would probably just result in me flickering in and out like an old light bulb about to go dark.”
“What if you did it at super speed?” Mouse asked.
I rubbed my chin in thought for a moment, letting Mouse’s question roll around
