The Duplicate

Chapter Twenty-five

The world slows, and begins to twist. Colors and shapes bleed and smear together. Insanity melting, liquefying, submerging me in the residue.

Here, nothing feels right. 

The car has stopped, and the parking garage is as motionless as its gray barren walls. Only empty cars and winking florescent lights occupy this floor. No one else is in sight. But here, in this murk clouding my mind, there's still a paranoid little voice that carries on, whispering:

Keep watching. 

And my eyes keep fluttering to the car's cracked side mirror, checking, as if any moment this stillness could be kicked right back into chaos. I'm not the only one who hears it. When I turn my head sluggishly to look at Trip, I find his eyes flashing up at the rearview mirror. Mechanically, coldly, like it's habit. He must be very well acquainted with that little voice.

"We weren't followed, were we?" I ask, my words sounding muffled, confined to my mind. 

Trip shakes his head. 

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure." He cuts the engine.

A thick silence sinks over the car. It weighs me down in my seat, makes my hands twitch, and soon I am rubbing my sweating palms over the tops of my thighs. Glancing, again, at the side mirror. Chewing my, still sore, bottom lip. Then the urge to say something—anything—to break the silence becomes too overpowering.

"They want you alive."

Trip draws a deep breath. 

"Why?" 

He lets the breath out in a sigh. "It wouldn't be as rewarding to Braxton if I was brought in dead." 

"But Ralston said there's more than just..."

"It's Braxton who wants me alive," Trip says definitively. His eyes lower to inspect his bruised knuckles, curling his fingers into a fist, uncurling them. "Ralston was trying to intimidate me, but I doubt anyone else cares whether I'm brought in dead or alive. They just want to get rid of me before word gets out to the public."

I stare at him. 

Before long, he notices—pale eyes meeting mine. "What?"

"Why does Braxton care? What happens if you're brought in alive?"

"If I'm lucky—" Trip bites the word "—I'll get a lecture, a beating, and a bullet to the head."

"That's lucky?"

"It's better than..." He stops, and the silence thickens a little more as his next choice words waver, unreadable, across his gaze. It's just a ghost of a thought, and physically he recoils from it—drawing back in his seat, mouth setting into a hard line. 

I blink at him in surprise. "Better than what?" 

"It doesn't matter." He looks away, body rigid, and without even seeming conscious of it, he lets the hand resting on the steering wheel drop. 

The tattoo on his wrist falls out of sight. 

Then I know. My lips barely move as I say, "Being put under."

A sharp, heavy breath forces its way out of Trip's lungs. His eyes dart around the car as if he doesn't know where to look anymore. "It doesn't matter. I made a choice. I knew the consequences. I'd just rather die with a little dignity than to die like a..."

Duplicate.

To die like he was nothing, not even considered a life. 

I feel a pinch in the very bottom of my gut, and for a while the only sound is the ticking of the engine as it cools. Neither of us speaks, and Trip only stares out the window.