Two of a Kind

The sharp buzz of my alarm pierced through my skull like a drill bit finding bone.

7:25 AM.

My blood crystallized.

The FBI meeting. The one thing I’d been obsessing over, the appointment that would determine whether I became something more than a paper-pusher in a beige cubicle—it started in exactly thirty-five minutes.

And I was still in bed. Forty minutes away. In sweatpants and a faded Metallica shirt I’d owned since college.

My stomach dropped like an elevator with cut cables. This wasn’t just sleeping through an alarm—this was a career-imploding catastrophe. The kind of screwup that didn’t get second chances. The FBI didn’t reschedule. They didn’t send reminder emails. You showed up on time, or you disappeared from their consideration entirely, relegated to a file marked Insufficient Commitment that would follow you forever.

“No. No, no, no—” The words came out strangled as I launched myself from bed like something detonating.

My legs tangled in sheets. I crashed into the nightstand hard enough to send my reading lamp teetering. I caught it before it shattered—muscle memory from years of late-night stumbling—but the close call sent adrenaline spiking through my system like someone had mainlined espresso directly into my brain stem.

There was no time for measured breathing or rational assessment. Panic was a physical thing now—cold and suffocating, filling my lungs with something heavier than air.

I stumbled to the closet, yanking hangers with manic energy. The navy suit I’d carefully selected last night to iron before I left hung there like a monument to my failed planning. No time. I grabbed the backup—cheaper fabric, slightly wrinkled, the suit I wore to funerals and job interviews I didn’t care about.

In the bathroom mirror, I looked like a man having a nervous breakdown in real-time. Sweat was already beading on my forehead. Eyes wild. Hair standing up in directions that defied physics.

Amateur. You look like an amateur.

I splashed cold water on my face, dragged a razor across my jaw fast enough to draw blood in two places, and threw on the suit while my skin was still damp. Everything felt wrong—the collar too tight, the shoulders binding, the pants slightly too short because I’d lost weight from stress and hadn’t bothered getting them altered.

7:35 AM.

My phone vibrated on the bathroom counter. Sharon’s name lit up the screen.

Just finished shift. Exhausted. Coming home now. Are you feeling better?

My fingers hovered over the keyboard. Sharon had worked twelve hours keeping fragile humans alive, and now she was driving home expecting to find her husband recovering from a migraine, maybe making coffee, definitely not racing across the city to meet with federal agents.

Still pretty rough. Going out to get stronger medicine.

Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.

OK. Get some rest when you get back. Love you.

Love you too.

The lie tasted like metal. Like blood from where I’d cut myself shaving.

I shoved the phone in my pocket and ran.

My Mustang coughed to life with a rumble that usually sounded powerful, but today just sounded slow.

7:37 AM glowed on the dashboard. Twenty-three minutes to travel forty minutes. Mathematically impossible. Physically impossible.

I was going to try anyway.

I reversed out of the driveway fast enough to leave rubber, narrowly missing Mrs. Loux’s mailbox and the rose bushes she’d won awards for at the county fair. A chorus of horns erupted as I cut across two lanes of morning traffic without signaling, without checking mirrors, operating purely on desperation and the kind of reckless certainty that got people killed.

The city streets were gridlocked—yellow cabs and delivery trucks creating an impenetrable wall of metal and frustration. I weaved between lanes like a maniac, mounting curbs when I had to, ignoring the angry gestures and shouted obscenities of pedestrians who had to jump back to avoid becoming hood ornaments.

My knuckles went white on the steering wheel. My eyes darted between road and rearview mirror, half-expecting to see police lights because driving like this should get you arrested, but somehow—through sheer luck or divine intervention or the universe’s twisted sense of humor—I stayed invisible.

The FBI building grew larger in my windshield. Polished steel and tinted glass. Each window is like a dark, unreadable eye watching my approach.

I screamed into the visitor parking garage at 8:15 AM, tires shrieking as I wrestled the Mustang into the first available space. Fifteen minutes late. Not catastrophic, but bad. Really fucking bad.

I abandoned the car—didn’t even check if I’d locked it—and ran.

Full sprint in a three-piece suit, briefcase clutched against my chest like a football, weaving through crowds of morning commuters who stared at me like I was either insane or about to commit a crime.

Maybe both.

The main entrance stopped me cold.

A line. Not just a line—a serpent of at least two hundred people stretching from the building’s glass doors down the block and around the corner. Men and women in their best suits, all clutching folders, all checking watches with the same nervous energy that was eating me alive.

My heart didn’t just sink—it plummeted through the earth’s core.

At this rate, I’d be here for hours. By the time I reached the front, my appointment would be ancient history, and some other desperate candidate would be sitting in the chair I was supposed to occupy.

8:17 AM. Every second in this line was another nail in my coffin.

I scanned desperately for alternatives, and that’s when I saw it—tucked in shadow, nearly invisible from the street: a side entrance marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

No line. No crowd. Just a single door that might lead to salvation or might get me arrested for trespassing on federal property.

Screw it.

I jogged to the side entrance, my briefcase bouncing against my leg hard enough to bruise. I reached for the handle.

The door opened before I touched it.

A mountain filled the doorway.

