“...and you’re certain this was the same doctor who saved that kid in the coma?”

“...and they’re sure it was suicide?”

The clone hung up the phone and ran a hand through his hair. The look on his face mirrored Jeremiah’s own alarm.

“Holy crap,” he said to Brent.

“What’s he talking about?”

“Just watch. I have a feeling this won’t be pretty.”

On the screen, his clone picked up the phone again and dialed.

“We have a problem,” he said. Jeremiah could only assume he was speaking to his department director. “That doctor who was singing Meld’s praises all over the news, you know the one with the comatose kid? Yeah, well, he killed himself this morning. And he left a note. He mentioned Meld.”

For the next two and a half hours, Jeremiah and Brent watched as the clone and everyone in ViMed’s Communications department rallied to build a wall against a media onslaught. Judging from the newsfeed in the background, it wasn’t helping. The news was reporting that the doctor, after his stint as a medical superstar, had abandoned his hospital post for a private practice focusing entirely on Meld-induced treatment of brain injury. He’d made quite a success of it, but there were indications he might have taken the drug too many times. A talking head read a critical passage from the good doctor’s suicide note.

“Meld showed me a monster. How can we look at ourselves through someone else’s eyes and not be fundamentally changed? I cannot defend what I’ve seen. I cannot live with the monster. I cannot escape him. We are not meant to see this. We’re not equipped. It isn’t right. My only solace is that at least I can take him with me.”

The clone had gathered a small group of writers and PR reps in his office. “This is the first suicide in a clinical setting. This is where we need to focus. We need to turn it around. Maybe we can spin the idea that this guy was abusing Meld outside of his practice, using it wrong, maybe even addicted to it. There’s got to be someone out there—some disgruntled patient, a jealous rival, a jilted lover—who will talk if we plant that idea in the right ears. You need to find those ears. Now.”

Brent whistled through his teeth. “Wow,” he said. “Clone’s gone all cutthroat. No mercy there.”

“Seems a bit aggressive to me,” Jeremiah said. “I mean, this doctor has a reputation. A family. He just killed himself, for Christ’s sake. I think a little mercy is in order.”

More to the point, Jeremiah thought to himself, Meld was still killing people, and the clone was still trying to push it on the public. And, for all anyone knew, that clone was Jeremiah. Those were his own hands bloodied in every one of those deaths.

It had to end. He had to end it. Somehow. But Brent was right about one thing: if anyone realized he was no longer a willing player in all of this, if he showed his hand at all here, he’d be even more stuck than he already was. They’d make sure of that.