Excerpt

An Original

Her back was turned to him and she couldn't see her husband when he came in. She couldn't see that he was bleeding in half a dozen places, bruised and battered, grass stains on his clothes. The sounds of his panting, though, were enough to turn her attention toward him.

She gasped when she saw the state of him, but didn't have time to ask what was wrong.

He began for her: "Do you love me?"

"Of course."

"Really? No matter what's happens?"

She pulled a bit of the shrubbery from his hair and gently put her hand on his face, trying her hardest to reassure him. "Of course I love you. Nothing could ever change that."

"I hope so," he said as he collapsed into a chair, fighting back tears.

"What's wrong?" Her voice quivered with concern.

"What if I told you something..." He could barely continue. "Something about me. And it would change everything. Would you still love me?"

"Will you please just tell me what happened?"

"I'm serious. Will things change?"

"How can I know that if you won't tell me what the problem is?"

"It's not so easy, and I'm not all that sure..." He stopped, trying to catch his breath. "It's all so much of a shock, I don't even know what..."

With a quiet, loving tone, she shushed him, trying her hardest to calm him. He was shaking beneath her touch.

"Just tell me what the matter is," she whispered delicately in his ear, "and I promise that it'll all be okay."

He looked up at her, took a breath, and—

"Please, take a seat, Mr. Drake," his attorney said, graciously motioning toward a plush leather chair opposite his desk. Steven Drake settled into the chair and folded his legs, assuming this all had something to do with his parents' will. The lawyer sat down in his chair with a creak, both of his back and the mechanical swivel under his seat. The lawyer was a very young partner for his profession, about the same age as Steven. Both men were in their early thirties and neither showed signs of graying. "Do you know why I asked you here today?"

"I imagine it has something to do with some dangling legal threads from the passing of my parents."

"That was tragic. Yes, it does, have something to do with that. Once again, I am deeply sorry for the loss of your parents."

"Thank you. It was terrible, but I think they'd be the first to say that they both led full lives with no regrets."

"You never know, Steven. Sometimes, you really never know."

"I suppose not," he said as he picked a spot of lint from his slacks.

"Well, technically, this is a matter that stems from your parents untimely loss."

"I just figured that since we'd been through the will this would have been all taken care of by now."

"Well, this matter is a little more complicated than that, unfortunately."

Steven furrowed his brow, curious, "What's the matter then?"

"Would you like a drink?" The attorney pulled a crystal decanter and a pair of scotch glasses from a shelf below the level of the desk and quickly poured two fingers of Scotch for each of them. In the last two years of being a client of John Lindh's, Steven had never been offered a drink inside the sanctum of his office. Something was the matter and it aroused his suspicions and raised the hairs on his neck.

Despite that, he accepted the drink, reaching over and sniffing the beverage. An oakey musk filled his nostrils, he sipped it, and the taste matched the oak bouquet. It went down smooth, warming him on its way. John sniffed and sipped as well, "It's an eighteen year. Oak aged."

"It's very good. But you didn't call me here for this."

"No," he said with a heaving breath. "No, I suppose I didn't."

"I'm grateful for the scotch, but I have to admit that I'm incredibly curious about our purpose here, now."

John stood and turned to face the immense picture window, staring out at the view through the open slats in the wooden Venetian blinds between measured sips of his drink. "This isn't easy for me, but it's not a thing I'm very well equipped to deal with. I'm a lawyer. Breaking news outside of a courtroom isn't my forte, unfortunately."

Steven gave a half chuckle meant to disarm, "I'm a big boy, John. I think I can take it."

John turned his back around, set his glass down on the cherry wood desk and withdrew an aged and battered manila envelope from his filing cabinet. He slid it across the desk to Steven and watched him open it. Steven unwound the string around the front, pulled open the flap, and withdrew a single sheet of paper that had been tapped out on a typewriter. There was no letterhead to speak of and no indication who it was from at first glance, so Steven simply began reading. As he read, his attorney shot down the rest of his scotch, hoping to ease his nerves.

Steven Drake read over the letter, got to the end, and began again. He read the letter again, twice more, before he looked up from his paper and scoffed, "Is this a joke?"

"I wish it was."

Steven's jaw dropped in shock and disbelief. Craning his neck, he drained the rest of his booze, put the empty glass on the desk, and hung his head. "What exactly is this supposed to mean?"

"As your attorney, it means a lot more than I think it should, but the ramifications are... Well, there's...hmmm."

