Double Down (Lois Lane)

by Gwenda Bond

  As we crossed the street, dodging through traffic, Maddy asked, “You don’t really think we might not make it out of here?”

  “I’m attached to the idea of being alive and seeing Moxie go down, so here’s hoping,” I said, hurrying us onto the sidewalk.

  “Not a time for morgue humor,” Melody said. In a more measured tone, she added, “Though I’ve read it’s part of newsroom culture.”

  “Everyone’s an expert on journalism,” I said.

  But it was noteworthy that Melody had been reading up. Was it a gesture to her sister? And had my conversation with Maddy softened her up any toward Melody?

  Time would tell. Assuming we made it out of Ismenios intact.

  We reached Dante, who pulled the front door the rest of the way open to admit us. I got a good look at the dragon battling the man with the sword. Since in the myth the man won, I decided we’d be him in this fight. Donovan and his clone were playing the part of the monster.

  “Good luck,” Dante said.

  Maddy leaned over and kissed his cheek, quickly, as she passed.

  “Take it easy on James until we get back,” I said to him. “And thanks.”

  “My pleasure,” he said. Then he jogged away, toward James.

  I bent down and put a piece of paper torn from my notepad in place to block the lock’s engagement, in case the boys did need to get in here and come to our rescue. I let the door close.

  The interior of the lobby was dark; the light that came in from outside was weak. I unearthed my flashlight and traced its circle of light up the stairs.

  “This is totally different than the other place,” Melody said. “I don’t think I’d have gone through with it if the building had been this old and clearly abandoned.”

  I’d had that question in the back of my mind. “He probably chose a nicer place then, because he knew he needed to lure in subjects.”

  “The verb lure,” Maddy said, “is seriously creepy.”

  “No argument with that or its appropriateness applied to that creep,” I said.

  We started up the first set of steps, which were wide enough that we could have stayed next to each other. But the twins let me lead. It was logical because I had the flashlight, but I sensed they were as afraid as I was. Logic wasn’t much a part of it.

  My heart pounded annoyingly in my ears, and it was getting harder to stay focused. I’d almost gotten trapped in here, and now I’d come back. Sometimes I did have truly terrible ideas.

  “He’s up there,” Melody said.

  “We better hope so.”

  “No,” she said, “he’s waiting for us. For me.”

  I looked back at her. She needed me to get her through this. So did Maddy. I ordered my pounding heart to calm down.

  I had to be the strong one. I had to get us out of here in one piece.

  “Good,” I said, infusing it with confidence. “I wasn’t sure how to wake him. Something tells me he’ll be eager to say hi.”

  My steps were steadier as we climbed. Maddy and Melody must have taken some comfort from that, because we didn’t stop again. We kept on, climbing up and up the stairs that twined like the DNA Donovan had harvested from Melody two years before. Until we reached the top landing.

  The door was open. The light in the lab beckoned, already on. I flicked off my flashlight. “Here we go.” I paused, and then added, “If I tell you to run, do it. Leave if you have to.”

  “No way—” Maddy started to protest, but we were interrupted.

  “So brave and valiant,” the clone said, in its stolen dulcet tones, an exact echo of Mayor Worthington’s. “And dramatic. Please, come in.”

  “I forgot to mention, he has crazy good hearing,” I said, not bothering to lower my voice.

  That got a chuckle in response. “One of the few perks of being me. You have nothing to fear here. Come in.”

  I nodded to Maddy, and then Melody. We were ready, though I bought no part of his “nothing to fear” reassurance.

  I entered the door to the lab first, but Maddy and Melody—more alike than they realized—stayed close behind me. I had no fear now that either of them would chicken out.

  And, in fact, Maddy stepped in front of me once we were inside, taking in the strange surroundings. The long file cabinets; the tidy but covered work counters; the glowing, human-sized tube filled with liquid but otherwise empty. Empty, because its occupant awaited us.

  He sat on a stool at one of the counters, in his usual suit. Slowly, his feet dropped to the floor and he stood, gazing at Melody. His eyes were creepily wide, as if she was some sort of miracle happening in front of his eyes and he was afraid she’d vanish with so much as a blink. Like she was a figment of his imagination turned reality.

  She was gazing back at him in much the same way, only with a touch of horror.

  “You do not have to fear me,” he said soothingly. “You are real.”

  Maddy took another step toward him, and I couldn’t grab her fast enough to prevent it.

  “Oh, really?” she said angrily. “That’s some story, given how she’s been suffering because of you. And how you told Lois you intend for her to keep on suffering.”

  “Maddy, stop,” Melody said.

  Maddy did not stop. “Yeah, she’s a real girl, and you’re taking her life away, piece by piece. She cries. She trembles. She screams. It’s your fault.”

  The clone shook his head slightly, back and forth, like he didn’t want to hear. “Is it true?” he asked Melody.

  She walked forward then, past Maddy—evading her sister when she tried to stop her.

  “Melody?” I asked.

  “I’m all right,” she said. She didn’t look back. She stopped a foot away from him, a funny sort of smile on her face. He echoed it.

  She lifted a hand. He did the same.

