Twin Envy

Chapter Nine: A Twin Thing


"Mmmpphh…"

Elliot gradually came back to consciousness, though how he'd lost it escaped him at the moment. All he was really aware of at first was that he felt unusually tired and groggy.

When he realized he was waking up in a sitting position, however, and that he couldn't move his arms or legs, it started to come back to him exactly what had happened.

He opened his eyes, glancing down at himself in shock. He was tied to a chair, arms behind his back, and gagged with a strip of tape. The room around him was dark, but the light shining through the one tiny window across the room gave him enough light to recognize where he was: Sarah's basement.

It was coming back to him now…Sarah had left him alone for a few minutes…he'd heard strange sounds from her room…and when he'd gone to look, he'd found…another Sarah…?

It wasn't possible. He had to have dreamed it. He had to be dreaming this. There was no way he was actually sitting here tied to a chair in Sarah's basement. There was no way he'd seen another Sarah stuffed in a closet. There was no way he'd seen Grace stuffed in there with her looking, for all intents and purposes, lifeless.

And there was absolutely…positively no way he'd seen the first Sarah return, and actually…shoot him. Even with the TF Gun, it seemed impossible that Sarah could do something like that to him.

But then he heard a rustling beside him, and when he turned toward it and squinted in the minimal light, he realized that it wasn't a dream. On his right, similarly tied to chairs and gagged, were Sarah and Grace. Sarah was stirring, eyes slowly blinking open. Grace, however, was still.

Elliot tensed. What the hell was going on?

"Mmphh!" he mumbled, trying to get Sarah's attention. She lifted her head up and turned to him at the sound, eyes wide and urgent. She looked terrified. She glanced at Grace, and from the expression she wore Elliot knew she feared the same thing he did, and prayed he was wrong about it.

Slowly he rolled his jaw back and forth, wetting his lips and gradually loosening the sticky adhesive over his mouth. It took several minutes of working, but at last he managed to force open space between his face and the tape. It still stuck to his lower jaw, but at least he could breathe properly. And talk.

"Sarah," he said, turning to her. "What is this? What's going on?"

Unfortunately her answer was too muffled for him to make out. He had to un-gag her somehow.

"Lean toward me and hold still," he told her. Sarah complied, leaning as far toward him as she could, and Elliot leaned in as well toward her cheek, until he could latch his teeth on the outer edge of the tape.

"On three, yank away as hard as you can," Elliot mumbled through gritted teeth. "One….two…three!"

Both yanked backward at once, ripping the tape clean off, which Elliot promptly spit out. Sarah, meanwhile, gasped for breath and finally looked back at him with fearful eyes.

"Elliot, it was her, the accident, she was just there and she blasted me and then I kept waking up in the closet and then Grace was there, oh God, Grace--"

"Sarah!" Elliot said sharply. "Calm down! Breathe!"

Sarah panted for breath, no less afraid, but slowly calming. "The diamond, Elliot…in the lab accident, she--"

"--is sick and tired of having to shut you up."

The voice was exactly the same. Except it held none of her usual warmth and compassion. And it didn't come from her mouth. Elliot whipped his head around toward the source of her voice, and all illusions of the scene being a dream were gone. Sarah was beside him, tied to the chair…just as much as she was standing in front of both of them, fury etched on her face and one of Tedd's precious Transformation Guns leveled at both of them. Every inch of her looked exactly the same as the girl held beside him, from tip of her blonde head to the shirt on her back to the soles of her shoes.

A perfect imitation.

A clone.

"The diamond…" Elliot echoed Sarah's words, suddenly understanding. "At the lab accident last week…Sarah got hit with it…"

"Right in one," the clone answered.

"All this time…this whole last week…"

"Had you fooled, didn't I?" the clone snickered derisively. "Not that it was difficult…I AM Sarah, you know. Down to the last detail."

"You're not Sarah!" Elliot fired back.

"You sure seemed to think so this past week…" she sneered.

"What do you think you're doing, tying us up down here? And Grace?! What did you do to Grace?!"

"She's not dead, if that's what you're getting so bent out of shape about," the clone snapped. "She's just stunned. And you will be too in a minute…"

Thankful though he was that Grace was okay, Elliot wasn't any less angry. "I want to know what's going on. Now."

"I'm doing what YOUR little clone didn't have the guts to do."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"She wants to replace me," the real Sarah said. "She stunned me as soon as we realized the diamond split us. When I woke up I was stuffed in that closet, and she would come back and stun me again. She wanted to take over my life, and keep me out of the way."

Elliot rounded furiously on the clone. "It that true?!"

"It WAS," the clone growled, her own anger rising. "Until you and Grace started snooping around where you didn't belong."

"So you tied us up and threw us in the basement? Brilliant plan," Elliot said with a smirk. "I'm sure no one's ever going to notice us missing and come looking for us."

