Counterpart (19 page)

“Just in case what?”

Samuel meets my eyes reluctantly, not quite ashamed, but neither proud. “This is going to sound horrible,” he says as a preface, as if everything else he's told me has been unicorns and stars, “but I thought, if something went wrong with one of your organs…well, there wouldn't be any risk of rejection with a cloned heart or lung or liver. You have to understand, none of them had your memories, your personality yet. The neural adjustments would have come later, after I was sure the body was viable. At that time, they weren't…they were just…”

“Empty meat.” I don't mean to be cruel, but I can't help it. He's talking about my genetic sisters. Women who could have been me. “Shells. Is that what you were going to say?”

For once, he doesn't apologize. “I won't pretend what I did was ethical, but it was necessary. It was what you wanted, what you asked me to do.”

Not me,
I think.
Her.
The arcade music hasn't intensified, but I feel its powerful rhythm in my chest like someone taking a hammer to my lungs. I suck in a shaky breath. “You should have come clean about all of this sooner.”

He angles himself toward me, face looking drawn. Nearby lights turn him alternately blue and purple. “Honest to God, Rhona. I didn't know about Brooks until I was standing in its ashes again.”

“Not Brooks. The cloning process.”

“I wasn't keeping it a secret.”

“Weren't you? You never mentioned any of this before.”

“I didn't think you'd want to know,” he says, then drops his voice down, almost to the point that I can't hear him over the din. “I wish I could forget.”

I want to be angry with him, furious over his callousness, but he was right to do what he did. Given our limited resources, there was no other option but to dispose of the failed clones. And were our places reversed, I can't help feeling I might have made the same ugly choice to honor a promise made to someone I love. To Samuel, or Camus, or Hanna.

And that frightens me.

When half the forest is on fire, I can't stop to obsess over the survival of a few individual trees, or the whole thing will burn down. I have to rise above personal feelings.
My decisions led us here.
That's what Lefevre told me, and only now am I beginning to understand how right he is. I charged Samuel with the task of cloning me. I asked of him—my best friend, my only living family—something not only morally questionable but emotionally reprehensible.

And here I am, giving Samuel the third degree. Incredible.

“Rhona?”

“Do you ever regret it?” The question tumbles out of me before I can think about it. I grind my nail against the table's lacquered surface, picking at a greasy smear, and close my eyes against the arcade lights tumbling endlessly through the dark.

“Regret what?”

“I don't know. Meeting me? Becoming my friend, my partner in crime. Agreeing to my plan, and everything that happened afterward. I know this sounds like I'm fishing—I'm not. Answer honestly. Do you ever regret knowing me?”

“Never,” he says, but then, to my surprise, he corrects himself. “Sometimes.”

It hurts more than I expect. Like anticipating a light slap and being sucker punched.

“Lately?” I ask.

Samuel takes a moment. Looks over at the Space Invaders console, where a bald Chinese man has stepped up to play. I'd give my left hand to know what he's thinking at this moment. Samuel, that is. Not the stranger.

“Yes,” Samuel admits, then cuts his gaze back toward me, adding hastily, “But it's not for the reasons you think. It's not about you being with Camus. I understand you love him, Rhon. I do. And I'm happy for you. He's a good man, even if he doesn't think so.”

That's an odd comment…

At the same time, Samuel's assessment is spot-on. Camus told me point-blank what his priorities are. It isn't the resistance or the base.
I would have let the world burn before losing her.
He was referring to my predecessor when he said that, but we've come a long way since then. I used to think we anchored each other; now I wonder if we're risking dragging each other down. How much time do we spend worrying about losing each other?

“It's not about the errors in cloning, or the attack on the base,” Samuel continues, ignorant of my personal crisis. “It's…” He sighs, smiling wryly, and gives a small shake of his head, like he can't believe what he almost confessed.

“What?” I press.

Samuel rubs the back of his neck. “I've always known a day was coming when you would outgrow me.”

“Seriously?”

“I know. It sounds pathetic. Needy. It's just this feeling I can't shake. Like, maybe it'll happen weeks from now, months, even years—but there's a time coming when I'm not going to be worth anything to you. I'm just going to be an albatross around your neck. One day, I'm going to let you down.”

“Samuel. That's ridiculous.”

