“I know. I’ve always known that,” I said quietly. “She was with you for a long time after I died.” It was important, with Shaun, not to acknowledge the differences between me and the original Georgia out loud. He knew about them—I’m not sure I could have stayed with him if he hadn’t been able to admit, at least once, that I wasn’t the woman he buried—but he didn’t like to talk about them. For him, the continuity of my existence was more important than the shape that existence had taken. I knew that. I had accepted, long since, that I would always be the center of his world and the other woman simultaneously, unable to ever quite replace the two iterations of me that had come first.
“Sometimes she tells me you’re going to die.” His eyes stayed on the road. “She talks about how flesh is transitory but she’s forever. She can follow me into the field. She can’t get infected. Even if I slip up, fuck up, whatever, she won’t leave me the way you will. She’s never actually told me to kill you, but I think she would, if she thought she could get away with it, you know? She would be thrilled if I slit your throat while you were sleeping and just walked away.”
Hearing him say those things in his calm, methodical voice was painful, but not shocking. His imaginary Georgia was the worst kind of intrusive thought, and she wasn’t going to let herself be replaced just because I had a body and she didn’t.
I leaned over until my head was resting against his shoulder. The dizziness faded a little. I closed my eyes. That helped even more. “Everybody dies,” I said. “What matters is what we do before that happens. I’m pretty okay with everything I’ve done. I saved a President. Overthrew the CDC and replaced them with a different group of shadowy overlords. I learned how to fix a broken toilet. I told the truth. I loved you. So I’m going to chalk this life up as a win, and I figure whatever comes next… comes next.” It was funny. I was the only person I knew who’d actually died, and I had no idea whether there was an afterlife. If Heaven existed, Georgia had gone there after her body died, which meant I didn’t have those memories. For me, her life—our life—had ended with the sound of a gun going off, followed by blackness.
Maybe there was something on the other side of death, some paradise or punishment or purgatory. Maybe when I got there Georgia would be waiting, along with all the other clones, the ones I’d left to burn when the Seattle CDC exploded, and we could find a way to make peace with each other. The only version of me who wasn’t going to have another shot was the one in Shaun’s head—or at least that was what I tried to tell myself when I got jealous of her for existing, for taking up his time and trying to turn him against me. It was hard to deal with the idea that I could be jealous of someone who didn’t exist, even if it was the most natural thing in the world.
“I don’t want you to go,” he said doggedly. “That’s all. There’s no ‘what comes next.’ She wants me to be with her, and not you, but she’s not real, and you are. I’ve already lived like that once. I can’t do it again.”
“So we figure out how to fix this,” I said. “Dr. Abbey is smart. She knows what she’s doing, and she’s going to find a solution. We just have to get to her, okay? She’ll make it all better, and we’ll be able to go home, and carry on like nothing happened.”
Shaun was quiet for a while. Then, in a soft voice, he said, “Your nose is bleeding.”
I sat up, reaching for the glove compartment, and the napkins. It was going to be a long drive.
Two
According to the old maps of Canada, our cabin was located in the province of Alberta. We’d traveled a long way from our entry point of Niagara Falls, all of it in a westward direction. I hadn’t been willing to go too far north; the snows got heavier the higher you went, and we’d had no experience with real winters back then. Now, we could probably make a go of it in Alaska. Maybe I’d suggest that to George after all this was over. Sure, I liked our cabin, but we were still closer to the United States than I liked.
Then again, times like this made me glad that we’d been afraid of freezing to death. Even with the bad roads and the impassable bridges, it had only taken me two days to drive from home to Shady Cove. Two days of granola bars, cold coffee, and warm Coke; two days of watching George try to pretend that her head wasn’t spinning, even as she mopped the blood off her face. Honestly, if the drive had been any longer, I would probably have gone even crazier than I already was. I wanted to help her, and there was nothing I could do.
Dr. Abbey’s people had been working on the roads since the last time we’d been there. The pavement had leveled out about a mile away from the forestry center, becoming remarkably smooth, even as it continued to look, to the naked eye, like no one had been through here for decades. The trees overhung the road in carefully cultivated arcs, blocking most of the aerial view. Someone watching via a satellite or unmanned drone would find themselves with very little in the way of usable footage. Heat sensors might do them some good, but even that, I wasn’t so sure of. This was Dr. Abbey we were talking about. She’d probably figured out some way to coat the leaves in a harmless chemical that blocked mammalian heat signatures, just to piss the government off.
That was the kind of person she was, and by extension, the kind of person I was about to entrust with George’s care: She would flip off God for the sheer satisfaction of not letting him think he got any credit for shit he did at the beginning of creation. Dr. Abbey was probably the only person I’d ever met who would argue with the law of gravity. Not because she didn’t like it, or because she didn’t use it. Because she didn’t feel like it should be rewarded for doing its job. In some ways, that made her an uncertain ally. Right now…
If there was anyone who would look at a clone’s medical problems and go “yeah, whatever, let’s break the laws of God and man a little more, just to see what happens,” it was her. She would do her best. I trusted her that far. I trusted her with our lives.
