It was 8:25AM, and Saturn and Plural were waiting at the entrance to the office when they saw Jenny approaching with a casual stroll, holding the straps of her backpack and staring into the distance with tired, half-closed eyes.
"Hey! We were worried! We didn't hear anything from you!" Plural yelled and ran over.
Jenny looked over like she hadn't spotted the two until Plural called out to her. When they reached her side, an empty-headed Jenny stared at them, then reached into her pocket to try and grab her phone. When she couldn't find it, she uttered some gibberish and returned her hand to the strap of her backpack.
"You don't have your phone?" Saturn asked.
Jenny looked at him and blinked twice, like she needed some time to process his message. Then, to their 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 office's roof terrace for more privacy.
♦
"What happened, Jen?"
Jenny looked away and started hopping in place, like she was embarrassed or not allowed to answer the question. At the same time, her eyes were begging the two to pry it out of her.
The three stood under a canopy, where part of the terrace was turned into a quirky meeting space with a whiteboard and a TV screen. Saturn took one of the whiteboard markers 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 at the first option. Then, Saturn drew two more lines from that bubble leading to two new 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 with a shaky finger, like she had a hard time admitting it. Saturn and Plural gave each other a worried look at Jenny's revelation.
Then, Jenny walked towards the whiteboard with a weak stride. Ever since they saw her this morning, Jenny moved in such a way that made it seem like all the strength was sucked out of her body, and she wouldn't even be able to win against her friends in an arm-wrestling match. She looked tired, yawned, and Plural even had to pull her hand to get her up the stairs just now.
Jenny looked at Saturn with her sleepy eyes, then gestured for him to give her the pen, which he did. Then, she started drawing. Unexpectedly, no doubt due to her current state, she drew like a grade schooler, and the result looked like something a child would've drawn in a horror movie. It was a crude depiction of Jenny, and… another Jenny.
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.
"H-How? Are we still talking about the shadow monster?" a confused Plural asked.
It seems this exercise was enough to finally make Jenny talk.
"It turned into me. I don't think I can kill it."
Jenny looked at the ground again while pressing her index fingers together.
"What, it's got all your powers?" Saturn asked.
Jenny nodded.
"I let it get its hands on me for too long," Jenny explained, then paused shortly before continuing. "It attacked me in my sleep. Got the whole city. You guys slept through it… I think…"
Plural and Saturn looked puzzled.
"So, what, it copied…" Saturn waved his hand around in Jenny's direction, "you? I can understand living beings, but... you?"
"I'm alive, too..." Jenny said with a grumpy frown.
"Sorry," he replied with a guilty tone.
Then, there was some silence until Plural spoke up.
"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," she reprimanded him.
"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.
"You think it remembers us?" Saturn asked.
Jenny nodded with a guilty look on her face, and Plural covered her mouth with her fist, looking spooked. Saturn turned to his friend and gave her a frown.
"Plu, you don't think—"
"Ah!" Jenny gasped. "Work! I'm gonna be late for my…" she said as she tipsily walked back to the door leading downstairs.
Plural took Jenny's hand and pulled her back. "You're acting weird! What happened last night?"
"I—" Jenny stuttered, unable to resist Plural's pull but still gluing her eyes to the door. "I stayed up all night trying to find it."
"Oh!" Saturn called out and tilted his head with his arms crossed. "You're on, like, power-saving mode or something."
"O-Or something," Jenny bashfully responded.
"You need to call in sick!" Plural said with authority. "I'm taking you home."
"B-But—", Jenny weakly tried to resist.
"No buts! I'll be right beside you if anything happens," Plural took her phone out of her pocket, then turned to Saturn and shook it.
Unamused, he nodded back.
♦
The whining of the van's motor increased as he came to a stop at a traffic light. Saturn had drawn the short end of the straw, and he had to work while the other two were kicking back at Jenny's house. Jenny probably looked adorable while she slept, and instead of watching over her, he had to spend the day doing delivery runs.
It made him wonder how her manager reacted to a robot calling in sick.
