Jaymie and Rex almost drove right past the dim lights of the facility; Jaymie was staring transfixed at the little blue GPS dot as it traversed the map in his phone, willing it to crawl faster toward the coordinates his father had given him. As they passed by, the wind bent one of the pine trees almost in half, and light from the tall lamppost behind it cast a furry halo over its creaking branches.

“There!” Jaymie lunged against the dash and yelled so suddenly that Rex stomped on the breaks out of surprise and nearly slid off the side of the road. They steadied the van, reversed, and turned down the drive into the parking lot.

“Will anybody let us in, do you think?” they asked nervously.

“They were bringing Jymmy here, so somebody’s must be around, right,” Jaymie replied, shrugging resolutely. They stepped out of the van, Jaymie leaning on his door for a moment to get his balance. Rex hugged their jacket closed against the wind and looked around. Theirs was the only vehicle in front of the building; a single black SUV sat in a reserved parking area to one side.

“Well, we may’s well just…” Jaymie nodded toward the main entrance, and Rex followed him through the unlocked glass doors.

Up close, the facility was more unassuming, its appearance nondescript. It had been built some decades ago to house a school or institution, then bought and repurposed by the provincial government after it had closed. The front entrance was neither welcoming nor threatening. A few black mats inside the doors suggested it would be proper to wipe their boots, and both of them did so, out of habit. A security guard watching over the foyer stepped forward to meet them.

“Did you find him? —Oh you’re not… Who are you?” asked the guard.

“We’re here for our brother,” said Jaymie quickly. “There’s a misunnerstanding and we need to take him home right away—”

“Your brother? Is this a clone you’re referring to? You need to go to the main office…” The man looked them over in confusion, his gaze hovering over Rex’s partially shaved head. He was clearly not expecting civilians to walk off the street into the secret facility he watched over, especially young ones, especially on a Sunday night.

“Yeah, we went to the office, and the guy—Spencer—he says we should come here and—uh, no, he said he’d meet us here, actually. Did he not get here? He can explain the mistake—it’s sort of a funny story, actually.” Jaymie gave a clipped, insincere laugh.

“Spencer, the new guy? Yes, he works at the main office…” said the guard unhelpfully. “You’ll have to go back tomorrow and sign… Actually, we’re having some issues with… The collectors are outside taking care of some escaped clones right now, and it could be dangerous, so I’ll need to ask you to leave immediately.”

“Excaped? Just now?”

“A little while ago—I actually shouldn’t be telling… You have to take your queries to the main office. Your confiscated clone will be returned after the paperwork has gone through.”

“But I need my confisclated phone now!” Jaymie objected. Then his expression became calculating, and he seemed to lose his gusto.

“Sir, are you drunk?” The guard ushered them out the front door without waiting for a response and turned the lock behind them. Rex was ready to resist, but Jaymie put a hand on their shoulder to stop them—or perhaps to steady himself—and gave them a look indicating they should cooperate.

“We’re going to leave? Just because that tool says so?” Rex protested once they were outside.

“Listen, Rex, listen. Rex—think about it. Jymmy left before us, so he should’ve gotten here a little while ago. A clone went missing a little while ago! Jymmy is clearly not here—and if had been, like, if he’d gone inside, that security guy would’ve recognized me.” Jaymie raised his eyebrows.

“You think Jymmy broke Aaron out?” asked Rex. “What about the collector guy who was driving him?”

“Spencer? I dunno. Might’ve helped him—Jym’s persuasive, you know? And they were pals, or something. Fits, though, right?”

“Maybe… But why sneak him out of there, when Jymmy could just explain to them what happened?”

“You met Jymmy! He’s—d’you really think he’s into, like, paperwork and exclaiming what happened? Plus, he didn’t want to be registered, so his options are either is he admits he’s a clone and gets trapped here, or to keep posing as me—and I have a bunch of fees to pay, and whatever other paperwork there is to register him. Not fun stuff.”

Rex looked doubtfully back at the building, evaluating Jaymie’s theory. It wasn’t implausible, considering the bizarre events of the weekend thus far. Still, they couldn’t bear the thought of being wrong and leaving Aaron locked up inside; the building looked to them like a giant lethargic toad contentedly digesting the contents of its great, grey belly. Fortunately, Rex didn’t have to waver for long.

