Jenny showed up to work at 8:25AM to find Plural and Saturn anxiously waiting for her.
"Hey! We were worried about you! We couldn't reach you on your phone!" Plural started.
Jenny felt around her pockets and noticed she didn't have her phone with her. When did she last have it on her anyway? She didn't charge it, or herself for that matter, after what happened in the middle of the night. Following the creature's exit, she was left stunned before pulling herself together and attempting to give chase. She spent two more hours this way frantically searching the city but came away with nothing. She found her friends comfortably asleep in their homes, like they didn't even wake up from the short-lived veil of darkness that must've crept inside their bedrooms. Jenny couldn't sleep that night, lying on her bed staring at her ceiling instead.
As a result, she was running a bit low on power. She decided to show up to work anyway, for lack of anything better to do. Saturn and Plural clearly noticed something different about her attitude, like she'd pulled an all-nighter. Jenny didn't respond to Plural's comment and just looked at her instead. She behaved like you'd expect someone to behave after smoking a blunt, but her eyes looked perfectly fine, if not a bit tired.
To her friends' surprise, Jenny actually yawned.
"Are you sure you're fit to work today? What happened last night?" Saturn asked.
Jenny looked away and started subtly hopping up and down. The two exchanged looks and Plural grabbed Jenny's hand to take her up to the roof terrace. When they had the privacy to talk freely, Plural asked again: "What happened, Jen?"
She looked away. There was a sense that there was something she couldn't say, but her eyes were begging them to pry it out of her. Saturn brought a whiteboard and started writing down some options:
- "I encountered the creature"
- "I didn't encounter the creature"
He started with two bubbles at the top of the canvas. Jenny nervously looked away and pointed to the first option. He drew two more lines with two more bubbles:
- "The creature is dead"
- "The creature is still out there"
He looked at what he just wrote down and paused, revising his options:
- "The creature is dead"
- "There are more of them"
- "It's too strong"
Jenny pointed at the third option, and she looked like she had a hard time admitting it. Saturn and Plural looked worried at the revelation. Jenny knew that if they had to keep going until they got to the option "It copied me", they'd be here a while. She couldn't think as clearly as usual because she'd decided to run in turtle mode to save power. She wouldn't get a chance to charge again until after work, and she might have to fight her doppelganger before then. In this mode, her thinking was slower, and she would probably even lose to Plural in an arm-wrestling match.
Jenny walked up to the whiteboard and gestured for Saturn to give her the pen, which he did. She started drawing her version of what happened. Her current state meant she drew at the level of a grade schooler, and the result looked like something a child would've drawn in a horror movie. A depiction of Jenny and her evil clone. She stepped away from her masterpiece and looked anxiously at the two judges.
"You have an evil twin?" Plural asked.
Saturn gave her a confused look and followed up: "It turned into your evil twin?"
Jenny nodded in his direction.
"Can you elaborate?" Plural tried again.
It seems this exercise was enough to finally make Jenny talk.
"I think there's an evil version of me out there... I don't think I can kill it..." she elaborated. Jenny looked at the ground again, she stopped her nervous hopping.
"What, it's got all your powers?" Saturn asked.
Jenny nodded: "The creature in the woods, I think it can turn into people. I let it get its hands on me for too long..."
There was a short pause.
"It attacked me in my sleep. Got the whole city. You guys slept through it… I think…" she said.
Plural and Saturn looked puzzled.
"So what, it copied-"
Saturn gestured towards Jenny.
"-you? I can understand living beings, but... you?"
Jenny frowned and said: "I'm alive too..."
"Sorry..." he replied in a defeated tone.
There was some silence after that until Plural continued the conversation.
"So now what? If you can't kill it, can it just do whatever it wants?"
"I dunno…" Jenny replied like she was out of ideas.
"Is it actually evil? What did it do?" Saturn asked.
Plural gave him an offended look.
"What did it do? You were there, if I recall," Plural said to Saturn.
"Well, maybe it's just curious in its own, twisted way…" Saturn replied.