Like lighting the clone whipped the TF gun up at him and fired a burst of stun energy at him. Elliot jerked, expecting to pass out again, but instead his whole body went slack, like he was paralyzed.

"That was a low power stun. Don't make me shut you up completely," the clone snarled.

"Why are you doing this?!" Elliot demanded. "What did we ever do to you?!"

"I don't have much choice in the matter, do I?" Clone Sarah countered, turning her angry stare on the real Sarah. "This house is hers. This family is hers. This life is hers. That's all anyone's ever going to see. But it still feels like mine. And I want it back!"

"You couldn't just ask?!" Elliot burst out. "You really think there's no other place in the world for you?! That you couldn't live peacefully somewhere else?!"

"I don't WANT to live somewhere else!" the clone shot back. "THIS is my life, and SHE'S standing between us!"

She gripped the front of Elliot's shirt and yanked him forward. "You could've been perfectly happy…you could've lived a great life with me, and you'd never have known anything had changed. But no, you just HAD to go sticking your nose where you didn't belong…you AND that little squirrel girl…and now both of you need to disappear along with your little girlfriend!"

"That's not gonna happen, you sorry excuse for a body-snatcher!"

"And who's going to stop me? No one else knows you're here. Once I close off you loose ends there won't be anyone left that knows what happened."

"You're pretty thick for being cloned from someone as smart as Sarah," Elliot sneered. "If Grace came snooping, you can BET Tedd's figuring out what's going on. Especially when she doesn't come back. And once Tedd knows, it's only a matter of time before everyone knows. Face it, clone, your little plan is falling apart at the seams."

The clone was shaking with rage now. Good, Elliot thought to himself. It was working. The paralysis was already wearing off, and she was getting angry to the point of losing focus. Of not thinking clearly.

Of making a mistake.

"C'mon, what stings the most?" he provoked. "That you were found out? That your ruse to take over the rest of Sarah's life lasted a whopping seven days before it fell apart?"

"Shut up!"

"Or is it knowing that no one is going to ever believe you're really Sarah again? That as far as anyone else is concerned, you're just a clone?"

To his misfortune, he'd pushed too far, and his plan abruptly backfired. The clone whipped the TF Gun around suddenly, not shooting it but instead swinging it like a club, and not at him, but at--

CRACK!

"AHH!" Sarah screamed sharply, her head thrust to one side from the impact and her lip bleeding from the fresh wound.

"HEY! Leave her out of this!" Elliot shouted, going pale.

"Then shut your goddamn mouth!" the clone shouted back, raising the gun again and ready to strike her again.

"Okay, okay!" Elliot blurted out. "Just don't hurt her!"

The clone lowered her weapon and glared at him for a moment longer. Then, at last, she made the mistake he was looking for. Her cell phone rang. And for the sake of maintaining her cover, she turned away from him to answer it, and set the TF Gun down on a nearby table for a few critical seconds. That was all Elliot needed.

The moment she was turned away the changes had begun. Fur sprouted to life across his whole body. His torso bulged with muscle, making the ropes feel, if anything, tighter. His pupils ceased to be round and narrowed into slits. And most importantly, pointed claws grew from his fingertips, more than sharp enough to cut the rope that bound him.

"Nice to know this cat-form has some uses…" Elliot observed. SLICE! Away went his bindings.

"Wh--HEY! STOP IT!" the clone suddenly shouted, dropping her phone.

SLICE-SLICE! Away went Sarah's and Grace's ropes.

"I SAID STOP IT!" Clone Sarah shrieked, diving for the gun. But Elliot was just slightly quicker. He slammed his claws down upon the TF Gun before the clone could so much as touch it; but the instant he did, a burst of green light radiated from it, and the stun energy within burst outward.

ZZHHTT!

"AHHH!" he cried out, at once human and feline as the energy surged through his body and dropped him to the floor by the stairs, panting.

"Serves you right, you little pest!" Clone Sarah growled, gripping the now-broken TF Gun. "You're going to pay for ruining my plan!"

The clone raised what was left of the gun over her head, ready to bash him over the head with it, but Elliot was left paralyzed on the ground by the stun energy, and the feeling in his limbs was coming back far too slowly…

"LEAVE HIM ALONE!"

Both Elliot and the clone whirled around just in time to catch sight of the real Sarah rushing toward them before she crashed right into Clone Sarah. The broken TF Gun went flying as Sarah tackled her clone roughly to the ground, the both of them rolling over each other a few times in a sudden struggle for dominance. Elliot himself could only watch helplessly, not only unable to do so much as sit up yet, but because he could no longer tell which Sarah was which.

"Elliot!"

Elliot twisted toward the new voice, and smiled broadly. "Tedd…Ellen…"

Indeed, his best friend and his sister were leaping down the basement stairs, Tedd armed with the only remaining TF Gun and Ellen armed with her own glowing-green fists.

"Looks like we were right," Tedd said grimly, catching sight of the fight in the middle of the floor. "There was a Clone-Sarah all this time."

