Gemini Man--The Official Movie Novelization

by Titan Books

  “Fuh yuh,” she replied, enunciating as clearly as she could.

  He screwed a silencer onto the end of the Glock and started shooting out the light bulbs in the chamber, spraying glass and fragments of bone into the air. Danny wanted to kick him for violating a place where the dead from ages past had been laid to rest with the idea that they would rest undisturbed for all eternity, but she couldn’t reach him.

  He was about to shoot out the last light when the grenade went off.

  CHAPTER 17

  Yanking the mask down over his face, Junior ran into the passageway, his heart pounding with a mix of anticipation, excitement, and confidence. The explosion that had blown his target to pieces had also blown the world back into its proper orbit. Everything was now in order again. As soon as he finished mopping up, his next mission would be waiting—

  He stopped short. The goggles were very high resolution, letting him see, in various shades of luminous green, the iron gate now hanging crookedly from one hinge, and the crater that had been blown out of the cement, with countless bone fragments and shards spread all over the blast zone. But there were no splatters of blood and tissue, no body parts, no dead or dying old guy. Had the son of a bitch somehow set off the mine from a safe distance? No, impossible. Even with night-vision goggles, Brogan couldn’t have spotted the wire unless he’d known where to look for it and there was no way he could have known that. He couldn’t even have guessed.

  Light exploded in his face, so blinding it hurt his eyes, and he staggered backwards, tearing off the mask, blinking rapidly to try to clear his vision. He reached out, blindly sweeping his arm around until his hand hit a steel rod; he grabbed it and held tight. At the same moment, he sensed something moving in front of him.

  As he raised the Glock, a shot knocked it out of his hand, stinging his palm. His vision began to clear and he caught a glimpse of a red flare sizzling on the cement a second before something slammed into his head. The force of the blow sent him flying and he landed hard, the back of his skull rapping sharply on the cement.

  Furious, he made to get up but someone put a heavy boot on his chest, grinding the heel into his solar plexus so that he could barely breathe. Junior tried to feel around in the bone fragments, which made the boot on his chest press harder. Nearby, another hissing flare threw shifting red light over everything. He raised his head and felt the muzzle of a rifle between his eyes.

  His vision cleared some more and he saw it was the old guy he had failed to kill in Cartagena. He couldn’t believe it. Brogan had to be at least fifty. How could anybody so old fight off someone as young and well-trained as he was without help?

  Brogan flicked on his rifle’s Tac Light, shining it directly into his eyes, then proceeded to pat him down, relieving him of both the pistol in his ankle holster and the commando knife in his forearm sheath. How hard had he hit his head just now, he wondered as he watched Brogan’s movements, because it was like he was watching himself. Only he knew he was sitting on this goddam concrete, refusing to give the pain in his head any place in his thoughts. So he couldn’t be watching himself.

  Except he was.

  No. Junior squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. He couldn’t see properly. It was a trick of the very dim light.

  Brogan stepped back, picked up one of the sizzling flares, and motioned at him with the rifle.

  “Up.”

  Junior got to his feet. All at once, they were eye to eye, and there was no denying the face staring back at him was his own. There were more lines around Brogan’s eyes, his skin wasn’t as tight or as smooth, and his lips were rougher. It was like looking into a mirror that showed him how he was going to look in nearly thirty years. And it wasn’t just their faces that were identical, it was their expressions, too. He had no idea how long he and Brogan stood staring at each other before Henry poked him with the gun and marched him back to the Quartz Chamber.

  The first thing Brogan did was pull the tape off Zakarewski’s big mouth and cut her free from the pipe. Apparently her constant talking didn’t get on his nerves. Maybe that was some kind of old person thing.

  “Thank you,” Zakarewski said.

  “Thank you for the tip about the grenade,” said Brogan.

  Junior’s mouth fell open, which the two of them thought was hilarious. Zakarewski scraped something off the back of a front tooth with one finger, then held it out to him. The light in the chamber was bad but he knew the small black object on her fingertip was a mic.

  He looked from it to her and then to Brogan. “She was talking to you the whole time,” he said, trying not to sound impressed and failing.

