It felt like time was at a standstill as he stared at me. As I stared back at myself.

This was crazy. Right in front of me, in my chair, sat a carbon-copy of myself. And the worst part was that it was acting like there was nothing weird with this scenario at all.

"Yeah, I know what you're thinking." He said as he waved his hand in front of his face. "You're thinking: 'Whos this devilishly handsome man that's sitting in my room like nothing at all? Oh, and why do I look like him?'"

He grinned in a manner that reminded me of my dad. "Or something along those lines. Am I right, Rick?"

If this were two weeks ago, this would probably have been the point where I would have freaked out and started sputtering gibberish. Or perhaps just outright faint. However, I had already decided what to do should something freaky occur again, and I was determined not to let it get to me.

Having overcome my initial shock and bewilderment, I bent down to grab my sandwich before promptly walking over and sitting down on my bed. I threw my PE clothes in a pile next to the wardrobe and took out my schoolbooks which I placed in neat stacks on the bed, trying my best not to look at the confounded replica at the other side of the room.

"What the hell?" I heard him grumble in the background.

The sound of the chair rolling away as he stood reached my ears, and he walked closer to the bed.

"Hey, what are you doing? I'm talking to you here." He demanded.

Still stacking my schoolbooks on the bed — for the third time now — I continued to ignore his outburst. I don't care if he's a ghost, invisible, or if I'm just plain crazy. I learned my lesson with Jen and seeing a copy of yourself standing in front of you in the flesh is too crazy to be anything but trouble — which I'm but all too happy to avoid at the moment.

Thinking this, I failed to notice that he was now standing right beside me, staring intently at what I assumed had to be the side of my head. With me doing all I could to avoid looking at him, it was kind of hard to tell.

He let out a bereaved sigh. "Dude, I've been dreaming of this day for years and you just had to fricking ruin it. Thirteen years of covering for you and this is the thanks I get? Way to treat your brother there...."

Two things he said caught my attention, and I involuntarily turned my head towards him, finding myself staring right into his face. I realized that my previous assessment about him looking just like me wasn't entirely correct. Yes, his face was almost identical to mine, but his hair was a bit longer and his skin was a tad bit paler than mine. The most distinct difference, however, was his eyes. Even though they were the same gazel color that mine were, his irises had the impression of blue-ish circles that surrounded the pupil.

"Bro? Hello, world calling Rick. You there?" His voice brought me back to reality and I immediately looked away.

"God damn it bro why are you just ignoring me? This is not how you're supposed to act when something like this happens! I was serious when I said that we had to talk." He sounded more and more pissed off the longer I kept ignoring him.

"Ok, how about this then. You're bound to have some questions about things, right? I probably have the answers to some of the general questions you might have. So let's make a deal. If you stop ignoring me and we have a talk, I'll answer whatever questions you throw at me. 'Kay?"

I stayed quiet. That made me think for a moment. I'd hoped of shelving the matter of everything freaky until Eleanor returned. I'd made a promise to her after all. Getting involved with my self-proclaimed brother here felt like it would mean breaking that promise because let's face it — there's no way something abnormal like this doesn't at least have a slight connection to Jen's case.

But who knows how long he's going to bother me? Just ignoring him until Eleanor comes back sounds difficult, and who knows if she'll even be able to help with it. This might be another case like with Jen, where I'm the only one that can see him. If that's the case, perhaps the best choice would be to talk with him. Get him to answer some questions.

I turned back to him. "Ok then. Let's talk."

"Really? Thank god. For a second, I was afraid you'd just keep ignoring me forever, you know." He said, going back to the chair and sitting down in the same pose as when I'd entered the room. "Ok, bro. I guess it'll be easier if you get to ask a few questions before I say my part, so shoot." He pointed his index finger at me and pretended to press a make-believe trigger with his thumb.

"Right. First question. Who are you?" I asked instantly. I didn't feel like wasting time right now.

"Ah, succinct. So that's how we're doing it. Fine, I can do that." Once again, he had that grin that was all too familiar to me on his face. "Alexander Maddox, but you can call me Alex. Or bro if you want."

"Alex it is then." I shook my head. "Second question. Are you supposed to be my twin or something?"

To that, Alex chuckled. "Yeah, you could say I'm your twin. or something."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that it's complicated. I could tell you the whole story, but frankly, it's pretty crazy and I doubt you'd believe it anyway. It also touches on other topics that I know for a fact you'll have a hard time accepting." He said.

I don't care. Explain." I've been through enough lately that I think I can handle it. Hopefully. Although a potential twin I didn't know about implies some pretty horrible things.

A surprised expression arose on Alex's face. "Seriously? 'Kay, if you say so."

I have to admit, I was curious as to what it was that he thought I'd have such a hard time accepting.