“Is it? Even when we were kids, I couldn't understand why you'd choose to hang around with some awkward nerd instead of your flock of other friends. You've always been a leader, Rhona. But, me? I'm a follower.” His mouth twists and he looks terribly sad. His pupils, dilated to see in the dark, have devoured the color in his eyes. “You have plenty of those now.”

“Stop it,” I snap. “You're not some…service animal, and you're
not
exchangeable. You're my friend. My best friend. With the way things are going, maybe the only one I'll have left in the near future.”

Samuel stares at the table, nodding. It's the same dull nod a child gives to their parents when they explain that yes, they're getting a divorce, sweetie, but it doesn't mean Mommy and Daddy love you any less, and nothing will change. I know I'm not getting through to him, just as I worry whether anything I say will be the truth.

“Samuel. I'm not friends with you because of what you can do for me,” I tell him. “Or because of the secrets you're keeping for me. I'm a little insulted you'd think that. I don't know if I necessarily agree with the methods undertaken on my behalf, but I understand. And it doesn't make me love you any less. You get that, right?”

Still no eye contact. “I know.”

I'm not convinced he does. And the fact he has such doubts is deeply troubling.

But I can't deal with it right now so I change the subject, liberating us both from this uncomfortable conversation. “Samuel, something happened in the IC lab tonight. There was a machine with my face and voice…my memories…”

He jerks out of his slouch. “What?”

I give him the rundown on what happened with the machine, leaving out some of the more grisly details, and the fact that the thing was searching for him. It would only traumatize him further, and make him feel guiltier for not being here.

“If the machines took the clones,” I say, “they must have accessed the servers storing the original Rhona's memories, right?”

“That room was destroyed in the explosion.” He says this so confidently, I know he must have visited the server room to double-check. I picture Samuel sorting through the rubble of his ambition, touching pieces of blown-apart metal, the edges still sharp enough to split open his fingers. “But”—Samuel picks aggressively at the facial hair on his cheek, thinking aloud—“maybe the machines accessed the servers before then. If so, they'd have everything they need to re-create my work.”

“Perfect. What about the clones in the capsules? How much of a danger do they pose? You said they were underdeveloped…”

Sighing, he answers, “Until the attack, I would've told you they weren't capable of the complex motor movement required to pull off something of this nature. Not in the condition we left them. But clearly the machines have continued the project.” He hunches his eyebrows in thought, and as he talks, it's as if he's speaking more to himself than me. “But, why? What are they hoping to accomplish by cloning you?”

“I was wondering the same thing myself.”

He shakes his head. “Unless the clones receive continual medical care, their physical and emotional development will not only halt, but decline rapidly. It still seems impossible. Even kept in the capsules, I'm surprised they survived being moved.”

“At least two of them have,” I say, thinking of what happened to Wrangell base.

“Two?”

My head pounds, just considering the tangled web of issues. “It's a long story. I'll tell you all about it later. For now, you need to go straight to the council. They're going to want to hear everything you just told me. Maybe then they'll finally start listening to me again.”

Samuel lifts his brows. “Everything?”

“You can leave out the sentimental parts,” I tease him, trying to return to the easy rhythm of our friendship. But it's like switching directions in a fast-moving stream. “And maybe don't go into detail about the process itself.” He nods.

I begin sliding out of the booth, but pause on the edge. “By the way, have you seen Camus tonight?”

“No. Why?”

“He's been missing all night. And with a maniac clone on the loose…” I trail off, not wanting to empower my worries by speaking them aloud. “Anyway. I'm going to head back to our quarters now, but if you see him—”

“I'll let him know you're looking for him,” Samuel finishes.

“Thanks.”

“Rhona?” I turn back to face Samuel after a few steps; he hasn't moved. “I want you to know I don't regret what I did for you. Creating the clones. I only regret that it didn't turn out exactly as we planned.”

“Water under the bridge,” I tell him. “Are you coming?”

He maneuvers his tall frame out of the booth, but shakes his head. “I think I'm going to stick around here a little longer. Unwind a little.”

I give his arm a friendly squeeze. “Don't forget to sleep.”

“You, too.”

Before I've gotten too far away from him, a sudden impulse spins me back around. I return, hugging Samuel around the waist while his back is turned. I feel him inhale, but not exhale. As skinny as he is, I feel his heartbeat, too, racing against my cheek.

