Angie stared at the dead man sliding down the wall. His feet touched the ground; his legs crumpled up underneath him. Eventually, after an eternity of waiting, he collapsed forward, hiding the gaping wound in his chest.

  She'd never seen someone die before. On TV, yeah, but never in person. Half of her wanted to scream and run, half of her wanted to poke the body with a stick, and half of her wanted to sink to her knees and cry or throw up. That didn't even count the half sitting behind the thin grey curtain in her head, shocked for once into silence, but obviously appalled at her lack of math skills.

  A sound from inside the room changed her hushed contemplation of the corpse into frightened immobility. Cloth rustled. Static electricity popped, enough to make Angie's hair stand on end all the way out in the hallway. Before she could run or hide, the voice from before spoke again, this time quiet enough to sound like a woman rather than thunder come to earth.

  "It's okay, little girl. I only seek Justice against the guilty."

  Images of destroyed couches, pallets of chocolate, and poor Steve's naughty bits clutched in her fist forced Angie back against the wall, curled into a ball. When she didn't move, the woman in the room spoke again, this time uncertainty seeping in to replace the iron.

  "I... I could really use some help. I promise, I won't hurt you."

  Angie knew she ought to help people, but the crumpled form against the wall forced her to stillness. Only when the faint sounds of sobbing replaced ripping cloth did she creep over to the door on hands and knees.

  A woman stood in the middle of the room, naked. Behind her lay the smoking remains of a hospital bed, huge circular chunks carved out of the mattress and frame. She pawed through one of the drawers, dropping smock after smock onto the floor.

  "I need real clothes. I'm sick of these... things."

  Angie looked away. She wanted to help, but she only had the swimsuit thing her other self dressed in, with a lab coat draped over top for pockets. She shrugged out of the white coat and held it in front of her. The naked woman... Jane... stepped over, took the coat, and stared at her. In the back of her head, Angie's other self screamed.

  "You give me the clothes off your back. You are not only innocent, you are generous. But," her eyes narrowed, and one hand shot out toward Angie. It didn't touch her; instead, it passed through her, and her other half screamed in agony. Angie cried out and fell to her knees, and the woman backed away.

  "Why are you hurting me?"

  The woman stepped back, blinking.

  "Hurting you? Does the spirit clutching at you have such a grip that I can't dislodge it without harming you?"

  Angie blinked. The woman seemed so confident, but what she said sounded so stupid. Angie wasn't possessed. She might be split in two, but both halves were her, and her alone. Confusion rippled through her, and in that moment the grumpy old woman swept her aside.

  ***

  Angela stared at the woman hovering above her, the woman she'd known only as Jane Doe. Anger and fear threatened with a wall of grey, but she couldn't let either overwhelm her. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, opened them and looked Jane over once again.

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  Jane's hands glowed faintly, and her feet each rested on its own glowing hemisphere. Her body covered by the lab coat, Angela couldn't see the faint sheen of energy playing across her skin, but nothing could hide the gaping wounds in reality where Jane's eyes used to be. All at once they occupied Jane's eye sockets, the whole of her face, and everywhere Angela looked. Even when she turned her face away entirely, the edges of Jane's 'eyes' teased at her peripheral vision.

  "I'll thank you to take your hands off me, Jane."

  "How do you know my name?"

  "I don't. You're a Jane Doe. I was your doctor for months. Honestly, given the state of things, I may still be the physician of record."

  Jane blinked, the unwavering certainty draining from her voice. "But... my name is Jane."

  Angela shook her head, pushing to her feet as she did. "Probably an implanted memory from hearing so many of us referring to you as Jane."

  "No." Jane stood, the spheres holding her off the ground letting her loom over Angela. Despite the light flickering around her hands, she still seemed less imposing than she had previously. Even the strange warping around her eyes dimmed. "My name is... my name... my name is Jane Donaldson. I am... I am a... I'm a Special Agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigations." She reached into her jacket, looking momentarily nonplussed as she scrabbled at the interior of it out of habit. "Dammit. I must have been undercover when I got... shot?"

  Angela's head spun, connections forming faster than her mouth could form words. Instead of trying to keep up, she replied to Jane's question, "I'm sorry, Miss Donaldson, but you were shot, beaten, and, we believe, violated sexually once unconscious. Do you have anyone who could confirm your identity?"

  Jane shook her head, then smiled wryly. "Damn. I was stuck so long, but I my old reflexes... it's hard for me to even admit to my real name."

  "Stuck?"

  "Yes. Stuck. I... I knew I was in a hospital, I could... I can still... dammit, when I try to say it, it feels stupid."

  Something about Jane's cadence caught at Angela. "Feels?"

  "Yes. The words feel stupid, even when I say them in my head. Like when I let them out, you'll sound like I'm crazy."

  More connections clicked, and Angela shook her head. "No, Jane. I won't think you're crazy. How much have you experienced since you arrived at the hospital?"

  "I woke up here one day. Since then, everything's been... wrong. You... you!" The vortexes of Jane's eyes flared, reaching out to encompass Angela, obscuring her vision, filling her ears with static. A moment later they receded, but she still felt them, feather light tickles across her back. "I'm sorry. You're my doctor! You're Doctor Merilyn!"

  Angela glanced at her lab coat; she'd long since replaced the stitched 'Merilyn' with the word 'Widget'. "You... you heard my name while you were in a coma, and you remember it?"

  "I heard it on the paperwork sometimes, I felt the orderlies say it." Jane's face hardened, the light around her hands flaring back to life. "They didn't like you much. You wouldn't let them neglect me." A smile cracked her face into humanity once more, and in an instant her arms were around Angela, her hands extinguished.

  "You took care of me. Thank you."

  Angela reached around Jane, remembering a day months ago when she did the same for Jack. "You're welcome, Miss... Donaldson." For a moment she held the other woman, but Jane wasn't dying. If anything, she'd just returned from the grave, and things needed to be taken care of as soon as possible, to return her to as normal a life as a blue blood could have. "I think we'll need to have a talk at some point, but for the moment... I think I may know someone who could confirm your identity, but before I go that route, can you think of anyone who could confirm your real identity?"

  Jane nodded, her face still over Angela's shoulder. "Yes. My old partner... my control when I went undercover."

  A final connection snapped into place, despite Angela's attempts to deny the synchronicity. "Your partner was Special Agent Jamil Johnson."

  Jane reared back, flying across the room until her back pressed against the wall, the spheres under her feet lifting from the ground until she hovered just beneath the ceiling. "You can't know that! How do you know that? "

  "I figured it out. I'm very smart."

  "No one's that smart!"

  "No one can fly, either."

  Jane's vortexes rolled across the ceiling. "Well, duh, but what does that have to do with anything?"

  "Look down."