The Mirror Man

by Jane Gilmartin

“Use it how? What are you going to do with a finger? Wave it around? What good is it? You were supposed to have a body! You were supposed to kill the clone, Jeremiah! A finger isn’t going to do us any good. It isn’t enough to prove anything!”

  “It might be,” he said. “We need to think. It might be enough. I mean, I have a finger in my pocket with my own DNA and ten more of them on my own hands. We can use this. We can. We just have to figure out how.”

  “You go back to them with that and they’re just going to lock you up and take the finger. And that’s if you’re lucky. It isn’t going to work,” Brent said.

  “I can bring it to someone,” Jeremiah said. “I can use it to show someone what they’ve done. We can prove it with this. I think this can work. At least it’s something.”

  Brent’s phone rang, the sound startling them both more than it should have. Brent looked at the number.

  “Scott again,” he said. “We’ve got to do something fast, Jeremiah. We can’t stay in the woods forever.”

  “I know a guy on the New York Times,” he said. “Walt Thompson—a science editor. I know this guy—he’ll go public with it. He is convinced that corporate America is to blame for everything from global warming to peanut allergies. Believe me, he’ll jump at the chance. He fucking hates Meld.”

  “Yeah, and how do you propose we get to this science editor of yours?” Brent asked as his phone rang yet again. “They’re looking for us. We can’t risk it. They have too much at stake here. Who knows how far they’ll go to bring you back.”

  “We’ll mail it to him, then. Pack it up on ice, with a note explaining the whole thing. He’ll know what to do.”

  “Yeah, he’ll know exactly what to do when some lunatic conspiracy nut cuts off his own finger and sends it to him in the goddamn US mail—because that’s what it’s going to look like, you know. He’s going to think it’s your finger. He’s going to think you’re crazy and that you’re stalking him. Then he’ll have you arrested. It won’t work.”

  “Wait a minute,” Jeremiah said with a sinking feeling in his gut. “That’s it, Brent—that’s exactly what we have to do.”

  “What?”

  “I have to send him my own finger. We have to have both of them. Mine and the clone’s. Same finger from the same hand. We put them together, that’ll prove it. That’s what we need.”

  “Are you insane? You’re not going to cut off your own finger! Besides, your friend won’t have any reason to think you didn’t just cut off a finger from each hand.”

  “No, this will work,” Jeremiah told him. “If we cut off the same finger—he ought to be able to tell. The fingerprints will match up. As far as I know, the prints are the same for me and the clone. It will be two of the same finger. Last time I checked, it’s not very common for someone to have two left index fingers! This will work. It’s our best chance.”

  “You’re crazy. I’m not going to sit here and watch you cut off your finger.”

  “You’re not going to watch—you’re going to have to do it.”

  “Absolutely not,” Brent said. “No fucking way I’m doing that!”

  “Brent, I can’t do it myself. I won’t be able to do it. I know my limits.”

  Brent’s phone rang again. “I have to take this,” he said. “It’s Mel.”

  Jeremiah listened as Brent’s voice quickly became agitated. “What do you mean Charles Scott is coming to see you? At work? He’s coming to the museum?”

  Jeremiah gestured for him to put the call on speaker.

  “No, to my studio,” she said.

  “Mel, where are you? Are you there now?”

  “Yeah. Like I told you, I’ve been here all night, since I dropped that weird old guy off like you asked me to. And where the hell are you?” she asked. “Your boss, Dr. Scott, was asking all kinds of questions.”

  “What questions? What did you tell him?”

  “Like when I saw you last, whether you’d left town. You told me you were working through the next two days. Why wouldn’t your boss know that? What’s going on, Brent? Where have you been for the past two days?”

  “Mel, what did you say to him?”

  “Nothing! I told him I haven’t talked to you since Sunday. That the last time I saw you was when you asked me to help out with that friend of yours. And he was asking all about that, too. What’s going on, Brent? But he made it sound like there was some kind of problem or something. He made it sound like he thought you were at home. Where the hell are you?”

