Counterpart (20 page)

“All things being equal, how do you imagine this scenario ends?” I step toward the door's control panel. “You stab me, I stab you. It's going to be messy. Painful. I'm just saying, I wouldn't recommend trying.”

“Equal,” she repeats, licking her dry, chapped lips. “What makes you think we're equal?”

“Have you looked in a mirror?”

She snorts. “We have the mind and body of a dead woman. So what? That doesn't make us equal. That makes us ghosts.”

“Hold that thought.” The panel's in reach, but communication is still spotty throughout the base. I'm not sure who to get a hold of, even if I can reach someone—Hawking, maybe? Someone on the council who could keep this enormous secret, but also send help for Hanna. Leaving isn't an option. My clone needs to be watched. Contained.

I push for comms.

Nothing. Not even static to suggest communication is possible.

My doppelgänger grins up at me like a skull, her eyes vacant and dead. “Technical troubles?” This woman may have woken up as Rhona, but she's gone down a very different path. Dread prickles the flesh of my arms again. I can't help imagining what horrible things the machines could have done to make her this way.

To make
me
this way.

“Nothing I can't handle.” Somehow, I know she's behind this, too. This entire ambush was meticulously planned. Makes sense she'd take out comms, eliminating any possibility of outside interference. “While we wait, let's start our discussion with something simple. An icebreaker, if you will. When were you…born? How long have the machines had you?”

“You mean, what did they do to me?” She shrugs, still wearing that empty smile, studying her own blood oozing down the shiv. “What
didn't
they do to me? While you were here stealing my life and everyone in it, I was living in the dark. Alone. Samuel chose you, and he left the rest of us to rot.”

“I'm sorry.” I doubt it's any consolation, but I mean it. I genuinely grieve for what she and our fellow clones have gone through. I can barely imagine it. The only one who might be able to relate is Ulrich, and it's doubtful he'd want to swap captivity stories. “But that isn't how it happened. The machines were attacking the facility. We were forced to evacuate—flee for our lives. Samuel didn't make a choice; I was the only one ready to move. That's all.” Put that way, I realize for the first time how lucky I am. A week or two of slower development, and I could be this other Rhona. I'd hate me, too. “We both thought the facility had been destroyed. If we'd known—”

“What?” She practically bites the word in half. “If you'd known, what would you have done?”

“We would have gone back for you.”

“And risk losing your place as McKinley's savior? Yeah, right.”

I frown. “You have a pretty low opinion of me. And Samuel, too.”

She cuts her eyes away from me. “Is that a question?”

“Just an observation.” This is a dead end. Time to switch rails. “You said
the rest of us.
How many others survived?”

“Hundreds,” she says, still grinning. It's obviously untrue. Based on what Samuel told me, only three others could possibly exist, after her and whatever Rhona is broadcasting lies. “Thousands, even. Whole dumps full of pretty, redheaded Rhona Longs. I hear they performed badly at Christmas.”

The joke's in poor taste. Which pretty much confirms whose brain cells she has, if there were any lingering doubts. “Now you want to be cheeky. Where was this good humor five minutes ago?”

“Not every day you get to chat with yourself.”

“If you wanted to chat, you could've come without the knife. Why try to kill me, anyway?”

She thinks for a long moment.
“Highlander.”

“What?”

“You know. There can be only one.”

I shake my head. Those words mean nothing to me, apart from their literal meaning.

Other Rhona squints, slowly arriving at a smile. “You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you? Wow.” Her smile fades, her enthusiasm reduced to something more poignant. Something almost sad. “The machines were right. You're defective, too.”

“I'm not defective, and you didn't answer the question.”

She presses her finger against the point of the shiv. “There's at least a few others. Heard they tortured one with a car battery.
Bzz.
The machines told her Samuel was dead, McKinley's leadership corrupt, yada yada. She needed more convincing to play her role.”

“Her role?”

She stops toying with the shiv, perhaps realizing she's said too much.

