The Mirror Man, стр. 75
Jeremiah said nothing, but inched forward a little. After months of watching the clone across the impossible distance of the cameras, they were now separated by the length of a single car. The figure before him was no longer that towering image projected across an entire living room wall. He was exactly, down to the last molecule, evenly matched with Jeremiah. Looking at him now, though, he seemed even smaller. Jeremiah stared into familiar eyes and the rage he felt beginning to boil back up in him made him feel almost giddy.
The clone backed up against the door that led to the kitchen, his hand grappling behind his back for the knob. Jeremiah saw the clone’s eyes widen in a mix of terror and desperate confusion as the shock of recognition settled there. He blinked hard and his mouth began to move as if to ask a question, make a plea, but no sound came out. He pressed his back hard against the door, fumbling, unable to turn away, until his knees gave out and he began to crumple to the ground.
Jeremiah moved slowly toward him, blade first, and stared him down, unblinking. A slow smile spread across his face when he saw the fear tighten its grip over the clone, pinning him to the floor. That fear seemed to feed something in Jeremiah. The more the clone cowered, the more intense Jeremiah’s own fury burned.
“Who are you?” the clone whimpered. “What do you want?”
Jeremiah stopped a mere two feet from him and almost laughed.
“Who am I? Don’t you know?” He took a heady delight in taunting him. “Here, take a closer look.”
He spanned the space between them in a few steps and knelt down at eye level, the knife so close to the clone’s face the steel began to fog with his breath.
“Now do I look familiar?” Jeremiah sneered. “Recognize me?”
“How can...” The clone arched his back and craned his neck away from the blade, his eyes wild with confusion. “Please,” he moaned, “please, I have a son!”
The words hit Jeremiah like a slap in the face. He pushed the flat of the knife under the clone’s chin, so tight against his neck that he could feel the pulsing of his veins right through the handle, as though the weapon had become some sort of conduit connecting them.
“No!” Jeremiah spat the word out like venom. “No, I have a son! You have nothing!”
He watched in fascination as the clone’s face twisted in terror, the blood visibly draining from his cheeks, the eyes darting frantically, looking for escape.
“Please,” the clone barely managed, “please.”
It would have been so easy to kill him then. It should have been so easy. One little push into that pulsing vein on the neck. One little slice.
But the sight of that face and the terrified eyes rattled Jeremiah, just for an instant. Just long enough to make him hesitate. Long enough to register the sudden, startling sensation of looking into a mirror. Jeremiah pulled the blade just slightly away from the clone’s neck as the realization spilled over him like defeat. He couldn’t do it. He wouldn’t kill this thing. His hand began to tremble, his breath heavy and hard in the clone’s sniveling face. He hated him. He wanted to do it. He wanted him gone. But something in him held back. This must be, he thought, what people go through in the seconds leading up to suicide. He’d always considered it a cowardly act. In that instant, though, he understood the steely resolve it must take.
Just a few months ago, he thought, this might have been him. This was him. This cowering, frightened mess of a man was him. And Jeremiah knew that. A few months ago, he would have reacted in exactly the same way, pleading for the sake of Parker, terrified at the thought of leaving him—everything relating to the fate of his son. And it was this, Jeremiah supposed, that finally snapped his will. Simple recognition. That, and empathy. A thing he never figured on, but there it was. He had been willing to kill to get Parker back. The clone was begging to stay with him. For all his faults and weakness, for all his mistakes, this clone loved the boy every bit as fiercely as Jeremiah did. It connected them, he thought; like it or not, more than any other of a million similarities, this was what made them the same.
But even as his murderous intent ebbed away, the anger and loathing still gripped his gut. Except that, for the first time, it felt more like what it actually was—self-loathing. It was something sharp, focused inward. It felt like regret. It was a hatred for every time he had ever ignored his own best interest, for every time he’d allowed himself to be swayed off course by propriety and appearance and someone else’s ideas. He was disgusted by what he saw in front of him. And Brent’s words came flooding back to him in that moment, words that had been uttered in a forced performance, but now rang achingly true in his ears. For the first time, perhaps, with his eyes wide open, he accepted this as himself. Standing there now, he had the sensation of choking on every single desire he’d ever forced himself to swallow. Everything he’d wasted was stuck in the back of his throat. Jeremiah suddenly found himself wanting not to kill the clone, but to change him. He wanted to warn him.
He grabbed his double by the necktie and pushed his head back down into the unforgiving cement floor with a thud. The clone let out a grunt at the impact and closed his eyes in agony.
Jeremiah got to his feet, stood over