"Hey, man, thanks for giving me a lift." Caleb seemed genuinely surprised that you offered to take him to Salopek as you left school. He was more surprised to know you did it because you wanted to see Salopek up close and personal. "Changed your mind about working there or something?"
"Uh, not exactly." You smile tightly. "Just thinking I might not be as bad at that kind of stuff as I thought. Did you hear from Carson about Kowalski’s class?"
"That you solved a derivative like you were possessed? ‘S not a big deal, y’know. Even cocksuckers like you get lucky sometimes."
"Fuck you! I swear, it’s gotten a lot easier for me recently! Anyways," you continue as you approach the main building at Salopek, "I want to ask Dad a few things."
"I can take you to see him. Had to do it once or twice." You seethe a little as Caleb about working with your father. It gives you a twisted sense of satisfaction to know that he was working with an evil clone. That is, if it is an evil clone.
You have to stop at the reception desk first, though. "Um... I’m here to see Harris Prescott?"
The receptionist looks up with a bored expression. "Name?"
"William Prescott."
As she taps on the computer, she asks, "Are you his son?"
"The older one," you reply with strange pride.
"Great to meet you!" She smiles as she hands you a pass hanging on a lanyard. "Want me to call and tell him you're on your way up?"
Your heart thuds once. "No, that's okay," you stammer. "Uh, he's expecting me."
"He is?" Caleb asks. "I thought you said—" He shuts up when you nudge him, and you shoot an awkward grin back at the receptionist.
Caleb's confusion turns to exasperation when you ask him to show you around the place. "I got work, dude!" he exclaims. "Didn't you come up here to see your dad?"
I'm waiting for a signal from Taylor. That's what you can't tell him, and it's why you need to hang loose for a bit. The hell is keeping Mitchell? you wonder. "I'm not in that much of a hurry," you mutter.
Caleb gives you a look, and gives you a quick tour of the box-like administration building, from the cafeteria to elevator banks. "If you really want to kill some time, you could come help me and Sean," he tells you, sarcasm dripping from his voice.
But you send him grumbling on his way, and look for the restrooms. You're in there, warming hands that are cold with anxiety under some hot tap water, when the phone in your pocket vibrates with a text from Taylor. [In yr dads office ready to go.]
But when you knock at your dad's office door, there's no answer. You know again, louder.
"Can I help you, son?"
You jump and whirl. A man in janitorial coveralls is giving you a puzzled smile.
"Er," you gasp, and glance between him and the door. "Do you know where Harris Prescott is? He's my dad, and I need to talk to him."
"I saw him just go out." The man's smile widens.
You gape. "Was he alone?"
"There was a blonde kid with him. One of the guys from the repair plant. Guess there was something your dad needed to look at."
Your head whirls and your breathing starts to cut out. This wasn’t part of the plan. Sean was supposed to establish an alibi someplace while Taylor took care of your father. If the two of them are wandering around the grounds, they might run into Sean!
You hurry back down to the reception area. "H-hey, did you see my dad going with someone somewhere?" you ask the woman out front, who is on the phone.
"Hmm?" She covers the mouthpiece. "He's out in the parking lot with one of the employees, moving something. You must have just missed him." She turns her attention back to her phone call.
Frazzled, you rush outside and scan the parking lot with shaded eyes. You quickly spot Taylor, his head bobbing up from between two cars, and you race over. Of your dad there's no sign.
Taylor jumps when he sees you running up, and his face is pale. "Hey man," you gasp, "where's my dad?"
Taylor doesn't answer, but looks at the ground at his feet. You edge over to look down.
Aubrey Blackwell, in clothes that are far too small for him, sprawls on the blacktop between two cars.
--
"He was coming out just as I was coming in," Taylor explains on the drive out to the elementary school basement. "He told me he had some stuff he needed to move out to his car and he asked me to help. After we got the stuff stowed, I—"
He doesn't have to finish. You know the sequel. He grabbed your dad, pulled a mask off him, and found the fat Professor Aubrey Blackwell beneath.
It's not Professor Blackwell in the back of Taylor's truck at the moment. It's your dad, unconscious and bound up in ropes, with Sean kneeling over him to handle him if he wakes up again. It sickened you to put that mask back onto the professor, but it was the easiest way to lug his ass away from Salopek.
It's a long drive out to Acheson, and "Harris" is awake again as you park at the school, but Taylor knocks him out again by pulling the mask off. Sean and Taylor strain every one of their massive muscles as they carry Blackwell down into the basement. He's already reviving as you tie him up in the chair next to what's left of Lucy's clone.
You brush past Taylor to put a fist in Blackwell's face. "Alright, professor. Game over. Where’s my dad?"
Blackwell laughs—a blubbery sound.
"I should have known it was you behind it all, Will," he chuckles. "You're a resourceful young man. Quite the chip off the old block. Your father underestimates—"
You slap him across his greasy jowls, but his grin remains fixed. "Don't fucking mock me. Where's my dad?"
"Will," Taylor cautions you.
"Best listen to your friend," Blackwell says. "You hold me, but I hold the high card." He twists in his bonds. "But let's call it a fair exchange. You let me go, and I'll return your father to you."
"Pfft! And what then? You'll just come after us again!"
"That is the risk you have to run. Weigh it carefully. The risk I will pose to you and your father, versus the certainty that you'll never see your father again."
His threat is like a hand that grasps and squeezes your heart inside your chest. He’s absolutely right. Maybe you and your family can survive if you let the professor go. But your dad is lost for sure if you don't bargain with him.
So wracked are you with the pain of indecision that you don't react when a cell phone goes off. It's Taylor who hunts down the phone, and finds it in your dad's pocket. "Will," he says as he studies the screen. "Will!"
You tear your gaze away from Blackwell, whose expression has darkened. Taylor shows you the cell phone screen. There's a text from "Prof. A. Blackwell." You frown and open it. [Temporarily delayed at school. Meet elsewhere to collect loot?]
You stare at the screen. At first you feel nothing, only a numb confusion. How can Professor Blackwell be texting your dad when the professor is tied up in the basement next to you in the rent and torn remnants of your dad's clothes? There's not two of him, are there?
It's when you ask yourself that question that your confusion begins to melt with head-spinning excitement. You yank Taylor up the stairs and outside, leaving Sean to guard the professor.
"Blackwell's got a clone of himself," you excitedly explain to Taylor. "Like he had a clone of Lucy? He's got one of himself!"
But Taylor's frown deepens. "How come?"
"For it to do the scut work he doesn't want to do! I don't know!" You throw your arms around wildly. "But he's got one, and it's texting him, looking for him! I guess maybe he had to turn it on—activate it," you correct yourself, "while he was pretending to be my dad!" You can't help making a face. "But you see, if we get hold of that clone, it probably knows where my dad is, and we can find out from it without making a deal with the professor!"
"Why would the clone tell you if the professor won't?"
"We could maybe trick it into telling us. Or—" You have to gulp as your heart starts beating wildly. "We could get the mask off it, the way we got it off Lucy, and one of us puts it on. If we can get into its memories, we could find out that way."
Taylor's expression perks up.
"That's a great idea," he says. "Do we go meet it up at the professor's house, or bring it out here?"
You open your mouth to answer, then hesitate.
Blackwell's clone will be looking for "Harris Prescott," which means that if you meet it at his house someone will have pretend to be your dad. You're not sure you can deal with that. But if you bring it out the basement, the professor, though tied up, might be able to work some kind of juju on it.
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