"A what?" Kyle asked after a long silence. "I don't understand."

Alaric moved back around his desk to stand in front of Kyle.

"A doppelgänger is a duplicate of a person. Usually in mythology they're unrelated, and mostly evil."

Kyle stood there, dumbfounded.

"But in reality, we've found that a doppelgänger is usually born within a family line, and separated by many generations. On the evil thing, that one's a 50-50 shot as far as I can tell."

"And Kyle, they're not created by accident."

Kyle's brain was whirling. "You're saying that I'm an exact copy...of my great-grandfather?"

Alaric grimaced. "Possibly. It's possible. It's also possible that your great-grandfather is himself a doppelgänger, a copy of a previous ancestor from past generations."

Sitting down hard, Kyle shook his head. "So I'm him like, reincarnated?"

"No, you're your own person. Doppelgängers are genetic duplicates, similar to identical twins. Even though they're biologically identical, your experiences still shape you into the person you are. That's why they're not all evil, and not all good."

Hope chimed in. "It's like every once in awhile, the universe reuses a template when a life is created."

"Well, more accurately," Alaric said, "it's like the universe would like to create a unique person each time, but the creation of a doppelgänger forces a previous template to be used, right down to the cellular level."

"So what you should be thinking right now, Kyle, is who in your family's history would do this, and why?"

Kyle's head was shaking from side to side. "I have no idea! Besides my dad and me, there's no one left on that side of the family. My grandparents died when I was 10. I barely knew them. Anything further back then that…" He trailed off.

Alaric sat on the front edge of his desk. "It's really important that we find out. And when I say important, I mean this is life or death…for you."

Kyle's eyes were huge. "What?! Why?!"

Alaric and Hope shared a look. Then Alaric spoke again.

"There's a lot of power in a doppelgänger. They don't occur naturally, it takes a lot of effort to create one, and they're created for a specific reason. It's usually not a good one."

Kyle narrowed his eyes. "So you're saying I have a lot of power?"

Again, the look between Alaric and Hope. Alaric shook his head.

"No, Kyle. I'm saying there's a lot of power in you. For someone else to use. And to get that power, it has to be released. And to release it, well…"

Kyle thought he knew where this was going. Alaric confirmed it when he finished his sentence.

"…you have to die."

The words made the bottom of Kyle's stomach drop out. He was glad he was sitting down.

"That's why you can't leave," Hope said. "We didn't stop whoever started this. They'll still be looking for you."

Trying to keep his voice level, Kyle asked "What do they want? What does my death get them?"

"We don't know yet." Said Alaric.

Then he looked at Hope. "That's why we'd like to try something. Maybe if you see what happened that night you might recognize something."

Kyle was confused, and a little outraged. "Did you record my parents being killed?"

"No, of course not." Hope said, softly. "But I can show you what I saw that night. You can see when we saved you."

Kyle was not sure he wanted to see it. He wanted to know what happened, but the words themselves were bad enough. He was not sure he could stomach the visual of his parents dying.

Still, he had to know. He looked up at Hope. "Ok. Show me."

Given the go-ahead, Hope walked over to stand in front of Kyle. He gripped the armrests to stop his reflexive recoil from Hope. She saw it, but didn't remark on it.

Instead, she bent forward and placed her hands on either side of his head. The girl's gargantuan breasts were at once squished together, and also trying to pop out of her v-neck top, almost directly into his face. He knew he should not be distracted by them, but JESUS they were huge! And she did smell good, too…

But suddenly, he wasn't in the chair any longer. He was outside of his house. He was running!

In the chair, Kyle's body struggled, and Alaric got behind him and held him down by his shoulders.

Kyle's awareness was still outside of his house, and he had no control over anything. He was starting to panic.

Then he heard Hope's voice, disembodied, and everywhere. Soft, calming, she spoke directly into his brain.

"You're safe. Just let go and watch. You're safe, Kyle."

So he did. He saw Alaric holding a large crossbow. He ran up the steps to his front door and yelled "Hope!"

He heard Hope's voice, this time from right where he was. She was speaking words he didn't understand. Before Alaric reached the front door it burst inward.

Without breaking stride Alaric and Hope walked into a nightmare.

All around the large living room there were candles and gutted animals, pigs, birds, and foxes. It looked like their entrails along with the candles had been used to make a circle in the center of the room.

