Counterpart (21 page)

I raise the walkie, swatting off the attack, but she's relentless. Again and again, she swings at me, first downward, then across, and again, and again. I either dodge the attack or block it with my arm or the walkie. After the fifth or sixth attack, her shiv breaks through the tender, glass face of the walkie with a little crunch, severing any hope of calling for reinforcements.

“
Why
,” she says, her words broken up by every swing, “won't, you, just,
die
?”

The shiv bites into my hand, drawing blood and causing me to hiss. I drop the walkie.

“Stop this!” I think I say, or “Don't!” or “Please,
Rhona
!”

Maybe it's a sloppy combination of all three: hard, frantic syllables mangling one another like steel during a car crash. Whatever my words, she throws herself at me again, and with the shiv plummeting toward my face, I bring up the knife.

I'm crouched over the body, performing chest compressions—
twenty twenty-one twenty-two
—when the door chimes. Once, twice. I cross my hand over my forehead, trying to starve my panic through activity. It's not working. Nothing's working.

Twenty-six, twenty-seven…

Beneath me, the clone's eyes are lidded like coffins. They don't react to sound. She lies still as death, her slashed neck continuing to pump blood, the carpet guzzling it down. Even if I had the stamina to keep going, I don't have enough hands to stanch the flow and continue CPR simultaneously. It's already been five minutes. Five minutes since she impaled herself on my knife and passed out, the sudden drop in blood pressure sending her urgently to the floor. Only five minutes.

One two three four…

The door chimes a third time or maybe a fourth time, I'm not keeping count, and a moment later slides open, admitting Samuel and Ulrich into the room. I glance quickly over my shoulder at them, knowing how bad this looks, and at the same time completely not caring. I can't stop. If I stop, she'll die. If she dies…

If she dies.

What does that make me?

“Help,” I manage to gasp. The most simple, primal word in the English language. I dredge it up from the swamp of my thoughts. “Help. Please.”

Ulrich's hand comes down on my shoulder. I smack him away with bloody knuckles.

Ten eleven twelve
—

Or, wait, no. I've lost count.

“Rhona,” I hear Samuel call me, as if from a great distance.

“You're a doctor,” I blurt out, ignoring the dozens of times he's corrected me on that fact.
Not that kind of doctor,
he always says. But I don't care. Any doctor is better than no doctor right now. “Do something. I think it's her carotid artery. That's the one in the neck, right?”

“Was ist das?”
Ulrich asks, not sounding like himself. Shock or disgust or some other nameless emotion pours gravel into his throat. He has to clear it in order to add, “Is that…?”

Samuel comes and kneels beside me. “Rhona. Stop.”

“Her pulse,” I beg, still seesawing over the body. “Look for her pulse.”

He lifts her arm gently, almost lovingly. I watch his fingers search the inside of her wrist. His features remind me of an ancient statue: pale, hard, refusing any hint of feeling. So unlike him, more like Camus. But his eyes betray him. His Adam's apple bobs, and after a long moment, he shakes his head.

I scrabble for Samuel's hands, yanking him forward, and forcing him to apply pressure to the wound. Like he's told me before, he's not that kind of doctor. What does he know about reading pulses? “Here. Keep them here.”

Horror finally cracks his strained expression, and he tears his hands out of mine. “Stop it,” he says harshly. “Rhona, I'm sorry. But she's dead. She's dead.”

Samuel looks down, his hands frozen like they're covered in stinging insects instead of blood. He moves them first toward his shirt, then his pants legs, but ultimately stops short of both. Anywhere he wipes the blood, it'll still be on him. I'm covered in it, too. My blouse has been carved into two distinct sections, bisected by a dark crimson path in the shape of spray fired from a nozzle. My hands are red and sticky, like I've been devouring a strawberry-rhubarb pie.

I think I'm going to be sick.

Sinking back, I stare helplessly at the dead, balding woman in front of me. The one I killed.

I don't know what to do with my hands. My head aches, and I almost apply fingers to my temples and the back of my neck before remembering the blood. I suck down a breath, but the air in the room is viscous, hot and slimy, and sticks in my throat.

Samuel's voice shakes when he speaks, but he steadies me when I climb to my feet. “Rhon, what happened?”

“She attacked me,” I murmur numbly.

“Attacked you?”

“When I got back, she was already here. Waiting for me in the bathroom.”

