The Mirror Man, стр. 91

Jeremiah rushed up next to his double and tried to pry Parker from his grip.

“He’s okay. He’s just sleeping,” he said. “He’s fine.”

“We haven’t hurt him,” Natalie said, holding her hands out in defense. “It’s just a mild sedative. That’s all.”

“Who the hell are you people?” Although he addressed both of them, the clone’s eyes were fixed on Jeremiah’s face. “I’m calling the police.”

“You won’t do that,” Jeremiah said. “If you didn’t do it before, when I had a knife to your throat, I don’t think you’ll do it now. Think about this. What are you going to tell them when they ask for a description? We’re not here to hurt anyone. Parker’s not in any danger. But you and I need to talk. It’s time I filled you in on everything that’s going on. It’s time you knew the truth.”

Natalie shot a warning look at Jeremiah, which angered him.

“What else are we supposed to do, Natalie?” he asked. “We’re sort of backed in a corner here and time is running out. The project doesn’t matter anymore. Fuck that. Besides, he has a right to know.”

“A right to know what?” the clone asked, looking from one of them to the other. His hands still gripped Parker’s shoulders. He let go, turned to Jeremiah and lowered his voice. “Who the hell are you?”

“That,” Jeremiah said, “should be as plain as the nose on our identical face. Come with me.”

Five minutes later, back in the hallway, Jeremiah’s clone was shaking his head.

“You’re insane,” he said. “Human cloning?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Illegal, immoral, all of that. But scientifically possible, and that’s what this is. Look at me! Look at my face. What do you think this is? What else can this possibly be?”

Jeremiah locked eyes with his double and watched as some sort of understanding eventually fell over its face. The clone’s eyes began to twitch, and he pulled at the hair on the top of his head, in exactly the same way that Jeremiah had always reacted to bad news.

“You know it’s the truth,” Jeremiah pushed. “You’ve known it since the minute you saw me. Now you just need to admit it. And time is running out. I’m afraid we can’t have your existential crisis right now.”

“You expect me to believe this?” the clone said. “How do I know that you’re not the clone? Maybe you’re the clone and you’re trying to steal my life, my son!”

“I’m not stealing anything. I’m trying to take back my own son, my real son. And believe me, I don’t want your life. You can keep that.”

“But Parker is my son,” the clone said. “I remember the day he was born. I remember every first day of school, every argument, every time he ever cried. I remember everything. He’s my son.”

“And Parker’s clone will remember all of it, too. Those memories won’t go away. You lose nothing. In some weird way, that clone is your real son,” Jeremiah said. “I just want to make this right again. For both of us. For all of us. We don’t have time to debate this. We have to do it now.”

Natalie’s voice pierced the silence between the men.

“We need to hurry this up, Jeremiah. We need the other clone.”

“Get him. He’s in my car, down the street.” He tossed her his keys as she brushed past them and started down the stairs. “Be careful,” he added. “Don’t give him any information. Just bring him in.”

He turned back to his clone, who was leaning heavily now against the wall and still shaking his head.

“My entire life? Everything I remember? My childhood? My marriage? You want me to believe it’s all been a lie? That I’m not the man I’ve always thought I was?”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned from all of this,” Jeremiah said, “it’s that no one, none of us, is ever really who we think we are. We tell ourselves lies to feel better, but they’re just lies. The truth is a lot harder to look at. But the trick is, you can’t let it crush you. You either accept who you are, or you change it. In your case, you just have to accept it. And you have to do that now.”

“Just accept all of this and hand over my son?”

“You don’t have a choice,” Jeremiah snapped. “Right this minute there are people on their way here who’d kill all of us in a heartbeat to keep this thing quiet. Including your son. And mine.”

The clone said nothing.

“You’re his father,” Jeremiah said. “Every bit as much as I am. Act like it! We’ve got to do this.”

The anguish still there on his face, the clone closed his eyes and offered a feeble nod of his head in reluctant acceptance.

Relief washed over Jeremiah just as Natalie started back up the stairs. Parker’s clone came up cautiously behind her and stopped as soon as he saw the scene in the hallway.

“Dad...? What?”

“Parker,” he said. “We need to do one more thing. You need to go with Dr. Young. Do exactly as she tells you. You can trust her.”

The boy looked at him in utter confusion, eyes widening in alarm, and Jeremiah laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “We need to do this, Parker. No one’s going to hurt you. We just need to fix this one thing.”

“And then we can go?”

“Then we can go,” he said. “Anywhere we want.”

Jeremiah felt a lump in his throat as he watched the boy follow Natalie into the bedroom as though he were walking toward a firing squad. His own clone made a move to follow, but Jeremiah stopped him with a hand to his shoulder. Natalie closed the door behind them.

“That’s your son,” he said. “He’s every bit as real as you are.”

“And he won’t remember anything about this?” the clone asked. “Nothing about the experiment, about seeing two of us? About seeing his own clone in there?”

“If everything goes