There have been a lot of surprising things in space. Plenty of them have been terrifying, too, scary enough to make Lance quake in his boots. But this? Watching Keith strangle another Keith, grunting and snarling and scrabbling for a better hold, straining for the discarded bayard between blows? He immediately wishes it wasn't real, because it's a nightmare and then some.
But he's seen the writing on the wall. He's deactivated the AI himself, freed the final traces of the Prudence and probably sent Tesar off to the big ship in the sky at long last, albeit entirely by accident and possibly with a little lightning frying the solar cells. Whatever's happening before him is no illusion or trick of the mind, because the Prudence no longer has the power to produce such a thing.
So he knows only that one Keith is his Keith, and the other is a fraud.
Damn it all, did he really sprint all the way from the airlock to the deserted ex-ballroom to here, just for this? Did he really throw himself through the wringer by using that teleporter, then beg his bioscanners to redirect him, only to find the actual worst case scenario waiting for him in this cramped berth?
He did. It shouldn't surprise him, either, given the way this all-nighter rescue has gone. So he does the only thing he can, and shoulders his rifle. Then, he fires.
The shot sails through the gap between the Keiths' faces, punching into the far wall and spraying debris. The Keith with the upper hand recoils, and the other Keith, blue in the face, topples forward, then stubbornly forces himself to his feet while clutching his throat.
Lance levels the gun at him until he freezes. "You're Keith One," he decides, trigger finger jumping until he moves it outside the guard. To the other, he says, "You're Keith Two.
"I'm not gonna play Twenty Questions," he goes on. "I know from at least four different movies that it does not work. Ever."
When he does continue, the Keiths look at him expectantly, waiting for the rest of his grand plan. Which he does not have. How was he supposed to prepare for this, after all? And how is he supposed to shoot Keith, even if he makes the right choice and shoots the fake Keith?
His knees wobble a little as he imagines making a mistake.
"Are you okay?" asks Keith Two, reaching out a hand, but he pulls away when Lance trains the gun on him.
"Don't," Lance growls. "Stay where you are."
God, he would give anything not to have to do this. Anything. One Keith looking at him with fear in his eyes would be hard enough, but two has put all of Lance's nerves on edge while tearing him apart at the exact same time. He can't hold a train of thought on track long enough to create a foolproof plan, not when his focus keeps jumping to the most catastrophic options available, and his trigger finger itches to make a choice.
Only one Keith is real, and the other must be the shape-shifting energy Tesar's systems picked up. That much is clear. But can the shifter read minds? Does it know all about Keith the same way it looks and sounds just like him?
Suddenly, Lance feels a spark of genius. It strikes like lightning, so brilliant that he nearly lowers his gun in his eagerness to say, "So, if we do the Voltron cheer, I say Vol, and you say…" Keith is the only person in the universe who refuses to finish the cheer properly. He has to be. It's a known law of the universe, a fixed constant, an eternally reliable fact.
And yet as Keith One croaks, "Voltron?" Keith Two echoes him barely a moment later.
"Damn it," Lance mutters. Already he can see his mistake. Tesar's ship dates back well before Voltron was ever created; Keith may answer the cheer wrong, but the shifter doesn't know what Voltron is anyway. Or it does read minds and knew exactly what to say, which Lance is inclined to believe, which he's afraid to test. There has to be another way.
He can't tell them apart visually. Their armor matches down to the last detail, save for scratches Lance doesn't have a hope of identifying as authentic. Keith's bayard is no help, either. It lies inert on the floor beyond the place where Keith Two was strangling Keith One when Lance arrived. Either one of them could have held it.
The only other difference is that Keith Two wears his helmet, and Keith One does not, but Lance hesitates to choose on only a single detail. After all, removing a helmet is easy enough to do. It could have changed hands. It could have stayed right where it belongs.
His own helmet feels too tight now. Way too tight. And warm. Maybe his discomfort shows, too, because as he opens his visor, Keith Two says that he doesn't look good. He garbles the words as if his throat hurts, and Lance hates to raise his bayard in warning against that.
But then he remembers Keith Two was doing the strangling, not being strangled. And that he didn't sound quite like that before, not at all.
With his heart thundering in his ears, Lance says, "I want both of you to look me in the eye and tell me that you're Keith, the real Keith. Go on, tell me the truth."
They do. They both swear that they're really, truly Keith. They swear it on their lives, all the color drained from their faces. They swear for all they're worth.
Lance fires.