Despite what he said before, he felt anxious travelling all over the city with a killer robot out on the loose. He was 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 store. It was closed to the public today, but there were always some staff present to accept deliveries. He parked the van in the alley next to the shop, then took the packages out the back and let himself in through the same door as usual.
Inside, he was expecting to find someone right away, but there was nobody there to greet him. Surrounding him were aisles of old junk, sorted by category. There were no windows to let sunlight in, instead relying on old light fixtures on the ceiling to illuminate the place. The general atmosphere of the warehouse gave him chills. The fact that he hadn't seen anybody yet worried him.
Then, he caught a faint smell coming from an office in the center of the warehouse. 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, with no signs of any 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.
When he turned the corner around one of the aisles and saw the office, he froze in place. There was a corpse against the wall. An old man who volunteered at the shop. Saturn dropped what he was carrying and approached the body, hunching down to check it for clues. The man had a gaping hole around the chest area, too large for a bullet or a knife, like somebody thrust a blunt object with enough strength to penetrate. This had to have been the creature's doing, no doubt. Apparently, it was going around killing people.
Then, he heard a clattering sound to his left, and when he looked, he saw a naked Jenny holding a bunch of old dresses, looking him dead in the eyes. He never imagined he'd ever be horrified at the sight. She had blood all over her, particularly her right arm. Did he really walk over and take his sweet time to examine 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.
Saturn's eyes went to the Jenny-clone's blood-covered arm, and the connection to the wound on the corpse was easy to make. He thought back to the moment the real Jenny hugged his arm when she was scared in the woods. Tightly, he thought at the time, but he knew better now. He remembered how soft she felt, like a real girl. Yet, that same girl possessed the strength to pierce through the old man's chest with just her arm, he realized.
Saturn remained frozen ever since he locked eyes with it, still crouched, with no idea of 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 there was no likely scenario where he would live.
This Jenny lookalike hadn't budged at all, like a statue, giving it an even more inhuman appearance. Slowly, Saturn stood back up, and he 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 it with his heart absolutely racing, but he tried his best to appear oblivious.
To his surprise, 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 reached into his pocket and grabbed his phone upon seeing the dress.
The thing cracked another smile and started putting on the dress while Saturn fidgeted with his phone case to retrieve something tucked inside.
"You uh, sure about that? You still have a little… red," he gestured at his own arm as the Jenny-thing finished and twirled around.
Then, its eyes landed on another object. Saturn followed its gaze and saw a jet-black tiara sitting on a shelf to his left. He wondered where the hell that even came from, then turned back to the Jenny-thing to see it giving him a hollow smile in anticipation.
"Y-You want…" he stuttered and fetched the tiara from the shelf, then handed it over, "this?"
The thing happily accepted the item, blew off the dust and put it on its head. Saturn was surprised that the whole thing came together as a coherent costume, as if it was purposely mocking Jenny's nickname.
With the costume completed, it turned its full attention back to Saturn 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, having almost forgotten about the item he'd retrieved from his phone case and tucked away inside his hand.
Having finished its circle, the thing gave Saturn a gentle kiss on his cheek. He tensed up, and in that moment, he really regretted that this wasn't the real Jenny. Nevertheless, he took his opportunity and skillfully clipped the item to the back of the dress without it noticing.
When the Jenny-thing stepped back, it didn't waste any time before disappearing into an explosion of red sparks and leaving the scene.
It took him a minute to calm down as he found himself sitting down with his back against a shelf and his heart racing. This was the second time this week he'd almost died, first on Saturday night and then just now, at the hands of the same creature. 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, then 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, which he'd covered with a tarp. He was staring into the distance like he'd just seen a ghost.
Plural stopped in her tracks when she saw the body, and 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 and her head on his chest. She didn't weigh much at all, and her body was warm, just like last time. He thought again about how much of her strength she must be holding back whenever she did these things.
"You're okay!" Jenny said with a tone of relief, and he realized she was pressing her ear against his chest and 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.
"It was crazy," Saturn continued, "it looked just like you, but... didn't act like you at all. Didn't say a word, either," he explained with trembling arms.
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," Saturn said, trying to lighten the mood.
Then, he remembered what he'd planted on the back of the thing's dress and perked up in excitement.
