Two of a Kind

"Well a part of that is the fact that Will never really considered himself your equal. In the back of his mind he's always seen you as this rich, beautiful super model. He's always thought that someday you'd get tired of him and dump him. So when his friend Danny showed him that video, he got scared. And then when Chris sent him the second video he just snapped. He's hurting pretty badly."

"I want to see this video," she said.

"Sorry, you'll have to wait a while. I don't have it with me," I said. "Besides, right now our job is to go there and calm him down until Chris gets here. So let's drive out to your cabin and I'll go in first. When I get him calmed down, I'll bring you in okay?"

She just nodded. Ten minutes later, we were in front of a beautiful small house.

"This is a cabin?" I asked in surprise.

"My husband is an architect," she smiled, proudly.

I got out of the car and went and knocked on the door.

"Who is it?" yelled Will from inside. His voice was clearly broken up. I could tell he was really upset.

"Will, it's me, Sarah," I said. It was a good thing that we'd parked on the side of the house. He cracked the door and looked at me suspiciously.

"I just want to talk," I said. "And you shouldn't be alone right now."

He opened the door and I walked inside. I spent about twenty minutes calming him down. I walked around the cabin picking up liquor bottles and putting them in the sink. Luckily he'd only opened one of them and hadn't drank much of it.

"Sarah, I really thought she loved me," he said sadly. Will looked like a balloon with all of the air let out of it. "I loved her more than anything. What did I do wrong?"

"Will..." I said. I didn't know what to say.

"My life is over," he said. "There's just no reason for me to go on."

"Will," I said again. "It's not that bad." It was the wrong thing to say. He exploded.

"How would you go on without Chris?" he spat.

"We'll never find out because I'll never have to," I hissed back at him. My compassion and all of that bullshit goes out the window when my marriage is questioned.

"That's exactly what I thought," he said. "I thought we were perfect but I over looked one simple fact. Angels never settle for regular guys."

"And they never settle for morons either," quipped Becca from the doorway. She headed for him. Apparently she'd been listening to him all along.

"Will, I never cheated on you," she said. "I would never do that."

She had me convinced and apparently she was even giving Will something to believe in. Because he'd stopped trying to back away from her as she slowly advanced on him.

"Get away from me," he suddenly yelled. "Why should I believe you?"

"Because you still love me dummy," she said. "Look into my eyes and tell me I'm lying to you."

"I want to believe you so badly," he said. "Deep down in my heart, I really want to."

"Then do it," said Chris. I covered the distance between us in a heartbeat and wrapped my arms around him so tightly I thought he'd burst and I'd shoot our baby across the floor.

"But what about the video?" asked Will. "Are you saying that someone faked the video?"

"It's probably photo-shopped," said Becca who was again very slowly moving towards Will.

"Nah, the video is 100% genuine," said Chris. Will glared at Becca again.

"What the hell is going on, Chris, did she cheat on me or not?" asked Will.

"Not!" said a big older guy walking in. He was dragging another man, kicking and screaming into the room.

Both Will and I recognized him as the short greasy looking guy from the videos. "I'm going to have you all arrested," he screamed. "This is kidnapping. You'll all do thousands of years in jail."

"Only if you live to complain," said the old guy dragging him.

Will immediately launched himself at the man. Only Chris intercepting him saved the man from a nasty kick.

Becca threw herself at Chris. She thought he was trying to hurt Will. Chris moved as if Becca was standing still and she ran into the table clumsily.

"Becca, besides his giant dick, what does this asshole have that I don't?" asked Will. "I would do anything he can do for you, if you'd only give me the chance."

"Will, are you nuts?" asked Becca. "I've never seen that man before in my life."

"If you're going to keep lying, I'm done," hissed Will.

"Will, she's not lying," said Chris. "You'd better sit down."

Will sat on a comfy sofa. Becca immediately dove for the spot next to him. She smiled at him even as he tried to move away from her.

"Let me guess," said Will. "The bastard hypnotized her so technically she's never actually seen him."

"Nope," said Chris. "Will, I'm your friend, you know that, right?"

"Yes," said Will.

"Then I need you to do something," said Chris. "...Because this is going to be a shock. Close your eyes and take Becca's hand. No matter what you do don't let go of her hand. Becca, close your eyes too."