"Tedd caught enough of it on camera during that accident last week to figure it out," Ellen hastily explained. "Then when Grace didn't come back from here we had a feeling you guys might be in trouble."

"And speaking of which, where IS Grace…?" Tedd added worriedly.

"Over there…by the chairs," Elliot managed to point to the floor off to the side of Sarah and her clone battling.

Tedd turned to follow his finger, and promptly gasped. "Grace!"

He hurried over to her, dropping his TF Gun into Elliot's hand as he struggling to his feet.

"What happened to you?" Ellen asked.

"Broke the other TF Gun…stun energy knocked the wind outta me for a bit, but I'm fine. Nnhh…" he grunted. "Still wobbly though…"

"Here," Ellen said, grabbing the gun from him and firing the normalizer setting at him. In an instant the paralysis lifted completely, and Elliot was back in his own, human body.

"Thanks," Elliot said. "I'll take that…"

Without waiting for a response he snatched the TF Gun from Ellen's grip and, hard-faced, leveled the weapon at the pair of Sarahs.

"HEY!!"

Both Sarahs froze in place and looked up at Elliot, who stared defiantly back, searching both of them for some way of telling them apart. But there was nothing. The cut lip the clone had given the real Sarah was no longer unique; the clone had gotten one herself in the scuffle. They both wore the same clothes; shirts, pants, even their shoes were indistinguishable from each other.

They were perfectly identical. And all three of them knew it.

"Elliot, I'm the real Sarah, shoot her!" the one on the left shouted abruptly, jabbing an accusing finger at the other.

"No! I'm the real Sarah, she's lying!" the one on the right countered immediately.

"She's the liar! Elliot, you know me, you know I'm the real one!"

"No, Elliot, she's trying to trick you! Zap her!"

"Zap her, Elliot!"

"Elliot, please, it's me!

"No, Elliot, I'M Sarah!"

"No, I AM!"

"You are not!"

"Yes I am! You're just a clone!"

"YOU'RE the clone!"

"I AM NOT A--"

"BOTH OF YOU STOP IT, NOW!"

Both Sarahs fell instantly silent at Elliot's command, and the boy moved the gun back and forth between each of them, unable to tell them apart.

C'mon Elliot, think…this can't be so hard… he told himself. Just ask them something that only the real Sarah would know…wait, no, that won't work…the clone has all the same memories of the real Sarah, she knows everything Sarah knew…anything I could possibly ask to tell them apart, both of them would know easily…

unless…oh no…of course…oh god…

Elliot grimaced, but he had a plan. He didn't like it…as a matter of fact he was already hating himself for it…but it was all he had.

"Alright you two," he said as he eyed the identical girls, hard-faced. "Since I can't tell you apart myself, we'll have to do this another way. I'm going to ask you both a question. Something only the real Sarah could possibly know. And once I get a right answer, I'll know who's who."

"Uhh…Elliot?" Ellen chimed in. "That won't--"

"I know what I'm doing, Ellen," he stopped her.

"But Elliot, the clone knows everything the real Sarah does!"

"Ellen, trust me!" he said back, his tone final. "No matter what…there is no possible way that anyone but the real Sarah could possibly know this…"

As he expected, both Sarahs looked at once nervous and jumpy, both ready to pounce on the right answer the instant they heard the question. But only one of them would know it. Of that, unfortunately, he was certain…

"Alright then…" he said, keeping his expression neutral. "Here it is…"

The room listened with baited breath.

"…I have a birthmark. Where is it and what does it look like?"

For a moment both girls froze as their minds raced to comprehend the question. Then the Sarah on his right seemed to pale sharply as though completely baffled, while the Sarah on the left burst out enthusiastically, "It's a crescent moon on your butt!"

Elliot smirked grimly, and leveled the gun at the one who answered. "Bingo."

ZZHHTT!

The blast of stun energy fired at low power straight into the girl whom Elliot now knew to be the clone, and she crumpled to the ground, shock on every face in the room but his own.

"B-but I…I got it right…!" the clone sputtered weakly.

"Exactly," Elliot said. "The real Sarah never saw that birthmark."

All too late, the clone realized her mistake with stunned eyes. "The date…after the concert…" She glared angrily at him. "You said only the real Sarah would know! You tricked me!"

Elliot only looked away from her. Unfortunately, his eyes fell on the real Sarah instead, her mind already jumping to the conclusions he feared she would.

"Sarah…I--"

He got no farther before she blew past him, charging up the stairs alone.

"Sarah, wait!" he called after her, but it did no good. She was already gone.

"Well well," Clone Sarah snickered. "I was going to milk that for all it was worth…but I guess my pathetic original self did all the work for me…"

In an instant Elliot had put her out completely with another stun blast. But it did nothing to ease the guilt he was suddenly wracked with.

"Sarah…"


Comments and critiques welcomed and appreciated, as always.