He’d almost given up on another chance. But they were leaving him alone in here. It wasn’t over.

When the door closed and he was alone in his office for the first time in several months, Jeremiah felt so strange that he hesitated and wasted precious seconds just taking it in. He turned to look out his office window, but by now it was so dark outside that all he saw was his own reflection, looking disoriented and quite out of place here. He snapped back into clarity and grabbed for the phone, dialing his home number with barely a glance at the keypad. He cupped his hand over the mouthpiece and listened anxiously as it rang three times, never taking his eyes off the office door.

Parker picked up.

Jeremiah froze for an instant at hearing his son’s voice on the phone. A wave of regret washed over him as he thought of all the things he wanted to say to his son. There wasn’t time.

“Parker, get your mother to the phone.”

“She’s not home, Dad. Hey, I watched you on TV. I can’t believe you took that stuff.”

“Where’s your mother?”

“Working, I guess.”

Jeremiah hung up the phone without even saying goodbye to his son and tried to remember Diana’s cell phone number. He’d only ever dialed it by pressing one button on his own cell. He had no idea what it was.

When he heard Scott and Pike in the hallway, progressing slowly with the dead weight of the unconscious clone, Jeremiah grabbed a pen. He had seconds to consider what he would write. He flipped to an empty page in the middle of a yellow legal pad on the desk and scrawled a message for his double: Diana is in danger. There are NO ACCIDENTS! Keep her home!

He righted the pad, quickly pocketed the pen and nearly toppled over at the sight of the two men dragging the drugged clone into the office. It would have been an unnerving thing to see even if he hadn’t been frantic. He tried to steady his breathing while they settled his double at his desk.

The downloading of the evening’s memories from his mind to his clone took all of fifteen minutes. Pike affixed several wires connecting Jeremiah’s head to that of his double, and then attached an additional connection to himself. He hastily explained that, this time, the Meld would feel different.

“This is a one-way transfer,” he said. “But you may sense something from the clone. Anything you pick up should be minimal. To be honest, I’m not entirely certain what you’ll experience. We never prepared for this.”

“What do I need to do?”

“Nothing,” Pike said. “The hard connection will allow me to control the download. I’ll be able to filter everything. I can implant only what we need. Try to relax.”

During the transfer, Jeremiah was hardly aware of anything except a vague sense of false confidence from his double. The sensation was hazy, hovering just in the background. But what he could sense from the clone’s mind was eerily familiar, as though his own random thoughts were flitting through his head. Afterward, he was shuffled out of the room by Scott and into the freight elevator, on his way back to the lab before the clone was even fully awake. Jeremiah wondered vaguely what they’d implanted in his mind to reconcile that he was about to wake up at his desk.