Doppelgänger 24
"We think it's twins this time though we're not sure. And I'm frightened," Kate admitted. She saw the look of not understanding on Alexis's face.
"When I was pregnant with Lily we couldn't go to any of this city's hospitals. Underneath what you see, I'm a succubus. They would learn that I'm not human and we couldn't risk it. No drugs, no medical help; it was scary. Now with twins, I just don't know. I love Rick. And I love my family and want to keep them. But what if…" Kate feared that giving birth to twins might kill her.
"And that girl is a…" Alexis didn't want to say demon even if it was true. She should be shooting both of them and taking them in to be terminated.
"The term is tiefling. Part human, part demon. Lily has to wear contacts to hide her eyes and she kind of has my skin coloration. She can't go to a hospital, either, for as long as she lives. Neither will these two." Kate placed a hand on her belly. She wasn't showing much but with twins she was going to get bigger faster.
"I want my family, but I'm so scared." Her tears started all over again.
"Love, we'll think of something. We'll find a way." Rick wrapped his arms around her and drew her close.
Alexis wasn't used to this from her father. He was single, he didn't have kids, and he certainly wasn't involved with a demon.
"Okay Dad, now tell me the long version. How did you get into this mess?" Alexis wanted to know partly to understand but also to see if there was a way to get him out of this predicament.
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Alexis was still shaking her head. The story was far too weird to be believed.
The demon had left them for a time to put the toddler down so she could sleep. She'd also found out that the three of them had been going to go see her father. Well, Kate Beckett's father. Her arrival had ruined that.
Now they were sitting at the breakfast bar eating Chinese takeout that Alexis had to admit was actually pretty good. "So there's another me?" She was still trying to understand that part.
"Richard Castle has a daughter named Alexis Harper Castle. She's two years younger than you and could almost be your twin," Rick explained. "It's really good to see you, sweetheart." He leaned over and kissed her head.
Alexis suddenly stood and pulled out a weapon. "I have weapons fire downstairs."
Rick checked his spies. "I've got nothing." He looked at Kate who shook her head.
"I spent a year and almost every credit I had upgrading everything. It looks like one person's down and another's entering the elevator," Alexis said.
"You stay here." Rick pointed at Kate. He took out a weapon, followed his daughter out the front door, and over to the elevator which was on its way up.
"I thought you said this Bracken guy was out of the picture?" Alexis inquired based on the information she had just been provided.
"He is. They picked him up and convicted him for manufacturing illegal drugs with intent to distribute along with tax evasion. They never could get enough on him for murder. Nothing that would hold up in court anyway," Rick quickly told her.
"Elevator will open in…3…2…1." Alexis and her father aimed their weapons at the doors.
When the doors opened Rick saw Alexis lying on the floor bleeding badly. "ALEXIS!" She wasn't his Alexis but in a way she was; he loved her much like he loved his Alexis. He stepped in, scooped her up, and retreated to the loft while Alexis covered their backs.
"ALEXIS!" Kate cried and helped Rick take her to the sectional. "What happened?"
He pulled out his scanner. "She's been hit by three rounds. Both lungs have collapsed, blood pressure is dropping fast. Another round has fractured two of her ribs which have done a number on her intestinal tract."
"Alexis, no, please don't do this." Kate dropped to her knees and stroked her orangish hair. "Please sweetheart, don't do this." Kate did nothing to the tears that were flowing down her face. "Do something," Kate begged, turning to her husband. His heart aching, Rick shook his head.
"There has to be something." Kate wasn't willing to give up. "I can't add her memories to mine." She was pretty sure she didn't know where Snohbal ended and Kate Beckett began. Adding Alexis would be just too much for her.
"Alexis, download her memories," Rick commanded. "Quickly, she doesn't have much time." He needed Alexis to do it since his device was filled with Richard Castle's memories.
"I'm going downstairs; go get your dagger," Rick told Kate. Then he jumped up and ran to the stairs while ordering his spies to go outside and scan the area.
Alexis watched Kate run to a bedroom while her father ran out the front door.
"You do look like me," Alexis was willing to admit. It was simple enough to do. She pulled out the device, attached the terminal to the dying girl's temple, and started downloading everything.
Rick ran out of the stairwell and found Ashley lying in a pool of blood. "Damn it!" He didn't stop to find out if he was still alive. Based on the amount of blood on the floor he knew he was already gone.
Next he came across the doorman who was also down and in a pool of his own blood. "What the hell is going on?" He looked outside using his spies and didn't see much of anything. "Long gone." He ordered his spies to spread out. There was likely a car, van, or truck doing its best to get away from here. He needed a lead on who to hunt down for this massacre.
He went over to the doorman, stripped him, and poured a liquid over his body. He didn't wait to make sure all of him was gone.
