“And you never see those guys anymore?” Brent asked.
“Not in years. We didn’t keep in touch. I haven’t even thought about them, to tell you the truth. That’s pathetic, isn’t it?”
“It kind of is.”
“I don’t think I have one single friend,” Jeremiah said after a moment. “Not one actual fucking real friend.”
“That’s really pathetic,” Brent told him.
“Well, maybe I do have one friend.”
“If you say it’s me,” Brent said, “I think I might cry or something.”
“No, not you. Louie. That dog is my best friend.”
Brent laughed. “I hate to break it to you, pal, but that dog hates you.”
“No,” Jeremiah told him. “That dog loves me.” He wanted to reiterate that it was the clone Louie hated, not him. But somehow he had the wits, even in his drunken head, to stop talking about it in front of the camera.
“You know, Jeremiah,” Brent said finally, “I am your friend.”
Jeremiah opened his eyes to gauge Brent’s expression, but he was still leaning back with his eyes closed, so he couldn’t tell if Brent was being serious.
“Yeah, well, I was kind of forced on you. You didn’t have much choice in the matter. If you met me before, I would have been that uptight asshole we watch on the monitor every day. I would have been the clone. You’d have hated me. God, he makes me hate me.”
“You’re probably right,” Brent said. “Sometimes I almost forget you’re the same person. What the hell happened to make you like that?”
“I don’t know,” Jeremiah said. “Maybe I take after my father.”
“Was he an uptight asshole, too?”
“Beats me,” Jeremiah told him. “He took off when I was a kid. Up and left. Walked out on us and never came back. He was probably an asshole, though. He was probably king of the assholes.”
“That’s harsh,” Brent said, his voice laced with a barely concealed yawn.
“Damn right it’s harsh. I mean, what kind of father does that?”
“Maybe he had his reasons,” Brent said. “I mean, who knows, maybe your mother was cheating on him.”
“Fuck you.”
“Sorry. That came out wrong. I just mean, well, with Diana and all. When you found out she was cheating on you, did it make you want to leave?”
“I thought about it, sure, but I’d never actually do it.”
“If you think about it, you did actually do it. You never talked to her about it. You never faced it. You left. You walked out. It just took you a little longer. And you did it in a way that would leave you blameless.”
The truth in the words stung.
Jeremiah got himself up off the couch to pee. He continued the discussion, turning his head and bellowing out the open bathroom door.
“I don’t know what happened to me. When did I become such a wimp? I wasn’t always like this, you know. Things are going to change. You hear me?” He waited, but Brent said nothing.
“No wonder I didn’t have any friends,” he said as he stumbled back into the room. “Don’t ever let yourself get weak, Brent. Don’t ever forget that you have to face things like a man. Stand up and just face it. Problems don’t just go away on their own. You have to do something.”
He was slightly annoyed to see Brent was completely passed out on the couch and had missed out on all of his sage advice. He considered for one minute trying to locate a green magic marker. Instead, he just went into the bedroom and slept, fully clothed, but soundly, for the first time in what felt like months.
Chapter 36
Days 167-168
The next morning, while Brent still snored on the living room couch, Jeremiah went into the bathroom and made a ritual of shaving off the scruff of the beard he’d been working on again, first carefully trimming and then pulling the razor over it twice. He wanted to look as much his clone’s double as possible when he finally confronted him. It would add a certain drama to the moment, he thought, and he’d certainly earned a dramatic moment.
Once they were both moving, fed and sufficiently caffeinated, he and Brent spent the whole of Monday afternoon and much of the evening in careful, deliberate preparation for the task ahead. Over breakfast, with the otherwise empty blender pulverizing the rest of the ice from the freezer, Brent asked Jeremiah to repeat the cell phone number he was to call when the deed had been done. Jeremiah told him it would have been far easier to just program the number into the burner phone he’d secured for him.
“It’s too risky. If anyone finds a cell with my number in it, what’s that going to look like?”
He went over and over the maze-like path from the apartment to the exit doors.
