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Gregory touched another button The recording skipped, the ie of the clone, now clean, clothed, and dry, with her head held up by a wedge-shaped foa softly, just offscreen I almost juia, open your eyes"

And the recording of subject 8b opened her eyes

A squeaky ory put a hand onfor hied that there was no band of color between the sclera Shark’s eyes, zombie eyes… or the eyes of a person with retinal Kellis-Amberlee, the reservoir condition I’d lived with for most of my life With those eyes, she looked more like me than I ever could Someone as shown a picture of me would probably allow that I looked a lot like a reporter who died during the Ryn Soed to rasp

"Surgical alteration," said Gregory He took his hand off my shoulder "They couldn’t induce a specific reservoir condition--when they tried, it either caused iered a reservoir condition in a different part of the body Getting one with stable retinal Kellis-Amberlee in both eyes could have taken years"

I didn’t say anything

"They’ve had to do inally planned It turns out we don’t really understand the changes retinal Kellis-Aht we did As soon as they rean to detach They’ve been replaced with artificial lenses, and the eyes have been stabilized"

And since I was known to have retinal Kellis-As over ano would never be caught "Slick," I said My voice sounded flat, like all the emotion had been somehow pressed out of it That was a reasonably accurate assessain, and asked, "How ory shot me a sharp look "What do you mean?"

"They didn’t fix my eyes They wouldn’t have fixed… her… eyes if they didn’t expect people to see her Logically, that means they didn’t expect people to see me If I was the finished product, they would have stopped once I was stable" My voice was starting to rise at the end of my sentences I forced it back down, and repeated, "How much time do I have?"

"We think it’ll take about teeks for them to finish all the tests they have scheduled, and for theain, they expected everything to be ready sooner, but they don’t want any lingering pain from the operations to distract from the recovery process"

I wouldn’t have paid any special attention toout over not being dead I decided to let that go for the moment "After that?"

"Another teeks, to be sure the subject won’t spontaneously aenuine risk, not just another way to scarethat, I was still scared plenty "What’s going to happen toas you stay useful, and then…" Gregory’s voice trailed off "I’ht That was a bad question Why are they doing this? Why waste all this ti her out of her chemical coaining fro me around?"

"You’re the display model Why do you think Dr Thoot your hair cut? They want you to be as pretty as possible, to show the investors that this process is safe and painless and yields the best possible results" Gregory touched the control panel The ie of subject 8b’s eyes vanished, replaced by a four-way split-screen oftucked underthe ers snarled in the short hair abovedown the hall The views flickered fro it clear both that I had been recorded froles, and that sole continuous feed

"What?" I asked, staring at the screen My face stared back at le showed the eyes that didn’t look as much like my own as the eyes on the clone intended to replace irl who broadcast her own death and turned the tide of a political election The one who told us to rise You were the perfect candidate to prove that a person--a real, recognizable person--can return frorave as thelanced at me as he spoke "They made you as accurate as possible, so that you could be the showroom model You didn’t think the CDC bankrolled you on their own, did you?"

"I didn’t really think about it," I said "So what’s… the other one… supposed to be?"

"The street ht, and while you have a certain ‘unwitting celebrity spokesperson’ cachet, there’s no reason to waste good research Building an accurate Georgia Mason taught them how to make an inaccurate one"