Chris left the cabin and when he came back, I ruined his big reveal in my shock. I gasped and both Will and Becca opened their eyes. Their mouths dropped open. They were as shocked as I was. Standing there next to my husband was Becca, or at least a second Becca.

Will started smiling like an idiot. He grabbed Becca and hugged her like there was no tomorrow. "I'm so sorry Honey," he gushed. "When I saw that video I thought..."

"I don't care what you thought, dummy," she said. "Just don't ever let me go."

"So Becca has a twin?" I laughed.

"What's your name?" I asked the woman standing there smiling.

"What's YOUR name?" she asked.

"My name is Sarah," I said.

"My name is Sarah," she said.

"Is her name really Sarah?" I asked Chris. He shrugged his shoulders.

"What does Hugh call you, Honey?" asked Clyde. She turned to Clyde and smiled.

"He calls me bitch or whore," she said to Clyde smiling.

"Is she serious?" I asked. "Or does she think this is some kind of game?" The angry tone in my voice apparently scared the woman and she immediately ducked behind Clyde. She only seemed to be at home with Clyde and Chris.

"What's wrong with her?" I asked. "Is she mentally challenged?"

"Hi, Sarah," said the older man. "I'm Clyde Waitt. She's not mentally challenged at all. In fact she's as smart as Rebecca is. The problem is that she's only about two months old. If you really think about it, the fact that she can even speak is remarkable." He took the woman's hand and stroked it. She smiled. She obviously loved the attention.

"So this woman is my wife's twin?" asked Will.

"Nope," said Clyde. "She's a clone."

Chris stood there holding my hand. He nodded his head. The rest of us were too shocked to process it. Clones were something that didn't exist in the real world except for some sheep that died early, and didn't taste good. It was hard to wrap our heads around the idea that someone had somehow duplicated a living breathing human being.

"How the fuck is this possible?" asked Will. He and Becca hadn't let go of each other since they'd discovered what was wrong. "I'm really pissed about this," he said. "This almost ruined my life and my marriage."

"The key word in your case, Will, is almost," said Clyde.

It's taken me a couple of years to get to this point," he said.

"Two and a half years ago I was living with my wife. I'd just turned fifty. And she was forty eight but she still didn't look a day over thirty five. She was my entire world. Sure she had a few miles on her, but she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. I'd just retired from the service to settle down in the same small town in Iowa that we'd grown up in. I was looking forward to a comfortable life with the woman I loved. We weren't blessed enough to have any children but we had each other and that was enough for us.

Then I started hearing rumors about things that had gone on over the past six months or so during my last deployment. The stories were ugly. I didn't have the benefit of the video that you got Will and I'm glad. Seeing that kind of thing can scar you for life. Luckily it looks like the two of you love each other enough to get past this. Especially since you can clearly see that your lovely wife didn't do anything wrong.

Anyway, I started to listen to my friends and acquaintances and I didn't want to feel like a fool, so I checked some things out. My best friend in town swore that he'd seen my wife Shelly going in and out of a motel that was just outside of town.

I went with him and I was shocked to see her getting out of a strange car and going into the motel. I crept up to the windows and peeked inside the room. She was already taking her clothes off and she dropped to her knees and started sucking the guy's dick. I didn't go busting into the room, I just turned and left. I didn't want to go to jail. I didn't want to beat anyone's ass. I'd seen too much violence in the service.

All I wanted to do was to sit down with her and calmly talk about what was going on. I waited for a couple of days so the anger would fade and I'd be clear headed. But before I could start the conversation, she brought it up.

"Clyde, we haven't made love in four days," she said. "You've barely spoken to me and last night you rolled away from me in bed. What's going on?"

"Why don't you tell me, Shell," I said. "I know that women get lonely when their husbands are away, but I thought that...Well I guess I never expected that of you. And since I'm back now and I've retired, at least you could have had the decency to either tell me so I could decide whether or not to stay married to you, or to divorce you."

"Clyde, what the hell are you talking about?" she asked. She looked really confused. I misread her confusion as surprise.

"I saw you go into that motel room with that guy, the other evening," I said. "I saw what the two of you were doing."