“There!” A tall woman rounded the side of the building and shouted in their direction. “You, stop!” She thrust her index finger aggressively at Jaymie, who politely pointed to his own chest and looked around and behind him inquisitively, as though it were necessary to confirm the instruction had been aimed at him and not someone else.

A tall man stepped out of the trees on their other side, shouting back, “What did you say? Any sign of—oh, is that him?”

“Stop him, quick!” cried the woman, picking up speed.

The man rushed to head them off, calling for them to stay still and spouting various threats and reasons they should heed him. Alerted by the commotion, the security guard popped his head out of the door questioningly.

“That’s him! The one that got away!” the woman yelled at him. “Don’t let him leave!”

Jaymie and Rex raced for the van. Rex jumped in, reached over to pull Jaymie gracelessly through his door and into a jumble across the passenger seat, and drove away as quickly and smoothly as their one year’s worth of driving experience allowed them.

“I get that a lot,” said Jaymie, once he’d straightened himself out and they were back on the highway. “From women.”

“Give me a fucking break,” said Rex.

***

Safely back within city limits, Jymmy drove his stolen car down Lagimodiere Boulevard, trying to decide on the best place for Aaron and him to live in between the escape they’d just executed and becoming famous rock stars.

Jymmy made friends very easily, and had never had any trouble finding couches or guest rooms or girlfriends’ beds where he could spend the night. He often secretly slept in the basement at Big Niki’s bar, which was his favourite place anyway, and where he usually practiced his instruments.

At some point he’d made the connection that the money he received at the bar could be used to obtain a space of his own, to put his guitar and keyboard and clothes in, and had decided to rent an apartment. The place was small, though, and he had an odd older roommate who was always home and to whom he didn’t want to explain Aaron’s sudden appearance in—and possible subsequent disappearance from—his life. Besides, it would be difficult to explain to Aaron that he had his own place when, as far as Aaron knew, they’d been living together at their mom’s house their whole life. The bar, he concluded, would be simpler.

“I know a safe place we can go,” said Jymmy carefully. “Where the government people won’t find us.”

“Fine,” said Aaron.

“So, what were the collectors like?” Jymmy asked it in an effort to make conversation, but Aaron interpreted it as a tactical question.

“A man and a woman. Really tall. Black jackets. They carry chloroform and they can sneak up quietly, so we have to watch out for that,” he said, staring out the window and holding his stomach, which Jymmy now noticed was bloated and lumpy-looking. He wondered if Aaron had caught some kind of fast-acting disease while in captivity—if it were fast-acting enough, Jymmy speculated, perhaps he’d be saved some difficult moral dilemmas down the line.

“Do you trust me?” Jymmy asked suddenly, not sure himself why he cared or whether the answer was important.

“Sure, whatever.” Aaron appeared to become irritated by something on Randy Bachman’s Sunday evening CBC show; he switched to one of the local college stations and turned the volume up. Jymmy pursed his lips but said nothing; he’d liked the CBC show. The theme that week was Songs with Women’s Names, and it was the last of a three-part series he’d been enjoying for a few consecutive Sundays, though for some reason he couldn’t remember the names of any of the songs the host had played.

If Jymmy had had more experience over the course of his short life with siblings and/or compromise and/or negative emotions, he might have been able to identify the feeling he had at that moment as resentment.

“It’s a very safe place,” he reiterated quietly. “Nobody will ever know we were there.”

***

“So, what now?” Rex asked, gripping the wheel. “Do we know where Jymmy lives?”

“We do not,” said Jaymie. “Think think think let me think…” he mumbled feverishly. He’d found a water bottle of Rex’s between the seats and chugged its contents to help clear his head. Still, he found it difficult to focus.

Rex aimed them toward home. The storm had blocked out all sign of the city lights and they were forced to drive blindly. “Aaron would try to contact us right away, right?” they said, a note of fear shrinking their voice.

“‘Course he would. But if Jymmy wanted him to be with us, he wouldn’t have left without me and gone by himself with Spencer in the first place…” Jaymie hunched forward in his seat, compulsively tugging a corner of his phone case on and off the phone. “Here’s a scenario: Jymmy wants to make a band. Of course he does—I know how this guy thinks! He’s me, Rex! What I wanted most in the world was to make a band, and so which means that what Jymmy wants most in the world is to make a band, right? Right!”

“You sound like a crazy person,” said Rex.

