“We ready to leave, kids?”
Tina climbed into the backseat and settled herself directly behind him. “Just drive, Jeeves. Chicago is a long ways off.”
In the passenger’s seat, Hank grunted and shifted and moved nervously as the change started. He shrank before their eyes, his rough features growing younger, his thick muscles slipping away until he looked like a little kid playing dress up in the clothes that had stretched to accommodate Hank’s bigger body mass. The pants were suddenly loose instead of tight and the shirt he was wearing looked like a tent. Hank had closed his eyes. Cody opened them, looking a bit disoriented. He looked around for a moment, not saying a word.
Tina cursed under her breath and climbed out of the car. “You stay right here, big boy.”
“Where are you going?” Joe scowled.
“Cody! Get over here!” Her voice was a sharp snap and Cody followed her without question.
Tina bent at the waist and fished into the wastebasket until she found the missing pieces of the phone and then put them together.
“Call home. Tell your folks you’re alive, Cody. Okay? Talk to them and tell them whatever you want, but let them know you’re okay.”
Cody looked at the phone for a long minute and licked his lips nervously. “What should I say?”
Tina shrugged. She had that expressionless look on her face again. “You love your parents?”
“Yeah.”
“Then tell ’em you love ’em and tell ’em you’ll see ’em soon.”
Cody nodded and started punching in the number. A moment later he turned away from everyone and started talking.
When he was done, Tina took the phone from him and once again broke it apart before throwing it away.
Cody climbed back into the car and said nothing, but he wiped at his eyes as if offended by the tears that had fallen when he spoke to his father. He hadn’t dared talk to his mom. He’d surely have taken the first bus back home if he had heard her voice.
Joe started driving. He pulled onto I-95 a few minutes later and accelerated to almost seventy miles per hour. Soon enough they were switching onto a westbound interstate, aiming for Chicago and a part of the country none of them but Joe had ever seen before.
There was a long road ahead of them, and each of them had many things to consider in the silence between them. Behind them, they were leaving all that they had once thought they knew about the world, leaving behind the lies that had been their lives and in most cases desperately wishing they could go back to those sweet lies. Instead they moved forward, seeking answers to truths that made no sense, haunted by the other selves who hid inside of them and wanted answers just as desperately.
And on the highway Joe Bronx drove, a half smile playing around his mouth, his fingers tapping on the steering wheel the beat of a Disturbed song that was playing on the radio as he cruised at just the right speed to look like just another driver, just another normal teenager heading down the long road.
And lost inside of his head, trapped away, Hunter Harrison said nothing, perhaps thought nothing or possibly dreamed of the world he’d known before Joe came into the universe and started destroying his life.
If he was aware of anything at all, he hid it away as surely as Joe did.
Chapter Forty-one
Evelyn Hope
Evelyn shook her head. They’d watched the new footage three times. She stared at the screen and sighed so softly it sounded more like a breath of disappointment.
Beside her, George shifted in his seat. On her other side, a younger man, a boy, really, only twelve though he looked a few years older, looked toward her with a nervous expression. He knew his mother’s moods well enough to know that she was upset.
“Gabriel?”
Her son looked at her. “Yes, ma’am?”
“Did you recognize any of them?”
“No, ma’am.” His voice was clipped and efficient.
“Do you remember me talking about Subject Seven, Gabriel?”
The boy frowned. “The one that killed Dad and Bobby?”
She looked at him carefully. “He killed your father. He took your brother away.”
“You said he was as good as dead.”
She pointed to the screen and tapped one of the figures. The shape was heavily muscled with shaggy hair. “Do you see him?”
“Yes, of course.” He stared at the shape.
“That is Subject Seven, Gabriel.”
Her son stared hard at the screen and the sneer that came across his mouth was unpleasant.
“Do you remember Bobby, Gabby?”
“Of course, he’s my brother. I miss him every day.” She knew the words were true. The absence had probably been muted by time, but he still felt it.
“Gabriel, if Subject Seven is alive, then it’s possible that Bobby is alive.” She watched the realization on her son’s face.
“Bobby could come back to us?” Oh, the hope in his voice almost broke her heart. It was so much like the hope she was trying to suppress.
“It’s possible, but we don’t know yet.”
George raised an eyebrow and looked at her but never said a word.
“Gabriel?”
“Yes, Mother?”
“Would you be happier if Bobby came back to us?”
Her bright, precious boy looked toward her and smiled. “Yes, ma’am. We’d… we’d be a family again.”
She allowed herself a small smile. The words cut a bit, but she knew how much she’d changed since Subject Seven had murdered her husband.
“Gabriel?”
“Yes, Mother?”
“Does the moon always shine so brightly at noon?”
The boy’s face went slack for a second and then he clenched the arms of his chair and moaned. His body tensed, his face grew dark with rising blood pressure and he leaned his head back and hissed in pain as his bones grew, his body changed. The black clothes he wore had been slightly baggy, but by the time the change was done, they were snug. Every Doppelganger had a command phrase, a simple comment that could change them from student to killing machine. The only exceptions that she knew of were the creatures that Subject Seven had surrounded himself with. They were supposed to be dead. That thought terrified her.
Gabriel was in excellent shape. He worked out every day, trained in both hand-to-hand and armed combat, and though he was only twelve, he ran five miles every day and ten to twenty miles when out on maneuvers. He was fit and he was competent.
What took his place made him seem frail. The shape was larger, stronger and as always darker. Everything about him said that he was a predator, designed for hunting and killing.
“Good afternoon, Rafael.” Evelyn smiled tightly. She remained formal with all of the Doppelgangers. It was best to keep them at a distance, as history had taught her.
Rafael stood up and immediately moved his arms to the small of his back, the hands crossed over each other, his legs slightly spread into a quick parade rest stance.
“Good afternoon, Ms. Hope.” His face was calm, but his eyes, oh, how they shone. He was glad to be freed of