  “I can’t tell you, Mel. Everything’s fine, but I can’t tell you.”

  “Are you in some kind of trouble?”

  “No, nothing like that, there’s no trouble,” he said. “But, Mel, you have to listen to me. You have to listen carefully. Get out of your studio. Right now. Don’t meet with Charles Scott. You can’t meet with him. Just trust me on this. Don’t go anywhere near him.”

  “What do you mean? What’s going on?”

  “Mel,” Brent pleaded, “just listen to me. Get out of there. And don’t go back to the museum. Don’t go home, either! Look, just go somewhere else, go to the mall or something. Take a drive somewhere. Go to your sister’s in Rhode Island. Just don’t let him find you.”

  “What the hell is going on? What are you talking about? I have to go back to work. I can’t just take off. You need to tell me what this is about. You’re scaring me, Brent.”

  “There’s nothing to worry about, Mel. I just need you to do this, okay? I need you to stay away from Charles Scott. I’ll explain it all, but not now.”

  “Brent...”

  “And turn your phone off, Mel. Turn it off and keep it off, you hear me?”

  “What if you need to reach me?”

  “Call me tomorrow,” he said. “By tomorrow this will all be over. One way or another.”

  Brent hung up on her before she could say anything else and looked at Jeremiah with real desperation in his eyes.

  “There’s no other way, Brent,” Jeremiah told him. “We have to do this. We have to do this now.”

  “I can’t cut off your finger!”

  “I didn’t think I could stab you in the shoulder, either, but I did it. You have to.”

  “This is going to hurt a hell of a lot more than that did.”

  * * *

  A little more than an hour later, they were in Brent’s car, parked in the service area behind a strip mall, hidden between two trailer trucks. Brent had gone to three different stores to buy several packages of dry ice pellets, two large bath towels, four nips of vodka, an insulated lunch box, a large assortment of bandages, gauze and first aid supplies and a small ax.

  Fifteen minutes after that, Jeremiah had fainted outright in the front seat and Brent was vomiting behind one of the trucks.

  Chapter 39

  By the time Jeremiah came to, Brent, his face a ghastly, grayish white, was visibly shaking as he attempted to bandage Jeremiah’s hand.

  “Jesus, there’s a lot of blood,” he said, tearing at a strip of gauze with his teeth. “We need to get you to a hospital. This was a stupid idea.”

  There was a blood-soaked towel in Jeremiah’s lap and another on the floor by his feet. He didn’t even remember seeing the blood. He figured he must have blacked out the instant the ax went down. His only recollection was of a sudden white-hot pain that seemed to engulf his entire body all at once.

  “No, it’s fine,” Jeremiah managed, his head spinning. “Just use more of the gauze. Get it good and tight. It’ll be fine. God, Brent, you look worse than I do.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve never cut off someone’s finger before. And you should look in a mirror. You’re not exactly going to win any beauty contests, either.”

  Jeremiah had downed two of the vodka nips before the amputation and opened a third one now with his teeth, hoping it would help to dul
l the fiery pain in his hand. He gave the last bottle to Brent, who drank it down without hesitation.

  “Where is it?” he asked. “What did you do with my finger?”

  “It’s in the lunch box with the dry ice.”

  Jeremiah took the clone’s finger out of his pocket and handed it to Brent, who, at the sight of it, instantly looked like he was going to get sick again. He took it gingerly and turned his head away as he slipped it quickly into the lunch box with its twin. Jeremiah closed his eyes and put his head against the cool of the window.

  “I need to get back to ViMed,” he said. “I need to talk to Scott.”

  “You need to rest,” Brent told him. “I think you can afford to take a few minutes.”

  “You’ll need to package that lunch box, address it. Have it ready to go. Once I’m in there, give it one hour. If you don’t hear from me by then, you mail the package, get Mel and get out of town. Understand?”

