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Duality

The Basement

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Staying out all night was irritating. Even though I had one whole body that was asleep, my other body yearned for rest and relaxation. While I did take a few breathers at various locations around the city—a bench in Central Park, an open-late diner, and a few bus stops—I never slept and I never let the bag out of my sight. I tried to act normal, like I wasn’t worried about a scary shadow lady following me around. Unfortunately, walking around the city for a full night wasn’t normal.

The clock on the front of the public library building struck noon with twelve resounding gongs of its bell. I finally started to relax. The sun was directly overhead, the brightest it would be all day. My shadow was tiny. I didn’t know the exact limitations of Shade’s ability, but her full body wouldn’t fit into my shadow at all. There were no obvious shadows around me either. I even opened the bag, discretely, and shuffled through the money inside, making sure to expose as much as possible to direct sunlight.

Even with my hands buried in money, I could hardly believe that I actually had it in my possession. It was the largest single lump of cash I had held in my entire short life.

Over the course of my nightly walk, I had paid careful attention to the shadows around me, trying to spot them shifting and moving as they had when Shade had been moving about. I hadn’t seen a thing. Still, Thoth insisted I stay out until at least noon to be sure.

Well it was noon now.

And I still wasn’t heading directly back.

Wishing that I could have more than two bodies at once, I reluctantly killed my well-rested self in a barrel behind our house.

My gait staggered as I did so. Not because of pain of driving the knife through my throat. Simply because of the sudden exhaustion. Without a second body to offload most of myself onto, I was fully aware of just how little sleep my only remaining body had received over the past twenty hours since it had been created.

Walking past an alley that I had scouted earlier for cameras and blind spots, a new me appeared instantly. The creation was far down the alley, only in my peripheral, practically behind a dumpster. That body had a face of a random bystander I had passed by a few minutes prior. Just a random woman I had picked off the street.

I kept walking without breaking stride.

Ten minutes after, I left the alley.

High heels were always a pain to walk in. But I didn’t need to walk for long. I quickly caught up to myself through a combination of walking fast and walking slow.

I set the bag down, stretched my arms up high, yawned, and closed my eyes.

I picked up the bag, turned, and walked away from my stretching self.

My panic upon noticing the bag was missing might have been a little exaggerated. I ran back and forth, searching underneath benches, inside trashcans, and even asked a few passersby whether or not they had seen a black gym sack. If I really did have someone following me, they would probably have been following the bag. Unless it was me that they were interested in and not the money. If King of Spades had been telling the truth when he said he didn’t care about the money, that was what I was hoping for.

So I really hoped I threw off any potential tails when I went into that same alley, climbed into the dumpster, and slit my own throat.

At the very least, I hoped my potentially imaginary follower would be confused.

To add to that confusion, I repeated the trick a dozen times. Different people. Different faces. Killing myself was the most annoying part. The things that came with my duplicates weren’t real. Clothes, wristwatches, glasses, and other such things would break down as soon as I let go of them. That first dumpster I had used wound up with three more corpses in it simply because I wanted the knife back—my flashlight was in the money bag.

I actually wondered what someone would say if they happened across the bin full of corpses before they started to decay.

I even changed up how I swapped hands. One old man tripped and fell, dropping the bag of money off the side of a foot bridge, right into the waiting hands of some punk kid. For one swap, I left it alone underneath a table for ten minutes. I never let it out of my sight, of course. If someone else had gone up to it, I would have had two of myself to chase after them. But nobody did. At the end of the ten minutes, I ran up in a new body and acted like I was relieved that nobody had taken my forgotten belongings.

Five hours after noon, five hours after I had started my stunt, I finally decided that I had swapped around enough. If I hadn’t shaken someone by now, I probably wouldn’t lose them after another dozen swaps. And, if I hadn’t shaken the possibly imaginary figure that was chasing me, they probably had a lot of questions at this point.

