When Gareth returned downstairs and saw two rats instead of the one he was expecting, at first he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. Then, as he got closer, he tried to convince himself that a second rat had somehow gotten into the cage. And then closed and locked the door behind it. Both of those ideas quickly fell apart.

I left one rat down here. While it is certainly not outside the realm of possibility that there are other rats in my basement, I find it hard to believe that one would willingly enter and lock the cage. And unless I have been grievously mistaken for these past few months, Theodore is male. Male rats cannot give birth. Even if they could, the baby would not come out the same size as the parent. Just where did you come from?

He edged closer to the cage, wary of strange rats or bugs coming out of nowhere. It was hard to tell when they weren’t lined up properly and were both moving around, but when he was close enough to compare the two, they appeared identical, or near to it.

“What is going on here, Theodore?”

Theodore, quite expectedly, did not respond. Gareth was relieved that his sanity wasn’t that far gone yet.

He set up the camera he had carried down with him, doing his best to not look away from the rats the entire time. Then, he reached for his phone and began to skip through the hour-long recording, looking for when the second rat appeared in the cage.

I will properly go through this later. For now, there is a pressing matter. Theodore Two.

He watched himself leave the basement, then skipped ahead when nothing immediately happened.

He is absent at fifteen minutes. Same with twenty. Let’s go a bit farther ahead… Ah, he’s there at forty-five! But not forty…? Theodore is moving around, though.

Gareth sat down and watched from the forty-minute mark, paying close attention.

Theodore seems alright.

He glanced up at Theodore and Theodore Two moving around in the cage, then went back to the video where Theodore was moving around his cage on his own.

I suppose that is to be expected considering he is doing just fine now. Still, it is a surprise. He should not be moving around normally.

Gareth banished the then-unproductive thoughts and continued to watch with a critical eye.

Forty-two minutes in and no second rat. Just how does he get in there within the next three minutes?

Before he could finish that thought, he got his answer.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

That… No. That’s simply impossible!

He went back and rewatched it several times, trying to find evidence that his eyes or the video were playing tricks on him. Unable to do so, he finally looked back up at the cage and exclaimed when he saw there was now only one rat within.

He shot up and peered in, searching for a sign of Theodore Two. When he saw nothing, he looked at the cage itself. The door was still shut, there weren’t any hole big enough for a rat that size to escape – he moved it around, checked every inch of it. When he looked at the bottom, he noticed a small hole. Then he looked at the workbench the cage had been on, and saw another one bored through it.

Not big enough for a rat. Unless…? No. It’s not big enough.

He set the cage down, looked around – then nearly slapped himself. He had set up the camera before he took his phone away.

Gareth connected his phone to the camera, then looked at the most recent video it had taken. It was only seven minutes long, with only the first four mattering. The last three were just him scrabbling around in a frenzy, looking for a missing rat.

He pressed play, and impatiently watched, waiting to see what had happened.

Just where did you go off to?

When he finally saw what happened, he slightly calmed down.

Okay, so I don’t have a potentially dangerous rat running around here. That is still not as comforting as it should be.

He went back and forth between the two videos, comparing what exactly happened in each.

I still find it hard to believe, but I think I might be beginning to understand.

The first video showed Theodore alone in his cage one moment, doing nothing out of the ordinary for a rat. Then it looked as though he began suddenly getting wider and wider – only, that wasn’t entirely accurate. It was another rat coming out from his side. Two extra legs popped out, then a third eye, a second nose and tail. Finally, a second rat was there, fully formed, neither of them worse for the wear.

Gareth had to slow down the video to see it in that much detail. In reality, it had been near instantaneous, happening in less than a second.

Some sort of clone creation? Or is it an illusion? He appeared to be the same size after the fact. Did he lose any mass whatsoever, or did he create new matter? Maybe he had to consume some other material first and convert it to rat. I will need to watch the previous sections of this video more closely.

He went back to the second video, where the same thing happened, but in reverse. The two rats were close together one moment, side by side. Then, one of them began sinking into the other. This one, Gareth did not need to slow down. It took several seconds for the two to fully fuse back into one. Other than that, it was the same process.

If neither Theodore nor Theodore Two made that hole, then I understand why I did not notice the bug crawling into the cage. But that means…

Gareth blanched.

Those things are much more dangerous than I realized. I am supremely lucky that the live one stayed within the thermos until I got home. Though maybe they cannot eat everything…? Or it was too weak until after it had digested its sibling. Regardless, they may well end up wreaking havoc on the city. I certainly hope the dead ones stay that way.

His eyes darted to the thermos he had resealed and left by the stairs.

In a moment. For now, there are more pressing matters.

“As insane as this is, I believe this is just what I needed, Theodore. None of our experiments had borne any fruit prior to this. I think that may change soon.”

Gareth reached for the needles on the workbench, thoroughly sterilizing them before anything else. His fears regarding physically interacting with Theodore had all but dissipated in the face of the excitement he was feeling.

“It would help immensely if you would clone yourself again.”