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infield. This was her , right down to the pores. A replica that would bleed blood identical to hers if she pricked it.
    A wave of dizziness swept through her. She balled her fists and held her breath. No way was she going to throw up. Not with so many people watching. Not with her watching.
    â€œGet. Out.” Jesse was on his feet too. “ She’s coming with us?”
    Sargent nodded. “Is that a problem?”
    â€œAre you kidding?”
    Clair touched him on the shoulder, to reassure him but also to take reassurance from him.
    â€œShe’s evidence,” Sargent said. “She has to come with us before she breaks down or dies or whatever dupes like her do. The more evidence the Consensus Court has, the quicker it can come to the decisions we need.”
    Clair understood the necessity of that, but she couldn’t bring herself to feel okay about it.
    â€œI don’t understand how you can even look at her . . . it . . . whatever she is,” said Jesse.
    PK Forest pressed the dupe into a seat while Clair asked herself the same question. If the real Clair had died on the station as Wallace had intended, this other Clair would have gone back to her home and lived her remaining days in her place, a human cuckoo in her parents’ nest. When she expired, her grieving parents would never have known the truth—that the real Clair had died much earlier without ever seeing them again.
    Seeing the flesh-and-blood proof of that plan made Clair’s pulse pound in her ears.
    â€œWhy do you do this?” she asked her other self, taking two cautious steps closer. “Why would you possibly want to?”
    The dupe just stared up at her with her own eyes, her own hands curled in her lap, restraints fastened tightly around her own wrists. Clair couldn’t see any evidence of a tremor, from nerves or anything else.
    â€œAre they threatening you? Threatening your family? Do you do it for fun ?”
    Clair studied her own face, marveling at how different it looked from the one she imagined every day.
    â€œNo, it can’t be fun, living like this. In and out of people’s bodies all the time . . . Do you ever actually leave? Do you stay until you’re discovered or the body breaks down? Do you know how many times this has happened to you?”
    The dupe shook her thick brown curls. I need a haircut , Clair thought in a moment of dizzying displacement. And since when had she had that frown line between her eyes?
    â€œI am nobody,” the dupe said, “but I remember Charlie.”
    The dupe Clair had confronted in California had said I am nobody too, but that wasn’t what struck her now. Charlie was the toy clown she had lost as a child, the day she realized d-mat wasn’t magic after all. This dupe didn’t just have her body. The dupe had her memories, too .
    She fought a sudden urge to smash her own face against the wall.
    â€œKeep her away,” she said to Forest.
    â€œOf course,” he said.
    â€œAnd don’t let her say another word to me.”
    â€œI would like to talk,” said the dupe.
    â€œShut up,” she said. “While we’re in the same room, you don’t say anything . You don’t even look at me. You make one wrong move and . . . I don’t know what I’ll do. Is that clear?”
    The dupe nodded and, after a moment, lowered her eyes.
    Clair realized she was shaking, and she carefully returned to her seat on legs that felt like straws, aware of everyone watching. Not just Devin Bartelme, but Tilly Kozlova as well.
    We have methods of dealing with inconvenient duplications , Forest had said. He hadn’t elaborated, and now Clair wished he had.
    â€œIt’s unbelievable,” said Jesse, sitting next to her and staring at the dupe with a look of disgust. “I can’t believe they got away with it for so long.”
    â€œNeither can I,” said Sargent. “And it