  Then the other hand. They didn’t touch, but they stood facing each other, movements identical. In sync.

  I had the same shivery sense of wrongness that I’d had with the Warheads and Anavi. Feeling connected to people was one thing, but being forcibly connected to them was something entirely different.

  Maddy turned to me and whispered, “What is she doing?”

  I didn’t know what to say. I moved, going wide around a counter so I could stand to the side of Melody and the clone. They gave every impression of being either side of a mirror. But the gap between them was important, and I intended to widen it.

  “Do you have any desire to hurt Melody?” I asked.

  “Melody.” The name rolled off his lips. “It fits you, you know.”

  Melody said nothing, but her half-smile had been replaced by a grimly serious expression.

  “Answer my question,” I said.

  “The girl reporter demands,” the clone said, but not harshly. “What was it you asked again?”

  “Do you want to hurt Melody?”

  His eyes went wide. His hands dropped, and Melody’s fell too. The spell they’d put each other under was broken.

  “Never,” he said. “I have few desires, but one of them is to never see her injured.”

  That is definitely better than if he’d said, “Yes, I dream of murder.”

  “I’ve noticed you mess with your tracker.” I nodded to his arm, where it firmly circled his wrist. “Melody used to mirror that gesture, like it stuck with her. You said you stopped taking the meds for a reason. Tell her why.”

  “I didn’t trust my maker anymore,” he said, “after he put me to sleep and left me there, inactive, for long years. The first day I was awake, I declined to take the medication and hid it from him. The action was petty, the whim of an angry child, even though I am not a child. I have never been a child.” His entire focus shifted back to Melody. “But you were. I bet you were a lovely child, young Melody. That day, the day I woke up, and disco
vered our bond, it was the first time I ever felt what it must mean to be truly alive. To be a real person. Your sister is right. You are real, and I am nothing.”

  “You’re breathing, you’re talking, and you can do something.” I’d seen an opening in his monologue. We could convince him to do the right thing. We had to. “Why would you let Dabney Donovan, who has mistreated you so badly, mistreat Melody?”

  He shook his head side to side. “Weak argument. Donovan does not even think of her anymore.”

  Wrong approach. Melody was simply listening, giving me no help. She might not be capable of it. I couldn’t know what it would feel like to be linked to someone like this, some stranger who wasn’t truly human.

  “Do you think of running away?” I asked. “Is that why you mess with the tracker? Maybe we can help each other out. I want to send your maker away, along with the men you accompanied last night. For a very long time.”

  “You will not catch him,” he said. “I constantly think of leaving. But where would I go? I never had a life of my own. I have nothing to run to. My purpose was to be a mimic, to imitate a man I had never met until last night. I was programmed with knowledge, but none of it is more than skin deep. I know so little. Now, you, girl reporter, tell me that my lone purpose of existence is almost at an end. I will not go back to sleep. But he will never let me be free, not of him. I will always wear his tracker.”

  Finally, a way out. I moved closer.

  “Free, like Melody is free?” I asked. “That’s what you want?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “But Melody isn’t free, not since you woke up and stopped taking the treatments. Even if you went back to sleep, she’d have to go through every day wondering, always wondering, if today would be the last day she got to live without suddenly losing track of herself, without you butting in and taking over her ability to function. What kind of life is that? I think you do have a life, and I think you know how terrible it is to be confined, shut in, limited, always under surveillance. There are worse things than being alone.”

  I waved my hand to indicate Melody. “But you, you hold the power to set her free again. You know the cure for her, the way to end this. If you are better than your maker, this is how you prove it. Once she’s free, I will help you. We can find you a place to go. Mayor Worthington would help.”

  The room became like the inside of a clock, and instead of the seconds ticking away to count off the time, it was our breathing amid the silent weight of the moment, of our surroundings, of what things Dabney Donovan might have done in this lab. Doctor Donovan, who could come back any time now. Our diversion wouldn’t keep him long. We were running out of time, with no other choice but to wait.

  “You did not hear what I said,” the clone said at last. “I am nobody. There is nothing I can do with your help.”

  “Then free her anyway,” I said. “Because you care for her. Be a good person.”

  “I am not a good person. I do not even truly understand what the term means, but I know that she is one.” He turned away from us, looking blankly toward the window. He spun back to us, then reached out, touching Melody’s cheek. “I do know the cure for her. I am here sometimes when he is not, and I did read her file. The pretty blond girl who gave me a taste of life. I’ve read all the files. Mine included. The details were in it.”

  Melody did not shrink from his touch. She waited.

  “Please,” she said.

  I wanted to push him away from her. “His notes said it was a one-time thing for her, but that it wasn’t like the pills he used to manage your symptoms and keep her in the dark. That she couldn’t be cured without figuring out he was Doctor Shady Shadiest of All Time. So what is it? How do we do it?”

  The ticking clock resumed, all of us waiting to see if he’d give us the answer.

  “She has to go in the tank,” he said, at last. “Once only, not even to sleep, simply to receive the chemical neuroshock that will terminate her role in the experiment, erase our mental bond.”

  “No more cousin to spooky action at a distance?” I asked.