He walked over to Ashley. "I'm so sorry, Ashley. I'm pretty sure Alexis loved you." Rick briefly laid a hand on the young man's head, removed everything on his body, then poured the same liquid over his remains. This time Rick watched his liquid dissolve the body and the pool of blood, leaving only a disproportionately small amount of water behind that would eventually evaporate.
He knew with his entire being that there was only one person behind this. He just didn't know how the bastard had managed it. The prosecutor had won early on and had convinced the judge that Bracken was a flight risk. So he had not stepped a foot out of prison since being arrested.
Rick knew what he wanted to do. He burned with the need to get close enough to put a round in Bracken's head and turn his brains into cottage cheese. What stopped him was Kate. Even though she was a demon she didn't believe in killing.
Maybe if he did it and never told her… He shook his head. Even if he didn't tell her, she'd know that he'd done it. He ran back up the stairs to find Kate sitting on the floor sobbing, her dagger in her lap. The anguish that was on her face when she looked up at him only solidified his resolve to kill Bracken for this.
Rick watched Alexis pull the terminal off of Alexis's head. "She's gone, Dad. …I'm so sorry."
Alexis hadn't been on this planet long but she'd already learned a lot. Seeing a succubus weeping brokenly over losing someone, a human no less, was not lost on her. She also saw her father crying as he knelt down to hold Kate. Kate latched onto him and held him tight while sobbing on his shoulder. "Who did this?" Alexis demanded. She wanted, no needed to know – now.
Rick raised his head and wiped his hand over his face. He had his guess based on what had happened over the last two years, even if he had no evidence to support it. "My gut tells me it's Bracken," he answered tiredly. What had happened today had taken everything he had to give.
Alexis stood there and watched what was effectively her stepmother and her father crying and mourning a girl that looked so much like her. She also decided what to do about it. "I'll take care of it." She strode out the door and up the stairs to reach her shuttle. Kate and Rick were too wrapped up in each other and the pain they were feeling to actually notice that she'd left.
Rick recovered first. He rose, reverently stripped her body, retrieved a vial, and started pouring its contents over Alexis. "What are you doing?" Kate really wasn't happy with what he was doing.
"Taking care of the body so we can live our lives." He knew he had no choice. They needed to avoid any questions about the three dead bodies so he dealt with them much as he had done with the bodies at the beach house in the Hamptons.
Kate watched Alexis disappear and broke down sobbing yet again. Her heart was broken and she didn't know what could possibly fix it.
"Mama?" a little voice called. Both of them turned and looked up to see Lily at the top of the flight of stairs, trapped by the baby gate that had been installed to prevent her from tumbling down them. Kate was up in a heartbeat, running up the stairs to scoop Lily up in her arms and carry her back to her bedroom. She needed to find out how much her baby girl had seen or understood.
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Alexis flew back to her ship and requested that Sara do a search. It wasn't difficult for Sara; she found Bracken in his cell without any trouble.
Alexis set her weapons to his location. "Alexis?" Sara questioned. Without answering, Alexis plugged her device that held Alexis's memories into Sara and started downloading her into a larger system with more memory storage.
A moment later Sara informed her, "Weapons are on line, target is acquired." Sara had already read every memory of Alexis Castle and sanctioned this action even though the young Earth girl wouldn't have approved.
Alexis pressed the tab and watched stoically as that section of the prison was utterly destroyed. The cells on either side were damaged and their inhabitants injured, but only Bracken was killed. It would take the investigators many hours to find even a few pieces of his body. The New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision immediately launched a formal inquiry into the situation.
"Alexis Castle wouldn't have wanted this done, however, based on our laws you had the right to execute him," Sara said.
Alexis suddenly had an idea. "Sara, can you download her memories into the Crimson Duplication device?" The device was an energy hog. Alexis had known that when she bought it. But given a little time while it was offline, her power system would recover. Granted this wasn't what she had bought it for, but this was a special case.
"Download commencing. Estimate twelve hours to complete download and fabrication of visual." Sara approved of this also.
"I'm going to go back down to the planet and talk with Dad and his wife," Alexis told her.
"Richard is married?" That was news to her.
"To a succubus no less." Alexis was starting to accept that.
"I will inform the authorities that we will be returning with a demon for disposal," Sara informed her.
"Not this succubus, Sara. She's my stepmother and as hard as it is to believe, I don't think she's evil like others of her kind. You should have seen her when the other Alexis died. She cared, Sara, truly cared." Alexis had never seen anything like it in a demon. Every other demon she had encountered had been a cold-blooded killer with absolutely no remorse for their actions.
"As you wish." Alexis was in charge, after all.
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Alexis was sitting with her dad and they were talking about things. Lots of things. Then Kate came out of Lily's bedroom and came downstairs.
