Doppelganger

Chapter 3

"Whoa, what?"

X5-494, Alec, whatever his name was now, was staring at her. His eyes bored into her as if he was seeing her for the first time, perhaps mentally cleaning the dirt smudges and grit off her face. If he did, he would see a face that looked like his, just with the smoothness of femininity and childhood.

X8-270 ducked her head again, flinching away from him. He looked so different from the last time she had seen him. She hadn't recognized him that first moment, even though her mind put the scent that was hers but wasn't and the face together. Now that he wasn't staring at the ceiling like a K.I.A. and bleeding from the beating that Manticore had given him, she could really see herself in him. An early, less-refined version of herself since he was an X5 and a male, but the familiarity of his face was both comforting and scary.

"What are you talking about?" 494 asked, his voice hard.

She flinched. Now that she had brought it up, she realized that he didn't know anything about her, and she really didn't want to talk about it. His fingers wrapped around her chin and turned her face towards him. She tried to look away, but he held her chin tightly, forcing her to look at him.

"Don't play with me, kid," he said, his identical eyes staring into hers. "What are you, some kind of clone?"

"That's stupid," she said, narrowing her eyes at the idea, "I'd be a boy."

"Then what are you?" 494 demanded. "You're the one going all dramatic and claiming to be me. So what are you?" He glared at her with suspicion darkening his eyes and raised his head. "Are you from PsyOps? Some kind of twisted joke?"

The word PsyOps took the breath out of her and filled her with cold dread instead. The metal room, the pinpoint of red light boring into her eye, the hard black restraints, the knives and needles, and that breathy, light voice in her head...

"No!" she hissed, more like an angry cat than a human. She yanked backwards and pulled herself away from him, hitting the headboard of his bed with her back. Her side burned and the fire scorched up across her torso again. In pain, she slumped onto his pillow, her body stinging like she was lying on coals. She managed to glare at him, mimicking his earlier expression even as his softened. "I'm not from them. Don't talk about them."

"Fine," he said, but he didn't seem as angry, "But I want an explanation. If that's okay with you."

She sighed and rested her hand over the bullet wound. The newly formed scab had torn open and blood warmed her hand. She considered mentioning it then decided against it in the same moment. Now that she had told him, he wanted answers. He might not even want to help her anymore.

His gaze was expectant, and his face was a frowning mask. 270 took a deep breath and buried a wince as her side hitched.

"I'm only really 87% you," she said, looking at window, "That's really not a lot, when you think about it."

Yes, it was. Except for her obvious femaleness and a few other details, they had engineered her to be as much like 494 as possible. The other 13% was tweaked to be like him, too, but it wasn't a perfect match. They had explained it to her once, back when she had been in PysOps, but she had been too frightened to take it all in.

A light rain tapped against the glass like someone wanting to get in. She had never noticed the rain when she had slept in her little bed back at Manticore; she had been too exhausted most nights to notice anything. She looked back at 494. "I'm you but not really. I'm mostly you, with a few improvements."

494 snorted. "Improvements? Like what?"

"I'm a girl," she said, tired of him snapping at her. When he cocked an eyebrow at her, she shrugged. She didn't really know all the details. "I don't know. I have better senses than you. And I'm more..." She thought about the word her handler had used to describe the X8 series. "All X8s are better at finding things than other Xs. Smarter, too." She expected him to rise to that bait, but he didn't.

"But why would they make a girly version of me?" he asked. He wasn't looking at her anymore. Instead, he was looking at his closet, shifting his gaze just like she did. "What's the point of that?"

She shrugged again. "My colonel said they were trying to see if a girl version would make up for the mistakes." She wrapped her arms around her legs and rested her chin on her knees. "It was... I'm just a test run. Expendable."

She flicked her eyes up at him, and for a moment, as the burn in her side lashed down her thigh and into her leg, he looked like he had back in Manticore, when she had seen him during his reindoctrination in PsyOps. It had been a couple years ago, but the image was seared into her brain as if they had lasered it into her memory.

His eyes staring off into nothingness, a blank expression on his ruined face. Blood dripping from his nose and across his lips. The metal doorjamb was cool under her fingers as she lingered in the doorway, too scared to go into the room until Channing shoved her in. She had wondered why no one had fixed 494, why they hadn't given him a bandage, sewn up his injuries. For the first time in her life, she had pitied someone. She learned to pity herself soon after that when she was thrust into PsyOps for the next five months while they tried to figure out if what had gone wrong with 494 was going to go wrong with her.

"Are you okay?" she asked, tilting her head to the side. She was really good at reading people, probably one of the traits she shared with him.

"Besides the fact that my Mini-Me is a girl, and she broke into my apartment to die on my bed because of poor first aid skills?" She stayed silent as he gave a hard sigh and shoved his hair back through his fingers, making it stick straight up. It looked funny. "And she's asking me if I'm all right while she's bleeding out?" He laughed darkly and looked at her. "Are you sure you're my clone?"

"Yeah. Cause I'm not a clone," she snapped, feeling testy again. She usually squashed the urge to backtalk like that, but this night had been tough on her. Her side ached, her head hurt, and she had accidentally ended up in the apartment of someone who might hate her just because a scientist had borrowed his DNA to make an experiment out of her. It wasn't like he was exactly an original either. His DNA had to be borrowed from somewhere.

She jumped when 494 chuckled. "Well, there's one thing I know that's mine."

"What?" she asked. She thought she deserved one question after answering all of his like he was her CO or handler or something.

His face changed from a suspicious glare to a quirky half-smile. "You've got my mouth."

She brought her left hand up to her face and self-consciously touched her lips. They were cracked from exposure to the cold weather but otherwise they looked exactly like his in a smaller, more delicate version. "Yeah, so?" Of course she had his mouth, she was 87% him, she'd just told him so. Watching him, she wondered just how much smarter X8s were compared to X5s.

494 snickered and stood up from the bed. "That's not exactly what I was talking about." He walked up to the top of the bed and crouched down so that their eyes were level. 270 tried not fidget as he looked at her as if trying to figure out if there was something she wasn't telling him.

Finally, he sighed and shook his head. "All right, let me take a better look at that wound, then I'm going to go call someone, ok? She'll know what to do with you."

She hesitated then nodded. What else could she do? She really didn't have a choice in the matter.

He reached toward her and then paused, his gaze lingering on her face as his hand hovered inches away from her. "Hey, kid."

"What?" Her muscles tensed, preparing for a blow. They always hit you back at Manticore when they didn't like what you did and nothing she had seen in this world seemed any different. She froze when his hand tentatively touched her arm above the wrist.

"You're not expendable anymore," he said, squeezing her arm in reassurance. It felt sorta nice. "Got it?"

Her eyes narrowed at him, thinking about how many times she had been lied to in her life, but she couldn't help but trust 494. He wasn't lying. She would know.