“Right down the hallway, out one set of double doors and into the parking lot,” Jeremiah said. “I know.”
“Two sets of doors, Jeremiah. The second set of doors gets you outside.”
After lunch, Brent paced the floors of the apartment, his brow knitted in worried concentration, and muttered to himself under his breath. It was a far cry from the carefree, whiskey-fueled confidence of the night before.
“If this is going to work,” he told Jeremiah. “It has to be exact, down to detail. Nothing gets left to chance. We need to go over it again. What time do we start arguing?”
“At two-thirty in the goddamn morning. And I’m going to need some sleep before that. Or a few pots of coffee.”
“And where do you aim the knife?”
“Right shoulder. Away from the neck.”
“Jesus, Jeremiah! Left shoulder! I’m right-handed!”
“Right,” Jeremiah said. “I mean, correct. Your left shoulder. Got it.”
“Let’s play IF.”
Jeremiah sighed and looked at the ceiling. “Can’t we just keep the blender going?”
“I’d rather play the game,” he insisted, and had his headset on before Jeremiah even sat down on the couch.
“This is ridiculous,” Jeremiah told him.
“We can practice our moves,” Brent insisted, handing over a headset and glaring at him.
Jeremiah sat down on the couch and put his gear on. “Fine,” he acquiesced. “We’ll practice.”
If Scott were watching, he’d see only two men nursing massive hangovers and playing an inexplicably long video game. They were meticulous about keeping their eyes to the screen so as not to give anything away with their faces.
You know what to do when Mel takes you to your house? Brent typed.
I wait in bushes until clone opens garage door in the morning. About 7 when door opens, I go in. Hit kill switch to bring door down. Kill clone. Call you.
Camera!
Sorry. Hit camera above my right shoulder. Then door. Got it.
That’s important!
I know!
Hit ViMed camera!
I know! Okay! Shut up already!
Okay. You ready for it?
Sort of...except stabbing you. That’s tough.
Don’t worry. That’s why we’re in here. Let’s practice.
Fucking stupid, Jeremiah typed. It wasn’t the practicing he was worried about.
Humor me. Let’s go.
For an hour or more, their avatars battled in hand-to-hand combat amid the scream of AI grenades and mortar blasts. Jeremiah was expert, by now, at manipulating Clyde’s movements and deftly had him overpowering Brent’s man with high karate kicks and undercut punches that nearly knocked his head off. He couldn’t, of course, add any such ninja-style flourishes in real life, but it felt cathartic to do it in-game. He could wield the virtual knife pretty well, too, after a while, unsheathing it from a halter at his side and twirling it, baton-style, in one fluid move. But the first few times he stabbed it, he killed Brent’s avatar, once actually severing the entire arm, and the simulation wou
ld pause and start all over again.
Oops, he typed. Sorry!
Another time, Brent’s guy kicked Clyde’s feet out from under him and ended up with the knife at Clyde’s throat.
Stop that, Jeremiah typed. That won’t happen.
I’m going to fight back.
Eventually, he figured out that he needed to overpower Brent’s avatar first with a few well-placed punches, get him to the ground, pin him there and go for one quick jab in the shoulder. No fancy moves, just a series of careful actions. They practiced it over and over until Brent seemed satisfied and finally took off his headset.
“There!” Jeremiah said triumphantly, adrenaline still pumping. “Satisfied? Had enough yet? I can beat you every time.”
“You say that like it’s going to be easy or something,” Brent said. “Don’t get cocky about this, Jeremiah. Remember, you’re not Clyde. You are a middle-aged marketing manager from Massachusetts. You’re not a warrior. It won’t be that easy.”
By early evening, Jeremiah found himself lying on the bed, unable to sleep. His mind was racing, Brent’s pacing in the kitchen sounded like line-dancing, and he was seriously doubting whether he’d be able to take a knife to his only friend once the time came. Stabbing him a hundred times over in virtual reality was one thing. In the real world, there was blood and guilt. Brent had reassured him that he’d “take care of it.” Jeremiah had no idea what that meant.
He closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind. He practiced the breathing exercises that he’d used so long ago, when he was first connected to the clone through the Meld. It had helped him then to stave off the terror of being sucked into the dark emptiness of his double’s blank mind. It didn’t work for him now. The moment he began to relax, new questions cropped up to trouble him: Where would he bury the body of the clone? What if the clone screamed and a neighbor came over at the wrong moment? What would happen once he took over his life again? How was he supposed to just seamlessly ease back into a life he hadn’t actually been living for six months? And how was he going to handle Parker? What if Parker noticed something was different?
After a few futile hours, Jeremiah got out of bed and went into the kitchen to find Brent putting two low-fat frozen dinners in the oven. His attempt to get a beer from the fridge was met with quick disapproval.
“Don’t start drinking now, Jeremiah. We still have a few hours to go. You need your wits.”
“Look who’s suddenly found his inner teetotaler? You’re right, though,” he said, and took a bottled water instead.
They ate in relative silence. There was little left to say. The only thing they had to do was wait.
Sometime after 1:00 a.m. they each took a single shot of whiskey and sat down on the couch, waiting for it to take effect. They had to force an argument, and if it was going to be enough for Jeremiah to take a knife to Brent, it had to be real.
“So,” Jeremiah began tentatively. “You’re an asshole.”
Brent rolled his eyes. “Sticks and stones,” he said, and leaned back on the couch. “You’ll have to do better than that.”
“Too much pressure,” Jeremiah told him. “I can’t argue on command.”
“Let’s just talk, then. You know, you never really told me how you got involved in any of this. What made you agree to have yourself cloned?”
“I don’t know,” Jeremiah said thoughtfully. “A lot of things, I guess. I needed a change. Something different. I think I was stuck, you know? Nothing was exciting to me anymore. I wasn’t going anywhere. Too many problems. Too many headaches. Then there was the $10 million, of course. That didn’t hurt.”
“So, they bought you right out of your life?”
“Yeah. For $10 million, they did.”
“And look where it’s got you,” Brent said with a smile that looked more like a sneer. “Your job is on the line, your kid is a punk and your wife is gone. Your life is in ruins. You’re worse off now than you ever were. And now, after all this, now you won’t even get the money. Kind of sucks, doesn’t it? Everything was for nothing.”
“None of that was my fault,” he said, real defensiveness creeping into his voice. “I didn’t do any of that. It just happened.”
“It just happened? That’s a lame excuse. Of course it’s your fault. You’re the one who walked out on your life, left it in the hands of some copy, a facsimile. This is all on you.” Brent reached for the bottle, poured himself another shot and threw it back.
“That’s not fair. The other day you were all, It’s not your fault. Besides, what happened to changing the future, all your spouting off about bettering mankind, saving the world? What happened to the power of your precious science? That’s why you signed on, isn’t it? Isn’t that what you’re doing here?”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t walk out on my life and my family. Nobody bought me. And I actually am a scientist, remember? This is actually my job.”
“Fuck you, Brent.”
“You ever wonder why they picked you for this?” he asked, unrelenting. Jeremiah felt the back of his neck grow hot. “You ever ask yourself that?”
“Because they knew I could handle myself, I suppose. Because I’m levelheaded. Careful. Probably not a concept you would understand.”
“Because you’re easy,” Brent said, moving forward on the couch to make his point. “Because you’re a pushover and you let the whole world just walk all over you. Because you don’t have a backbone. You have no balls. You’re a wimp.”
Jeremiah stood up and glared down at him.
“Look at yourself!” Brent said, not threatened in the slightest bit. “Look at your life. I’ve seen it. I’ve watched that clone day in and day out for six months. And that’s you up there. You know that, right? You just do what you’re told, what’s expected. You just go along with it. The people you work with don’t give a crap about you. Your son basically ignores you. Your wife could barely look you in the eyes. And you just pretend it’s all hunky-dory. You’re weak. You’re hollow.”