"That's great. The great John Lindh at a loss for words." It was ironic, as young as he was, John Lindh was renowned for his ability to talk his way out of anything inside the courtroom. "You can't be serious. There's no way. If this were true, I'd have known about it."

"Believe it. They left all the evidence in the safe deposit box anyone could ask for. If the letter and I can't convince you, there's files and files. It's true, without a doubt. Trust me. I went over it all myself, twice. It all checks out. Believe me. It all checks out."

"You're seriously telling me that I'm a clone?"

"I'm afraid so."

Steven's world shrunk. At that moment, his eyes could focus on nothing specific and his ears could hear nothing but the thumping beat of his own heart.

"Hey," John snapped his fingers, "Hey. You awake? Please don't go into shock on me, Steven." But Steven couldn't hear him. "I don't want to alarm you, Steven, but things are a little worse than that."

The saliva evaporated in Steven's mouth as the hearing was slowly restored to his ears. "How?" He coughed. "How could it get worse?"

"Well, this conversation isn't covered under the attorney-client privilege of confidentiality."

John was positive no more blood could drain from Steven's face, making him pale even further, but there was still yet blood to drain. "How so?"

"Well, not many of people know the finer details of the Bioethics and Anti-Cloning legislation, but buried in it is a little clause that completely tied my hands in this matter."

"What clause? What do you mean your hands are tied?" Steven asked through another shocked, dry cough.

"It basically supersedes any confidentiality contracts, implied, written or otherwise. It specifically cites an override on attorney client privilege and it compels me to turn you over to the authorities immediately under penalty of a class A felony, punishable by up to a $1 million fine and up to four years in prison."

"What are you saying?"

"What I'm saying is that I like you, and I'm sorry this had to happen. But honestly, neither I nor my firm can incur any risk of lawsuit or federal penalties on your behalf."

"So you're turning me in?"

"I had no choice."

"How long do I have?"

"Not long."

"How long?"

"They arrived right before you did. I'm sorry."

Steven received a jolt of adrenaline and it coursed through his veins. He was suddenly a caged lion, not knowing if he should stay to fight or flee expeditiously.

"I'm sorry," John repeated as the door clicked open and the men in white suits entered aggressively.

That's the moment Steven snapped.

Everything he'd been through in the last ten minutes was so overwhelming that the rational portions of his brain shut off and an animal instinct took over. Rage and betrayal frothed over the brim of his chest and he knew that he wouldn't let these men lay a finger on him while he had a choice. As he weighed that thought against the desire to strangle his former attorney, he barely realized that the glass shattering around him was caused not by some brutal attack on his person, but by his body crashing through the second story office window that John had spent so much time staring out of during their conversation.

Steven hit the shrubbery on the ground floor, hard. It broke his fall, but not enough to prevent him from injuring his right leg. But he was no longer running on corporeal concerns like pain and injuries, but on instinct and base emotion.

Run.

Get away.

Those three words kept repeating in his brain, over and over and over. It was so all-consuming that he didn't even look back to see if the men in white had given chase.

He left his vehicle in the underground structure, beneath the law office headquarters. Not so much because he realized that he would have been stepping into a trap, but because his instincts had put him on his feet and picked a direction.

That's how he made it home, hopping fences, dodging people, sneaking around at a full sprint.

"—and you ran all the way here to ask me if I would still love you?"

"I had to know."

She lowered her head and he couldn't tell from her reaction which side of the fence she would fall on. Carefully, she sighed, confusing him even further. The rage and betrayal from before had slowly turned into simple, raw emotion that boiled up into his eyes and tear ducts, spilling his feelings out in hot, salty streams down his cheeks. After a moment of his involuntary tears, she took a deep breath into her lungs and held it in until she was ready to speak. "I suppose I'm wondering why you even had to ask me."

He blinked and swallowed hard, waiting for her to continue, not yet comprehending her feelings or intentions.

"I love you. And just because you found out that you're not an original, why would that change anything? I'm not in love with the source of your genetic code, I'm in love with you."

He collapsed to his knees, letting the relief wash over him like the surf.

"So what's next? Where do we go from here?"

"I can't ask you to come with me. I need to get out of here. They're after me, there's no sense in getting you involved."

"With all due respect, I said I would be with you no matter what when we got married. This doesn't change anything."

"You'll come with me?"

"I love you. I don't have much a choice."

He grabbed her, pulled her close to him and kissed her. Deeply, passionately, loving her as much as the day he married her.

Then sense took back over, "Then we have to run. Now."