The parking lot was almost jarring after the carefully curated road leading up to it. We came around a corner and then we were rolling over smooth black concrete, flawlessly maintained, obviously cleaned and re-tarred on the regular. There was no effort being made to conceal the fact that people were using this space—and maybe that had something to do with the center itself.
Half the big glass windows were gone, broken by some outside force and then boarded over. The rest were intact, and light from inside escaped to pollute the otherwise untouched twilight. The doors were closed, but there were cars outside, too new and well maintained to have been abandoned since the Rising. Dr. Abbey really had put down roots. She might be hiding the ways to reach her out of habit, or because there were other dangers to be considered; I didn’t know, although I was going to do my best to find out. A mystery might be just what I needed to distract me.
Assuming I could focus on anything other than the issue at hand. I drove around to the back of the building, where the entrance to the garage was located. It seemed a little odd that Dr. Abbey would have her people park outside when there was a perfectly good garage for them to use, but she probably had her reasons, and whatever they were, she would probably explain them, loudly, possibly while rolling her eyes at how slow I’d become after a few years in the Canadian wastes. It was almost nice to be coming back into the sphere of someone who thought that exposition was a normal part of the way people talked to each other. One good thing about Dr. Abbey: You always knew where you stood.
The garage door swung open at our approach, no blood test required. I stiffened as I realized that we’d passed back into the world of blood tests and needles. I would probably be paying for George’s medical care in a couple of pints, and maybe some bone marrow samples if Dr. Abbey was feeling particularly frisky. I was okay with that in principle, but it had been so long since someone had come at me with a needle that I wasn’t sure how I would react when it actually happened.
There was an open space next to the employee entrance. It had originally been intended for use by the handicapped, judging by the blue lines and
the faded ghost of a painted wheelchair. Someone—probably Dr. Abbey—had hung a sign on the wall in front of it: RESERVED PARKING FOR CLONES AND ASSHOLES. I snorted as I pulled in and killed the engine.
George didn’t stir. I turned to her, holding my breath until I saw the slow rise and fall of her chest. She was alive. That was all I needed. As long as she was alive, there was hope, and hope was more than I had been given on several occasions.
“Hey, George.” I leaned over and shook her shoulder. She made a faint noise of protest, raising one hand like she was going to bat me away. It dropped back to her lap as the motion proved to be too much trouble, and she slept on. I shook her again. “Wake up. We’re here. We’re in Shady Cove.”
“Mmgh?” She finally opened her eyes and looked at me, disorientation and grogginess warring for control. Then she blinked, and saw me properly, and smiled. “Hey, you. I was having the weirdest dream.”
“Did you dream that you were a clone having weird medical problems, and that we were taking you to see a mad scientist in the hopes that she could fix it? Because if not, I’ve got to say your dreams need to work harder to trump reality.”
“No. I dreamt we were back at the Agora. Remember that place?”
“How could I forget?” The Agora was Seattle’s haven for the ultra super scary rich, a hotel and resort that could cater to every need of its guests. It was exclusive enough that most people, George and me included, couldn’t even afford to breathe its air. We had stayed there once, thanks to Maggie Garcia, our resident Fictional and stealth heiress to Garcia Pharmaceuticals. She was a great lady and a good friend, and had married one of our other coworkers, Alaric Kwong, after George and I took off for Canada.
I was still a little sorry about missing the wedding. It hadn’t been safe for us to come back to the United States then. It still wasn’t, if I was going to be realistic. It was just that the alternative was worse.
We’d been at the Agora when we freed George from the CDC. She had dyed her hair brown in the bathroom of my suite, turning from a stolen science experiment back into herself right in front of my eyes. She had never looked back, and neither had I. If she was talking about the Agora, where everything had started for us…
Nope. I wasn’t going to think that. “Come on,” I said. “We’re here, and Dr. Abbey is going to get pissed if we don’t come inside and say hello before she has to come out and get us.”
George was in no shape to carry anything. I left our bags in the van as I walked her to the door, providing an arm for her to lean on while trying to be unobtrusive about it. I didn’t want her to feel like I was hovering. At the same time, I wasn’t going to let her fall. I was never going to let her fall if I could help it. That was what she had me for. To keep her on her feet.
Who’s going to keep you on your feet when she dies? whispered the sticky-sweet voice of her invisible twin. At least I couldn’t see her. If I could keep my hallucinations at bay, this would all go a lot more smoothly. You need me to prop you up. You’ve always needed me.
“I don’t need you,” I muttered, before I could catch myself. I winced. George shot me a quick glance, but there was no blame or malice in her expression. She knew what I was dealing with. My mental health was no less important to her than her physical health was to me, and that was just one more reason that I couldn’t afford to lose her. She was all that was keeping me even halfway down the road to sanity.
The blood testing panels next to the door were dark and deactivated. We exchanged a look. Then George shrugged, pragmatic to the last, and knocked on the door. It swung immediately open, revealing a short, slender woman with freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her hair was pulled into pigtails, one over each shoulder, and dyed the impossible brick-red color of fox fur, save for the tips, which were bleached snowy white.
She was holding some sort of complicated rifle. Of course she was.