“What was that for?” he asks me, turning around when I release him.

“As smart as you are, you can still be really stupid sometimes.” I poke him lightly on the forehead. “Don't you ever think I'm going to abandon you, Samuel Lewis.”

Samuel smiles, somewhat shyly, and it makes my heart ache.

Because he's not safe.

None of us are anymore, if we ever were.

Perhaps the worst side effect of the attack was the illusion of safety it shattered. Like flying down a snowy highway, that moment when the tires lose their grip on the road. Hitting the guardrail: a tiny pinball slamming into a flipper. My hands are on the wheel, but it's obvious I've lost control. The car's still skidding, sliding, spinning, heading backward over the cliff…

And at this point, all I can do is brace for impact.

When I finally return to the room I've been sharing with Camus, it's pitch black—and even waving my hand directly in front of the motion sensor doesn't trigger the lights. If it weren't for the warm blue recessed lights in the hall, I'd think we were suffering another power outage. The only other explanation is someone manually turned off the sensors in our room, though I can't imagine Camus doing it, not after stubbing his toe on the way to the bathroom last week. I know it wasn't me. Once I'm out, I sleep like the dead. Lights don't bother me like they do him, so I'd have no reason to mess with the settings.

Without ambient light, it's impossible to make out the bed, its potential Camus-shaped lump, or anything else in the room. The darkness is absolute. “Camus?” I call out, receiving no reply, and my worry spikes again. Where the hell is he?

I unwind the scarf I've worn around my throat all night and toss it in a ball into the corner of the room we're currently using for laundry disposal. It reeks of sweat, and will need to be washed. I begin unbuttoning the wrists of my blouse, too, and, calling up a mental layout of the room, I stumble toward the bathroom, hoping the light there will work.

The mirror appears like a camera flash, causing me to squint against the backdrop of angry fluorescent lights. Once I can see, I frown.

The image that greets me isn't pretty. My face is tired and drawn, my eyes are hollow, my pupils dilated, my nostrils flared. I squint, my freckles striking me as wrong. I didn't bother applying fake ones today, yet they cover my whole face in blotchy constellations, crossing the bridge of my nose where normally my features turn into an empty beach of white skin. As I lift a finger to probe my freckled cheek, wondering if I'm so exhausted I've begun to hallucinate, the mirror doesn't reflect my movement. It takes me a few more seconds to realize the angle is wrong.

From where I'm standing, I shouldn't be showing up in the mirror at all.

I turn past where my peripheral visions ends—right as a fist flies toward my face, fingers going for my eyes. A stranger's body slams into me as I jerk away at the last possible moment, barely avoiding having my eyes gouged out by jagged, picket-fence nails. The bathroom wall manifests behind me, knocking the breath from my lungs. I also hear an electronic crunch. My walkie-talkie.

Without thinking, I reach for the other woman's hair, planning to use it like a horse's bridle and yank her off. Instead, her entire scalp comes free in my hand.
What the—

It's a wig. She's wearing a cheap wig. Beneath, rather than baldness, I discover a ruined landscape of bruised flesh and thin, molting hair that stops just at her temples. Without the wig, she looks like a cancer patient, or an inmate of some old folk's home.

“Rude,” my doppelgänger says. Right before showing her knife.

Sharp, dizzying pain flares along my forearms. I'm not even aware I raised them to defend myself until I spot the shallow streaks of red bleeding through my sleeves, dangerously near my wrists.

“Stop!” I shout, catching her knife arm. “Wait! It doesn't have to be like this.”

She doesn't bother arguing with me. Instead, she wrestles me to the floor. My head narrowly misses the counter on the way down, but at no point do I release her arm. I continue fighting even when she has me flat on my back. Cold pushes up from the bathroom tiles, contrasting with the rush of hot copper invading my mouth. I must have bitten my cheek when she first tackled me against the wall.

“Don't make this difficult,” my attacker says, her voice struggling past clenched teeth.

The words plunge into my chest like a wooden stake, gooseflesh rising along my bare arms. My heart continues to beat frantically, my lungs on fire.

This can't be real.
It's like I'm struggling toward the dark, distant surface of a lake, my arms tangled in seaweed, fighting currents, heavy and weighed down. My consciousness is barely keeping up with reality.
This isn't real…

The vile taste of my own blood convinces me otherwise.

