About an hour later, Jeremiah steadied his son with a hand on his shoulder and they walked back into the adjoining examination room.

“Pretty cool, huh?” Jeremiah said, trying to sound as casual as he could.

“Not really,” Parker told him. He looked a bit pale. “Can we leave now? Can you just take me back to school?”

Jeremiah looked at Pike, who nodded quickly toward the door as he began looking through the test results.

“Yeah, we can go, Parker. But there’s only a few hours left of school. Why don’t you just take the day off? We can grab some lunch and you can spend a few hours with me at the office. I’ll show you around. It’s pretty cool.” He still had no clear idea of how he was going to explain all of this, how he was going to tell Parker he would never be going back to his school again. That he would never be going back to the life he knew again.

Back in the apartment, Parker looked around excitedly, taking in the sleek design of the place.

“Whoa,” he said. “This is where you work? Is this your office?”

“Check it out, take a look around.”

“This is awesome,” Parker said as he went into the kitchen and opened the fridge. Rooting through the freezer, he immediately went for the ice cream and Jeremiah almost tripped in his rush to physically push the boy away and close the door.

“That’s for later,” he said with a bit more force than he liked. “Go ahead and take a soda, though. Make yourself at home.”

Parker took his bottle into the living room and stopped short when he saw the video game console, which Jeremiah had placed conspicuously on a table.

“That’s a Sparx Four,” he said, stunned. “That isn’t even supposed to be released for, like, another six months. No one has that yet. How did you get one of those?”

“Parker,” Jeremiah said. “Sit down for a minute. I need to talk to you. You can check that out later.”

But Parker had gone over to the console and picked up the headset. “This is amazing,” he said. “Are there any games?”

“Yeah, later, though. I need to talk to you. Put that away for a minute and come and sit down.”

Chapter 41

Day 172

“I think you must have lost your mind along with that finger, Dad. Clones? Really?”

Jeremiah had just spit the whole thing out without taking a breath, and Parker had listened with a blank expression and then burst out laughing.

“Parker,” he said, “I’m serious. I know how it sounds, but this isn’t a joke. I haven’t been home in six months. I’ve been here. I’ve been watching. I saw the whole thing with your mother. I saw everything, right there on that TV set on the wall. But I’m back now.”

“Yeah, whatever, Dad, very funny,” he said. “Can I just play a game on this thing now?”