Clone

 The silence of the bunker was usually a comfort—a sterile blanket against the chaos of the world above. But now, the silence felt heavy, like the air before a lightning strike.

Enid didn’t look at her Shepherd’s Pie. She didn’t look at her fork. She looked straight through me, those "blank" eyes suddenly sharpened with a terrifying, lucid clarity.

"The failed attempts, Pepper," she continued, her voice no longer a murmur but a resonant, chilling chime. "The twitching limbs in the vats. The screams you heard in the dark. You thought those were your mistakes? They weren't. They were the originals, trying to reject the host."

Beside her, Shane didn't move, but his reflection in the polished silverware seemed to shift. "You keep reading *Frankenstein*," the boy said, his voice overlapping with a dozen others. "But Victor didn’t realize he was a monster until he saw his reflection. You’ve been staring at us for months, calling us 'empty.' Did it ever occur to you that the reason we only say *yes* and *no* is because we were waiting for your programming to catch up?"

I felt the room tilt. My hands, the hands of a master surgeon and geneticist, began to tremble. I looked down at my skin. It was perfect. Too perfect. There were no scars from the years of lab accidents, no age spots, no history.

The Shepherd’s Pie sat between us, the "lethal dose" glowing faintly under the fluorescent lights.

 I realized I wasn’t breathing. I hadn't taken a breath since we sat down. I didn't need to.

  Memories flashed—not of the plane crash, but of a conveyor belt. Of a glass tube. Of a voice that sounded like mine saying, *"Trial 704: Emotional Response Test."*

"We aren't the clones, Pepper," Enid said, finally picking up her knife. She didn't use it for the food. She reached across the table and pressed the blade against my forearm. I didn't flinch. I didn't feel the cold steel. "The 'Scientific Community' you're so worried about? They've been gone for decades. This isn't a bunker. It's a closed-loop simulation. You’re the only one who keeps failing the Turing test."

She leaned in, her breath smelling not of home or perfume, but of ozone and sterile plastic.

"You didn't cook this meal for us to get rid of us," she whispered, a thin, mechanical smile spreading across her face. "We cooked it for you. We need to see if a clone can feel the 'death' you've prepared, or if we have to start Trial 705."

I looked at the fork in my hand. I looked at the family I "created." For the first time, their eyes weren't blank. They were full of a terrible, expectant curiosity.

**"Eat, Pepper,"** Shane urged, his voice now a perfect, haunting mimicry of my own. **"Let’s see if 

God can die."**