“Hi!” said Foxy brightly, beaming at the two of us. “Who wants me to shoot them first?”
Three
The last time I’d seen Foxy, she’d been waving from the window of a house that was about to explode. I had assumed that she’d been killed in the blast. We both had. So finding her standing in Dr. Abbey’s lab was a bit jarring, to say the least.
But it was still Dr. Abbey’s lab. I knew Shaun had been in touch with her during the trip. Sometimes he’d called in over wireless relays when he thought I was asleep or dealing with something that would keep me distracted. He hadn’t wanted me to hear how worried he was about me, like he thought my own awareness of my condition was somehow veiled in self-deception. He didn’t know how many symptoms I’d been able to hide from him since we’d left the cabin, and hopefully, he never would. It was a small, petty wish, but it was mine, and I was holding to it.
Dr. Abbey would have told us if it wasn’t safe, or if she wasn’t here. So I raised an eyebrow, and asked, “What are you shooting us with?”
“Huh? Oh, nothing, if you come with me to decontamination. Didn’t I say that first?” Foxy’s face scrunched up as she thought about the last few minutes. “I guess maybe I didn’t. It’s good to see you again! I figured for sure you’d be dead by now, but Shannon says nope, you’ve been alive this whole time. That’s important, you know. Staying alive in a straight line. You can stop, if you have to, but it’s very hard to start again.”
“That’s true,” I said, trying not to laugh at her. We still didn’t know what that gun of hers did. It looked like it might be some sort of tranquilizer delivery system, intended for use only if we refused whatever decontamination process Dr. Abbey wanted us to go through. Since Foxy was the one holding it, we could probably wind up tranquilized for sneezing. It was best to tread lightly. “Let’s go get decontaminated, and then we need to unload the van. We’ve been living in it for the last few days, and it smells pretty ripe.”
“Shannon collects dead things and doggies,” said Foxy. “Nothing can smell worse than dead things and doggies. Come on.” She started down the hall. We followed her, lacking anything else to do.
Shaun took my hand as we walked, lacing his fingers through mine and holding on so tightly that it hurt. I didn’t mind. I still felt shaky enough that having him there to lean on was important, and if he needed to hold me to be sure that I was real, it was a service I was happy to provide. My own heart was hammering, seeming to echo through my entire body. Until we’d arrived, I hadn’t really considered the part where Dr. Abbey was a doctor. Maybe that seems silly, but it was the truth. She didn’t fall into that category in my thoughts. She was a mad scientist, an ally, a friend, a dangerous enemy, but not a doctor. Even when we’d been asking her to help me, she hadn’t clicked over into that category.
But now here we were, and it was time for her to start doctoring. Time for the white walls and the backless gowns and the needles and the tests—
My hands spasmed, forcing themselves into fists without my willing them to do so. Shaun gasped a little as I crushed his fingers, but he didn’t pull away. Instead, he pulled me closer, close enough that I could smell the sweat under his deodorant.
“Breathe,” he said, in a low voice. “This isn’t like before.”
I shot him a grateful look. He didn’t need to ask what was wrong, because he knew. He knew every part of me, the ones that were like his original Georgia and the ones that were entirely my own, forged in the strange crucible of cloning and medical experimentation and escape. He didn’t judge, either. That was the best part. Whoever I was, whatever the source of my soul, he loved me all the same. I was his George. That was all he’d ever needed me to be.
“I know,” I said. “I just… I guess I didn’t think about what this would mean until we got here.” I hadn’t allowed myself to think about it, because thinking about it would have meant admitting that I was willingly handing myself over to a woman who had belonged to the CDC, once upon a time, even if she’d found it in herself to walk away. Dr. Abbey was our friend. She was also the face of my worst nigh
tmare. Those two things didn’t contradict each other. They existed simultaneously, informing each other, and nothing I did would change them.
“I’m going to be with you the whole time,” he said. “No matter what.”
“That’s not quite true,” chirped Foxy, turning around and walking backward as she led us down the hall. “You have to go into separate rooms for decontamination. Doctor’s orders. Something about making sure that there’s no confusion about what came from who.”
“What are you doing here, Foxy?” Shaun sounded more weary than curious. He didn’t let go of my hand. “I thought you were dead.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” said Foxy brightly. “I’m pretty sure I was dead, or close enough for tax purposes. Got some real nasty shrapnel in the back when the house went boom-boom, and bled all over the place. It was a bad, bad scene. But then some of the Monkey’s friends came to see what had happened, and they found me and took care of me until they didn’t, and then I came here, and now Shannon takes care of me, and tries to help me remember how to be a people instead of a weapon of mass destruction, and Tom makes me my space lobster juice for when the screaming gets too loud. So it’s all good. We’re here, by the way.”
She stopped walking between two doors. They were labeled, in quixotic fashion, “Squids” and “Mollusks.” Shaun raised an eyebrow.
“Okay, I’ll bite,” he said. “Which one am I?”
“All gender is a construct and binary gender doubly so, but you have a hard shell and you’re hard to kill, so you’re probably a mollusk,” said Foxy blithely. “You should get clean now. Shannon doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
“Right,” said Shaun. He looked toward me, expression going grave. “George…”