Page 45 of Scion

Then I hold up my own, exactly matching left hand next to it.

There’s a long silence.

On the couch, Jasa makes a painful-sounding wheeze. “Azure?”

I finally look at her. There’s something scared in her eyes as she looks at the hand. Scared, and sad, and somehow terribly resigned.

“You’ll still look after me, won’t you, dear?”

She slumps, unconscious.

AZURE, DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN I asked you if it was bad? And you said something about it being subjective?”

Verity, unfortunately, has turned on the holo.

I join her in gazing at the image of Sanctum’s burning crater. Even in the Core, destruction on this scale is newsworthy. We don’t have the sound on, but text over the footage describes the incident as the worst commercial accident in almost a decade. DeGov units buzz across the rubble, shifting metal and stone. Searching for survivors of what is being put down to an as-yet-undetermined malfunction.

“This,” she continues quietly as she watches the ashes of her life’s work, “is bad.”

I chew my lip as I watch the burning chaos. “Yep.”

“I’m very angry with you right now, Azure. Very disappointed.” Still not looking at me.

“I know. Sorry.”

Verity finally glances across at me. Snorts, then moves away and crouches beside Jasa, making a face as blood-matted hair slides wetly across her back. “She needs more than medi-gel. There’s a clinic not far—”

“No clinics.”

“Why not?” I give her a withering look, and she sighs. “DNA. The Keres. Right. Then where?”

I stride over to join her. Examine the elderly woman, her frailty undeniable, and then the map of Themis on Verity’s pad. Close my eyes for a few moments, then zoom in the display and jab a point on the screen.

“Caelum?” I can hear her doubt. “Not really the best spot to keep your head down.”

“Trust me.” Jasa’s lab had enough off-net basics that I might be able to save her. Maybe. Her breathing’s growing increasingly laboured. “You just need to drop us off.”

Her gaze travels almost unwillingly to the still-dripping hand dangling from mine. “Azure, darling?”

“Yes?”

“What in the hell is going on?”

I lean against the wall, opposite the one with the fist-size hole in it. The whine of the drone seeps through, as well as a constant, vaguely annoying whistling of air. I can see glimpses of the lights of Themis. “Seems I’ve been Duped.” The limb has stopped bleeding. I toss it from one hand to another absently. A few things are making sense, now.

“That’s not possible.”

I think of Jasa’s bios. Waggle the rapidly cooling body part. “And yet.” Even beneath the blood, there’s no denying the match. My left hand identical in every pore to the one it’s holding.

There’s silence, and I can see Verity assessing. Research into human cloning was banned under Ten-O-Ten as well, covered under the broad umbrella of life extension. Not to mention that it’s the one thing any city’s DeGov will send enforcement outside its walls to stop; the system knows that the production of even vegetative human Dupes could be used to negate far too many of its verification techniques. So if it came out that the Keres were using them as assassins?

Hell. Forget the outcry over people finding out about Jasa de Alwes and their little deal with her. There would be riots.

And now Verity knows. And the Keres, most likely, know she knows.

“You are an asshole, Azure,” Verity eventually says wearily, punching in the new coordinates.

“Yeah.” I finally put the severed hand on the table as the drone begins to bank toward Caelum. I’ll run a DNA scan on it when we get to the lab, just to be sure. But I’m sure. “If it helps, this is news to me too.”