Page 32 of Scion

“Eighteen thousand each,” he says cheerfully. I stare at him steadily. He holds up his hands. “Sixteen, for an old friend.”

I nod to de Alwes, who takes the data pad Manuel’s indicating. A few taps later, and she hands it back. “Done.”

Manuel, to his credit, appears outwardly calm as he sees the truly ludicrous balance being transferred. “Alright. Wash time.” The side door hisses open again, and he heaves himself through.

De Alwes gives me a concerned look as I scoop up the two pads off the bench. “Here?” she asks under her breath as we start after him.

“I’m sure his lab will be very clean.” I scan the pads as we hit a neon-lit stairwell and start downward. “Manuel, these say we’re both meant to be in our fifties.”

“Nobody’s going to look at your birthdate. And if they do, you say you had a Reconstruct.”

“That’s fine for me, but nobody’s going to believe anyone had one to look older.”

He huffs as he navigates the stairs. “DeGov protects image history, so they’ll have to take your word for it. Anyway, what age would you have preferred I make her, from my vast collection of Slabs?”

De Alwes looks at me expectantly.

“I don’t know. Double it, maybe.” She crosses her arms and frowns sternly. “Triple it?”

Manuel chuckles, and pushes open the black door at the bottom of the stairs, fluorescents blinking to life beyond.

MANUEL’S LAB IS NOT CLEAN. Black grime clings to the walls. Dirty plates clutter a bench. There’s a scurrying sound as we enter that I don’t need my revs to hear, and a slight shifting of the pile of refuse in the corner. Bare wiring dangles from the roof to blinking monitors and a jumble of equipment of indeterminate nature. Several of the tools appear to have stains of some sort on their blades.

Behind Manuel’s back, de Alwes glares at me.

“Who’s first?” Manuel waddles over to a capsule against the wall, the shiny silver with a curved translucent pane dissonant against the rest of the room. He hits a few settings on the attached pad and a blue transilluminator light springs to life, highlighting a bed of glass. The capsule hisses open.

“She is.”

De Alwes’s frown makes her wrinkles into canyons. “Why me?”

Mainly because there’s an outside chance her heart will give out during the wash, and I don’t want to have to go through the process if there’s no point. “So you have more time to recover before we have to get to an Autobooth.”

“Oh. That makes sense.”

Before I can turn around to give her a modicum of privacy, she starts to strip. I exchange a vaguely horrified glance with Manuel, who shrugs, then turns back to her. “No implants? Subdermals? Anything that’s going to get fried?”

“Just a biochip.” She taps her heart.

“That should be fine.”

Before long de Alwes has shed her clothing and is stepping into the coffin-like capsule. Her craggy skin is blotchy and pockmarked in the stark blue light. Manuel briskly checks she’s secure, then presses a button on the pad.

The washer secures her in place with looping metal bands and then whirs closed, so that de Alwes is peering out grimly through the glass top. Then it slowly tilts away, so that she’s lying on her back by the time it locks into place with a hiss.

Her body jerks violently as the wash starts.

I wince slightly, keeping an eye on the vitals readout on the pad. “Soundproof in there?”

“Nah, but noisy. She can’t hear us.” He eyes me. “You sure you don’t want a Reconstruct too? I have the tools. It’s not great, having your old faces in the system.”

“People choose to look like other people all the time. That’s why there’s no face-recog-only stuff any more. It’ll be fine.” I see his dubious look. “You think she would survive one?”

“Oh, god no. I’m surprised she made it down the stairs. But it doesn’t mean you have to take the risk. What have you gotten yourself mixed up in, Azure?” My turn to glance at him. He holds up his hands. “Yeah, yeah. Best I don’t know.”

I nod. “You sure these Slabs are still good?”

He looks wounded. “For almost thirty thousand? Damned straight they are. Speaking of which.” He brings up a pad from his pocket, meaty fingers tapping, then hands it to me.