All in all, he still looked like a juvenile delinquent—but it was too late now. And anyway, Bray didn’t want to see him to discuss his appearance. His nonappearance at school was more to the point.
He knocked on the door.
‚Come in!' a voice called.
Alex opened the door and walked into the principal’s study, a cluttered room with views over the school yard. There was a desk, piled high with papers, and a black leather chair with its back toward the door. A cabinet full of trophies stood against one wall. The others were mainly lined with books.
‚You wanted to see me,' Alex said.
The chair turned slowly around.
Alex froze.
It wasn’t Henry Bray sitting behind the desk.
It was himself.
He was looking at a fourteen-year-old boy with fair hair cut very short, brown eyes, and a slim, pale face. The boy was even dressed identically to him. It took Alex what felt like an eternity to accept what he was seeing. He was standing in a room looking at himself sitting in a chair. The boy was him.
With just one difference. The boy was holding a gun.
‚Come in,' he said.
Alex didn’t move. He knew what he was facing and he was angry with himself for not having expected it. When he had been handcuffed at the academy, Dr. Grief had boasted to him that he had cloned himself sixteen times. But that morning Mrs. Jones had traced ‚all fifteen of them.' That left one spare—one boy waiting to take his place in the family of Sir David Friend.
Alex had glimpsed him while he was at the academy. Now he remembered the figure with the white mask, watching him from a window as he walked over to the ski jump. The white mask had been bandages. The new Alex had been spying on him as he recovered from the plastic surgery that had made the two of them identical.
And even today there had been clues. Perhaps it had been the heat of the sun, or the fallout from his visit to MI6. But he had been too wrapped up in his own thoughts to see them.
Jack, when he got home. ‚ I thought you’d just gone out.
Bernie, at the gate. ‚ You again!'
They had both thought they’d seen him. And in a sense, they had. They had seen the boy sitting opposite him. The boy who was now aiming a gun at his heart.
‚I’ve been looking forward to this,' the other boy said, and despite the hatred in his voice, Alex couldn’t help marveling. The voice wasn’t the same as his. The boy hadn’t had enough time to get it right. But otherwise he was a dead ringer.
‚What are you doing here?' Alex said. ‚It’s all over. The Gemini Project is finished. You might as well turn yourself in. You need help.'
‚I need just one thing,' the second Alex sneered. ‚I need to see you dead. I’m going to shoot you. I’m going to do it now. You killed my father!'
‚Your father was a test tube,' Alex said. ‚You never had a mother or a father. You’re a freak. Handmade in the French Alps, like a cuckoo clock. What are you going to do when you’ve killed me? Take my place? You wouldn’t last a week. You may look like me, but too many people know what Grief was trying to do. And I’m sorry, but you’ve got ‘fake’ written all over you.'
‚We would have had everything! We would have had the whole world!' The replica Alex almost screamed the words, and for a moment Alex thought he heard Dr. Grief somewhere in there, blaming him from beyond the grave. But then the creature in front of him was Dr. Grief …
or part of him. ‚I don’t care what happens to me,' he went on, ‚just so long as you’re dead.'
The hand with the gun stretched out. The barrel was pointing at him. Alex looked the boy straight in the eyes.
And he saw the hesitation.
The fake Alex couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. They were too similar. The same clothes, the same bodies, the same faces. For the other boy, it would be like shooting himself. Alex still hadn’t closed the door. He threw himself backward, out into the corridor. At the same time, the gun went off, the bullet exploding inches above his head and crashing into the far wall. Alex hit the ground on his back and rolled out of the doorway as a second bullet slammed into the floor.
And then he was running, putting as much space between himself and his double as he could.
There was a third shot as he sprinted down the corridor, and the window next to him shattered, glass showering down. Alex reached the stairs and took them three at a time, afraid that he would trip and break an ankle. But then he was at the bottom, heading for the main door, swerving only when he realized that he would make too easy a target as he crossed the school yard. Instead he dived into the laboratory, almost falling headfirst over Bernie’s bucket and mop.
The laboratory was long and rectangular, divided into workstations with Bunsen burners, flasks, and dozens of bottles of chemicals spread out on shelves that stretched the full length of the room. There was another door at the far end. Alex dived behind the farthest desk. Would his double have seen him come in? Might he be looking for him, even now, out in the yard?
Cautiously, Alex poked his head over the surface, then ducked down as four bullets ricocheted around him, splintering the wood and smashing one of the gas pipes. Alex heard the hiss of escaping gas. Then there was another gunshot and an explosion that hurled him backward, sprawling onto the floor. The last bullet had ignited the gas. Flames leapt up, licking at the ceiling. At the same time, the sprinkler system went off, spraying the entire room. Alex tracked back on his hands and feet, searching for shelter behind fire and water, hoping the other Alex would be blinded. His shoulders hit the far door. He scrambled to his feet. There was another shot. But then he was through—with another corridor and a second flight of stairs straight ahead.
The stairs led nowhere. He was halfway up before he remembered. There was a single classroom at the top that was used for biology. It had a spiral staircase leading to the roof. The school had so little land that they’d planned to build a roof garden. Then they’d run out of money. There were a couple of greenhouses. Nothing more.
There was no way down! Alex looked over his shoulder and saw the other Alex reloading his gun, already on his way up. He had no choice. He had to continue even though he would soon be trapped.
He reached the biology classroom and slammed the door shut behind him. There was no lock, and the tables were all bolted into the floor. Otherwise he might be able to make a barricade. The spiral staircase was ahead of him. He ran up it without stopping, through another door and onto the roof. Alex stopped to catch his breath and see what he could do next.
He was standing on a wide, flat area with a fence running all the way around. There were half a dozen terra-cotta pots filled with earth. A few plants sprouted out, looking more dead than alive. Alex sniffed the air. Smoke was curling up from the windows two floors below, and he realized that the sprinkler system had been unable to put out the fire. He thought of the gas, pouring into the room, and the chemicals stacked up on the shelves. He could be standing on a time bomb! He had to find a way down.
But then he heard the sound of feet on metal and realized that his double had reached the top of the spiral staircase. Alex ducked behind one of the greenhouses. The door crashed open.
Smoke followed the fake Alex out onto the roof. He took a step forward. Now Alex was behind him.
‚Where are you?' the fake Alex shouted. His hair was soaked and his face contorted with anger.