  Brogan shrugged. “Hey, you either search somebody thoroughly or you don’t. Being thorough will keep you alive.” He took another flare out of his pocket and handed it to Zakarewski. “Know how to light one of these?”

  “Jesus, Henry.” She rolled her eyes as she lit the flare. Brogan was now walking a slow circle around him, like a drill instructor conducting an inspection, and it was a real effort not to squirm. Dammit, Brogan stood like him, moved like him, even gestured like him.

  “For the record,” Brogan said after a bit, “I don’t want to kill you. But I will if I have to.”

  He tried to make himself stare through the old guy, the way his father did when he was mad at him, but he couldn’t. Maybe his father would have had a much harder time with someone who looked exactly like him.

  “What did Clay Verris tell you about me?” Brogan asked.

  Junior kept his lips pressed together, refusing to answer.

  “Okay, then, let me tell you about him,” the old guy went on. “I happen to know Mr. Verris very well. How did he start you out—hunting? Birds and rabbit, right? Then when you were about twelve, he moved you up to deer.”

  Junior refused to look at Brogan, concentrated on keeping his face a stony mask. But he couldn’t help thinking the man saw something about him—his eyes, maybe his posture or even his breathing—that told him he was right.

  “I’m guessing you were nineteen or twenty the first time he ordered you to shoot a person. Any of this ringing true? He also told you to lean into your fear because ‘you’re a warrior blessed with great gifts to defend the weak.’ Right?”

  Junior forced himself to stand motionless and silent despite the anger building inside of him.

  “But he just couldn’t stop the noise, could he?” Brogan said. “That secret part of you that always felt a little different than everybody else. The part that made you feel like a weirdo.”

  “You don’t know shit!” Junior blurted, unable to help himself.

  Brogan laughed. “Kid, I know you inside out and backwards. You’re allergic to bees, you hate cilantro, and you always sneeze four times.”

  “Everybody hates cilantro,” Junior said, wondering if Brogan really didn’t know that.

  The old guy kept talking. “You’re meticulous, thorough, disciplined, relentless. You love puzzles. You’re a chess player, right? Good, too, I bet. But you suffer from insomnia. Your mind never lets you sleep and even when it does, it attacks you with nightmares. I’m talking about those three-o’clock-in-the-morning, someone-please-save-me nightmares.”

  Junior began hoping the ceiling would cave in; anything to shut the old guy up.

  “And then there’s the doubts,” Brogan was saying. “Those are the worst. You hate them, and you hate yourself for having them because they make you feel weak. A real soldier doesn’t doubt, right? The only time you truly feel happy is when you’re flat on your belly about to squeeze a trigger. And in that moment, the world makes perfect sense. How do you think I know all of that?”

  “I don’t give a shit how you know anything,” Junior told him contemptuously.

  “Look at me, dummy!” Brogan shouted. “Look at us! Twenty-five years ago, your so-called father took my blood and cloned me. He made you from me. Our DNA is identical.”

  “He’s telling you the truth,” Danny put in, her voice quiet and matter
-of-fact.

  “Shut up!” Junior shouted. Were the two of them high or merely batshit? Everybody knew Clay Verris had adopted him, it wasn’t any kind of big state secret. But what Henry had said about his DNA had to be a steaming pile of horseshit. It had to be.

  Except it explained how Brogan had his face.

  No, it was crazy. Even though they looked alike, it had to be crazy. Cloning wasn’t a real thing, not with humans.

  “He chose me ’cause there’s never been anyone like me,” Brogan went on, “and he knew one day I was going to get old and then you’d step in. But he’s been lying to you the whole time. He told you that you were an orphan. And of all the people to send after me, why would he send you?”

  “’Cause I’m the best,” Junior informed him.

  “Oh yeah?” Brogan shocked him by putting the barrel of his gun right up to his ear. “You’re obviously not the best. For one thing, you’ve got a hard-ass head. But I guess this was supposed to be your birthday or something. I had to die and you had to do it. As long as I was alive, Clay’s little experiment was somehow incomplete. That’s the maniac you’re pulling the trigger for.”