"You're suggesting we welcome second Jenny into our lives? Give it a phone and add it to the group chat?" Plural sarcastically asked.
"Please don't…" Jenny said under her breath.
"That's… Not what I meant…" Saturn said, unable to defend his point any longer.
"It's not friendly…" Jenny said at a normal volume.
Her two friends looked at her again.
"I gotta find it before it finds you two," Jenny said.
After all, Saturn and Plural were there with her in the woods. If the creature was as intelligent as Jenny thought it was, it would remember them for sure.
"Ah… Work… I'm gonna be late for my…" Jenny said as she tipsily walked back towards the door.
Plural pulled Jenny towards her. "You need to call in sick! I'm taking you home."
"B-But-", Jenny weakly tried to resist.
"No buts! I'll be right beside you if anything happens," she held up and shook her phone, turning to look at Saturn. He nodded back.
♦
Saturn felt like he got the short end of the stick as he started a delivery run. He even considered skipping today's runs because of what Jenny said. The creature, now with Jenny's powers, was out there. Maybe somewhere close. Against his better judgment, he decided to go anyway. It was hard to justify to his manager why he couldn't go, and somehow he felt confident he'd be fine. On the other hand, he wondered how Jenny felt having to call in sick as a robot. Would her manager even believe her? Surely Plural would've helped her out with that.
He drove listening to the radio station most likely to broadcast the news if anything were to happen in town. It was a nice day, though, and the bustling city gave him a sense of comfort and safety.
His next destination was a local thrift shop. It was closed to the public, but there was always some staff present to accept deliveries. He entered through the back, expecting to find someone inside, but saw nobody. He strolled around the warehouse, surrounded by old junk. There were no windows to let sunlight in, only old light fixtures on the ceiling. Leaving the place looking creepy. The general atmosphere of the warehouse gave him chills. No signs of life, like something was wrong…
He caught a faint smell coming from an office in the center of the warehouse. When he approached, it reminded him of the stench the creature in the woods gave off, but this time it smelled more… real. He turned and looked in every direction, ready to make a run for it, but he could clearly see the boundaries of the warehouse, no signs of artificial darkness. He exhaled and took his phone out of his pocket to double check. Plural on speed-dial. He couldn't help but keep going, having some idea at this point what he'd find.
And indeed, it was a corpse against the office wall. It was an old man, and he didn't recognize the face. He approached the body and hunched down to check it for clues. The man had a gaping hole around the chest area, too large for a bullet and not quite like a stab wound either. This had to have been the creature's doing, no doubt. Was it killing people?
A clattering sound caught his attention to his left, where he saw a naked Jenny holding a bunch of old dresses. She looked him dead in the eyes. He never imagined he'd ever be horrified at the sight. She had blood all over her too, particularly her right arm. How long had she stared at him like that? Did he really gawk at the corpse with her standing right there? He never doubted Jenny for a second, but an evil clone was such an outlandish idea that he had to see it to believe it.
His eyes went to the Jenny-clone's blood-covered arm. He thought of the Jenny he knew. He thought of how much of an angel she really was, remembering how she hugged his arm when she was scared at the campfire. Tightly, he thought at the time. She felt soft, like a real girl. That same girl had the strength to pierce through the old man's chest with just her arm, he realized.
He didn't know what to do. If he ran, he'd probably provoke the thing and die. In fact, the poor man it killed probably did exactly that. Dread was building up in his chest with each passing second as he realized he'd likely die here. This Jenny lookalike hadn't budged at all, like a statue, giving it an even more inhuman appearance. He slowly stood back up and could see its pupils following him. He swallowed again and decided to turn off his brain and go with his gut feeling.
"Hey, Jen!" he walked towards her. His heart was absolutely racing.
The thing smiled and waved at him, making him feel eerily at ease.
When he reached its side, it held a black gothic dress in front of its torso and gave him a questioning look.
"That's… new for you," he grabbed his phone upon seeing the dress.
