The Duplicate

Chapter Seven

"Pull over."

"What?"

"Pull over. I'm going to be sick."

Jerking the steering wheel over, Trip slows the car down. The tires kick dirt up into the air as they bounce over the side of the road. We haven't even come to a complete stop before I open my door, and in violent retches, my stomach empties only bile.

The acid burns my throat. Tears well in my eyes. My fingers clutch the handle of the door, tightening with each wave of heaving. And I am left slumped in my seat, barely able to hold myself up when my retching finally subsides.

It must be five or six in the morning now. The sky's hue of black is lightening, and there are dew drops on the sporadic clumps of grass growing between the cracks in the road—the clumps of grass I am puking all over.

"Are you done?"

Slowly, I turn my gaze on Trip.

He stares back at me irritably.

I've never been a violent person, but at this very moment, I've never wanted to punch someone so hard in my entire life. Thick, suffocating anger surges through me. I open my mouth to say something—something horrible, something demeaning. But nothing comes to mind. Instead, a pathetic, wailing sob bubbles up my throat, tasting worse than the bile I just threw up. I rip my eyes away from him and spit in the grass.

Trip gives an exasperated sigh. "We don't have time for this. Close the door."

"Give me just a second," I hiss at him. My voice croaks. I don't even sound like myself.

"Close. The door."

"What is wrong with you?" My head snaps around to stare daggers at him again. "I am tired! I am hungry! I am sick! I just saw three men have their brains blown out! And you don't even care! Do you not feel anything? Are you even human?!"

For a second, Trip looks like I just kicked him in the gut. I am screaming at him, so the shock is expected. But when his mouth sets into a hard line and his eyes turn to stare straight ahead through the windshield, I realize this is not shock.

I said something horrible. Something demeaning.

Oh.

My gaze drops to the numbers tattooed on Trip's wrist.

Oh.

Silence falls over both of us. A car whizzes past us on the road, and my car judders from the gust of air it brings.

"If you want to go back, get out," Trip says finally. He doesn't even look at me as he speaks. "Just know they are after you too now."

"Why?"

"Because you know about me." His eyes flicker to his wrist, and he lowers his hand from the steering wheel so the tattoo falls out of sight. "They must have been monitoring the Database. I didn't think they would be yet."

"They?" I ask, shaking my head. "Who are they?"

"Government."

I stare unblinkingly at Trip. "But... You kidnapped me. I haven't done anything. If I tell them—"

He is already shaking his head. "It doesn't matter."

"But if I tell them—"

"Shut-up and listen to me." His eyes lock on mine. They are frosted over again. Cold and chilling. "It doesn't matter. You know what I am."

Another car zooms past us, and I just continue to stare at Trip. And he continues to stare back at me.

"And what is that exactly?" I ask breathlessly. A quick gesture at his arm and I find my voice rising again. "You're supposed to be hooked up to a machine. You're not even supposed to open your eyes, but you're sitting here talking to me. How are you alive? How are you even here—out here—right now?"

Trip grits his teeth and looks away.

"Answer me."

"Close. The door."

"Answer me."

Trip snaps. One moment he is staring out the windshield, and the next he has me by the arm and is jerking me towards him. My breath hitches as the cool metal of his gun, the hammer cocked before it even touches me, presses under my chin.

God is he fast.

"We don't have time to sit here and argue. I am giving you a choice. Either you get out and try to face this on your own, or you close the fucking door so we can put some distance between us and the people trying to kill us."

We.

Us.

He speaks as though I am with him in this, as if I asked for this to happen, as if I had agreed to have him kidnap me and have Government hunt me down. But he knows, as well I do, that I don't have a choice. If he is right about Government wanting to kill me, though part of me still hopes he is lying, my only chance of survival is with him—the very monster who has thrown me into this mess in the first place.

Trip must see the resolve in my eyes. He releases me and settles back into the driver's seat, watching me as I pull my door shut. In seconds, we are blazing down the road again, Trip pushing the speedometer needle near sixty-five to make up for the time we spent stopped.

I stare out the window as trees blur by like a moving watercolor landscape. "Where are we going?"

"To the City."

I look at him.

"They must have deleted my file from Emulation," Trip says, shaking his head. "The only other place it can be is in Government Database."