The Brzezinskis’ joyous reunion was short lived. As soon as Aaron had gotten his arms through the sleeves of Jaymie’s jacket, he turned on Jaymie to interrogate him.

“Who is that clone? Why does that clone exist?”

“Why does anything exist, Aar-bear?” said Jaymie evasively. “What curious ways life has of—”

“Did you try to replace me with a clone of yourself?” Aaron demanded.

“Ok, ‘replace’ is a strong word—and it was during the time I was living on that shitty couch and not sleeping—I think any decisions I might have made in that difficult period—and you know, you had just broken up the band, like, a week before the tour that would’ve made us famous, so yeah I might have done it but it’s not like I didn’t have some reason—”

“I can’t believe you!” said Aaron, his voice rising. “I’m sorry, but I only had one happy tearful reunion in me, and I used it up on that creepy monster that looks like you and picked me up in his creepy car and chased me through that creepy bar—”

“That’s a lot of creepy, Aar.” Jaymie patted his shoulder consolingly. “If you’re a little unsettled, it’s perfectly understandable—I was too, when I met him. Celebrations can wait, it’s no problem. I know you’re probably miffed at me—”

“Miffed at you? Perfectly underst—I don’t even know what to—you’re fucking—this is just—”

“If you’re about to have a panic attack, which I’m sensing, that’s totally fine and I’ll sit with you and find some water and any other things you need, and I am really sorry about the clone fliasco—”

“Are you slurring? Are you drunk right now?”

“No! Maybe—I got very stressed out that you were gone so long, and I had some wine at dinner but I’m practically sobered up—”

Aaron seized him by the front of his sweater and threw him against the brick wall of the bar. “I don’t even know how to deal with you!” he yelled.

Jaymie blocked Aaron’s fist before it could meet with side of his head, then ducked from under the arm pinning him. He caught his balance as Aaron tried to kick one of his legs from under him, and shoved Aaron away with a forearm to his chest. “You quit the band like five times!” he retorted. “Why do you have to be so fucking unpredictable!”

“I’m unpredictable?” Aaron refused to be fended off, jabbing Jaymie’s shoulders roughly with his palms a couple of times and sending Jaymie staggering off the sidewalk between two parked cars.

“Why can’t you just like my music?” Jaymie shouted. “Everybody else does! How good does it have to be before you’ll be into it?” Aaron lunging at him and he managed to dodge; he grabbed Aaron’s shoulder and threw him past, his momentum propelling him into the street.

“I would like it—I do like it,” said Aaron as he gained his footing on the icy road and intercepted a half-hearted swing from Jaymie. “If it didn’t keep almost getting us murdered! If you didn’t care about your stupid music more than everything else—” Aaron’s knuckles skimmed over Jaymie’s jaw with not quite enough force to leave a bruise.

“You never believe in us!” Jaymie accused. He wrestled Aaron into a headlock.

“You never care when I think something’s a bad idea! And sometimes it’s legit terrifying stuff like staying with that cult!” Aaron twisted free and kicked Jaymie lightly in the shin. A car made a too-quick turn onto the street. It skidded sideways on the pavement, straightened out, and accelerated toward them.

“Don’t care? I’m constantly trying to reassure you! Why do you think I’m so goddam positive all the time?” He struck Aaron’s shoulder with his forearm. Aaron leaned into it and body checked him, sending him staggering further into the road.

Rex was waiting out the storm slouched under the building’s shallow awning, glancing back and forth between the fight and several rapid-fire text messages they were exchanging with Maggie which described and complained about it. They suddenly cried out in warning. The car shrieked past the bar in a zigzaggy blur, its driver speeding and almost definitely drunk.

Both brothers grabbed each other’s arms, stumbled to safety, and hollered a handful of profanities after it. Then Jaymie shoved Aaron into the side of a parked car, Aaron grappled him around the chest, and the altercation resumed.

“Fuck you, I hope your clone steals your identity and ruins your credit!” gasped Aaron. “—Hey just don’t punch me in the stomach, ok?”

“Fine! Why, did you get hurt?” grunted Jaymie, elbowing his brother in the bicep.

Aaron kneed Jaymie in the gut, not particularly hard. “No, I just don’t want you too!” he snapped.

“Fine, I won’t, you fucking hypocrite!” He’d planned to punch Aaron in the stomach next, but compromised by tripping him and sending him sprawling against the hood of the car.

Lucas had returned to the front of the building. He wiped the rain off his glasses using the end of his scarf and squinted at the brawl with discomfort..

“Hey,” he said politely to the collectors, who stood by their car pretending they had protocol for how to deal with this exact situation and were about to leap into action and enact it. “Should we… intervene…?” he asked Rex.

“Don’t bother,” said Rex, looking up from their phone. “They know how to do it without actually hurting each other.”

Sure enough, Jaymie and Aaron soon worked past trying to kill each other and moved on to the stage of patting each other on the back and tussling each other’s hair and saying things like, “I’ll do a better job from now on,” and “It could’ve gone a lot worse, now that I think about it,” and Rex knew it was safe to put them in the van.

“Ok, you walking gender stereotypes, are you done dealing with your emotions? We have a show to play,” they said.

“How quick did you figure out it wasn’t me, though?” asked Jaymie, his arm slung around Aaron’s shoulders and his thirty-six hours’ worth of stress easing away as though it had never existed.

“What do you mean?” said Aaron, examining Jaymie’s jaw to make sure his punch hadn’t left a mark.