  “Yeah, I understand. But let’s try to avoid that, okay? I have enough explaining to do already without telling Mel we have to leave town and go into hiding.”

  An hour later Brent pulled the car over as close to the ViMed lab as he dared and turned off the engine. He didn’t want to risk being spotted by the security cameras, so Jeremiah would walk the last quarter mile or so.

  “You ready for this?” Brent asked. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m as okay as I’m going to be,” he said, looking down at his bandaged hand. Brent had wrapped it in so much gauze it looked like he was wearing a boxing glove, which felt appropriate for what he was about to do. Even then, blood was just beginning to seep through on one side. It hurt like hell, but at least it was a dull ache now and had stopped throbbing.

  He got out of the car and looked at the building he’d been trapped in for so long. He was struck by the strangeness of looking at it from the outside. He’d been so focused on escaping the place, and here he was about to walk right back in.

  He patted his pocket and felt for the phone, which contained photographic evidence of the package that was now in Brent’s care. It had to be enough, he thought. This had to work. If it didn’t, he didn’t know what would happen. Would they simply put him back in the lab and carry on with the experiment? Doubtful. Once they realized he couldn’t be trusted, they’d likely do a lot worse than that, he thought. He turned back to Brent, who had started the car but hadn’t pulled away yet.

  “Don’t go too far,” he called. “Wait for my call.”

  “One hour.”

  Jeremiah took a few uneasy steps in the direction of the lab, his head spinning from blood loss, adrenaline or both, and readied himself for what he had to do. If this was going to work, he knew he had to go in strong. He could show no doubt, no hesitation. He needed to face Charles Scott with confidence and in full control.

  About twenty paces before he reached the building, Charles Scott came striding swiftly out the front door, flanked by two serious-looking armed security guards. Scott said nothing as the guards took Jeremiah, one by each arm, and hurried him through the entrance, down the hallway, through the two locked security doors Jeremiah had come through the previous night, past three uninterested secretaries and directly into Scott’s office. When Scott nodded at the guards, they let him go with a shove and swiftly left the room, shutting the door behind them. Scott stood silently, taking Jeremiah in with a venomous glare.

  “Mr. Adams,” he said finally, “do you have any idea the resources we’ve wasted trying to locate you?”

  “Do you have any idea,” Jeremiah asked, “how much I do not care?”

  “What happened to your hand?” Scott said, glancing at the bandage. Jeremiah said nothing, but smiled slightly. “Sit down, Mr. Adams.”

  Jeremiah knew he should have remained standing, asserting his confidence, but he was still light-headed. Better to sit than to faint, he decided, and took a seat in front of Scott’s desk. Scott remained standing.

  “Would you care to tell me where you’ve been for the past several hours?”

  “I have a distinct feeling you already know the answer to that,” Jeremiah said.

  “I am assuming you went home. Did he see you?”

  Jeremiah just smiled again, enjoying the anxious look creeping over Scott’s face. He’d play this out for a while, he decided, make him squirm for a few minutes.

  “Mr. Adams,” Scott said, leaning into Jeremiah’s face. “I need you to tell me, did the clone see you?”

  “He certainly did. Saw me. Talked to me. Fell in a heap at my feet. I don’t think he’ll soon forget it. I don’t think he likes me.”

  “What did you do?” Scott asked harshly. “What did you tell him?”

  Jeremiah went quiet again and Scott straightened up and walked slowly around the desk, stopping and leaning down into Jeremiah with a steady glare.

  “All right, Mr. Adams,” he hissed, straining to keep the rising anger out of his voice. “Let me tell you what we know. We know that Brent Higgins is responsible for your escape last night. There is no way you could have managed it without help, and he was the only person there. And rest assured, when we find him, he will answer for it. Dearly. We know you were at your house this morning at 7:43. We know that because that is the precise moment our camera in the garage suddenly went dark. We also know that the clone did not report to his office at ViMed this morning. And that is because he drove himself to the hospital with a serious injury to his left hand. We saw that from our camera in his car. Can you illuminate how the clone came to be so gravely injured? And why you seem to have similarly injured the same hand?”