"But for my story to make sense, there's one thing I have to tell you first. And I'm warning you — it'll be hard to accept." He looked at me as if he were expecting to interject, before continuing when I stayed silent. "I know you've heard about how, when you were a kid, you used to be pretty smart. But the truth of the matter is much bigger than that. 'Mommy' and 'Daddy' didn't tell you the entire truth. Far from it, actually. You see, you weren't just a particularly bright kid. You were a freaking super genius. Like, with a capital G."

Yeah. I know." I replied flatly.

"What?!" Alex exclaimed.

Why does everybody think that hiding this from me was so important? I'll admit that learning about it hurt a bit at first, but I think I handled it pretty well.

"Where'd you hear that? Didn't your parents keep that a secret from you?" He continued.

"My therapist told me about it a few weeks ago. But that doesn't really matter. I'm more interested in why you would know that my parents kept it a secret from me."

"Your therapist told you?" He seemed to be lost in thought for a second before he returned his attention to me. "That makes sense. Well, anyway, I know a bunch of stuff about you. I'm your brother after all."

"Gee, thanks. That tells me a lot."

"You're very welcome."

"..."

"Want me to keep explaining, then?" He asked.

I waved for him to continue.

"Ok, here comes the hard to swallow part. You see, your unnatural intelligence didnät go unnoticed. Some pretty bad people wanted to get a hold of you so they could run their experiments and reproduce whatever power they believed made you that smart." He said.

"One of the first things they tried was cloning you, but it never really worked out as they wanted. They then tried abducting you, but long story short, it didn't end that well and a group of heroes saved you. However, they did manage to do some things to you before you were saved, chief among those being a chip that they placed at the back of your neck." He pointed towards his own neck. "You with me so far?"

I nodded. "Yes, but I can't say I believe you. I think I'd remember something like this happening, or at the very least my parents would have told me about it."

"Dude, you know as well as I do that you barely remember anything at all from those days. And our parents don't have the best track record with these things, you know, because of the whole 'once-a-genius' thing." Alex said as he began fumbling around in his pocket. "Besides, didn't it strike you as weird that your family has been moving around so much? You think that, just because that guy can't get it through his thick head that he should stay out of your way, your parents would you and your sister every other year? No, they're just scared that people would find about your past and try to kidnap you again."

Finding a piece of gum, he nonchalantly tossed it into his mouth and put his legs on the desk beside him. "Although, to be fair, they probably think he works for the guys who originally kidnapped you."

With 'that guy', did he mean...

"You mean Mr. Stalker?" I asked.

"Mr. Stalker? That's what you've named him?!" Alex laughed out loud and slapped his legs. "That's just too good, my god. If that asshole knew that, I bet he'd tear off your limbs. Well, probably not your limbs. Though he might take mine..." He stopped laughing and his expression suddenly turned somber. "Hey bro, do me a favor and keep that nickname a secret, 'kay?"

I guess that answers that question, although it's a little disturbing how familiar he sounds with the guy. I put that thought at the back of my head for another time and waited for Alex to keep speaking.

"But we've gone onto a tangent here. We were talking about that chip in your neck. This is where I come in. Remember how I told you they tried cloning you? Well, those clones were failures, every single one of them. However, one of them was less of a failure than the others and they used that clone in a lot of their experiments. The clone eventually died, but they tried conserving part of the information of the clone in a digitalized form. it worked, but not really as they planned."

Alex looked at me for a moment. "As your brother, I know that you're not an idiot. You've probably got an idea where I'm going with this, but I'll say it anyway. Basically, they accidentally created an artificial intelligence." He threw his arms outwards and a smug smile had found its way onto his face. "And you're looking at it. When you were rescued by that group of heroes, I used that opportunity to escape, and trough a bunch of shenanigans that I don't feel like sharing right now, I ended up in that chip at the back of your head. And that's where I've been living for the last thirteen years."

I stared at him. That smug smile didn't disappear, and his feet were still on the desk. Looking at him like that, I realized that I can have a very punchable face. "Did you make all of that up on the spot?" I asked, not even trying to hide the annoyance in my voice. "That entire story has more holes in it than swiss cheese. Sounds more like you copied it from some comic book than anything else."

His expression. Not by much — he was still smiling — but the smugness was gone. "You were the one who asked me about it. Not my fault if you don't believe me. Not that it matters much. The only thing that you have to believe is that I'm inside your head. And that, I can easily prove." He said. "We'll just wait until your family's home. Nobody else will be able to see me, you know."

"Oh, I'm not doubting that I'm the only one that can see you. I wouldn't have ignored you earlier if I thought you were actually there. I've had enough with experiences like these during these past weeks, and I'd rather just avoid it."

Alex, who'd started leaning back heavily on the chair, almost fell off it out of surprise. "Wait, what?! What do you mean by that?" He yelped.