A lightbulb goes on inside my head. “She's the one who gave the fake broadcast. Who lured Wrangell base's soldiers away.”

Still nothing from the peanut gallery. Her silence is as good as confirmation.

“Right. Fine. I get the point of that. But what about the machine with the digital face?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The doppelgänger machine. I don't know what you call it. It has our face, our memories. Not to mention a really bad desire to wear people's skin. Ringing any bells?”

Her expression stays blank throughout my explanation, then she makes a great show of remembering. “Oh! Yeah, I might know a little something about that. Come closer and I'll tell you.”

“Nice try. What's the point of that machine? Why make it?”

“I didn't make it.” She sounds offended at the prospect.

“Then why?”

“Isn't it obvious? To screw with you.”

I frown. “I don't think that's it. At least, not the whole explanation. You know what I think? I think the machines sent it as a sort of…auxiliary power system. In case you failed, in case you had a change of heart and couldn't go through with it. Or if you were stopped. Machines love their redundancies, huh?”

She replies with a challenging tilt of her head, continuing to hold that grin like the rictus of a creepy doll. I'm pretty sure I hit the nail on the head; she just doesn't want to admit the machines don't trust her, or that she's fallible.
Or that she had a choice.

“
Maybe, in a worst-case scenario, they thought it could pass for you,” I continue, and then toss out some bait, to see if she bites. “Like down in Water Treatment. I mean, Larry was fooled. Was it also the doppelgänger machine's plan to poison the water supply with fluoride? Pretty genius, actually.”

“Please,” she says, scoffing.

“What?”

“I know what you're doing. It's not going to work.”

“Fine. I know it was you on the biology level, talking to Larry. I know it was
you
planning to poison the water supply, but I've implemented regulations that will prevent that from happening. How's that for honesty?”

My doppelgänger lets out another raspy laugh. “You're bailing out a sinking ship with a bucket. But whatever floats your boat.” I can tell by the way her cheeks lift slightly that she's proud of the pun. Damn, she's so much like me, it's scary.

“So what's the machines' endgame here?” I keep an eye on her while I pull my broken walkie from its holster on my hip. The damage isn't as extensive as I initially feared. In fact, it looks as though only the battery compartment has broken open, the batteries themselves askew. A simple fix, if I'm right. “After you killed me, what then? Did they really think you could take my place so easily?”

Her gaze focuses on the walkie. “Don't,” she warns.

I pop the batteries back into place. “Did you know Camus almost died in those attacks?” At the mention of Camus's name, her entire expression shifts. Her shoulders visibly tense. “He had just been on one of the elevators before the explosion destroyed them. Seconds and luck. That's the only thing that saved him.”

“He didn't die,” she responds after a beat. “That's what's important.”

“Are you kidding me? What's wrong with you? This is
Camus
we're talking about. Did the machines carve that out of you, too?”

Her fist chokes the rubber grip of the shiv. “I
did
this for Camus!”

“What?”

“Don't you dare suggest I don't love him.” She bares her teeth. “I love him more than you ever will. And I'm going to be the one who saves him!”

“Again—what? What are you talking about? You clearly don't know him if you think terrorism is the way to Camus's heart.”

“He'll hate me for a short time, but then he'll see I made the right choice. The only choice.”

However hostile my genetic twin is, speaking to this Rhona feels strangely like chatting with the original. I imagine this is the same attitude that helped her justify the decision to clone herself in the first place and not tell Camus. The same arrogance that told her she knows better. Loathing swirls around the pit of my stomach like molten rock, because I recognize the same flaw in myself.

“Why don't we just ask him”—I wag the walkie at her, ignoring my dry mouth—“and see what he thinks?”

“I'm warning you…”

“Warning
me
? Hate to break it to you, girlie, but you've lost.” She struggles to her feet, the skin around her eyes wrinkling in distress. “Come on,” I say wearily, “Don't make this any worse than it already is. Let me help you.”