"You didn't see me go anywhere with any man," she spat angrily. And again as much as I loved her and knew her, I misread her. Her anger at being accused of something that she hadn't done came across to me as anger that she'd been caught. I now also suspect that she was devastated that I'd think that she could do something like that.

"So you think I'm a whore?" she asked loudly.

"Look we all have our needs" I said. "But I put mine aside because I loved you so much. I feel kind of stupid now because I had plenty of chances but I never slipped once."

"I didn't slip either, you fool," she spat at me.

"Look, Shelly, I know what I saw," I said. "And if we can't discuss this openly and honestly maybe we shouldn't be together." I packed a few things and left. She was really shocked. I don't think she had any idea how angry I was about the situation. We talked several times but we just couldn't work out our differences. I was angry at her for cheating on me and I had friends telling me that she was still doing it. She was angry because I was accusing her of doing something that she hadn't done. She was also angry because I didn't trust her. We ended up divorced.

Neither of us could help the other. Neither of us really wanted a divorce but both of us were too stubborn to back down. We were both depressed afterwards. I know I was but I was nowhere near her level of depression. Three weeks after the divorce, she made herself a pot of her special tea with four bottles of sleeping pills dissolved in it. She never woke up. By the time they found her she'd been dead for over a week.

I had to be committed. I went more than a little crazy. A few months after the funeral, some of my friends started to look at me funny. They told me that they were still seeing Shelly at that motel.

I started to hang out there and eventually met her. She was a carbon copy of my Shelly, but her personality was completely different. It's like the way Becca here and whatever we're going to call her clone, look exactly alike. But Becca two, here, doesn't have that Russian accent.

Eventually I got in good enough with her, that the guy who brought her to the motel every night...I guess he was her pimp, offered to sell her to me. I thought he was talking about letting me pimp her. But he explained it to me. He was going to sell her to me. She'd be my property body and soul.

By that time I had noticed that she had spots and other things on her body that indicated that she would die soon. By then I knew that something was going on. I got a DNA swab from her and some hair off of Shelly's brush. I sent the samples to a guy I know who does that kind of thing. He told me that I'd made a mistake and sent different samples from the same person. I told him the two were twins and he told me I was wrong. He started trying to tell me how they differentiate twins and the two samples I gave him were from the exact same person. Not a mother or a sister or even a twin, the same being.

I grabbed the pimp the next day and beat the shit out of him until he told me how to get to the guy who'd sold her to him. I found him and tortured him until I found out everything he knew and so on and so forth until I got near enough to the top to get the information I needed.

I'm so close now that I can smell the bastard. Doctor Franklin Nathaniel Stein is responsible for my wife's death and he will pay. Do you know that they just picked her at random? One of Stein's flunkies was out looking for DNA material to use to test the process. He went into a hair salon and picked up some of my wife's cut off hair from the trash. It could have been anyone. I lost my wife by random chance. Fate just decided to screw me over.

From the information I got from that bastard, Hugh, while we were on the plane, Becca was targeted as the next phase in the plan. The clones are more stable now but they still won't live anywhere near a normal human lifespan. According to Hugh, Becca two here will probably only live for about thirty years. And after the first twenty she'll begin to age rapidly.

Stein has this big plan to provide super rich customers with the women of their dreams. Just think about it. If you have the money, even if you're a fat, freckle faced, zit ridden nerd, you can have Eva Mendes; or her clone, on your arm. She'll be beautiful, she'll be sexy and she'll be faithful to you. She'll be obedient and you can even program how long she lives. When you get tired of her, you can trade her in on someone else.

Becca was a test run for Hugh here who's one of Frank's biggest investors. I guess that porno money comes in handy.

Clyde stopped talking at that point. We'd all had a really rough day. Clyde locked Hugh in the trunk of their rental car. It didn't have a safety trunk release and Clyde had drilled holes for ventilation in the bottom. They set up a schedule and Will insisted on taking part in it, for who would check on Peters. Tomorrow they would get more information from him. But tonight was about something different.

Obviously Will had the same idea I did. "Goodnight, find a room," he yelled over his shoulder, as he started up the stairs. He grabbed Becca's arm and practically dragged her after him. As soon as she realized where they were heading, it became difficult to figure out who was dragging whom.

