Except Chen didn’t care if he was a made thing or not—Moss had cured him of that neurosis—and he had the advantage of having fought Chen before. He knew all of his moves, knew all the ways to end it, including how he had learned to adapt his flesh from Moss, that he could detach his hand and turn it into a dangerous flaming star flying through the sky.

Yet still Chen muttered at Chen as they struggled, pleading with this other self to submit, to give in, that they could work together if only Chen had a chance to explain. Trying again.

“Submit and join us. Two are better than one. What do you owe the Company?”

“Submit and the Company will welcome us back in. Submit and we can both have the life you had before.”

“A dead life?”

“Something to hold on to.”

But had Chen said that or had Moss’s Chen thought it? Who was lying to whom?

As Chen fought back and refused to submit, Grayson’s Chen grew weary. Not of the fight, for he had learned to love fighting because at least it ended in a vanquishing that denoted a kind of progress. But as he traded blows with himself—rabbit punches, kicks to the groin—Chen felt something sanded down finally and forever. As his fist struck Chen’s jaw and Chen’s fist struck him in the stomach. As they stumbled in the grapple, neither quite going to the ground, Chen realized he was weary of killing himself. He was tired.

This was the fourth time.

With a great spasm and twist of self-loathing, Chen moved to the side and locked his arm around Chen’s throat in a choke hold, clambered onto his back, and clasped Chen’s torso tight with his legs. Chen fell with Chen on top of him, bucking, trying to get at Chen with elbows, then trying to dislodge Chen’s legs.

Chen managed to twist enough to get his fingers under Chen’s choke hold and flip so that they were face-to-face on the uneven floor, in the dust and dirt next to the swimming pool. Now each had hands around the other’s throat, those bull-like necks, so close they could have kissed or spat or done anything.

Moss had altered Chen’s oxygen capacity, or taught him to do so. He never remembered what was augmentation and what was just training. So Chen was content to choke Chen, until Chen passed out and there was a moment when Chen had always, would forever, continue to apply pressure to the throat and Chen would die.