Author : Sharoda

Jerry and I stood in the locked room looking through a large window at the woman in the hospital bed. The door next to the window led into the room, it had a green light over it showing it was unlocked.

“I’m not going in there”, Jerry said. “Becka’s gone! That’s not her in there; I buried her 6 months ago”.

“I know. I was with you at the hospital after the accident” I said.

“Screw this Ken” he was shaking; seeing the clone with Becka’s face lying on the bed in the lab’s hospital ward was pushing him to the edge.

The accident had been horrible. Jerry still had terrible scars but with Becka gone he didn’t care.

“Call security so they can let me the hell out of here” he was starting to get really angry. Getting into or out of this part of the lab complex was difficult and required a lot of security access that Jerry no longer had. He hadn’t been able to work in 6 months but I had to bring him in today because we were going to wake her. Jerry started pacing back and forth in front of the window staring at the Becka clone.

She was cutting edge science. She was literally a perfect physical copy of Becka and her mind was everything we could salvage before she’d died.

“Please Jerry”, I begged, “A lot of people, a lot of your friends, went to a lot of trouble, for you. Please at least wait until she wakes up”.

He stopped pacing and turned to look at me. His face was red and he was shaking. He turned back to the window and started pacing again.

I looked at the security camera in the corner and shrugged. We waited, no one came. “I’ll go find out what’s keeping security” I said and badged myself through the opposite door.

One more door and I was in the observation room. Johansen stood there with his expensive suit and slick hair staring at the monitors and speaking softly to the techs. I’d made a deal with this particular Devil to make this happen for my best friend.

“How come…” I started to say.

“It’s waking up” Johansen said, cutting me off. Everyone looked at the monitors.

The Becka clone opened her eyes and slowly looked around. She couldn’t see through the large window, it was tinted glass on her side.

Jerry stopped pacing.

She sat up.

Jerry leaned close to the glass. There was still tension in his face.

She put her face in her hands and rubbed her eyes the way she always did when the lights were too bright.

Jerry stood with his hands on the glass. His head slowly shook back and forth but the tension was gone.

Becka stretched her neck and flicked back her hair. I’d seen her do it a thousand times.

Jerry’s hands fell slowly to his side, his mouth was open. He moved to the door and turned the knob.

“Jerry?”, she said, head still in her hands.

“Becka?” he said softly.

“Oh honey, I had the worst dream” she said and raised her head. He stopped at the bed and sat down; she started to cry when she saw his sad scarred face. She pulled him to her breast and wrapped her arms around him and held him while he cried.

“We’re going make a fortune”, Johansen said.

“Ya”, I said wiping my cheek. “probably”.