I hardly even knew what faces I was wearing at the point where I decided enough was enough. One of me picked up the knife for one final time, though I didn’t use it. Then we went home. Separately. I was a bit reluctant to leave the carrier alone, but if someone had been following my knife, I didn’t want to bring them too close to the bag.

Realistically, I was probably being overly paranoid. There had been no sign of shadows shifting around. Not once had I actually spotted a single sign that I was being followed—either through shadowy powers or more mundane methods.

The body with the knife arrived home first. I didn’t even go inside. Slipping through the gate in the fence, I went straight for the barrel in the back. I waited on killing myself, however. There was always the possibility that the bus might crash or another thief would show up. So I waited until the bus dropped me off and I was standing outside my front porch.

I slit my throat, walked inside, and immediately created a far more familiar body. That of Ares. I handed the bag to myself and immediately began disposing of that body as well. Outside of course. I had to keep things tidy.

Finally, things felt like they were back to normal. Well, normal plus four thousand dollars. I couldn’t help but feel a bit giddy. Thoth had been quite vocal about her desire for more parts and equipment. But Toxx, Dice, and Ares? Two of them didn’t even know what I had brought home. Most of the money would have to go to bills and groceries. Refilling the emergency funds would be a good idea as well. But I should at least find a nice present for each of them. Something they wouldn’t expect but would find fun or interesting.

First, I needed to know exactly how much money was in the bag. I would have to get the finances out and start figuring out exactly how much I needed. Then I could start window shopping for small gifts.

But before I could get to the table, Thoth’s television lit up. There were no antics in her workshop today. No fumbles with a wrench to accidentally burst a pipe. She just stood, arms crossed under her chest. Her mildly jittery eyes flicked to the bag as if confirming its existence. Slowly, she nodded. “Bring it to me.”

“To you? But—”

“If they weren’t following you, they might be tracking it through some other method.”

“I…” I sighed. “Right. I should have thought of that.”

The screen turned dark again without another word. I turned away, headed through the family room, past Ares’ bedroom, and to the elevator. Normal houses didn’t have elevators, as far as I knew. I didn’t particularly like it, but it wasn’t like I could just lift it up and throw it out on the next garbage day. There were only two buttons in the elevator. And up and a down. But, I paused before hitting the down button.

A thunder crashed down the stairs directly over the elevator. The pitter-patter of feat against the hardwood floors grew louder and louder until two girls popped around the side of the elevator door.

“You’re home!” Dice squeaked. She barely got the words out before Toxx barreled into her. Both tumbled to the ground in a tangle of limbs.

Putting on my best ‘stern’ face, I stared them down as they picked themselves up. “What have I said about sprinting around the house?”

“But we haven’t seen you all day!”

“Are you visiting Thoth?” Toxx asked in her usual whispery voice. “Can we come?”

“I’m only going to be down there for a minute. And you know how she gets about people in her room.”

“We won’t touch anything!”

“We promise!”

“Like you didn’t touch anything last time?”

“Please!”

“Please!”

I stared at them, meeting Toxx’s bloody eyes through her stringy black hair before moving onto Dice. Her shorter red hair was tied back into a mess of a ponytail today, giving a clear view of her pleading green eyes. Puppy-dog eyes was the term that came to mind.

Sighing, I stepped aside, allowing the two now cheering girls to enter the elevator alongside me. It was a bit cramped. The elevator wasn’t like those they had down at the mall. It fit into a small closet beneath the stairs, barely big enough to fit the three of us. But, fit we did. With them inside, I hit the down button.

The doors slid shut with a ding.

A moment later, after a bit of motion and vibrating, they opened.

The two girls sprinted out of the elevator the moment they could fit, leaving me to call after them. “No running in the basement!”

Of course, they ignored my words.

I couldn’t help but frown as I stepped out into the control room. One of the fluorescent lights overhead was flickering. That probably meant that it would die soon. Yet another expense. Even with our added money, I didn’t want to spend all of it on home repairs.