And also the knife poised above my face.

I still have a grip on her wrist, thankfully. She's weaker than I would've expected. I press the nail of my right thumb into her pulse point while she bears down on me, her left knee crushing my sternum, her free hand trying to pry mine off.

“I should've smothered you in your sleep,” she hisses, eyes bright, wild as a madwoman.
What's wrong with her?

“Probably…should've,” I quip thoughtlessly, still trying to puzzle out the blood.

The realization finally reaches through the wall of adrenaline and panic a moment later.
I should've smothered you in your sleep.
I wasn't having night terrors earlier this week; someone had, in fact, been in my room. Not any passing stranger, either, but my own damn clone—who was planning to kill me. Of course. Because that's totally the week I'm having.

On the heels of that thought comes this one:
Why not kill me when she had the chance?

Unfortunately, my doppelgänger doesn't seem like she's in the mood to chat. Go figure.

Instead of waiting for her to realize her insanity—which seems unlikely—I stop resisting. It's like cutting power to an airplane engine. I lean away just as the momentum of her attack carries the knife past my head. Her shoulder jerks as the blade collides with solid tile, causing me to grimace in sympathetic pain.

I sit up sharply. My head cracks her chin, drawing pained cries from both of us, before I shove her off with both hands. Then I'm moving, crawling, scrambling to get away.

I need a weapon. I need a gun or a knife or something.

Something.

I flee into the bedroom on my hands and knees, calling for help—anyone's. But now that I'm thinking about it, no one was posted outside the room when I arrived. I dismissed Ulrich for the night, but Hawking's been adamant about me being watched. So where is his replacement? Someone should have been here, even if it was just to satisfy the council's paranoia.

I've almost gotten my footing when something hard comes down on my neck. I lose my balance, smashing into the edge of the bed, rebounding off the mattress onto the hard, carpeted floor. It's like colliding with a quarterback.

The room blurs.

Blue-and-black shadows move at the corners of my vision. Imaginary. Terrifying.

As I lift my head, jarred but conscious, I peer over my shoulder and see my doppelgänger slouching toward me. Her hand remains closed around the handle of a steak knife. Maybe it's the shock, but I can't help thinking,
Hey, I recognize that knife.
It belongs to the same family of cutlery we use in the cafeteria—which immediately makes me regret not implementing a base-wide regulation requiring all utensils be plastic. No one's ever been killed by a spork. Then again, it's not like I could've seen this coming. We're a military installation, not a prison. I didn't realize dinnerware being used as improvised weapons was a concern until now.

I spit out a piece of blue carpet fuzz, plus a little blood from having bitten the inside of my cheek, and push with my arms.
Get up get up get—

A foot comes down on my spine, hard,
harder,
crushing me flat.

My involuntary gasps are what I imagine a beached whale might sound like, stranded on some hostile shore. All I can do at this point is turn my head, barely, and try to keep breathing.
Maybe if I get her talking,
I think. Get her talking and keep her talking, and maybe I can find an opening to escape, or at least reason with her. There doesn't have to be any more bloodshed tonight.

Then I notice platinum-blonde hair snaking out from underneath my bed, and a woman's hand tenting the bottom edge of the comforter. There's a ring on her fourth finger, a wedding band, and her nails are painted the same color as my own. A plain, inoffensive nude.

Oh God. Oh my God.

“What have you done?” I manage to get out, tears clotting my voice.
Hanna.

I can't see my attacker's face, but I suspect she follows my gaze, because the pressure on my back eases. “It was an accident,” she says.

An accident.

Like tripping on the stairs, or hitting the wrong laundry cycle.

“What—did—you—do?”
I demand, shaking, all my fear transforming into hot rage. Without thinking, I inch a hand toward my right pants pocket where the pointy end of my shiv is digging into my hip.
Of course.
Why didn't I think of it sooner? Despite my mind racing a million miles a minute, I begin wriggling the shiv free with agonizing slowness. I can't let this other Rhona see or even suspect I'm going for a weapon, or I'm dead.

“What I had to,” my doppelgänger replies. “You should know something about that.”

True, but all I'm thinking just then is,
She hurt Hanna.