“How did she get in?” Samuel asks before realizing what a stupid question it is. As clones, our biometrics would be identical. “Sorry. Do you know why she attacked you? Did she give a reason? Any kind of explanation?”

“She mentioned…
Highlander
?”

“There can be only one,” Samuel mumbles.

“Yeah. That's what she said.”

“Okay. So she ambushed you, and…” He rakes both sides of his face, ending at his mouth. Takes a beat. “You fought,” he finishes, eyes roaming over the tousled bedsheets, the damaged plaster on the walls. Even though I know he doesn't mean it to be, his statement feels more like an accusation.

I wrap my arms around myself, latching a hand on each elbow. It feels like a furnace in here, yet I can't quit shivering. My teeth chatter. “It was an accident…”

And that's when I remember.

The bed.
Hanna.

I rush past Samuel to the bed, falling to my hands and knees, before pushing back the comforter. I pause only long enough to shout, “Are you going to stand there or are you going to help me?” at Ulrich, who's standing above the other clone. He toes the corpse's side once, as if to make certain she is real. Or really dead.
“Ulrich!”

With Ulrich's help and Samuel's supervision—“careful of her shoulder”; “don't pull so hard, you'll strain her neck”—we maneuver Hanna out from underneath the bed, dragging half the comforter with her when her nail catches on a thick thread.

Except when we turn her over, it's not Hanna.

This woman's nose is too large, and her lips are too thin, while the bones of her face are hidden beneath fat, giving her a rounded look. She's wearing urban military fatigues, which are grey and white, unlike typical camouflage, but even that isn't much of a clue. Many McKinley personnel of various occupations wear these on base. As for how she died, a vast quantity of blood down the front of her uniform tells most of the story; her throat has been cut, the skin parted by a dull knife.
Like the one I just used.

But it's not Hanna. It's not Hanna, thank God. It's not her. Ugly relief passes through me as I stand back up. The feeling is almost as powerful as vertigo, and produces a similar dizziness and confusion. Because I'm grateful, and I know I shouldn't be. What kind of monster feels relief at the death of another human being? But I already know the answer to that question.
The kind currently trapped in a zero-sum game.

“Do you know her?” Samuel asks me, leaning down to search for a pulse, even though the woman's milky-blue eyes stare up at us emptily.

I keep silent, not wanting to admit the truth, that I have no idea who she is. At best, my ignorance is insensitive, given the fact that she apparently died for my sins. At worst, it's yet another indicator of how out of my depth I am as commander of this base, at least at present, when I don't even recognize one of my own.

“I know her,” Ulrich says before I have to admit I don't.

“Who is she?” I ask.

“Sandra Westen. Your guard until morning. She relieved me after I helped deliver the machine to Zelda. After you ran off with this one.” Ulrich eyes Samuel, irritated, but the latter doesn't see it. Samuel's too busy dragging a sheet from the bed and laying it over the dead woman's body. “I suggested she try looking for you back here. Apparently she did.”

“And met the wrong Rhona.”

Ulrich nods stiffly.

“That reminds me,” I continue, talking to keep the silence at bay, a heavy silence packed with guilt and anxiety, enough to crush me, if I let it. “Why are you both here? How did you know I was in trouble?”

“We didn't. Not exactly.” Samuel rips the fitted linen from the bed and moves toward my clone. He hesitates, studying her face. His eyes express a deep remorse I'm not willing to confront in myself just yet.
I didn't have a
choice,
I want to scream at him.
She gave me no choice.
It's not a lie, but I'm not sure it's the truth either. Every time I replay those last moments in my head, it goes differently. She came at me. I swung.
She
came at
me.

Didn't she?

I dimly remember a shuffle of feet, the feeling of flesh giving beneath the knife, her eyes widening into shocked plates…

Stop it.
I want to beat my fists against my brain.
Stop it.

My mouth is suddenly parched. I swallow, trying to keep the building hysteria from my voice. “Not exactly?” I repeat absently.

“Camus—” Ulrich cuts himself off, given some signal from Samuel behind me.

I turn. “What about Camus?”

Samuel has finished covering up the bodies and regards me, frowning. “We'll tell you all about it, I promise.” Fetching the comforter from the ground, he throws it around my shoulders, holding it in place so the heavy blanket doesn't slide off. I clutch the insides, still trembling.
There goes my blanket-burrito theory.
Having Samuel here feels like the only thing keeping me from flying apart. “But not right now.”

