Oh God. Am I dying? Where am I?
I have to wake up. I have to break unity.
Wake up.
Wake up!
I
My surroundings feel different, sound different. I’m outside again. I can feel the cool desert air on one of my bodies and then another. Flashes of light play across my eyelids, but it must still be night. Somewhere a shovel blade scrapes the sandy earth. Someone sets my bodies down.
“Uh, Jenna—”
“Not now. Get over here. For fuck’s sake, do I have to do everything myself? Help me dig. We need to get this done before sunrise.”
“I already called it in.”
Everyone goes silent.
“You what?”
“I called in the bounty. They sent us coordinates for the exchange—”
“You called the Medusas,” Jenna says. “You told them we had these three. Alive.”
“They are alive. Technically. And worth fifty million fucking squid.”
I can hear the quiet whine of a waver priming. Jenna’s voice is eerily calm when she says, “You can’t spend squid in hell, Bart.”
“Whoa, whoa! Fuck! Don’t—!”
“Stop,” Doc says. “Jenna, put it down.”
“We’re all dead. He’s killed us all. You don’t know these people. We show up with three bodies ‘technically’ alive, we’ll all be smoking corpses by sunup.”
Doc clicks his tongue and says, “We’ve got no choice now, do we? They’ll kill us if we back out. For better or worse, we have to make the deal. And if it gets hairy, I’d much rather be a gang of six than five.” He adds, “You can always kill him later.”
“He’s right, Jenna. Listen to Doc.”
“No. He dies now.”
“Then so do you,” says a fourth voice. “Stand down.”
“You double-crossing snakes,” Jenna says.
“What did you expect? He’s my brother!”
“Oh Lord, thank you. Thank you, sis.”
“Shut your lips, Bart. Let me handle this. Jenna, put it down.”
“I’d rather take him with me.”
“Stop!” Doc barks. “All of you! Look!”
Then I know he’s looking at me. They’re all looking down at me. It takes me a moment to realize my eyes are open.
I can move again, but I can feel the link collapsing. I’m forgetting myself. Soon I won’t exist in the sense that I do now: I’ll break back down into my constituent parts, and Danae and Alexei will forget me like a dream.
But there was something here—something crucial in me, while I existed. I knew something, learned something from this tenuous link, that Alexei and Danae need to know. Maybe it could save them both.
I’m trying so hard to remember, to burn it into my splintering memories, but it’s too late.
The bounty hunters are lifting me back into the truck. My bodies are already going numb to each other. I blink again and dissolve.
BORROWER
When my other copies return from their hunt, there are three of them. The new flesh looks strong, if a bit young. It can’t be more than seventeen years old. They all look anxious.
“This is the best we could do,” says my new epsilon copy, climbing into the truck bed. “All the other potential vessels were in crowds.” He pauses to wipe a trickle of blood from the puncture-marks ringing his scalp.
My copies’ eyes keep darting around. Veins are standing out on their necks and foreheads. They’re sweating.
“Something is wrong,” I observe.
“There’s a significant Medusan presence massing here,” the alpha copy tells me. “They’ve put an enormous bounty on her head. They just received word that someone wants to collect it. Sybil has been caught. She’s being held captive.”
“No,” I gasp.
“We can use this development to our advantage,” Epsilon says. “If they know her exact whereabouts—”
“—and we can glean that information ourselves—” the alpha agrees.
“—then we only need to get there first,” I finish.
There’s sound outside the truck. Boots thudding in the lifeless earth. A voice shouts, “Hey you. Did you see a snot-nosed kid come running this way? He’s about to get a beating if he thinks he can just walk off without finishing the job.”
“I . . . I don’t know,” says the station attendant.
“You don’t mind if I have a look,” the stranger responds. Even through my aging ears, I can hear him stomping closer to the back of the truck.
“Thank you for your carelessness,” I tell my copies. They glare at me. We brace ourselves to strike.
I could read you like a book, Sybil, and that day was the page I’d been waiting for. You pressed through the infirmary doors with deep bags under your eyes, but your confidence seemed to light up the whole white-tiled room. Taking care not to touch the tubes that now crawled like ivy along the hospital bed, you bent down to hug me and whispered, “We did it. Jackson found an interface.”
“You have it?”
You stroked my sweaty forehead. “One of the two. The other one is on its way here by courier. It’ll arrive tomorrow afternoon. We just tested the one we have, and the link is measurably perfect. No loss, no artifacts. I’ve run dozens of tests, and they all pass with flying colors. But how are you? Will you be okay . . . until—?”
“Until tomorrow?” I croaked. I snorted a shallow laugh. My body was racked by fever now, my skin greased with foul-smelling sweat, but it didn’t matter anymore. I could laugh at death now. “Yes. The doctor thinks these old antibiotics will delay septicemic organ failure for at least forty-eight hours. You did it, Sybil. You saved me.”
You put your hand on my shoulder and smiled radiantly. I couldn’t help myself. Something in the IV was making me high, or the fever had boiled all the inhibition out of my brain.
“I love you, Sybil.” I couldn’t believe I’d finally said it.
You weren’t perturbed or surprised. You didn’t miss a beat before you replied, “I love you too. You’re like a brother to me. Tomorrow . . . tomorrow we won’t need words anymore.” Suddenly your gaze clouded over with worry. “Are you