"Oh, shit…" he grabbed his phone and raised himself up, prompting Jenny to get off him. "We can track it! I did a thing!"
He scrolled through his phone to look for an app but paused and dropped it onto 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. "Assuming it doesn't ditch the outfit, anyway."
Then, sirens approached in the distance, catching their attention.
"Did you call the police? How are we gonna explain this?" Plural asked.
"I didn't..." Saturn replied.
The three waited in anticipation for the police to enter the building. Saturn got to his feet, and Jenny instinctively stepped forward, in between her friends and the incoming sirens.
When the police showed up, they barged through the door in full gear.
"Hands in the air!"
Plural and Saturn immediately 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. Jenny 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. Instead, 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 Plural's way. She took it as permission to stop holding her hands up and retrieved it from the ground. When she unfolded the paper and looked at the contents, she looked shocked.
"What!?"
She then turned it so Jenny and Saturn could see.
It was a selfie of the Jenny-thing making a peace sign in front of the corpse that was under the tarp. Jenny looked even more horrified than Plural. This must've been her worst nightmare come true.
"Fuck..." Saturn sighed.
The photo spoke volumes about the creature's intelligence, assuming it used the victim's phone to take the picture and send it to the local police.
"Yeah. Fuck," the officer replied. "You're gonna come with us, and we're gonna have a long chat. Please do not resist."
Jenny looked helpless, and like she was about to break down in tears. This creature was turning the whole world against her, including the police, who were supposed to be on her side.
"Hey, uh, it's clearly not her!" Saturn waved one hand in her direction while still holding the other in the air. "She doesn't have blood on her, for starters, and she's wearing clothes!" he blurted out in a panic after seeing the look on Jenny's face.
The officer gave him the same impatient look he gave Plural, and Saturn realized that what he said wasn't very convincing.
"Okay, let's go," the officer told Jenny.
Then, he stepped forward, and his men followed suit. Jenny started shaking and clutched her hands to her chest, hesitantly taking a step back.
Saturn's heart was racing once more, and he couldn't even recall whether it'd even stopped since his encounter just three minutes ago. He didn't have the magic answer. 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 pulled her against his chest, using his body to shield her from the line of fire. He trusted that 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, through which she could surely feel his heart pounding.
"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, and his voice was starting to crack a little bit.
So much for his cool and protective act. Despite the jokes about being a wanted man, he'd never actually gotten into trouble with the police before, and this was much scarier than he thought it would be.
The officer sighed like he was tired of the kid's baseless nonsense and aimed his rifle at Saturn's leg, then pulled one of the two triggers.
Out came a dart connected by wire to the rifle. But instead of his leg, the dart hit the ground amidst blue sparkles. Saturn reappeared half a meter away, closer to Plural, flipped around so that Jenny was now standing in between her two friends and the police.
For a moment, Jenny ignored the police and looked Saturn in the eyes, holding both of his hands.
"I'll be fine," she smiled, looking up as she was an entire head shorter than him.
"You don't look fine," he replied with a worried look.
"We'll talk later," she took a step back and let go of his hands, giving him and Plural a confident smile.
Then, she turned to the officer and gave him a death glare.
"You're lucky you missed," she said in a threatening tone.
He smiled back at her, showing a hint of relief, then lowered his rifle.
"If you are innocent, we'll get to the bottom of it."
Jenny complied and stepped forward, walking with the older officer to the exit and never breaking her resentful glare towards him. The other officers took a step back when Jenny got close, like they were scared of her, and nobody dared to restrain her.
Once outside, Jenny stepped into an armored vehicle, and she gave Plural and Saturn a wave through the open door of the thrift store warehouse before the doors of the vehicle closed on her.
Some of the officers accompanied her inside the van, while the rest went back to their own vehicles. All except one, who stepped to the side when all the others had walked through the door, then turned around and snuck back to Saturn and Plural, who looked on in bewilderment.
When she reached their side and took off her helmet, they recognized her as the one they encountered in the woods, searching for the missing couple. The police girl leaned forward and whispered with her hands next to her mouth.
"Fuck that guy. I wanna help."