My head throbs and pain spreads throughout my back, webbing out from my spine in dazzling waves, and I can barely breathe, but none of that matters because
she hurt Hanna.
Maybe even killed her. For all I know, she might've hurt Camus, too, or plans to harm him in the future. This other Rhona's off her rocker. Totally out of control.
Sometimes the greatest kindness you can do for a wounded animal is to put it down.

I focus on rotating the shiv from my pocket, sliding it out. Slowly…
slowly
…

“That's it, then? Nothing clever to say? No more quips?”

“Anchorage,” I sputter. “You died at Anchorage.” I want to see if she denies it. I need to know for sure who this woman is: whether she's wearing my face, or if I'm wearing hers.

She lets out a breathy sound that might be a laugh. “Is
that
what you're afraid of? That I'm the original big bad Rhona Long, come back to haunt you? Sorry to disappoint, but she's dead. She's always been dead.”

Confirmation at last!
But instead of relief, a wave of pity crashes through me. My first memories—of cold bullets tearing into my torso, falling backward into the snow, covered only by the warmth of my own leaking blood, and Camus trying to call me back, trying to save me—were truly my progenitor's last. She died in the arms of the man she loved. But even so, she died with regrets, and afraid. I'm the story she told herself in those last moments to give her courage. I was her bold, stupid, messy promise to McKinley, to the resistance, to humanity.

Although not for much longer, if this keeps up.

“We're not your enemy.” I squeak in pain as the pressure on my spine resumes. If she was any heavier, she might do some real damage. As it stands, my fellow clone is surprisingly light. About the weight of two or three toddlers. I pull at the shiv again, but it's snagged on a loose thread.
Great.
“Me. Hanna. Everyone else here. We're on the same side. The machines. They're the real enemy.”

“That's cute.” I hear her sniff, as though she's deeply congested. Has she been sick? “You think you understand the machines.”

“The higher echelon brainwashed you. I get it. But some part of you, deep down, must know this isn't a solution.” I tug at the shiv.
Come on, come on…
“If you're really a clone of Rhona Long, you'd know this is wrong. What you're doing, what you've done. The attack on McKinley, killing all those innocent people including some of our friends—doesn't that bother you even a little?”

Other Rhona lifts her foot and slams it back down on my back, almost causing me to lose the shiv. “Shut up. What do you know, anyway?” she says. “You're nothing. Just another half-baked clone. A science experiment. A waste.”
Who is she trying to convince? Me or herself?

“I'm not—”

“I said,
can it.
” She stomps on my back again. Though the blow doesn't come as hard as the first, the force still bows my head, and the carpet burns my cheek.

She lifts her leg, no doubt to deliver another kick, but this time I'm ready.

Flipping myself over, I roll partly out of the way. Her foot glances painfully off my hipbone instead. I reply by burying my shiv deep into her calf, punching right through her athletic pants. She howls, hobbling backward, cursing and swinging her knife wildly, as if trying to fend off a swarm of angry gnats.

I crabwalk away from her, marshaling my thoughts. My options are limited: make another run for it, giving her my back and another opportunity to attack me—or stand and fight. And possibly die.

I glance desperately at the bed.

I'm not leaving her alone with Hanna. That's for damn sure.

“You”
is all my doppelgänger manages to growl before I'm on top of her, wrestling once more for the knife. We tumble over one another like hyenas. Her knee punches into my stomach, my crotch. Mine hits her thigh and abdomen. I feel her fingers tangling in my hair, pulling my head back to expose a vulnerable expanse of neck.

Wham.
I break her nose with my elbow, and then we're on the floor.

Her gaze is glassy, and I realize I've temporarily stunned her. If she's not unconscious, she's very near it. I pry the knife free from her hand and stand.

My doppelgänger groans, sitting up slowly, and reaching up to her nose, which is already turning an angry purple. Blood gushes onto her fingertips, and I resist touching my own nose. I know what that's like, the nosebleeds. Weird seeing it from a third-person perspective though.

“You couldn't make this easy,” she complains, sounding like a stuffed-up child.

“Well. You know me. Whoa. Uh, uh,” I add when she starts to climb to her feet. I brandish the knife between us like it's a broadsword. “Stay where you are. We're going to have a little chat.”

She responds by ripping the shiv from her leg, grimacing and releasing a flood of dark blood over her ankle. I expect some kind of rebuke, but instead she continues white-knuckling the sharpened sliver. She still thinks she can take me. And she might be right.