“So, he decides he needs a drummer-slash-backup-vocalist, and who better than the guy who’s been doing it in my band for years—a band which is, stylistically speaking, very similar to his future band, one can obviously assume. Jymmy thinks Aaron will be mad at me because I replaced him with a clone, and that he’ll be convinced to choose him—Jymmy—over me! He’s very arrogant, Rex. He’ll probably tell some lies and rumours and some lies about me—and some unfortunate truths. For instance, how I’m too careless toward my siblings and I drive them to hate me…” He looked pointedly at Rex.

Rex ignored the nudge and said, “Or he’s still pretending to be you, and hoping Aaron won’t know the difference. He could convince Aar that he nearly got caught busting him out of that building, and now the two of them have to go on the run from the law. He could say they need to leave me at home and not contact me, to keep me safe.”

“That’s ridiculous, Rex. Aaron has known me our entire life—I’m pretty sure he’d know the difference! To continue my hippophagy—”

“Your what?”

“—my hypothesis: Jymmy—in his vanity!—thinks Aaron will like him better than me and choose to stay with him, but of course Aaron will be as creeped out by him as we are, and he’ll want to come home to us! Which leaves Jymmy with a choice to make: let him go home? Or no?” hippophages

“He’d let him… Right?” Rex asked doubtfully. “That’s what you would do, if you’d captured somebody to make a band.”

Jaymie looked at them helplessly. “Yeah, of course I would! I mean, I would never have captured someone in the first place—can you even imagine?”

“None of this is stuff I’ve ever imagined.”

“Aaron and Jymmy, though… Rex, picture that! No, don’t. That is two people who are not going to get along. Talk about opposing personalities… I don’t like it, Rex. Is not good…” He rested his elbows on the dash and put his head in his hands, but was immediately jolted from his position as Rex drove over a particularly large chunk of roadkill, the original size and species of which had been rendered a mystery by time and the weather’s bored prodding.

“Oh my god,” said Rex, slowing. “Oh my god, what did I hit!”

“It was already dead. It wasn’t moving,” Jaymie tried to reassure them.

Rex jumped out of the van, intent on making sure they hadn’t injured an innocent animal, and Jaymie took deep breaths and tried to come up with a plan. The components of his brain that were responsible for confidence and composure seemed to have tucked themselves away somewhere, like a box of two hundred of your band’s EPs that you got printed a week before computers were redesigned without CD drives, and have been sitting in a corner of your basement ever since, and now an older relative wants to buy one and you can’t for the life of you remember what the box looked like.

Rex screamed.

Jaymie tumbled out of his seat and ran back down the highway, the wind nearly buffeting him over as he shielded his face from it and sought his sibling in the darkness.

Skid marks on the asphalt indicated they weren’t the first to run over the ambiguous smear; someone had swerved trying to avoid the poor creature and gone off the side of the road. The path they’d made driving their vehicle back onto the highway was marked by tire tracks in the tall grass. Rex stood beside the ditch, staring in terror at something half hidden in the weeds.

It was the lifeless body of Spencer, pale and still and, for some reason, wearing Jymmy’s shirt.

“B-backup,” Jaymie stuttered. “Need backup.”

Rex nodded wordlessly. They grabbed his arm and the two of them struggled back to the van, the wind thrashing away at them like a band both too terrible and too loud to bear, in a venue too packed to find the exit.

“We have to find out where he lives!” Rex panted, wiping rain out of their eyes and shifting the vehicle into gear.

“Yes, we do,” said Jaymie.

“Do we know anybody who knows?”

“I know his bar is where what bar he’s work. Gah, I mean, I know where he works, and I know he has coworkers…”

“Do you think they’d tell us?” They saw Jaymie’s paralyzed expression and frantically continued, “Or you could, I don’t know… fucking… charm it out of them? Or whatever it is you do?” Rex reached the speed limit suggested by the highway signs and continued to accelerate.

“I don’t think I have any charm left in me at this point… We’ll just have to beat it out of them.” He chose a contact in his phone, held it to his ear, and heard the dull A5 dial tone like the hum of a distant tuning fork, or like the tinnitus your twin is always complaining about that you wish he’d just learn to wear earplugs at shows to alleviate.

Rex emitted what Jaymie knew was supposed to be a derisive snort but came out more as a hiccough of dread. “Yeah, right. Dramatic enough. Have you ever been in a fight?”

“No, but hopefully we won’t have to. Intimidation tactics, Rex! The last resort, when charm finally flails.”