Duplicate Minds

Twenty-One

"Did you already eat?"

He'd slid into bed as quietly as possible, but Sarah had woken up anyway.

"Yeah, I just got some fast food."

She swats him on the arm playfully. Her voice sounds like a faraway whisper as she says, "You need to stop eating that crap. It's going to kill you someday."

He smiles, amused by the childlike demeanor she's taken on in her half-asleep state. "Anything could kill anyone at any time," he says. "Best not to worry about it."

She sits up and rubs some of the sleep out of her eye. She's waking up now and regaining her full faculties. Rajeev knows that can mean only one thing: A serious talk is coming.

"I want you to quit driving," she says.

He lets out an exasperated sigh. "Sarah, we've been over this—"

"I know, but it's taking a toll on this family. You hardly ever see Dev and Mira, and with Mira's grades slipping . . ."

"I told you why her grades were slipping."

"I know. And she suffered in silence for a long time, Rajeev. She didn't come to either of us. And why would she have? You're never here and I'm always busy holding everything else together. She has no one to turn to."

"We have a mortgage. We have two kids—kids that need food and clothes and, before too long, are going to need college tuition. How do you think we're going to pay for all that if I quit?"

"We'll make do. I'm not proposing you do nothing, just that you find a job with a better work-life balance, even if it pays less. The kids are getting older. I can get a part-time job; hell, so can Mira! The kids are smart—they'll get scholarships to help pay for school. We can always find ways to make more money. But we can never buy back time with the kids."

He shakes his head. She has a point, he knows that, but he doesn't feel like he can stop the momentum he's built up.

"I'll think about it," he says.

She nods. "That's all I'm asking from you, for now," she says. "But think it over soon. I need you. The kids need you."

He kisses her cheek. "I know," he says. "I need you, too. I love you."

***

Rajeev kept coming to the same conclusion. He'd never be able to find a solution on his own; that much was certain. He'd barely been able to set up his own phone in the time before his crash, so he'd certainly never be able to navigate any of the newfangled tech that powered the NLT campus now.

But Gregory Maltek probably could—or had someone on staff who could.

Rajeev tasked Daniel with drafting a message to Maltek summarizing the situation and explaining that if he didn't get his permissions restored somehow, his mission was doomed to fail.

The response took longer than Rajeev would have expected, but then, Maltek was the CEO of one of the world's fastest-growing corporations; it was a safe assumption he had other things on his plate. Finally, after nearly thirty minutes, Daniel read Maltek's reply.

"Figures they'd tighten security after you escaped," he said. "I have a man on the inside. Give him a couple hours. I'm sure he can help you out."

Rajeev wondered exactly how many men and women Maltek had "on the inside." There was an entire world of corporate espionage out there he'd barely even known existed. He wondered, was this the way companies like Coke and Pepsi, or Microsoft and Apple, operated? It seemed insane that companies would go to such immoral lengths just to line the pockets of their executives and shareholders, yet it happened all the time. It had always been an abstraction to Rajeev, but now it was affecting the fate of not just himself, but everyone he loved.

He returned to his dorm and waited for Maltek's mole to do his thing. He tried not to think about what would happen if the mole failed. Living the rest of his possibly eternal life shuffling back and forth between his dorm and the entertainment lounge was close to what Rajeev imagined hell might be like. How had he wound up in this ridiculous situation? It all came down to the car accident.

Dev had said it wasn't Rajeev's fault, and that might mostly be true. But how could he be sure he wasn't at least partly responsible? He'd been working a lot leading up to the accident. That in and of itself was a regret. It had cut into time he could have spent with his family. He'd missed out on much of Dev and Mira's childhoods. He'd convinced himself he'd work fewer hours in a couple years so he could spend more time with the kids, but of course, he'd never had a chance to; instead of watching his kids grow up, he'd spent fifteen years in a coma.

All he'd cared about back then was money. It wasn't purely out of greed; as an independent contractor for a ridesharing company, he'd needed to maximize his earnings to pay for all the benefits the job lacked, health and dental insurance chief among them. That was on top of the mortgage, utilities and socking away some money each month for the kids' college fund. There was no doubt he'd been overworked. He'd had close calls before, toward the ends of his shifts, when he was tired and irritable. He'd taken corners a bit too quickly, drifted into an oncoming lane before noticing and darting back into his own. A couple times, he'd found himself drifting off and had had to pull over after dropping off his passenger to get a good ten minutes or more of sleep before venturing home.

No, maybe the accident hadn't been his fault directly. The drunken driver had swerved into his lane, Dev had said. But maybe if he hadn't been so tired and overworked his reflexes would have been sharper. Maybe he could have swerved into a ditch and avoided a head-on collision. Maybe the accident wouldn't have been so bad. Maybe he wouldn't have spent more than a decade in a coma. Maybe his passenger wouldn't have died.

Maybe.

Daniel appeared suddenly, breaking Rajeev's reverie.

"You have a new message from Gregory Maltek," he said. "Would you like to hear it?"

"Yes."

"'Try the elevator now.'"

"That's all it said?"

Daniel nodded.

Well, Rajeev thought, there was no point in delaying the inevitable. He stood, walked out of his dorm and made his way for the elevator. When it opened, he stepped inside. He wished he could have taken a deep breath; the situation seemed to warrant it.

The doors closed and he faced the rows of buttons before him. He reached out and pressed the button for the thirty-fifth floor.

The button lit up and the elevator lurched slightly as it began its descent.

"Looks like it worked," he said. "Here we go."