Kate saw the look on Rick's face. "She woke up and heard me crying, she didn't see a thing." She sat next to Rick and tried to melt into his body knowing more tears were just a moment away. "How do we explain to her that she'll never be able to see her sister again? She loved Alexis." Kate didn't dare look at Rick, she knew if she did she would just start crying all over again. She wasn't sure how she was going to survive never seeing Alexis again. She was an integral part of their family.
Her husband gently brushed her hair back from her face. "Alexis and I have been talking about that a little and there's something you should know." Actually there were a lot of things they needed to talk about.
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Lily was up and sitting in her high chair, eating and making a mess while half the time she would hold her arms out to Alexis. She wanted out of her chair and into her sister's arms.
"You really think this will work?" Kate had listened to Alexis and Rick explain the device to her. She did notice that while she was making breakfast for herself that Alexis was picking up after Lily. That brought a sad smile to her face.
"It won't be ready for a number of hours yet, but all or almost all of your Alexis will be in there. There are a number of limitations to this, power being one of them. The first major problem will be whether your Alexis will be able to handle the situation. Seeing, talking, hearing but not being able to touch or be touched might be too much for her."
Kate gave up putting jam on her toast. "I'm not even sure if I can. I'm going to want to hug her and even kiss her. Not to mention never letting her out of my sight again. Damn Bracken!" she snarled in her fury, enough fury that Lily didn't fail to notice.
"Mama?" Lily had only ever heard that tone of voice a couple of times and it worried and confused her. Her mama was always nice.
"I'm sorry, sweetheart. Mama isn't mad at you." Kate lifted her out of her chair and held her tight. It allowed Lily to hold onto her mother. "What?" Kate saw a look on Alexis's face.
"It's just that I've never met anyone like you. Every…" Alexis didn't want to say demon in front of Lily since she might not understand. "They've been heartless killers that didn't concern themselves with even a thought about who or why they killed." Alexis was still amazed at Kate.
"Yeah, I saw that a lot in my world. I spent months planning my escape. I don't want to think what would have happened to me if I had been caught. I would likely be screaming in pain until time itself ended." Kate shivered at the thought.
Alexis nodded at Lily. "Does she know?"
Kate shook her head. "Lily knows she's different but she doesn't know that. I need to put her contacts in if we're going anywhere public today." She carried Lily toward the stairs. "Rick should be out of the shower soon."
A fresh and clean Rick came out of the bedroom to find only his daughter at the kitchen counter. "How are you doing? It's been a little while since we've done anything as a family. How's your mother?"
She looked at her father and shrugged. "You know what happened when I followed in your footsteps and became a hunter… Well, Mom's still an ass. The last time we talked it turned into our usual yelling match." She didn't want to hate her mother, but it was hard not to.
Alexis found herself being hugged and reveled in it. "I'm sorry sweetheart, but becoming a hunter was your idea, not mine." He'd tried to talk her out of it.
"I know." She wondered what her life would have been like if she hadn't chosen to become a hunter. She liked her job, though. And it didn't hurt that she was good at it.
"So why are you moving? I mean I get that if you're going to have twins you need the space, but is there a different reason?" Alexis was curious and she had other questions for her dad as well.
"The space is part of it. Another is that this Richard Castle was a writer…" Rick was interrupted when Alexis began laughing.
"Sorry, Dad. …It's just that I can't see you as a writer." She didn't see him as anything but a hunter.
"It turns out it's not as difficult as it sounds. But I can't wrap my mind around the type of books he wrote. I may have his memories but I don't have his imagination. Then Gina, who was his publisher, was killed so I took that opportunity to write a different type of book. It doesn't pay as well but at least I'm good at it. Here, I'll show you." Rick got up and started rummaging through boxes till he found the right one.
He handed the latest book to Alexis who quickly scanned it. Her face showed her surprise. "You're writing about Lily." She read a few pages. "It's a children's book." She looked at her father through new eyes.
"It was something I could put my heart into. It's actually doing relatively well. With the money I get from writing this and Kate's salary as a detective… we're doing pretty good." Rick was happy. It wasn't the money Richard Castle made but they were doing well.
"We bought the new place using money from the sale of this place and had money left over. You wouldn't believe what the loft was worth. It surprised the hell out of me. The new place has more bedrooms, more living space, even a yard for Lily to play in."
Something bothered Alexis. She knew the kind of money she made and her father had to be making at least as much. More since he had been doing it longer. "What did you do with your money?"
Rick knew she meant the money he'd made as a hunter. "We need to wait for Kate." Was what he was thinking about even an option? With Alexis gone only Martha and Jim were holding them here.
"I knew it! What did you spend it on? The 'verse knows you didn't spend it on your ship or it would still be in one piece." It also meant he wouldn't be here, married to a succubus, and raising a family. A family of tieflings no less, which she was shocked to admit didn't bother her so much.