Victor remained focused on Jonas. “But you want all the glory for yourself,” he accused.
“There is no glory,” Jonas answered. “There is just me. Exploring an idea I couldn’t get out of my head. I’m still a year away from publishing.” The word “publishing” flew out of his mouth unbidden. Jonas felt his blood cool and his stomach clench. He had just waved a crimson flag in front of a bull.
But Victor seemed to calm. Jonas could feel him grow cold. If anything, it was more terrifying than Victor’s wrath.
“Publishing?” Victor asked, making it sound like an atrocity. “By the time I’m done, you’ll be lucky to get a job teaching eighth-grade physics.”
It wasn’t a threat. It wasn’t even a promise. Victor had told him what was going to happen. A prediction.
“Victor—” Jonas said, convinced he could still find the words to calm his friend.
But Victor disappeared out the door.
Jonas stared at the open doorway and noticed he was sweating, even though he felt cold. He closed the door, and Amanda surged to him and wrapped her arms around him. “Are you okay?”
No, he wasn’t. He didn’t question whether Victor’s accusations had been right. Despite the doubts and self-recriminations that would later follow, Jonas knew in his bones that he had committed no plagiarism, no theft of ideas. He knew his work was his own. But he dreaded Victor and what he knew the man was capable of. He shuddered, without realizing it or intending to, and he felt as if he had awoken the archetypal sleeping giant. And lost a friend. And, if Victor was to be believed, his career.
“Don’t worry,” he assured Amanda. “It’s all going to be all right.” It was the first time he had ever lied to her.
NOW
Jonas retches for what feels like days. Apparently spent, he remains on the cold tile, leaning against the porcelain toilet. He wipes away bile with the back of his hand and throws up again.
He decides he’s not going to move until he is confident the vomiting has stopped. And until he can get his rubberized legs to obey his commands.
As he sits on the bathroom’s hard tile, his mind races. Although he’s in another reality, he can fathom only one person killing him: Victor Kovacevic.
He now believes Victor to be capable of anything. He’s already demonstrated his capacity for murder twice, once with Eva by proxy and again by his own hand with Amanda. And that, Jonas reminds himself, is just the Victor he knows. There remains the possibility—if not the likelihood—that this reality has a Victor of its own.
The possibility of a Victor originating from this universe raises the question of why he would kill this reality’s Jonas if Amanda was already dead here. Then again, what drives a man like Victor, in any reality, to homicidal madness?
Back in the bedroom, Jonas sets about the task of deciphering the impenetrable formulae that cover the walls. The cacophony of math appears impossible to untangle. But as Jonas pores over the jagged scrawl, it becomes ever clearer that his counterpart was working on multiverse theory. On one wall is a rudimentary version of the Many Worlds Proof that won him the Nobel in his universe. From there, the equations reach out to embrace the theories and calculations that underlie the science behind untethering from one universe to travel to an infinite number of others.
The formulae are familiar, albeit with eccentric alterations, tiny rhetorical flourishes, like a song covered by another singer. The work of a mind almost identical to Jonas’s own, yet changed in minute ways by a parallel existence, a shadow lifetime.
Then fireworks spark off in his head, and he feels a sharp pang at the base of his skull. He staggers forward and collides with the wall. He tries to pull back a curtain of pain to see clearly. He pivots around to face the attacker but is met with a man’s fist. But Jonas refuses to recoil. He keeps his head low and leads with his shoulder and wills himself forward, bulldogging, throwing himself at the other man.
The impact sends them both spiraling to the floor. The man’s fists fly up at Jonas, but Jonas is atop him. He has leverage and uses it, raining down a series of wild punches. He unleashes the blows without anger, only the desperate need to put the other man down and end the attack.
Jonas retracts a fist, ready to deliver another blow.
And stops.
The man beneath him isn’t moving. He’s still conscious, but the fight has gone out of him. He appears disoriented. And not, it seems, from Jonas’s attack. He appears manic. Unhinged. His face is gaunt and unshaven.
But Jonas instantly recognizes it as his own.
He stares, straining to make sense of this.
Another doppelgänger.
He expects only one per universe. And this reality’s Jonas Cullen is rotting away in a cramped crawl space.
In the interval it takes for Jonas’s mind to reconcile what his eyes are seeing, the other Jonas recovers his senses and sends his fist hurling into the side of Jonas’s head. Jonas rears back, holding a hand up against another volley as he staggers to his feet.
Other Jonas stands and assaults him again. Jonas falls back against the nightstand. He and the photograph of Amanda in Central Park crash to the floor as the doppelgänger surges forward, pressing his advantage.
Jonas struggles to stand, but his counterpart starts kicking him, causing Jonas to fold himself into the fetal position to protect his ribs and make himself as small a target as possible. Other Jonas keeps up the assault, alternating between kicking and stomping.
“I killed you!” Other Jonas is screaming, his voice disturbingly familiar. “I killed you! How can you be alive? I killed you!”
His foot sails again—this time toward Jonas’s head—but Jonas catches it. Gripping the sole of Other Jonas’s shoe with both hands, he twists hard to the left until he hears a faint crack.
Other Jonas wails in agony and falls back. Jonas staggers to his feet. His chest is on fire, but he doesn’t think any ribs are broken. He chances turning his back to Other Jonas so he can lurch back toward the closet.
In seconds, Other Jonas is on the attack again with a guttural roar in Jonas’s voice, but it is a sound Jonas could never envision himself making, even at the nadir of despair over Amanda’s death. Other Jonas is almost atop him, but Jonas now has one of the closet’s wayward floorboards in his hands. He swings it hard and is rewarded with the sickening sound of wood against skull.
Other Jonas drops to the floor at the outer edge of the closet. Out cold.
Jonas stares at this other man, studying him. Fingernails long, dirty. Clothes disheveled. Face gaunt. Familiar, but a stranger. A chilling fun-house mirror.
Jonas staggers toward the nightstand. He bends to retrieve the fallen picture of Amanda. But the glass is cracked, right across her face. He removes the photo from the fractured frame and runs a finger across Amanda’s face.
Wishing it were the real thing.
Other Jonas lies unconscious on the floor. His head is bleeding from where Jonas struck him, but even if he were in pristine condition, he would still strike Jonas as pitiable. He is noticeably thinner, making him seem strangely older in appearance than Jonas. His skin is pale but for the smudge of unkempt stubble. His hair is wild and greasy.
Jonas studies this strange intruder. Maybe he isn’t an intruder at all. Maybe this is his apartment. If so, who is the Jonas beneath the floorboards? What parallel reality does he hail from? Jonas’s world cantilevers with questions as the most pressing one springs forth: What will he do next?