  “Shut your mouth about him,” Junior said, his anger and frustration turning to rage. “You’re just trying to rattle me.”

  “I’m trying to save you,” Brogan replied. “What are you, twenty-three? And still a virgin, right? Dying to be in a relationship and connect, but terrified to let anyone near you because what if someone saw who you actually are. If they did, how could they ever love you? So everybody else are only targets, and you’re just a real good weapon.”

  The bullshit psychoanalysis finally pushed him over the edge. Junior grabbed the end of Brogan’s rifle and yanked it toward himself, hard. Brogan came with it and Junior kneed him in the groin, making him let go of the weapon as he fell. Junior reached for it but Brogan surprised him by kicking it straight to Zakarewski, then gave him an elbow to the head. Junior sprawled on the dirty stone floor, rolled over quickly to see Brogan had drawn his commando knife; he flipped himself to a standing position and kicked it out of Brogan’s hand.

  That blow hurt, he could see it in his face. This will hurt worse, Junior promised him silently as he lowered his head and charged him like a linebacker, driving both of them into the wall of bones.

  The impact sent clouds of dust billowing into the air as the shelves collapsed and bones that had lain undisturbed for hundreds of years broke into pieces and flew in all directions. This was the perfect place for Brogan, Junior thought—buried under a mountain of old, forgotten bones. He pulled away from the old guy and his hand fell on a broken thigh bone with a viciously jagged end. Junior tried to jab it into Brogan’s throat and discovered Brogan had also found a jagged femur and was trying to do the same thing to him.

  More bones cracked and scattered as he struggled to get on top of Brogan, trying to get the upper hand. He almost had him a couple of times but before he could drive the jagged bone into the old guy’s throat, Brogan would somehow find the strength to heave him off or go upside his head, or trap his leg and twist it, forcing him to let go before the old guy broke his knee. Junior just couldn’t get the better of him. But at least Brogan wasn’t getting the better of him, either—

  “Drop it!” Zakarewski yelled suddenly, aiming the rifle at him. Junior looked at Brogan’s face covered with dirt and bone dust. Brogan’s face; his face. He couldn’t deny it, now or ever.

  “Drop it!” Zakarewski yelled again, louder now. “I will shoot you!”

  “Don’t shoot him!” Brogan yelled.

  Junior saw her freeze. Thanks, old man, he thought with a grin. She really wouldn’t shoot him, not if Brogan told her not to. He twisted his left hand out of the old guy’s grasp and punched him. At this angle he didn’t have the leverage for a knockout blow, but the feel of Brogan’s jaw slewing sideways gave him a moment of satisfaction before the old guy surprised him with a hard jab to his throat.

  He fell away from Brogan, rolled over, and got to his feet, rubbing his neck and coughing. Zakarewski had a clean shot now; she could drop him easily.

  Only she still couldn’t—he saw it in her face. No matter how much she wanted to, she just couldn’t put a bullet in someone who looked so much like her hero. Good to know, he thought just as Brogan used the linebacker charge on him.

  It crossed his mind as they crashed into another section of wall that Brogan’s old-man shoulder didn’t have as much muscle on it as his but it seemed to be just as strong, and damn, this wall was so thick with bones, they were tunneling through it with their bodies.

  Some kind of barrier broke apart behind him and then all the bones and shelves were gone, everything was gone, even the dust. Suddenly they were hurtling out and down through dark empty air and before he could even wonder what was waiting below them, they plunged into water, momentum still driving them downward.

  Son of a bitch—they were in the goddam cistern.

  Now the old guy was flailing with all his might, his movements desperate and panicky. Right—that would be Brogan’s special problem with water; it scared the shit out of him. Junior grinned triumphantly. This was such a lucky break—it was like Fate itself wanted Henry Brogan dead.

  * * *

  Crashing through a wall of bones into thin air took Henry completely by surprise. He had barely had any time to look up information about the catacombs and most of what had come up on his phone had been in Hungarian.