“What? No. I mean, yes. Yes, right now.”

“Rhona, slow down.” His voice is unusually firm, like a pediatrician with a stubborn patient. “You're in shock.”

He attempts to guide me to the bed; I lock my knees. “Tell me what's happening with Camus.”

“He was found tied up. Drugged,” Ulrich says. Samuel shoots him a dirty look, but the German is unfazed. “She should know.”

A strange calm settles over me. Probably the shock. “Where?”

“Cafeteria storage room,” Samuel says. “That's why we came to check on you. There were concerns you might be in danger as well.”

“Is he all right?”

“He's conscious, last I heard.” Samuel must read something in my expression, because he quickly adds, “I mean, yeah. I'm sure he's going to be all right.” He rubs my shoulder through the blanket, and I release a shuddering breath. “At the moment, I'm more worried about you. Rhona, you—”

“I know what I did, Samuel,” I interrupt, pulling away from him. “You don't have to remind me.”

“I was just going to suggest you sit down,” he says quietly.

Oh. Right.

I glance at the covered bodies, too close to the bed. The sight alone pushes bees into my stomach. Neither of the corpses smells yet, but I'm struck by a sudden urge to plug my nose and hold my breath. Even stronger is the desire to escape. “I need to get out of here,” I announce, letting the comforter fall. Samuel leans down to pick it up but I wave him off. “Not in five minutes. Now.”

“Okay,” he says.

“I need to see Camus.”

“He's in Medical. We should really get you looked at first.”

“Wait.” Already halfway to the door, another thought stops me cold, and spins me back around. I feel myself rallying a little. Right now, McKinley's fate—and humanity's, by proxy—is intricately tied to the decisions we make in this tiny room. I need to delegate from a position of strength, as a military commander; no one benefits from the leadership of a scared little girl.

“What about the…them?” I dart a look at the bodies, unable to say the word aloud. “No one can know what happened here. It doesn't matter that she's not me. She was still Rhona. If she became a traitor, logic follows I could, too, under the right circumstances.”

“No. Not you,” Samuel says, with such confidence my heart twinges. Some days, like today, I feel his faith is entirely misplaced. “But I agree, secrecy's probably best. At least where it concerns our foreign allies. We should inform the council, though. It'll further prove your innocence.”

At least for the attack on McKinley.
I pinch the bridge of my nose, weighing the pros and cons of the situation. “Fine. We'll tell the council. Ulrich, see if you can raise Hawking on the walkie. Be vague.”

“
Ja.
Let me do that.” Ulrich mimes raising a walkie-talkie to his mouth, never breaking eye contact with me.

Right. I stole his walkie. And then broke it.

“We'll figure it out down on Medical.” I start for the door again.

“It is a bad idea to leave the bodies here, unattended,” Ulrich says. “Someone could stumble in. Janitor, maintenance worker…”

“He's right,” Samuel says, weariness dragging at his tone. “Someone should stay. I'll do it.”

“No, Samuel.” The idea of leaving him behind, alone in this dead space, however briefly, is unacceptable to me. There are ghosts here—angry, awful ones, with eyes empty and accusing. I don't know what these deaths will do to Samuel. I'm not sure what they're doing to me.

“I need you,” I add quietly, hating that I'm still unable to cut the umbilical between us, months after choosing Camus. I'd be lying if I said a small part of me didn't still gravitate toward my best friend, especially in times of crisis. When I'm with Samuel, I never have to pretend I'm strong if I'm feeling weak. “Ulrich can stay.”

“Danke,”
Ulrich remarks dryly.

“No one will hassle a big, burly German. It's a compliment,” I assure him.

“But I'm what, a pushover?” Samuel says.

“That's not what I meant.”

“No. I know.” He lets his head hang for a moment, breathes out slowly, watching the floor. When his gaze returns to me, his jaw is stiff, his eyes determined. “Still, it should be me. I'm responsible for this. Please”—he holds up a hand to stop my objection—“don't say I'm not. Rhon, you and I both know it's true. Consider the facts: I created the clones, I abandoned them to the machines.” Agony streaks through his face. “The attack on the base, and now this one on you. I caused this. There's no way around it. Inadvertently, maybe, but you know what they say about good intentions.