Constance (Constance #1)(15)

“Raleigh,” he answered with a melancholy half smile and dissolved into the gloom. Con yelled for him to wait and pushed open the lid. Her shirt had done its job after all, and she fell out of the womb, sprawling across the floor. She called for Zhi to come back, but he was gone. Had never really been there despite how real it felt. She shook all over. The gray static returned.

What was happening to her?

She lay there on the floor until her heart stopped trying to fall to its death. Then she rolled gracelessly onto her back and pulled up her pants in the dark. What the hell did she do now? On one hand, she hadn’t been discovered; on the other, she was trapped inside a vault with the ghost of the man she loved.

Wonderful.

Her LFD vibrated in her pocket. An incoming message. She fought with her uncooperative hands to slip it into place behind her ear and toggled open a message window.

It’s Laleh. Sorry about that. Are you okay?

Con struggled to type out an answer on her chest. Thank God for autocorrect. Creeped the hell out. Otherwise, decent. R u coming back?

Can’t. Gabe here is keeping me company until Dr. Fenton arrives, but I should be able to guide you out.

I’m kinda locked in a vault. Apparently she could type pronouns even if saying them felt like she was being dragged across gravel.

The vault door clicked and began to open again.

How about now? Laleh messaged.

Less.

A floor plan appeared in Con’s display. An X marked her current location, and a dotted line showed a path to a door circled in red.

Give me access to your camera, Laleh messaged.

Con toggled her permissions.

Okay, that’s better. Ready?

Is it safe?

No idea. Let’s find out.

It took ten minutes to make it to the circled door because Con froze every time she heard a sound. She felt strangely alienated from her body. As if it were the avatar in a video game, and she didn’t know how to work the controls. Walking in a straight line proved a challenge, as did spatial awareness. She had trouble judging the distance between herself and objects, and bumped into more than one wall like a character out of the old cartoons her grandmother had loved.

The door led to a stairwell that took her up to the underground parking garage. It was mostly deserted, but Laleh guided her on a winding path to avoid security camera hot spots, then up a spiral vehicle ramp. At the top, Laleh remotely unlocked a service-access door that let Con out onto a loading dock. Maybe she should have felt more relief at stepping outside. After all, she was now officially a person, at least by Palingenesis’s self-serving definition, and not some laboratory experiment scheduled for deletion. But it was hard to feel victorious—her head throbbed, her hands seemed to have a mind of their own, and her lungs burned from climbing the flight of stairs. Not to mention the vivid hallucination. She’d wait until she was safely home to start celebrating her escape.

A wall of summertime humidity hit her on the other side of the door. Her LFD said it was mid-June, which rationally she knew it must be, but that felt wrong, nonetheless. Her memory clung to the belief that it had to be December since it had been December when she got up this morning.

Reconciling the year and a half that had passed since was not proving an easy sell. In any event, she had definitely missed the Weathervane gigs. She hoped Kala understood. Then it occurred to her that her original hadn’t missed the show. The original would have gone after the refresh eighteen months ago. But since that had happened outside the scope of the refresh, Con had no memory of it. Thoughts like that were going to make her lose her mind. What else had she missed in the last eighteen months?

Laleh directed her to a backpack hidden behind a dumpster. Inside were a box of protein shakes and five different bottles of pills.

The pills will help manage the transition, Laleh typed. It’ll mask some of the side effects until you acclimate. Go ahead and take one of each now.

Acclimate to what? Con replied.

Being alive.

That brought Con to a halt. She stared at those two words. Being alive? What does that mean?

Sorry. What Palingenesis does is incredibly complex and delicate. Like any transplant, there is the risk of rejection. Except, in this case, it’s a neurological and psychological rejection.

What kind of pills are these?

Mood stabilizers. An antipsychotic. The others manage the neurological adaptation.

AN ANTIPSYCHOTIC!? Con typed. She definitely didn’t remember that from the brochure. Though it might explain her hallucination in the vault.

I know how it sounds, but Palingenesis has a very prescribed regimen for transitioning a clone into the world. And we just skipped all of it. The pills are part of that process, and hopefully they will get you over the hump. I wish I had more time to explain, but you have to keep moving.

Why are you helping me?

There was a pause long enough that Con wondered if their connection had been broken.

Because this is my fault. After ninety days, it was my responsibility to put a hold on your account. Honestly, I thought I had.

What’s going to happen to you? Con asked.

They put me on administrative leave, pending a review. I’m supposed to write up a report, but they’re going to fire me tomorrow. I would. Helping you will just speed up the process.

Thank you, Con typed. I mean it.

Hopefully you still mean it in a few days. Oh, and take it easy on solid food at first. Your digestive tract will take time to adjust. There’s also a series of probiotics in the backpack for you to take.