Darren Lemke - Gemini Man

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.”