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“You can’t tell me you seriously didn’t even consider it?” Regan leant back in his seat and laughed. “Really?”
“No.” I lit up another cigarette and took a long drag. We’d been ushered out, but not caught, by the return of the security robots. And now, we’d retired to my local bar, the one opposite Sam’s old place. It was quiet tonight, a weekday, and we’d found a booth near the back, private, to discuss the implications of what we’d found out in the hospital databases. “There wasn’t exactly much time for that anyway.” I flicked away some ash. “And I might need to remind you that he was about to destroy Space Station Delta.”
“I don’t believe you never even thought about it!” He took a sip of wine. “Not even once?”
“I’m not that much of a narcissist, you know.” I poured more whiskey into my glass; we’d already been here an hour, drinking and talking, having fun. “There’s only enough room in this universe for one Jack Gemini.” I winked. “Two of me might be a little much.”
He leant forward with a sly grin. “Well, I don’t know...” His voice trailed off and his smile grew coyly.
I was tempted by his lips, tempted to give in to his kiss again. But I couldn’t. Not yet. Not until things were square between Queenie and me.
I cleared my throat and sat up. “He’s dead now.”
He moved back. “Wow, way to dampen the mood, Mr Gemini.”
I sighed and took another drag of my cigarette. “I’m just saying that it’s all very well talking about hypotheticals but at the end of the goddamned day, the other me was a batshit crazy lunatic and there’s no way I would’ve ever...” I shivered. “It’s just plain weird and creepy; I don’t know why you brought it up.”
“Just intrigued, that’s all.”
“You’re a pervert, that’s all.” I sucked the cigarette to the filter. “Anyway, he was better looking than me.” I held up the stub to indicate. “He didn’t smoke or drink anywhere near as much as me, if at all. Jack Gemini was a handsome fella.”
“He still is.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere.”
Regan shrugged and drank some wine. His lips had reddened from the beverage, and I wanted to taste him again.
“Does Queenie know?” asked the other man.
“How could she? I haven’t seen her since...” I suddenly clicked that he wasn’t talking about our little rooftop liaison. “No. No, she doesn’t know about the parallel world stuff. She doesn’t know I’m fake.”
“You’re not fake,” he said. “How many times have I got to tell you this?”
“But I’m not the real Jack Gemini,” I said. Maybe it was the booze doing the talking for me. I stubbed out my cigarette and clasped my whiskey with both hands, hugging it for comfort. “This isn’t my world; I stole his life.”
Regan reached out and cupped my hands with his own. “There’s no reason a fake cannot surpass the original.”
“What? I don’t understand.”
“Delartes often copied other artists, even though most of his work is original,” said Regan. “There’s numerous examples of his plagiarism scattered through the campus of Solaris University and nearly everyone thinks Delartes was the original. Not true. People are so fascinated by his work that they’ve forgotten the original artist. I should probably point out that ’The Call of Narcissus’ isn’t one of the copies, I’m sorry to say. And, you know, sometimes covers of great songs are even greater than the original. A fake can surpass the original.”
“I know you’re trying to cheer me up, but it doesn’t change the fact that this isn’t my life. I’m just pretending to be Jack Gemini, or at the very least, pretending to be this world’s Jack Gemini.”
“It is your life,” he said. “Whether you like it or not. And you can be better than he was, are better than he was.”
I snorted a laugh.
“You’re not going to try and blow us all to kingdom come like he tried to, are you?”
“Not yet.”
He patted my hands and leant back; his smile was tender.
“Your mother might,” I said. I retrieved a cigarette from my jacket pocket and placed it in the corner of my mouth. “She shouldn’t be meddling with stuff like that, even if it does solve the power crisis.” I lit up. “Not by permanently solving it by killing everyone who needs the power.”
“I’m happy she’s alive,” said Regan. “I think. But not at the expensive of everyone else. These... what was it... transdimensional conduits are dangerous. One death is bad enough; another Dionne Bex, another mother, had to die for her to live.”
“And she could explode everything this side of the solar system.”
“Yeah, there is that too.”
I nodded and held up my glass for a toast. “Here’s to putting a stop to it.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Are we officially working a case together now?”
“Why not?” I laughed. “We’ve already broken into a building together!”
He clinked his glass against mine. “I’ll scratch your back, and you can scratch mine.” We both drank to our partnership.
The quiet bar was beginning to get even quieter; from where I sat, I could see a couple of people, other regulars, bid their farewells to the owner and exit. It was getting late, and we’d need to decide on our next steps and make a move to get home.