It cracked another smile and started putting on the dress. Saturn fidgeted with his phone case to retrieve something tucked inside.
"You uh, sure about that? You still have a little… red..." he gestured as the Jenny-thing finished and twirled around. Its eyes landed on another object, a jet-black tiara sitting on a shelf to his left. He wondered where the hell that even came from, when the thing grabbed it from the shelf, blew off the dust and put it on its head. It surprisingly came together as a coherent costume. Was it purposely mocking Jenny's nickname?
With the costume completed, it turned its full attention back to him and hopped around him in a circle with surprising feminine grace. Saturn didn't turn his body to follow it around, but he could tell it was examining him from every angle.
Saturn had a relaxed expression but was panicking on the inside. He'd subconsciously tucked the item he retrieved from his phone case away inside his hand. Having finished its circle, the thing gave Saturn a gentle kiss on his cheek. He tensed up and really regretted that this wasn't the real Jenny. Nevertheless, he skillfully clipped the item to the back of the dress. When it stepped back, it didn't waste any time and disappeared into an explosion of red sparks.
It took him a minute to calm down as he found himself sitting down with his back against a shelf, his heart was still racing. This was the closest he'd ever come to death. It happened twice now, first on Saturday night. At the hands of the same creature, even. If it really was the same creature, that would mean it must've remembered who he was from the campfire. Did he survive because he compelled the thing to play along with his act? Did it really believe that he saw it as the real Jenny?
He grabbed his phone, took some deep breaths to get his emotions together, and called Plural. Two hours had passed since she took Jenny home. Enough time, hopefully, to get her sufficiently charged again. It took them less than a minute to arrive, and they entered through the same side of the building where he parked his van. When they found him, he was sitting next to the corpse covered by a tarp. He looked like he'd just seen a ghost and stared into the distance.
Plural stopped in her tracks when she saw the body. Jenny jumped to hug him, knocking him over. He felt a sudden surge of safety and comfort lying on the ground with her on top, her head on his chest. Her body was warm, like a person. He thought again about how much of her strength she must be holding back whenever she does things like this. She really didn't weigh much at all. He realized he'd been shaking the whole time up until this moment.
"You're okay!", Jenny said with a tone of relief. He realized she was listening to his heartbeat.
"What happened?" Plural asked.
Jenny had gotten up now but was still sitting on him, giving him an anxious look.
"The Jenny clone… it killed someone..." his eyes went to the body.
Jenny didn't avert her eyes at all and looked at him intently.
He continued, "It was crazy, it looked just like you, but... didn't act like you at all. Didn't say a word, either," he still looked spooked.
Jenny looked down at his chest, seemingly deep in thought.
"It didn't do anything? Just left?" Plural asked.
"It… came here to find clothes... I think…"
Jenny's face turned into a look of relief.
"Not your style though, I think," he looked back at her.
It took him until now to remember what he'd planted on the back of her dress and perked up in excitement.
"Oh shit-" he grabbed his phone and raised himself up, prompting Jenny to get off of him.
"-we can track it. I did a thing!"
He scrolled through his phone to look for an app but paused and dropped it into his lap when he realized he didn't have the tracker's feed on the phone it was supposed to be tracking.
"I put a… fucking thing…" he looked up at the other two as if they wouldn't believe him at his word.
"…as long as it likes the outfit, anyway."
They could hear sirens approaching in the distance.
"Did you call the police? How are we gonna explain this?" Plural asked.
"I didn't..." Saturn replied.
When the police showed up, they ordered everyone to put their hands in the air. Plural and Saturn instinctively complied but Jenny just stared at them wide-eyed.
"You!" one officer yelled at Jenny.
"You think this is some sort of joke?"
All guns were trained on her. They didn't look like regular guns, more like heavy duty assault rifles, like something out of a sci-fi movie. She offered no response and looked lost for words.
"Hey! She didn't do anything! How stupid do you have to be?" Plural yelled back. The officer glanced at her like he didn't have the patience for this.