"You don't know? Two weeks ago, a girl in my class named Jennifer Burch seemingly died in an accident right in front of me — only for it to turn out that she hadn't actually been real in the first place. I'd been the only one that could see her as far as I'm aware. I actually meant to ask if you knew anything about that."

Alex scratched the back of his head as he looked away from me. "I don't recognize the name if that's what you're asking. But I'm not going to lie to you; I have a pretty good idea as to why only you could see her. I can't tell you about it though. I've made a promise not to, and I'd rather piss off you than the person I made that promise to. I can tell you this, however. Whoever that girl was, she wasn't the same as me. I'm unique."

At this point, I had a hard time keeping myself from just outright punching the guy. He straight out admitted that he had the answer to a question that had haunted me for the last two weeks. "Who the hell could you even make a promise like that to?! I thought you were inside my head. How could you even interact with another person then?"

"Who I made the promise to is a secret. Although how I interacted with them? That I can tell you. It'll even bring us back to what I wanted to talk with you about originally, so if you could just calm down for a sec, bro, we can probably come to some kind of agreement here." He put out his hand toward me as if he were waiting for a handshake. "We good?"

"No, we're not good. But I'll listen to what you have to say, so go on." I said, ignoring his outstretched hand.

"Hmph. 'Kay then. So you know how I said I'm an AI inside your head? That pretty much means that I can't actually interact with anything for real. I can pretend that I can, and it might sometimes look to you like I am, but I'm essentially non-existent as far as the rest of the world is concerned. Because of that, my first few years inside your head was kinda boring, you know? I couldn't really interact with many people, and for reasons I can't tell you, I had to hide from you too."

"But I eventually found a loophole." He continued. "A way for me to interact with the world — at least indirectly. That loophole was your sleepwalking. At first, I'd often follow you around during the night when you were tumbling around doing your stuff, but after a while, I realized that, sometimes, I could influence you when you were in that state. It was a bit like hypnosis. You'd listen to what I asked toy to do but you weren't really aware of it, so I started interacting with the world at night with you as an intermediate. I was mostly confined to the house though, so I mostly just had you use the computer for me. You could say that the digital world is sort of my experti—"

He didn't get much further before my fist slammed right into his face.

He fell down on the floor with a shocked expression, while I held my right hand with my left. That hurt. A lot.

But I ignored that and glared at him. "You're saying that you're the reason I haven't been able to sleep for YEARS!?!"

He held his hands to his face as blood dripped from his nose.

"GOD DAMN DUDE. WHAT THE HELL!?" He wiped away some of the blood with the back of his hand. "Even if I'm not really here, your brain still thinks I am so I'd prefer it if you didn't freaking hit me! And didn't you listen to a word of what I said? I told you I used the fact that you sleepwalked, not that I caused it. Your sleepwalking was all you, bro, so calm down. Geez."

He's asking me to calm down?! I think I've been pretty damn calm up till now considering the circumstances. But he's right...Maybe that was a bit of an overreaction. Especially since my hand really hurt now from that punch. If he's telling the truth and my brain only thinks I hit him, then it's doing a mighty fine job in imagining it.

"...Sorry, I shouldn't have punched you." Still, it felt wrong apologizing to him. He had just admitted to using my body for years after all.

"You're right, you really shouldn't have! I knew you'd be hard to handle, but who the hell hits someone when they know they're not even there?!" He clambered up against the chair. "I'll just get straight to the point. Who knows what you'll do if we continue this for any longer."

He was still holding his left hand over his face when he sat down again, but he wasn't wincing from pain anymore, at least. "The reason I introduced myself to you now is simple. You've no doubt noticed how, for the last two weeks, you've stopped sleepwalking during the nights. I didn't know why before, but I guess it has something to do with that girl's death. Anyway, I assume you understand how the fact that you sleep the entire night nowadays sort of puts me in a pinch — considering it means I can't do anything to interact stuff."

Alex leaned his head back to avoid the blood flowing into his mouth. "I have a lot of balls in the air right now, and even more things that still needs doing. Two weeks of inactivity isn't the best thing for me, you see?"

"You're in my head." I pointed out. "What could you possibly do through the computer that's so important?"

"A lot of things!" He snarled. "You'd be surprised at just what you can do with just a computer and an internet connection. Especially when you've been at it for years. So, what I want should be obvious. Either you start sleepwalking again, or, even better, you start helping me out while you're awake. In exchange, I can help you out with all sorts of things."

"Sure. What I want, is for you to tell me whatever it is you're keeping secret from me about Jen and the person who made you promise not to tell me about it. If you do that, then we have a deal." I said.

"If you want to know that, then you'll have to give me more than just some help with using the computer."

"Like what?"

He dropped his hand from his bloodied nose and flashed me that annoyingly smug smile again. "There's some 'business' I want tended to that require a more...corporeal touch."

He had barely begun laughing at his joke before my first impacted with his face again.