Hope swung her head to the left quickly and Kyle's vision went along with it. There he saw his mother pinned to the wall by her hands, feet and stomach, black metal spikes protruding from each location. She was either still alive or very newly dead, because the body kept convulsing.

Kyle heard Hope's gasp of horror as she saw it. Alaric yelled out "Hope!" again and the view snapped back around to Alaric.

She ran over to him, entering the circle of destroyed animal bodies. On some sort of table Kyle saw his own body, wearing the same clothes he was wearing now. At the foot of the table Kyle's father lay with one of the black spikes in his stomach.

Then, in the blink of an eye a black, growling shape rushed forward out of the darkness beyond the circle, straight toward Alaric, who was closest to Kyle's unconscious body.

Alaric managed to fire a crossbow round, but it either missed or went right through the thing.

Then the creature was on him. It batted the crossbow aside and grabbed Alaric by the throat. The two grappled viciously. Hope again yelled out some unintelligible words and the thing flew off of Alaric and was pinned to the wall behind him. Splayed on the wall Kyle could see it was a man in dark robes, but not much more than that.

Alaric quickly surged forward and grabbed Kyle's body, tossing him over his shoulder. He started to move off, but Hope screamed.

"I can't hold it much longer!" Which translated to 'not at all', because the thing flew off the wall, straight at Hope, clawing at her face. She tried to use her magic to defend herself but she was buffeted around the room by the thing's animal ferocity. They kicked over several candles as they fought, and the room caught fire.

Alaric dropped Kyle's body unceremoniously and tried to grab the creature. A quick swipe of it's arm slashed open a bloody gash across Alaric's chest. He fell backwards, blood seeping out of him.

Hope again tried to say some words, but the creature's hand shot out and gripped her throat. Kyle felt like he was choking, he could feel the fear as Hope struggled to breathe.

Up close, Kyle could see the thing was indeed a man. It looked like a very old, withered man. The pale skin was leathery and pockmarked. It looked emaciated, but the strength of the creature was incredible.

Then it threw back its head and howled in pain. It released Hope and whirled. Kyle could now see that Alaric had thrown some sort of ax or hatchet into the thing's back.

It clearly meant to attack him again. Hope, voice raspy, barked out a word and the creature flew back again, but did not stay immobilized like before. Kyle could see the figure through the accumulating smoke as it rose from the floor.

Again it was preparing to rush at the two, but then a voice cried out.

"GET MY SON OUT OF HERE!"

Kyle saw that it was his father, who had hauled himself to his feet. His body was already on fire. Maybe the pain of the flames had woken him up. He still had the spike in his gut.

Hope surged forward to reach for Mr. Carter, but he himself ran forward, ignoring what must have been agonizing pain, and threw himself on the creature.

He did not try to fight, but instead used his ebbing strength to simply hold onto the thing as longs as he could. They both started to burn as the creature tried to free itself from the desperate grasp of Kyle's father.

"HOPE, WE'RE LEAVING! NOW!" It was Alaric. Then Hope…Kyle…he felt himself yanked hard, and turned to see Alaric running out of the front door with his own body draped over his shoulder.

Hope followed right behind him, and the two kept going to their truck, only glancing back once they were inside, Kyle's body sprawled across the back seat.

Inside, silhouetted by the flames there was just a remnant of two shapes struggling. Then Alaric accelerated and they took off down the street.

The memory ended.

Kyle "woke up" and he was back in the chair, with Alaric holding him down and Hope's impressive cleavage in his face.

Kyle realized he was crying.

"What the hell was that thing?" He asked, through a strained voice.

"We don't know." Alaric said. "We've never seen anything like it."

"We were wondering if you had?" Hope had backed way off, and was practically on the other side of the room now. She sounded apologetic.

Alaric nodded in assent. "Correct. Did you see anything that could give us a clue as to who or what that was, or why this happened?"

Kyle sat forward and held his face in his hands. He should not have agreed to that. It was way worse than he ever dreamed it could be. His parents, brutally murdered, and that thing.

But there was something. He had seen something.

He stood up and walked over to Alaric's computer. Checking the site on the screen he could see it was a website dedicated to his family history. He typed in a search.

"When that thing was choking me…choking Hope…I saw its face."

"It was hideous." Hope said.

The results of Kyle's search came back and he clicked a link. Then he gestured toward the screen.

Alaric and Hope got closer so they could see.

"It was my grandfather."