  Jeremiah glanced down at his own bandaged hand with a smirk. “Coincidence?” he said.

  “I will ask you again, Mr. Adams,” Scott said, “what did you do?”

  “I did nothing to the clone that I wouldn’t have done to myself, I assure you.”

  “This is not a game,” Scott said. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, Mr. Adams, but let me make this perfectly clear. Whatever this is, you will not get away with it. Whatever little game you think you’re playing, it won’t work. We have far too much at stake here to allow you to get in our way.”

  “Oh, I am quite aware of what’s at stake for you, Dr. Scott.” Jeremiah waited a moment before elaborating. He wanted to savor this. “You’re not feeling too well, are you? What did the doctors tell you—ALS, is it? That’s my guess.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “That’s a nasty disease,” Jeremiah said. “Slow, but thorough. What did they give you? A year? Maybe two? How long before you can’t speak anymore? Or breathe on your own? How long before it starts to eat away at your precious mind?”

  Some of the color drained out of Scott’s face, which was answer enough for Jeremiah that all of his suspicions had been correct.

  “But it doesn’t really matter, does it? I mean, presumably, you’ve got a clean medical scan and a Meld implant of your mind. Everything nice and tidy to put into a clone of your own.”

  Scott remained silent, but Jeremiah could see his face tense up.

  “And the Meld,” Jeremiah added. “I know a few people who would be very interested to learn why it was rushed onto the market, where all the profit was funneled. Now that would make a hell of a headline, don’t you think?”

  “You can’t prove any of it,” Scott said defiantly. “No one would believe you. It’s your word against the corporation’s.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that. You think I’m stupid enough to come here without proof?”

  “You’ve got no proof,” Scott said, concern now creeping into his features. “There is no proof.”

  “Why don’t I just show you,” Jeremiah said. He took the phone out of his pocket, opened up the photos of the package and its contents and handed it over. Scott took it and sat down again behind his desk.

 
“What is this?” he asked. “You severed the clone’s fingers?”

  “Oh, just one of his fingers. The other one is mine.” Jeremiah watched as Scott, looking back at the image on the phone, began to comprehend exactly what he was looking at. His eyes went wide and he pursed his lips. He looked back up at Jeremiah with something approaching apprehension.

  “And what, pray tell, are you planning to do with these grisly items, Mr. Adams?”

  “Look at the next photo,” he said, “and you’ll see where I plan to send them. And I think Walt Thompson will be very interested in the implications. Have you read his stuff, Dr. Scott? He’s not exactly a champion of big business. And he really has it in for Meld and ViMed.”

  “This won’t prove a thing,” Scott said. “It’s just two fingers in a box. It’s nothing but the ravings of a madman.”

  “Yes, it is just two fingers in a box. Two left index fingers with the same prints and identical DNA. I think all the information is there. I almost didn’t see the need to include a note. Those fingers, excuse the pun, will point him in the right direction. He’s smart. It won’t take him long to figure it out.”

  Scott stood up and came around the desk again, red-faced and serious. He grabbed Jeremiah by the wrist and began to pull at the bandage on his hand. Jeremiah pulled away and carefully unraveled the bandage himself, displaying his mangled hand, and watched as realization came over Scott’s face. As he wrapped his hand back up, wincing with the pain, Scott glared at him and fell silent. He waited for Jeremiah to finish with his hand.

  “Have you sent the package?” he asked.

  “No. But it will be sent on my behalf in about forty minutes unless I make a phone call to stop it. It’s your choice.”

  “You are stepping on some pretty powerful toes here,” he said. “I’m not sure you understand the magnitude of this project—who is involved in this.”

  “Oh, I understand more than you think I do,” Jeremiah said. “I’m well aware of the military involvement. What was his name? General McGavin, right? Waffles, Dr. Scott?”