He looked at his colleague and nodded his head in the direction of Jenny. The other officer paused for a second and gave him a hesitant look back before retrieving a printed photograph, folding it a couple of times and sliding it at Plural. She took it as permission to stop holding her hands up and retrieved it from the ground. She unfolded the paper and looked shocked at the contents.
She then showed it to Jenny and Saturn. It was a selfie of the Jenny-thing making a peace sign in front of the corpse they were standing next to. That would explain the look of disbelief on Plural's face. Jenny's face looked even more horrified. This must've been her worst nightmare come true. It sent this to the police? On what, the victim's phone?
"Fuck..." Saturn sighed.
"Yeah. Fuck," the officer said.
"You're gonna come with us, and we're gonna have a long chat. Please do not resist."
Jenny looked like she might tear up. These past few days hadn't been her best. The police were supposed to be on her side. This creature was turning the whole world against her.
"Hey, uh, it's clearly not her!" Saturn gestured in her direction with one hand, while still holding the other in the air. He was panicking. He had to say something to get her out of this mess, but he didn't know what. "She doesn't have blood on her, for starters, and she's wearing clothes!" he continued. The officer gave him the same impatient look. Saturn realized what he said wasn't very convincing.
"Okay, let's go," the officer told Jenny.
The officer was the first to approach Jenny, and his men followed suit. She started shaking and clutched her hands to her chest, even hesitantly taking a step back. She wasn't able to say a single thing in her own defense. Jenny's face clearly showed how conflicted she was about whether to surrender or not. But most of all, it was hard to watch her tremble in fear like this.
Saturn's heart was racing again, and he couldn't even recall whether it'd even stopped since his encounter three minutes ago. He didn't know what to do anymore. All he knew was that Jenny needed help, and if he did nothing, he'd regret it later.
The officer stopped when Saturn stepped in front of Jenny and pressed her to his chest, using his body to shield her from the line of fire. He trusted the police wouldn't shoot him with their anti-Jenny looking weapons at the very least.
"Hey! What're you doing!? Idiot!" Plural whisper-yelled.
"That's not smart, kid. Come on," the officer said calmly.
Saturn felt Jenny relax as she put her head on his chest.
"Smart!? You're arresting her based on some photo! Don't you think she's earned the benefit of the doubt!?"
"We're just asking her to come," the officer responded swiftly and professionally.
"She can decide to come if she wants!" Saturn snarked in frustration.
He found himself stuttering and his voice cracking. So much for his cool and protective act. He'd sometimes make jokes about being wanted, and he'd done some illegal stuff before, but he'd never actually gotten into trouble with the police. This was much scarier than he thought it would be.
The officer looked so tired of this. Anybody could see Saturn was trying to bullshit his way out, but that wasn't a skill he was very good at. The officer aimed his rifle at Saturn's leg and pulled one of the two triggers.
Out came a dart connected by wire to the rifle. The dart hit the ground, though, as Jenny and Saturn warped out of the way. She teleported herself and her passenger maybe half a meter to the side, closer to Plural, flipped around so that Jenny was now in between the two and the police. She released herself from Saturn and held his hands, looking up at him as she was an entire head shorter than him.
"I'll be fine," she added a smile.
"You don't look fine," he replied with a worried look.
"We'll talk later," she said as she let go of his hands, giving him and Plural a confident smile.
She looked back at the officer and gave him a death glare.
"You're lucky," she said in a threatening tone.
He smiled back and lowered his rifle. His smile showed a hint of relief.
"If you are innocent, we'll get to the bottom of it," the officer said.
Jenny complied and stepped into an armored truck, never breaking her resentful gaze towards the older officer. They didn't restrain her. She gave Plural and Saturn a wave as the doors closed on her. Some of the officers accompanied her inside the van, the rest went back to the other vehicles. All except one. A younger officer approached the two and took off her helmet. They recognized her as the one they encountered in the woods, searching for the missing couple. She leaned forward and whispered:
"Fuck that guy. I wanna help."