Constance (Constance #1)(13)

Laleh continued, “As long as you remain on premises, you’re not a person. Do you understand? They can delete you and write it up any way they want. No one would ever know you’d been revived at all.”

Con shivered. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet. This might be a mistake. The board could be right. I’ll be honest, the chances that you won’t have serious psychological issues are low.”

“How low?”

Laleh glanced away. “I don’t know. Palingenesis has run simulations for lag over twelve months, but it’s purely theoretical. We know that as lag increases, it stresses the body’s ability to accept a download. That’s why we lock clients out after only ninety days, and you’re at eighteen months without a refresh.”

“What’s the laggiest download that’s been attempted?”

“You’re it. By a mile, and there’s no way to know for certain how it will affect you.” Laleh hesitated. “Look, if you want, I’ll put you back under. It’ll be peaceful. No pain, I promise. But I figure you deserve to make that call for yourself.”

Maybe if she’d had a better grasp of what waited for her, how hard it would be out there, Con would have climbed back onto the examination table and let Laleh reconnect the IVs. But despite how heavily her depression had worn on her of late, she’d never considered suicide. She wasn’t ready to start now.

“Nah, I’ve already got my shoes on,” Con said, hoping she sounded braver than she felt.

Laleh smiled, co-conspirators now. “Follow me, then.”

She led Con out into a long, windowless hallway. It was slow going, and Con trailed a hand along the wall to help keep her balance. Walking felt more complex than she remembered, and she had to focus on each leg separately to complete a single step. Despite the bright lights and high ceiling, she sensed that they were deep underground. They passed a series of vault-like doors numbered “W1” through “W8” and stopped at a deserted nurses’ station.

“Where is everyone?” Con asked.

“Sleeping,” Laleh said. “Alarms wake the overnight staff if there’s a problem. Don’t worry, I deactivated yours.”

“How’s the security?”

“In the client wing, it’s intense but outward facing.”

Con gave her a questioning look.

“Designed to keep people out, not in,” Laleh explained. “We’ve had some attempted breakins by Children of Adam and other nutjobs. They want video of our inactive clones for their propaganda campaign. No one’s ever broken out before, though, so we have that going for us.”

The echo of boots snapped them both to attention. Security guards making their rounds and coming this way, by the sound of it. Laleh cursed under her breath and cast around for a place to hide. The nurses’ station was too small, and there wasn’t time to make it to the next junction in the corridor. Laleh dragged Con back the way they’d come.

The footfalls grew louder. There was no chance they’d be able to retreat all the way to the surgical suite—not with Con waddling like a drunk penguin. Laleh pulled up at the vault numbered “W7,” swiped her ID badge, inputted her biometrics, and then slapped the door when it didn’t swing open quickly enough.

“Come on,” she implored. “Come on!”

With a petulant hiss, the door began to open slowly inward.

Laleh let out a sigh of relief. “Worried they’d locked me out of the system already.” She pushed Con into the dark room. “Make yourself scarce, okay? I’ll stall them, but they will check in here.”

A man’s voice called out, “Hey, who’s there?”

Laleh stiffened. Through the gap, Con saw her turn and walk toward two guards, trying to sound upbeat and loose. “Gabe, hey, you startled me. Give a girl some warning?”

“Laleh? No one’s supposed to be down here this late,” the guard said, sounding almost apologetic.

“I know. But you heard about my epic screwup? Dr. Fenton is on my case to have it written up by the time she arrives in the morning. I need to check the settings in the vault for my report. Won’t take me five minutes.”

“You’re not supposed to be down here,” the second guard said, unmoved by Laleh’s tale of woe. “Are you alone?”

Con took a step away from the door and cast around the vault for a place to hide. Computer monitors lit the room like phosphorescent algae in some underwater cave. She saw a series of identical pods lining both walls of the long, narrow room, the length of a city block. She paused, transfixed, realizing where she was. When a client signed up with Palingenesis, it took months to speed grow a clone that matched the client’s current age. After that, the inanimate clones were stored in hyperbaric, self-monitoring medical pods—wombs, in Palingenesis-speak—where they aged in parallel to the clients, waiting to step into the lives of their originals should tragedy strike. She had read about the wombs but had never seen one. No one outside of Palingenesis had, not even the clients themselves. Staring aghast into the nearest womb, she understood why. If the outside world ever saw clones this way, it would sound a death knell for legalized cloning in America.

You’re one of them.

The mere thought made her want to crawl out of her skin. No, she chided herself. She was from Lanesboro, Texas, northwest of San Antonio. She was twenty-four years old.