“Shut the fuck up! You don’t know me. You don’t know me at all!”
“I guess that’s what comes of having no father,” Brent pressed on, not missing a beat. “Then again, that’s probably why he left in the first place. Maybe he saw the same thing in you all those years ago. Maybe that’s what drove him away. He figured it was hopeless and just took off.”
Jeremiah’s whole body clenched, and he grabbed Brent by the shirt collar and pulled him off the couch to his feet. Brent laughed. From this distance, Jeremiah could see his eyes were glassy and smelled the whiskey on his breath.
“And then you did the same exact thing,” Brent pushed. “You just took off. Walked out on your family the first chance you got. Don’t you see that? Don’t you get it? You can’t escape your own destiny. You were doomed from the start to repeat the same mistakes of your father. It’s a never-ending cycle and you can’t stop it. Your son will end up the same way: Weak. Pathetic. Hollow.”
Jeremiah couldn’t contain himself another minute. Before he even had time to think about his own actions, he pulled back his right arm, holding Brent’s shirt with his left, and punched him hard and square in the face. Brent’s head reeled to the left and he fell backward, hitting the back of his head on the arm of the couch, blood already coming out his nose, his mouth. And before he could get his balance back, Jeremiah hit him again, pulled him forward away from the couch and then pushed him back hard. He fell on the floor.
Brent shook his head and slowly got on his feet. He took two or three unsteady steps toward Jeremiah, looked him right in the eye, almost nose to nose with him now, and showed bloodstained teeth behind a deliberate, joyless smile.
“Diana probably crashed her car on purpose,” he snarled. “Just to be rid of you.”
Jeremiah stood still for another instant, his breath coming out in slow, shallow spurts. He pushed Brent back h
ard against the wall and burst past him into the kitchen. He grabbed a knife from the counter—only half recollecting in that moment that this had all been carefully planned—and then he went back and jabbed the thing three inches in and out of Brent’s left shoulder. Somewhere in the back of his mind he wondered how he’d remembered to put the knife into Brent in exactly the way they had rehearsed. Brent went silent. His face went slack and his eyes went wide and finally closed. Something in his expression seemed to relax and he fell slightly forward, right onto Jeremiah, and uttered a single word into his ear before falling limply to the floor.
“Sorry.”
It was enough to snap Jeremiah back into his senses. He looked down in dismay at his friend, who was slumped now at his feet, but still awake and perceptibly smiling, despite his injury.
Jeremiah bent down to fish Brent’s key card out of his pocket, taking time to let his hand linger on Brent’s shoulder for just an instant. Then he slipped the bloody knife into his sock, opened the door and ran. Without thinking, he somehow made it down the hallway, out the doors, through the dark woods and into the next empty parking lot. He was standing under a broken streetlight just as a young woman pulled up in a silver Volkswagen Beetle.
Chapter 37
Day 168
Jeremiah was crouched behind the tangle of an overgrown rhododendron bush at the side of his house, the knees of his pants already soaked through from the damp ground. A chill in the air kept him from sweating, but the tension in his muscles and his frantic heartbeat were harder to control. He fingered the smoothness of the knife handle between his thumb and fingers and tried to slow his shallow breathing with a sort of meditation. After all the trouble to get himself here, all the sleepless nights he’d spent imagining this very moment, all he wanted now was to have it over with. The sun had been up for more than an hour, but it offered little warmth. He’d been hiding here since 5:00 a.m. and his body shook with the simple desire to stand up and stretch. He shifted his weight from one knee to the other and rolled his shoulders and neck to get a little relief. The last thing he wanted was to cramp up at the crucial moment. He’d only have seconds to get himself under that garage door if he wanted to do this right. He needed to take the clone by surprise. The shock factor was crucial. He figured he probably could have stood up for a second or two—after all, any of his neighbors would only see Jeremiah in his own side yard—but he didn’t risk it.
The Mirror Man Page 24