I yawned cavernously and Chris got the hint. "Well, I guess we're going to sleep too," he said.

"Yeah," said Clyde. "Enjoy your uh...sleep. Don't forget you have the second shift."

* * * * * *

Clyde

I went out to the car to check on Peters even though it had been barely ten minutes since we put him in the trunk. He seemed to be breathing and the car had enough room for him to stretch out. He was actually very comfortable. He was asleep. I woke him up.

"What do you want?" he asked. "It can't be morning already."

"You do know that you're going to tell us everything we want to know," I told him.

"You do know that I'm going to have you all put into jail for kidnapping," he said. "You could let me go now. You could tell your friends that I escaped on my own. No one would have to go to jail."

"Hugh, this was always a one way ride for me," I smiled. "When my wife died, it left me nothing to live for. Since I'm willing to die to get Stein, jail really doesn't scare me."

"But you have women with you. They won't let you kill me or torture me," he said. "The tone of his voice had changed as a note of desperation affected it."

"Who says I won't start before they wake up?" I asked. "My slim blond surfer looking friend has the next shift. You've already seen the way he fights. You have no idea what he's capable of. The two of us could inflict more pain on you by morning than you could ever stand. In a couple of hours you'd give up your own mother to save your ass. You'll give up Stein. It's just a question of how much pain you want to go through. Remember back at your warehouse how Chris played a game with your men. They threw everything they had at him, knowing that his intention was to kick them in the nuts. Not only could none of those huge men beat him. They couldn't even stop him when they knew what his target was. What do you think he'll do to you?"

"But, Stein has people," whined Peters. "He has a lot more men than I do. If I give him up, he'll kill me."

"If you don't I'll kill you," I said. "Your best option is to tell us where to find him. Because once you do that we're going after him. And I think he'll be so busy trying to fight us off or hide from us, that he won't have the time to go after you. But you think about it. I'll be back in a hour or two for your decision."

I had given him something to think about. The fear in his eyes told me that as I hoped, I'd scared the shit out of him.

The car was parked very close to what I considered a nice sized house, but Will and Becca called their cabin. The place had four bedrooms, a deck that ended only fifty yards from a small lake and a spa. It was nicer than a lot of people's primary homes. I guess you think differently when you're a successful architect and your wife is a super model.

Will just seemed to be so normal and down to earth though. It amazed me that both he and Chris seemed to have and love Mustangs. What amazed me even more was that both of them seemed to have more than one and that they both seemed to be planning to buy more of them.

I guess life works differently for me. For one thing I'm older. For another, I don't seem to have what they consider or what most people would consider a life, anymore.

For most of my time on this planet or at least the adult part of it, I was in the service. And as strange as it may seem, for the last ten years, I've never been in combat. A lot of people don't realize it, but an important part of military operations is logistics. You can't have any type of war unless you get the troops and their vehicles and equipment to the operational zones. I've been involved in military logistics for ten years. Before that I handled a lot of missions that I can't talk about, but I got hurt on one of those and moved in another direction. Logistics was that direction. It kept me in the military even after my combat abilities were compromised. My thirty year military career continued.

For most of that time my wife and I had lived on various bases around the world. Five years ago when I began to consider retirement we'd bought the house in our home town. During my time in the service I'd seen lots of marriages and families break up for exactly what I had believed that my Shelly had done.

The time apart that most military couples have to endure can easily ruin or at least challenge a marriage. The separation makes your sex life a feast or famine situation. A lot of very healthy people both men and women all prey to it. While they're together it's nearly wall to wall sex and then the weeks or even months of going without, pushes them into doing something...human.

I guess that was why it was so easy for me to believe that Shelly had done it. The funny thing is that I understood the temptation. I'd had no intention of divorcing Shelly for being human. Although I hadn't liked the idea, because my needs were at least as intense as hers and I had truly never slipped, but I could understand it. What had angered me was the frequency that she'd displayed. People were telling me that she was doing it every night. And then the two factors that really damned us came. The first was that she'd seemed to continue doing it after I'd come home. And the second had been her absolute refusal to come clean about it. Actually the lying was the worst part. If we didn't trust each other, what was the point of us being married?