The Book of Apex: Volume 1 of Apex Magazine by Jason Sizemore

cheek. “Look closer.” And
more quietly—“It’s you.”
    I gazed down in abstract horror
at the man lying on the trolley before me. It was true. He had my face.
    For a moment everything seemed
to stop. The noise was gone; replaced only by the roar of blood rushing through
my ears. I stared down at the body before me in grim fascination. His eyes were
closed, his face unshaven and covered in a burr of fine black bristles. He had
the same long, equine nose and the same square chin that faced me in the mirror
every morning. Yet he was thin, painfully so. His cheeks were hollow and drawn
and his ribcage was clearly visible through his translucent, papery skin. His
lips were dry and cracked. It was clear he was both severely undernourished and
dehydrated. His blood was flowing freely through the fat tubing, sloshing into
the glass demijohn with every beat of his weak heart, assisted by the pump that
was inexorably drawing him closer to his death. I wanted to feel sick but,
instead, I felt simply numb. He wasn’t me, couldn’t be me , but he was a part of me, somehow.
    I turned to Isabella, unable to
speak. She could see the question in my eyes. She took a moment to fiddle with
the volume on the radio, then turned to me and began to explain.
    “Accelerated cloning.” She
shrugged, her face still an emotionless mask, unreadable. She hesitated and I
thought for a moment that she wasn’t going to continue. I think she was as numb
as I was, shocked by the confrontation, the need to relive everything all at
once. Then: “I grew him when I thought you weren’t coming back.” A pause. “I
wanted to be close to you. I needed to be close to you.” It sounded like
she was pleading for forgiveness. I couldn’t believe her, couldn’t understand
how she could do this, how she could go to these incredible lengths. I shook my
head.
    “Then why this?” I waved at the
jar of blood on the floor and the tubing coming out of the man’s—out of my —chest.
My voice was a hoarse whisper. “Why?”
    “It didn’t work. He’s got no
mind. He’s not you. He’s just a body, a bag of blood and bones. I didn’t know
what to do.” I realized now that she was weeping, tears running in sparkling
tributaries down her cheeks, splashing her clothes. “And then it hit me.
O-Negative blood. Anyone can take a transfusion of O-Negative blood. If I
drained him I could sell it on, make a fortune. I’d already seeded him with
nanomachines, the moment he was fully formed. All I had to do was bag it up...”
She sobbed, coughing back on the tears. I think my face must have betrayed my
horror, my judgment. “ What else could I do !” She broke down, collapsing
to her knees, her face in her hands.
    I looked back at the body on
the table before me. “It was never me, Isabella. It never could have been.” And
then I did the only thing I could. I couldn’t let it live like this. I grabbed
for an implement from a nearby tray–a sharp, surgical scalpel–and thrust it
deep into his throat. It was soft and offered little resistance. The body
shuddered and began to spasm, but his eyes remained closed and no sound escaped
his lips. I pulled the scalpel out and thrust again, channeling all my anger,
my frustration, my fear into those blows.
    “ No! ”
    I heard Isabella scream behind
me and turned, realizing too late that she was rushing me from across the room.
She fell against me hard, sending us both sprawling to the floor. I jarred my
elbow sharply on the trolley and cracked my head against the tiles.
    For a moment, the world turned
upside down. I lay there, dazed, the pressure of Isabella on top of me like a
dead weight. My head was spinning with pain. I tried to speak, but the weight
of her on my chest made it difficult to breathe. Gasping, I pulled my arms free,
then pushed her to one side, before rolling over and scrabbling up onto my
knees.
    “Isabella? Are you okay?”
    She was still, unconscious. Her
hair had spilled out across the