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Thank you for sending the Masons I’ll see you soon I love you

--Taken froust 6, 2041

SHAUN: Thirty-two

The engines of the Kauai Institute’s private jet huh that we could be confident that ere still on the plane and not, I don’t know, sitting in a really funkyroom It didn’t help that ere practically alone on the plane Becks and Alaric were sitting on one side, reading through the files Dr Abbey had loaded onto their phones before we left Dr Shoji was at the front of the plane,us a little privacy in the last few hours before we landed That left e, and she’d been asleep for the better part of an hour, head pillowed on her ar softer andover to make sure she was still there, but I couldn’t look at her for more than a few seconds when she was like that It felt like I was stealing soe was never that vulnerable, not even forto the little trip monitor at the front of the cabin, ere approxiton DC, where presu us out of the private airfield ere ai shot in the head If you had to fly, there orse ways than hopping from one private airfield to another in a fully outfitted corporate jet Of course, there were better ones, too Ones that didn’tin essentially blind, on the word of a man who just happened to know the people responsible for cloning roaned "Things were a lot si to poke with a stick today," Ia hand until she caught my attention Then she beckonedupover to join the able to drink it without feeling guilty made it the best cup of coffee in the world

"What do we know?" I asked, plopping down next to Becks She wasn’t wearing her seat belt Alaric was That, right there, tells you most of what you need to know about both of them

"The clone tech they used for…" Alaric cast an uneasy glance toward George, see to lose the thread of the sentence

When several seconds ticked by without hie, but he juhed "The clone tech they used to bring Georgia back," I prorew her body with a lot of chemicals, a lot of hormones, a lot of radiation, and a lot of luck," said Alaric slowly "It only worked because they didn’t need to worry about getting a clone with cancer She probably was cancerous by the ti Amberlee part of Kellis-Amberlee do the mop-up when she was exposed to the virus"

"She mentioned that she wasn’t the only one," said Becks "What I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know is that she wasn’t even one of ten"

I raised an eyebrow "No?"

"Tryfrorown humans Most of them never made it out of their petri dishes The ones that did… I don’t understand half this science, except to understand that I don’t like it It was technically ethical, or would have been, if they hadn’t been growing bodies with functioning brains, but the fact that the CDC can do this at all disturbs me" Becks shook her head "Isoldiers?"

"Only if they feel like paying five million dollars for every functional --the starting cost It doesn’t include the cost of the subli--"

"Which is how she can actually reave her a look that was half glare, half fond exasperation "I would have gotten to that," he said "But yes The synapse progras And then there was the physical therapy to keep herher toat thirty or forty y Easy"

There was a pause while we turned to look at George She shifted in her sleep, one foot kicking out a few inches before it was pulled back to nestle against the opposite ankle I turned back to the others

"Well, I hope they don’t think they’re getting her back," I said "What else can you get out of those files?"

You want to know if I’ less and less the longer there was a living, breathing George for one It justto strike when I was least prepared You don’t go that far past the borders of Crazytown and co out unscathed

The worst part of it was that she--the dead girl’s voice in ht I wanted to know if George was going to die There was no way I could survive that twice

Becks looked at me levelly "She’s stable, Shaun Those doctors from the EIS took out the CDC fail-safes, and they couldn’t actually build a human body that would self-destruct without help The science isn’t that good"