“Help me?”

“Yes. You're obviously sick.”
In more ways than one.
“Samuel and Matsuki can run tests. We have equipment and surgeons…”

She laughs—really, it's more of a cackle. Tears gather in her eyes, and she wipes a few that trickle down her cheek. Her fingers leave scars of blood. “God. I am such a moron. No wonder it was so easy to infiltrate McKinley. You actually think humanity still has a chance. You still believe in people.”

Her tone, utterly condescending, cold and inhuman, chills me. “You say that like it's a bad thing, but look around you. The resistance is stronger than ever, despite this setback. We've pushed the machines out of Alaska, we're making headway in Canada. We're winning the war.”

“You call this winning?” She moves toward me, shiv tucked against her leg.

“Hey. Not so fast. Stay where you are.”

“This isn't victory,
Commander.
” Not for the first time, the word “Commander” weighs me down, like a block of concrete tethered to my legs. One day I think it's going to drown me. “It's a slow, agonizing death for everyone you love. The resistance, as you call it, is just the wounded stag you're dragging behind your car.”

“Interesting point of view. Here's my counterargument: screw you.”

Juggling the knife, I smack the walkie a couple of times before switching it on, and am pleased when I finally get feedback. I'm still on the same channel as before, as evidenced by the Polish voices discussing a matter of no small importance. I can't understand the words, but I recognize the tone.

“I don't know everything that's happened to you, and I doubt you'd willingly tell me,” I say to my fellow clone, “but let me tell you what's happened here in your absence. While the machines were busy rinsing your mind of basic human decency, I was fighting tooth and nail for my old life. You were dealt a bad hand; so was I. When I showed up here, the council worried I was a machine plant, sent to sabotage the base. Camus could barely stand to look at me, let alone—”
Touch me. Love me.
I clench my jaw, heading off the memories. They're in the past. They don't have power over me anymore. Camus and I are fine. We're fine.

“My point is, returning to McKinley wasn't easy for me either. I made sacrifices. Everyone in this base has. Now it's your turn. So nut up or shut up, sister. Because whether you like it or not, you're joining Team Human.”

I cycle one channel down on the walkie, hoping to raise a council member.

My doppelgänger takes another step toward me, backing me closer to the door. “Last chance,” she says. “Drop the walkie.”

“Yeah. Let me just do that.” I raise the walkie to my mouth. Press the button to speak. “This is Command—”

Even expecting her to do something rash, I'm not fully prepared when she dives at my legs. The force bends me in half, nearly sweeping me off my feet entirely. My arms fold over her as I try steadying myself, and I accidentally graze her back with my knife. If it hurts her, and it must a little, she issues no verbal complaint. Instead, she continues forging ahead, driving us both into the wall.

Her focused silence is more disturbing than her constant pessimism and snark. This confrontation, unlike the first, has an alarming air of finality about it. I believe, deep down, that she didn't
really
want to kill me until now—
All evidence to the contrary,
the reasonable portion of my brain quips—that she's simply out of other options. Her plans to save Camus, to protect Camus, hinge on my death. The death of the resistance. I'm the pin in the grenade. I keep thinking she won't do this because we share the same chromosomes, the same pulse, but the opposite is true. Any woman is capable of atrocity under the guise of devotion. Even me. At least this version of me, and she's not totally unrecognizable.

That's what scares me most. Not the fear I could become her. But that I already
am
her. She's just a little further down the cold, hard road I'm currently on, standing beneath a pole light, casting the shadow of a monster I know well. The demon, Preservation, who says all things are acceptable to save the man you love.

Other Rhona tries to wedge the shiv up underneath my arm like an assassin's dagger. I feel it tear through my clothes and some skin before I knee her in the groin, forcing her backward. It's a blow I'm confident would debilitate a man, but I'm not so lucky here. She holds herself for only a moment—and then the shiv is coming back at me again.