Page 52 of Scion

There’s another several moments where Atti doesn’t respond, just the sound of machinery at work.

“Perhaps you’d better tell me the whole story.”

“WOW. WOW. THEY MUST HAVE kept the whole thing off-net because I never knew about any of this,” says Atti when I’m done.

“You sure?” I fiddle with the sleeve of my slightly too-tight change of clothing, which I fortunately found lying next to the pulse shower when I used it.

“You know there’s no way to tamper with my memory.”

“But if the Keres have restricted you from revealing something…”

“Pfft. You’re the majority shareholder now, Azure: I can’t lie to you, and I can’t be locked down like some neural either. Minority shareholders can request that I not volunteer proprietary information, but if you directly ask me something…” She sounds almost indignant.

“Alright, alright. Settle down. I believe you.” Useful to know. Doesn’t sound like the Keres will be actively able to hide anything that Atti was previously aware of.

“And I believe you, by the way. Or, I believe the DNA result. It’s you. They actually went and made a Dupe of you.” She makes a noise as if she’s shuddering.

Confirmation rather than news. “I’m guessing they started the process after Oceanus.”

“Makes sense. You were out for months, and it really looked like you were going to die. And they do rather like your rev compatibility.”

I grunt.

“And your delightful personality, of course, Azure,” adds Atti. “I’m sure they were super worried on a personal level as well.”

I give a baleful look at the nearest camera, and keep working.

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to figure out how to kill this thing when it arrives.”

“When it what, now?”

“I left a trail for it.”

“You did what, now?”

“I can’t let it run free.” If it’s actually intelligent and not just a bio—a reasonable assumption, because I don’t see the Keres having many use cases for it otherwise—then it should be able to follow the hints I left it from where Verity dropped me. “And based on what it did at Sanctum, it’s not going to stop. Better to choose the place and time.”

“You can absolutely let it run free! You’re richer than God, Azure. You have some pretty nice alternatives to the stabby-stab life, now.”

I finish what I’m doing with a flourish. “I wasn’t and I didn’t when I decided to do this. And, you know what? I like this plan. We’re going with this plan.”

“So you bought me so you could ignore my advice, I take it,” grumbles Atti.

“Pretty much. Now. I need you to run some scenarios. Full sim. I have Jasa de Alwes’s body, this lab, this Dupe hand, and you. If I go to DeGov and try to get the Keres proscribed under Ten-O-Ten, what happens?”

A long silence.

“It’s… not great,” says Atti eventually.

“Why?”

“Well, this lab is run from a cold start; it’s off-net, but otherwise there’s nothing in here to suggest anything improper is going on. Having de Alwes’s body is probably enough to trigger an investigation into whether the Keres illegally took crowdfunded tokens fifteen years ago, but ultimately that’s public fallout, and if DeGov eventually finds anything, a big fine. There’s no proof she’s been working with them since. No proof of cloning, either. The hand could have been printed at any limb replacement clinic or any of a dozen labs specialising in growing transplant organs. It’s weird, Azure, but it’s a long way from evidence that the Keres made a killer Dupe.”

“So it ends up just kind of irritating them.” What I’d thought, but I needed the confirmation.

“Yeah. And we both know how that ends.”