Though really, one light out would hardly be the worst thing that had happened to the control room. Once upon a time, it had held several monitors, computers, control panels, buttons, knobs, dials, and all sorts of other things that I preferred to not mess with. But its walls today looked like Amazing had dashed through it on his way to arrest some criminals. Most of the monitors had been set up around the house for Thoth’s sake while she had cannibalized the more computery components for herself. There was only one machine set up with a pair of monitors. Various numbers and readouts were listed, monitoring the experimentation chamber.

Since our parents had died, none of us had gone inside that particular room. A security feed and the graphs were all the information we really had about it. Not even Thoth knew how to properly operate or interact with the machinery and equipment inside.

I followed after Toxx and Dice, moving at a more sedate pace. I didn’t often come down here. It just wasn’t normal for people to have a basement like this.

Down a short hallway, there were four rooms. My old room, Toxx’s old room, Dice’s old room, and Thoth’s current room. The two girls were standing outside the very last room, glaring up at the small monitor next to the door. Thoth had her arms crossed on the monitor, anger obvious even without the literal steam coming from her ears.

“Janus… Why did you bring these two down here?”

“We wanted to see you!” Dice said, not sounding ashamed or embarrassed at all.

Toxx as a bit more bashful as she whispered, “We never get to see you.”

“We see each other all the time!”

“The real you,” Dice said, hands on her hips.

Thoth glared hard enough that the two girls jumped back. Her thumb slammed into her chest, pressing hard into her grease-stained tank top. “This is the real me.”

I stepped forward, hoping to defuse their argument. “Thoth, it wouldn’t hurt once in a while.”

“Dice tripped over my life support last time! I could have died!”

Dice grinned back. It was hard to tell if she was sheepish or just grinning because she was a child despite having a teenager’s body.

I gave both of the older girls a glare. “You two will stand at the doorway and touch nothing. Am I understood?”

“Yes, Janus,” Toxx said immediately. Her younger sister was a little slower on the agreement.

Dice crossed her arms, pout firmly in place.

“Dice… If you can’t agree, you’re going to go wait for me in the control room.”

“Fiiine.”

“Good.” With one last firm glance at both of them, I looked up to my youngest sister. “Will you please open the door now, Thoth?”

She turned up her nose with a harrumph. A moment later, the screen went black. The red light next to the handle turned green as a loud buzz echoed from the lock. Toxx and Dice immediately perked up.

“Remember,” I said as I put my hand onto the handle. “Stand by the door. Toxx, you’re in charge of your sister.”

Getting one last affirmation from both, even if Dice’s agreement was punctuated with a pout, I pushed the door open.

There was a slight hiss from the change in air pressure. A thin mist rolled out from the dark room, hugging the floor and curling around my shoes before dissipating a short way down the hall. The lights in the room were off. Flicking the switch by the door did nothing. But the half-dozen monitors provided enough illumination to at least see the cables and wires that lay on the ground within the thin mist.

But the cables were hardly the only hazards in the room. More hung from the ceiling in long looping tendrils. Tubes pumped liquids from elsewhere in the basement facility. Carts containing a variety of machines were strewn about haphazardly, though all the organization—or lack thereof—meant something to my sister.

And my sister, my youngest sister, was right where she always was. In the center of the room, cradled by bundles of looping cables, she sat limp and lifeless. A helmet covered the upper half of her head, completely hiding her hair and eyes. A thick black mask held tubes down her throat and nasal passages. Plugs had been inserted into her spine, chest, arms, stomach, groin, legs, and even her feet. She didn’t move or otherwise react to our presence inside her bedroom.

Instead, one of the monitors flickered. Rhythm strips and numbers containing her vital signs vanished. In its place, a cartoon sprung up. A workshop, reorganized to look like Frankenstein’s laboratory, made up the background. On a slab in the center of the cartoon room, my sister, wild blond hair and grease stained clothing, sat with a glum expression on her face.