  He had no idea how long the fall would last or what might be waiting for them at the bottom but he did his best to keep Junior Hitman under him. Landing on him would give him a better chance of surviving the impact—better than Junior Hitman’s, at least.

  Unless there was no impact and they fell forever.

  The thought was fleeting, there and gone in a tiny fraction of a second, and it should have been ridiculous, utter nonsense. On the other hand, he had just crashed through a wall of bones in the middle of the night going mano-a-mano with his clone. The bar for strange and farfetched was higher than it had ever been. But the possibility of landing in water had never occurred to him.

  All thought ceased as he thrashed madly with his arms and legs, trying to get to the surface. But this time, the weights on his legs weren’t just impossibly heavy, they were alive and actively fighting him, trying to drag him down into the dark. This wasn’t how the dream went—the weights were always inanimate objects.

  Which meant this was no dream. It wasn’t Hell, either—otherwise his father would have been there laughing at him and telling him to concentrate, dammit, this was easy. No, he was awake and alive, and if he wanted to stay that way he had to get the hell out of the goddam water NOW.

  Henry finally kicked free of the hands pulling at him and propelled himself upward. When he finally broke the surface, he caught a glimpse of Danny high overhead, holding a flare as she peered down at them from the hole he and Junior had punched in the Quartz Chamber. He was about to call out to her when the kid surged up out of the water and threw himself on top of him, trying to push him under.

  Instead of resisting, he let the clone push him down with a force that actually pushed him away. Henry slipped around him and broke the surface again, looking for some way to get out of the water. Off to his left, he spotted a jagged ledge, the remains of a floor or platform. As he started to swim for it, Junior Hitman’s hands clutched his shoulders hard from behind.

  Henry jerked his head back sharply, hitting the clone in the face, grinning when the kid yelped in surprised pain. Treading water, he turned to see the clone coming at him with his nose bleeding profusely and a broken femur in one hand.

  How the hell had he managed to hold onto that, he wondered as the clone jabbed it at him. Henry put his hands up as if he were going to try to push him away, then let the clone get just close enough for another, harder head-butt before he swam for the ledge.

  No yelp this time but Henry knew that one must have hurt him a lot more. His clothes dragged
heavily on him as he pulled himself out of the water onto the ledge and rolled over onto his back, out of breath. Something on his neck was stinging. Henry touched the spot and his fingers came away bloody. Then all at once the kid was there with him, leaping up out of the water and onto the ledge seemingly with no effort at all.

  Henry threw one arm across his face. The clone knocked it away easily and pounced on him. His nose was still bleeding copiously but he seemed oblivious to it as he put both hands around Henry’s neck and squeezed.

  Henry tried to pull his hands away, fighting to breathe, but his air was already cut off. Dark patches appeared in his vision and the light from Danny’s flare above him began to fade out. Henry tugged on the clone’s wrists and forearms but it was like pulling at steel bars. Dammit, instead of drowning, he was going to suffocate out of water like a goddam fish. Henry was vaguely aware of a splash as something else fell into the water but he was too busy losing consciousness to wonder about it.

  “Get your hands off him!” Danny yelled from somewhere off to Henry’s right. He felt Junior’s hands loosen but only for a moment before he started to squeeze again.

  And then impossibly, there was a gunshot. Even more impossibly, Junior fell back from Henry.

  Air rushed into Henry’s lungs in a noisy, torturous wheeze. He could hear the clone panting with shock and pain, as if he had never been shot before. Henry managed to prop himself up on one elbow and saw Danny treading water and aiming a Glock at the clone.

  The woman could tread water and shoot a Glock, Henry marveled. If this was the DIA agent of the future, he was retiring just in time.

  The clone was staring at her, too, astonished and indignant. Henry half-expected him to yell something like, No fair, that’s cheating! And then fling himself at her. Except he couldn’t. His nose wasn’t bleeding as much any more but now Henry saw a lot more blood on the front of his shirt.

  Danny had maneuvered herself so that she was right beside Henry. With her free hand, she used the ledge to steady herself and took aim at the kid again. It was a tremendous physical effort but Henry reached over and somehow found the strength to push her gun hand down.