“Those face changes concern me,” I said. I exhaled some smoke. “We’ll need to go back to the hospital at some point and take another look at the database; those damned robots messed everything up. We know one is Emmett Greene, but the other...?”
“It’s a horrible thought but do you think my mother changed the face of her other self?”
“I doubt it. That’s a little too macabre, even for her.” I finished off yet another glass of amber liquid. “And redundant.” I was beginning to feel a little tipsy. “Giving someone a face change and letting them live a life before you use them up. Besides, if the other Dionne Bex had been anything like your mother, she wouldn’t have allowed anything like that to happen. It’s more likely she was kept sedated, or cryogenically frozen until needed.”
“Wouldn’t she have rights?”
“Would she? Not that it would stop your mother.”
“I guess not.”
“Anyway, she wasn’t from this world.” I took a long drag of the cigarette as I studied Regan’s face; he was even handsome when he was scowling. “I’m lucky. I’m only getting away with being here because I’m the only Jack Gemini. I’ve been here years, got an established life and business. The other Bex, not so much. Tribeca don’t want people to know the truth. Trade secrets and all that.” I leant forward and whispered. “And then there’s the matter of how your mother got injured in the first place.”
“The copycat killer.”
I nodded. “I wonder if the face changes Tribeca funded have something to do with the copycat killer. Is that why your mother was attacked?”
“I think we might need to break into somewhere else.”
“Tribeca HQ?”
“Yeah,” he slurred. He emptied his glass and reached for the bottle. “I can get my access details from my apartment, and we can take a little trip in the morning... well, maybe not the morning. We’ll go the middle of the night.”
“What about the security?”
“That won’t be a problem; are you forgetting whose son I am?”
“I try to,” I said with a grin. “I would’ve thought your mother would’ve cut you off from everything in Tribeca.”
“Umm...” He blushed.
“What?”
“She... er... did, yes.”
“So?”
“You know Tony?”
“Her security guard?” I felt my mouth drop open in shock. “You didn’t?”
“He’s got a bit of thing for me, and we might’ve...”
“Wow.” My cigarette had burnt to a stub. I dropped in the ashtray and lit another. “I can’t believe it.”
“You’re one to talk!” He pursed his lips with a mischievous smile. “You know, he told me about you and him, about what you got up to.”
“It was one night!”
He shrugged. “Anyway, he lets me into the building.” He was holding his wine as he talked, gesturing and waving it around. “Keeps my access valid.” He spilled some of the red liquid onto the table. He didn’t notice.
“It might be time to call it a night.” I was feeling tipsy myself, but Regan was more than half cut. “And I think it’s going to be safer for you to sleep on my sofa again tonight.”
I finished my smoke, no more drinks for me, while Regan finished his glass of wine, before we clambered out into the street and into the cold, power saving atmosphere. The bar owner had seemed very pleased to see us leave; we’d been the last patrons there. It was late, it had been late when we’d paid a visit to the hospital, and it was now the middle of the night.
The alcohol hit us hard as we walked and as we moved from the stuffy bar to the stale and chilly exterior, I felt woozy, that good kind of woozy that you can only get from that certain level, the right level, of intoxication. Regan, on the other hand...
“I should sleep in your bed, with you,” he slurred. His hand was around my waist as I propped him up under my arm; he could barely walk straight. “But not sleep...”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said. It goddamned wasn’t. Not only was Regan not sober enough to consent, but there was also Queenie to consider. “How about you sleep in the bed, and I sleep on the sofa this time?”
“I’ll...” He babbled off into incomprehension and his mumbling slurs made me feel like a sober and responsible person. That wasn’t something I was used to.
I mouthed an affirmative to whatever he’d said and hoped he was the type of drunk to fall asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.
We reached the apartment and I carried him up the entrance steps and through the door. His hands kept touching me, my arms, my chest and he kept trying to grope my bum; I had to swat his hand away, even though I welcomed his affections. His hands talked instead of his mouth.
The elevator was waiting for us, thankfully, and I pulled both of us inside. Regan snuggled close, half unconscious, and his warmth felt good against me. I let him cuddle me.
The doors pinged open.
“Jack,” said Queenie. She was outside my apartment, despite the lateness, rummaging through her purse. “I forgot my keys. Oh.” Her expression turned to fire as she took in the handsome young man embracing me. “I see you’ve found yourself a hussy for the night.”