“I hope you’re all happy. As you can see, this lump of flesh is perfectly fine.”

“Thank you for inviting us inside, Thoth.” I turned to the two older sisters and gave them both pointed stares. I had said it before, but it was worth repeating again. “Stay here. Don’t touch anything.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Thoth said before either of the others could respond. “Hurry and bring that bag over here. The sooner I get a look at it, the sooner you all can leave.” As she stretched out a hand on the monitor to a table of levers and knobs, one of the cables descended from the ceiling. A little gripping claw on the end of it clenched and unclenched in time with her fingers squeezing a latch on one of the levers.

Stepping forward just to her feet, I handed the bag over to the waiting claw. Some machinery in the arm whined a bit under the weight, but Thoth made no indication that anything was wrong. The mechanical arm brought it over and gently set it on her bare stomach.

Thoth walked over to an array of gauges and dials on the wall of her workshop, humming a little tune while she inspected each. “I see. There is a device, but it isn’t active at the moment.”

Sucking in a nervous breath, I tensed. “Is… that a problem.”

“Let us find out,” Thoth said. She grabbed hold of some levers and knobs and started twisting an pulling. As she did, another mechanical arm lifted from somewhere in the mess of wires and cables. This one had far sharper implements on the head than the previous one. It sliced a small cut into the side of the bag, allowing the grabber arm to reach in and pull out a small circuit board topped with all sorts of… computery things.

Technology was really Thoth’s domain. Not mine.

Shoving the bag back into my arms, she held the circuit board over her body’s chest, roughly an arm’s length away.

A burst of blue lightning shot from Thoth’s body’s chest into the circuit board. The pungent sweet scent of ozone filled the air for a moment until I waved my hands a few times. With the circuit board under Thoth’s power, the gripper arm let it go. It didn’t drop. It just… hovered.

Then it started pulling itself apart. Little cylinders floated around the flat piece of green plastic. The square chips rotated gently in the air. A more rectangular piece floated just a little closer to Thoth’s body. Then, the show was over. With tiny sparks at each of the metal contact points, the device reassembled itself.

All the while, Thoth had been nodding her head on the monitor. “Good news. It recorded your path around the city all day today, but was not transmitting it live, instead, it is waiting for an external signal to activate it properly. If it had been sending information live, I had a plan to spoof a bunch of data to make it seem like your final stop was somewhere far from here. But that’s not necessary. I have instead rewrote the data to keep your path up until you decided to come home. According to it now, you’ll have stopped in the Grove Hotel.”

I let out a relief-filled breath. “Thank you, Thoth.”

Thoth just shrugged, looking back at the dials and gauges on her workshop wall. Her world being a cartoon meant that there really wasn’t much detail. Even had I tried to make out what she was looking at, I wouldn’t have gotten anything useful.

“I wonder if that King of Spades guy has a bunch of these just sitting around,” Thoth said with a hum. “Or maybe he had been planning on tracking anyone who answered our imprisoned robber’s call for help. It would be nice to get my hands on a few more of these. I can reuse this for all sorts of things.” Looking back over to me, she shrugged again. “Alright. That’s all that I could sense inside. Get out. And keep your hands to yourself, Dice!” she added a little louder.

I turned to find the sister in question quickly retracting her hand from Thoth’s bare foot. Her head dropped far enough that I couldn’t see her eyes. She was deliberately avoiding my gaze.

Toxx was standing back by the door as if she had nothing to do with anything.

Grabbing Dice’s shoulder, I could only sigh.

“Out! Out! Out!”

“Bye Thoth,” Dice said softly. “It was nice to see you again.”

“Idiot! You see me every single day.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Come on, Dice. You too, Toxx,” I said as I led them out of the room. “We will be having words about what it means to promise something.” I lightly squeezed Dice’s shoulder. “And what it means to watch your sister,” I added with a hopefully serious look at Toxx.

And after the lecture: Back to the finances.

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