“I mean, you’ve known me since we were born, you must’ve noticed right away that clone was a total psycho,” said Jaymie.

“Oh, right,” said Aaron. “Yeah.”

“Ok, good,” said Jaymie. “I bet you were just biding your time ‘til you could get away from him—so smart!”

“Yeah. Of course I noticed,” said Aaron.

“Right away?”

“Of course I noticed right away.”

***

Jymmy pelted down back alleys, the harsh bootsteps of his pursuer ringing in his wake. The black-jacketed woman had very long legs, but she was no match for Jymmy’s extra-human speed. He ran several blocks at an easier pace, looking back over his shoulder every few seconds to see if he could determine his adversary’s strengths and weaknesses—i.e., checking her out.

She was tall and ran with a heavy grace, like a big tall muscly gazelle, Jymmy thought. Raven-black hair streamed from under her toque as she slid on the ice and made a tight, agile turn down a narrower alley after him, hunting him like a dauntless comic book heroine. Her breath plumed in front of her determined visage in a misty dewy cloud of danger, to be swept from her fearsome cherry lips by the rain. He sure wouldn’t like to get collected by her.

Or would he?

He paused. Then he remembered Aaron’s traumatized rambling and the freaky lump in the front of his shirt. He suppressed his fantasies and decided to play it safe.

He swerved into a cramped opening between a garage and tool shed, edged through sideways, and climbed over a wire fence into a backyard. From there he shimmied up a telephone pole, lost his grip, slid back down, bounced off the top metal bar of the fence he’d just climbed, fell five feet, belly flopped into a snow-filled garden box with an echoey poof, stifled a snicker at his own clumsiness, clambered back up the pole, scaled a garage, and leapt to the roof of a house, where he lay flat against the shingles, effectively invisible in the darkness.

Jo slowed to a halt in the middle of the alley, breathing hard. She’d lost the trail.

“Ohmigod,” she panted. “So out of shape.” She hunched over, bracing herself with her hands on her thighs for a few breaths, then turned in a slow circle, scanning the alley. Jymmy lay in fidgety silence, torn between his desire to win the hide-and-seek game and wanting to go say hi and ask if she’d met Big Niki and would she like to hear a poem he’d made up just now. She apparently accepted that she’d been outrun, swore to herself, and headed back in the direction of the bar at a slow jog.

He watched her depart from above. Then he sat up and picked idly at the shingles supporting him, wondering what to do next. He considered walking home to his apartment, as he usually did after a night of bartending, but he found he was curious about what had become of Aaron, and about where Jaymie was and whether he was mad about all this, and he was already getting a case of FOMO, and he thought the girl chasing him was actually really pretty, so after another minute he dropped quietly to the ground and began cautiously to follow her back.

***

The collectors eyed Jaymie with disdain. They’d opted not to intervene in the fight, but they certainly weren’t going to let him escape the consequences off the stressful and inconvenient little episode they'd been through that evening.

“You think you’ll be approved for clone ownership after such a breach of the law?” said the tall woman.

“I’ll pay all Jymmy’s registration and late fees and whatever—” Jaymie tried.

“You helped a clone break out of a top-secret government facility—you’ll be lucky if they don’t press serious charges!”

“No, that was my clone that broke in there, not me—I just got here!”

“You expect me to believe that, when I just saw your clone break out?”

“That was my twin! The clone broke him out!”

“I broke myself out!”

“So where’s the clone?” challenged the collector.

“I thought he would be here, with Aaron!” Jaymie looked around desperately.

"He ran away!" said Aaron.

“You didn’t see—? He looks just like me!”

“Kind of like how this guy looks just like you?” she said. The tall man moved in to take hold of Aaron’s arm.

“I’m a real person…” he protested feebly.

“Just give me time to find him!” Jaymie begged.

“You’ve had six months’ worth of time. We’re done here.”

“No!” Rex objected shrilly, grabbing hold of Aaron’s other arm.

“A sponsor!” said Aaron suddenly. “I can still find a sponsor, right?”

“That’s set up by the administrative staff, not the clones themselves…” said the woman, but there was a hint of doubt in her voice, and Aaron remembered that they had little by way of established procedure for clone sponsorship.

“I’ll do it!” said Rex quickly. “Just tell me how much—I have money, and if it’s not enough I’ll get more!” They glanced at Jaymie, certain of where the payment would really come from.

“Are you eighteen? No can do, kid.”

“What’s going on?” Jo had arrived in time to hear the end of their conversation. Identifying the tall woman as foe, she engaged her in a brief stare-down to determine who was more frightening; the other woman looked away after a moment. Rex filled her in on the details.

“I’ll sponsor him,” she said without hesitation. “I’m over eighteen. Obviously.”

The collector eyed Jo up, taking in the tattoos peeking over the top of her loose scarf and decorating the backs of her ungloved hands. “And you can prove your employment? And you have a steady income, ongoing?”

“When you use those words, ‘steady,’ and ‘ongoing’…” said Jo.

“Or a spouse who can co-sponsor?”

“Yeah, right here,” she said, grasping a surprised Lucas by the elbow. “Lucas, will you adopt a drummer with me?”

“Um, I’m not sure we’re there yet…” he said half-jokingly, but when he saw the anxiety on her face he finished, “But how could I say no to you?”

Jaymie would, of course, cover all their expenses later. It was the least he could do, he assured them once the collectors had taken their information and been on their way, “Since at least a small part of this is partially my fault.”