  “No more connection between us, quantum or otherwise,” the clone said. “No more action and reaction. She must go into the tank.”

  “Thank you,” Melody said, shaky.

  He dropped his hand. “I did not mean to frighten you.”

  “Too late,” Maddy said. She went over to the tank, eyeing it with skepticism. “Won’t she drown? Lois, is he telling the truth?”

  Considering Donovan’s certainty in his notes that the treatment wasn’t possible to administer without Melody’s knowledge and consent—unlike what he’d planned to do with her DNA—I supposed I should have guessed the tank would be the answer. I didn’t trust the clone, either.

  “I could check the file, but Donovan will be back any second,” I said.

  “He’s telling the truth.” Melody pulled herself straighter and walked over to join her sister. The blue glow of the liquid inside illuminated their faces. “The fluid will not hurt me.”

  “Okay, then,” I said. “I don’t mean to rush anyone, but Donovan really will be back soon enough. He’s bound to have figured out the note was a trick by now.”

  The double went to Melody, the cloth of his anonymous suit whispering with the movement. He offered her his hand, almost like he planned to dance with her. She took it.

  With his other fingers, he pressed a button on the side of the tank, and it slid open, the door mechanism pressing back the liquid to make a dry area for the person to climb into. Without a word, Melody stepped in.

  He pressed the button and the opening closed again. She was sealed inside, eyes open and scared, the glowing blue liquid surrounding her completely.

  “I told you,” he said. “I am not a good man.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Maddy pressed a hand to the glass, and her sister’s raised through the blue liquid to meet it. Look at me, Maddy mouthed to her. Melody did.

  “Are you hurting her?” I asked, because I knew Maddy needed to know the answer.

  “Do you always ask the same questions over and over again, girl reporter?” the clone said. “No, I am hurting only myself. I do not understand why I am doing this.”

  “You’re doing it for her,” I said. “You might not be a good person, but I don’t think you’re a bad one either.”

  “I am hardly a person at all,” he said.

  Melody’s hair spread out around her head. Her movements were deliberate, controlled. She wasn’t thrashing around or giving any sign of alarm.

  “What is the liquid?” I asked.

  “His special creation. Think of it as a type of amniotic fluid. He says I am reborn each time I enter it.”

  “Um, so… will she be the same person when she comes out?” Maddy asked, eyes remaining on her sister.

  “Its effect here will be more immediate and less dramatic for her. She will be the same. And I will be alone.” The button the clone had pressed to open the tank’s door was part of a small keypad, and he concentrated on it. “The shock may sting, however, it cannot be avoided.”

  He pressed another button.

  Melody jerked once in the tank, then a second time.

  Maddy gasped, pressing her other hand to the glass. “What’s happening?” she demanded.

  “It will not last long,” he said. “This is what you asked for. Quantum disentanglement.”

  Melody’s limbs froze, seizing up, and then she flew into motion. She shook her head. Her hands hit the glass, roughly opposite Maddy’s. My heart began to pound again. What if I’d risked my friend’s sister by listening to this guy, and we lost her?

  But her hands moved back to push her hair out of her face. Her eyes closed, and then opened. She looked right at me and smiled.

  Melody was still Melody.

  She angled her face to nod—not
to Maddy or to me, but to him.

  “It is done,” he said.

  He pressed another button, and Maddy retracted her arms as the door whisked open again. Her clothes were damp, but the liquid must not have been water. Nothing dripped to the floor as she stepped from the chamber, free, and he sealed it once more. Maddy instantly folded her into a hug, and Melody returned it.

  When they parted, the clone was messing with the keypad again. She waited until he’d finished and snapped her fingers to get his attention.

  In case he didn’t get the message, she added, “Look at me,” in the same imperious tone she’d used on me when we first met.

  He did as ordered.

  “You’re not so bad as all that,” she said to him.

  “Someone who affects other people, who takes action, sounds like a real person to me,” I added. “You are one, whether you believe it or not. Do you need that tank to live?”

  “I do not need anything,” the clone said. “Not now that she is free. Confining me is simply part of his protocols, more convenient to keep me close.” He paused, and spoke to Melody directly. “Look at Donovan, my creator, spurned by his former employers at Cadmus… Now he fancies himself the enemy of Cadmus, and who knows what he is capable of? I know you think I am not bad, but I do not know what I would do if I had no leash.”

  The clone couldn’t want to exist that way. Could he? I didn’t trust him, but we needed him and I’d made him a promise before. He helped Melody. We owed him.

  But first, we had to finish this. “We need the public to see you,” I said, “believe you are Mayor Worthington’s twin—in order to protect Melody’s part in this—but you can say Moxie forced your hand. They’ll believe it. We can get Worthington to help, get you away from Donovan. You could be free too.”

  “I will give it due consideration,” he said. His head shifted toward the door. “You should not have delayed to talk with me. He has returned. I can hear him. The door just opened, a slip of paper fluttered to the ground. He is hurrying up the stairs.”

  We had what we’d come for—Melody was no longer in danger. The connection was broken.

  I would remain calm. I would get us out of here.