The Mirror Man, стр. 68
“How do you know?” he asked aloud. “Are you sure about that?”
“I’m sure, Brent. The signs are subtle, but they are there.” He nodded at Brent to put his headgear back on and then resumed their conversation in the game.
Pike is giving him stem cells. You know what that means.
The coffee cup, Brent typed, looking at Jeremiah with widened eyes.
You understand?
Brent paused for a long moment before typing his reply, as though the realization of it all needed time to sink in.
He’s desperate.
So am I. I have to get out of here. You have to help me. I have to get out. Help me.
They’ll kill me. They’ll kill Mel. I can’t help.
They won’t know.
??
We fight. You let me win. I get out. No blame.
They’ll know. No.
I’ll knock you out. Steal your key card.
Won’t work. You’d have to kill me.
Okay...?
Really?
No. Help me. How can we do it?
Or almost kill me. Stab me.
??
Not fatally. Enough to get me taken out of here.
I can’t!
Only way it will work. I know how to make it safe but look real. You stab me. Steal my key card and, in the confusion, you’ll have time.
No.
Trust me.
I can’t. No!
You want out? You will. Trust me!
Okay.
Okay. How will you kill clone?
Stab him, too.
Too much blood?
MY blood. No one will question.
The body?
I bury it. Need it for insurance against Scott.
??
If they try anything I go public. They go to jail. Insurance.
When?
Has to be soon. Dr. Y wants to do Meld.
How soon?
A few days. We need a plan. Need to get to my house. How?
I’ll get you there.
You can’t. You’ll be stabbed, remember?
Mel, then. I’ll get it done.
No. Too risky. Don’t involve her.
Only option. She won’t know more than she has to. Trust me!
I do.
Start shooting. Game too calm. Looks bad. Talk tomorrow. I will have more.
For the next hour, they finished the bottle and battled. Jeremiah lost miserably, misfiring and screwing up his aim at every shot. He didn’t have it in him to shoot his friend at the moment—even in a virtual way.
Chapter 33
Days 164-165
Two days later, at eleven in the morning, Brent and Jeremiah sat solemnly on the couch together and watched as the clone shook hands and awkwardly embraced a steady line of mourners at Diana’s wake. Jeremiah only caught a few brief glimpses of his son the whole day. Each time, Parker sat sullen and sunken in his dark gray suit and scuffed black shoes. He hardly looked at anyone and only spoke when absolutely necessary. Even then, he said as few words as possible. As far as Jeremiah could tell, Parker didn’t shed a single tear. It was hard to watch. He found himself wondering whether Parker had even spoken to the clone since the last time they’d watched them. Despite how it made him feel, he hoped he had. A kid shouldn’t have to go through this alone. No one should.
The day after that, they viewed her funeral and Jeremiah wept openly in front of Brent. His sobs, though, were punctuated with the sting of determined anger, as he steeled himself for what he was about to do. It wasn’t going to end this way, he told himself. The anger was the only thing that kept him in one piece.
In the kitchen afterward, Brent took two beers from the fridge and looked at Jeremiah with an unreadable expression on his face. Jeremiah thought he’d rattled him with the crying.
“I’m fine, Brent. Don’t worry.”
“It’s not that.”
“What, then?”
“I wish I’d listened to you sooner. About all of this, I mean.”
Jeremiah got a few handfuls of ice from the freezer. He wanted to alleviate some of Brent’s guilt, but he had to do it under the din of the blender. This wasn’t for anyone else to hear.
“I don’t know that it would have done any good. I got the note to the clone. It didn’t help. It’s not your fault, Brent.”
“It’s not your fault, either,” he said. “You know that, right?”
Jeremiah didn’t answer.
“There was nothing you could have done,” Brent told him. “You couldn’t control what you were thinking under the Meld.”
“I shouldn’t have been thinking about the dog,” he said. “I shouldn’t have tried to keep that a secret. It was pride, some ridiculous sense of power. It was stupid of me. And Diana paid the price for that. This is on me. This is all on me.”
“You didn’t know,” he said. “There was no way you could have known.”
“I did try.” Jeremiah was fighting back more tears. “I tried to warn her, I tried to tell the clone to protect her.”
“I know you did.”
“I wanted to save her. I thought I could. I thought I could do something.”
“You’re doing something now,” Brent said. “Just get through this and it will be over. I’m going to help you. You’re not in this alone anymore.”
Chapter 34
Day 166
They were scheduled to watch the clone at home on Sunday afternoon. Jeremiah didn’t want to see it. A day after he’d buried Diana, after all the planning and details and gatherings were behind him, the clone would be forced, finally, to deal with the reality he was left with. Jeremiah didn’t want to witness that.
There is so much ritual involved after a death, he thought. People come together for the wake, stiff handshakes and teary hugs giving way, after a while, to more boisterous reminiscing and a few stifled bouts of uncomfortable laughter right in front of the casket. Then the funeral, all solemn, righteous and wooden, filled with quiet, pious reflection, until everyone goes off to have a few drinks afterward. All of it, of course, as a means to some sort of closure.
But there’s never any closure. Not really. All the ritual is nothing more than a way to stave off the inevitable finality of the long goodbye. It’s easy to stand for hours at a wake, surrounded by people who’ve come to help ease the burden. You feel sheltered. Getting out of bed on