Six-foot-five easily, built like something designed to break other humans, with a face that looked like it had been carved from granite and then used for demolition practice. His eyes were pale gray and absolutely empty—the kind that had watched people die and felt nothing.

“Name.” Not a question. A command.

My throat constricted. “Jason… Jason Taylor.”

“You’re late, Taylor.” Still not a question.

“Yes, sir. I saw the line and thought—”

“And you thought you’d find a shortcut.” He stepped aside, but his presence still dominated the space, making the doorway feel smaller than it was. “Does anyone know you’re here today?”

The question landed like a punch. “My wife thinks I’m at the pharmacy.”

“Good.” Something that might have been approval flickered in those dead eyes. “Sergeant Reeves. I run tactical operations. Advice?” The word carried weight—not friendly guidance, but a final warning before something irreversible.

“Yes, Sergeant.”

His lips curled into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “You have about two minutes to get your ass to the fifth floor. Deputy Director Chen is having a bad day, and if she decides you’re not worth the oxygen you’re consuming, you’ll be lucky to leave this building through a door instead of a window.” He leaned closer, and I could smell coffee and something metallic. “Move, Taylor. Now.”

----------------------------------------------------------

The interior hallway was brutally sterile—fluorescent lights harsh enough to give you a headache, polished floors that echoed every footstep like an announcement of your presence. I speed-walked to the elevator bank, jabbing the call button repeatedly like that would make physics work faster.

The doors slid open with a soft chime that sounded obscenely cheerful.

I stepped inside and reached for the button panel. My finger hovered over the number five.

It was already glowing green.

I glanced left.

A man stood in the corner of the elevator, head down and studying the floor with intense focus. About my height. My build. Wearing a suit that looked like it came from the same discount rack as mine—slightly too big in the shoulders, slightly too short in the sleeves.

Something about his profile made my skin crawl. A familiarity that shouldn’t exist. Like déjà vu but… wrong.

We stood in silence as the elevator climbed. I kept my eyes on the floor, watching the numbers tick up.

The man shifted beside me. I caught movement in my peripheral vision.

He was staring at me.

Not a casual glance. Staring. With an intensity that made my skin crawl.

I turned my head slowly, and my brain short-circuited.

I was looking at my own face.

My face. Same short, dark hair. Same brown eyes, currently wide with shock. Same slightly crooked nose. Same jawline. Same everything.

Like looking into a mirror that showed me at a slightly different angle.

We stared at each other in absolute silence. Until he spoke.

“What the fuck,” he whispered.

My mouth opened. Nothing came out.

The elevator kept climbing. Third floor. Fourth. The numbers glowed like a countdown to something neither of us understood.

“Connor Goodwin,” he said finally, his voice shaking. “And before you ask—no, I don’t have a twin. Or a brother. Or any explanation for why you look exactly like me.”

“Jason Taylor.” My voice sounded like it belonged to someone else. “Same. This doesn’t make sense.”

“Nothing about this makes sense.” Connor’s hands were clenched into fists. “I got an acceptance letter. Told me to be here at eight. No explanation. Just an address and a threat not to tell anyone.”

Ice flooded my veins. “Me too.”

We stared at each other as the implications crashed down like an avalanche.

“They knew,” Connor said. “They knew we looked alike. That’s why we’re here.”

Fifth floor.

The doors opened.

“Mr. Taylor. Mr. Goodwin.”

The voice was a whip crack.

A woman stood in the hallway like she’d been waiting for this exact moment. Mid-forties, gray hair pulled back so tight it had to hurt, wearing a suit that screamed federal authority and personal violence.

Her eyes moved between us—cold, calculating, predatory.

“I see you’ve met.” Not a question. A statement of fact.

Her arms were crossed, and she had a look on her face. Disapproval. Disappointment. The same look Sharon wore when I’d come home and lie to her face.

“Well, don’t just stand there.” She said as she motioned for us to come forward.

Connor and I stumbled out of the elevator like drunk men.

“I’m Deputy Director Patricia Chen.” Her voice could strip flesh from bone. “Impressive operational records, both of you.” Her voice was low, dangerous, the verbal equivalent of a knife pressed against skin. “Pity about the punctuality.”

Chen continued, her gaze moving between us like a predator calculating which prey to take down first. “In my world, seconds cost lives. Right now, you’re both wasting mine.”

She took a step forward. Her presence filled the hallway despite her relatively small frame—maybe five-foot-six, but radiating authority like a gravitational field.

“You have one chance to prove you’re worth the resources I’ve invested in you.” Her eyes narrowed. “Disappoint me, and you’ll discover that administrative termination is the merciful option.”

She turned and walked down the hallway. “Follow me. Now.”

Connor and I exchanged one look—pure terror reflected—and followed.

Reeves’s warning echoed in my skull: If she decides you’re not worth the oxygen you’re consuming, you’ll be lucky to leave this building through a door instead of a window.

Great. I’d upset the one person who apparently held my entire future in her hands.

Chen stopped at a door midway down the hall and whipped it open with enough force to make it bounce against the wall.

“Inside. Now.”

I exchanged one glance with Goodwin—my goddamn doppelganger—and saw my own confusion and terror reflected at me.

We stepped through the door.

And just as I thought it couldn’t get any worse, weirder, or more frightening, I soon began to realize this wasn’t the end of my troubles.

This was where they began.