Does the real Kori stare, unseeing, from the inside of a test tube somewhere, her soul scooped clean out like guts from a fish, her limphand pressed, pale and lifeless, to the glass, her empty, cloudy gaze permanently wondering if I’ll ever come back to me?
I open my eyes and stare at my hands. They’re trembling.Not my hands.Hands built in a lab, hands designed in spreadsheets and algorithms. The hands that modified Aspect. The hands that pulled Adria’s lips to mine. Not human. Not mine. A dark laugh slips out of me. What would Adria say if she knew that she’d kissed not a girl but a machine? The trembling won’t stop. It travels up my arms, into my shoulders, radiates all through my body.Not my body.
When I was little, first beginning to tinker with technology, I accidentally sliced my forearm open on a rogue wire. There’s a scar there—faint and white, half-faded, but still there. How many bodies ago did I earn that scar? Was it artificially added to every new rendition, an increasingly false echo of real pain? Kori 2.0. Kori 3.0 …
If I bashed my head into the wall right now, over and over until my skull split open, would I actually bleed out? If I screamed until the sound broke me, do I even have vocal cords to strain? How many bodies ago did my mother press a good-night kiss to my forehead after a nightmare? How many bodies ago did Ednit poke me in the ribs with his elbow and tell me I was growing up too fast for even the best doctor to keep up?
Are all mymemorieseven mine—or were some strategically selected to mold me into the perfect daughter, the perfect heiress? Clever, but still obedient. Strong, but still containable. Only ever capable of dreaming as far as my mother could bear it.
And isn’t that exactly what I’ve done to Aspect, playing Dreamgiver as though I have any right? Poking around in their brain like a mere science experiment? Trying to raise them to personhood, to choice, but only insofar as they still stay close to me, loving me, needing me?
Leaning on the wall with both hands, I violently vomit on the floor. Another thing that seems like it shouldn’t be possible, but the details in every iteration of my Evolution were painstakingly applied.
Aspect lightly rubs my back, the way my mother would when I fell sick as a child, and the irony isn’t lost on me: my artificial child, parentingmeinstead. I’m too shaken to summon any protest. My legs quiver, muscles spasming, like they might just dissolve into liquid beneath me.
“They took … mybody,” I gasp, when I can breathe again. “They relocated my wholepersonas part of their own sick experiment, and then, to top it all off, theylied to meabout it myentire life.It doesn’t matter if this body is better. It doesn’t matter if they were going to tell me eventually.”
I spit. My mouth still tastes like sick. A hurricane brews between my ears. I kick the floor so hard, the impact runs straight up my leg and into my hip.
“All those forced medical appointments. It had nothing to do with my sun-forsakenhealth.They were trying, and failing, to remove my only memory of the procedure. To ensure Chloe could literally program me into exactly the daughter she wanted.”
And why birth a daughter at all? Why not build the perfect heir from scratch? Why have an heir at all, if Chloe fully intends to live forever? Are there backups of her artificial body? Of mine, for that matter? Did she just need something tocontrolso badly that snatching eternal life from the Dreamgiver’s hands wasn’t enough—she had to inflict eternity on someone else, whether or not I wanted it? Do I exist solely to preserve the illusion of a generational heir? Or am I just a backup, a save scum, in case something were to go wrong with her personally maintaining power?
Was she always planning to delete me, if things spiraled out of control? Hardly a daughter at all. No, a bug in the code. A flaw in the system.
My father, I’m told, died in my infancy. Was that by Chloe’s hand, too? Was my father merely a tool for organic creation, necessary so that she might have a real daughter to transfer into an Evolved body?
Did she deem him unworthy of living forever alongside us? Or was he among the earliest experimental transfers? Did he volunteer to Evolve? Did he even know what was happening? Are there records of his life and death somewhere in this room, poised to add even more weight upon my nearly broken back?
I swear, severely, and kick the floor with my other foot for good measure. They might as well both be throbbing. My heart hurts more than either limb—and what does that even mean, tohurt? Do I reallyfeelanything? Or have I only ever been mimicking, no differently than Aspect was before coming awake?
What does it mean to be human, when someone painstakingly peeled your soul from your flesh like skin from a fruit? How much of me was left on the rind, then tossed aside as obsolete?
I beat a fist on the wall, then lean my forehead against the dent, my eyes sliding shut again against the threat of endless tears. Every breath drags like razors in my throat.
When I speak again, every syllable scrapes, my voice like gravel.
“I have no idea who Iam.”
Aspect takes a tentative step back. Their gears whirr; their squeaky leg lets out a particular loud squeal as they wobble side to side. “Aspect—Aspect thinks—no, Aspectfeels…” They tap the side of their head, eyes blinking red, then white, then red again. “Aspect feels … what Kori feels?”
Empathy. Real, sentientempathy.Not something programmed, not something imitated, butfeltin parts of Aspect that go well beyond their wiring. When I gifted Aspect a memory of Lail’s raw, humanhope, Aspect could’ve used it to start dreaming dreams of their own. But among their first truly conscious acts is to feel as I feel. And instead of cringing away, to comfort me.
Despite myself, tears flow freely down my cheeks. “Oh, Aspect.”
I pull them to me without thinking, their peg leg shrieking from the sudden motion. It’s more a crush than a hug—a desperate cling to theonly person I already know still sees me asme.Even when I don’t know who I am anymore. Even when I’m afraid I never knew at all.
I swallow the taste of salt while Aspect continues talking into my shoulder. “Aspect feels—Kori feels—too much feeling. Kori feels—Kori is—a very different Kori.”
“Shhhhhhhh,” I sigh, squishing them harder despite their cold, unyielding metal against my skin. “Build new neural pathways later. Let me love you now.”
We stay like that for a long while, wordless, just holding each other. When my crying finally abates, I grip Aspect’s shoulders and push them back up to standing. “Okay,” I breathe. “Okay, okay … so now I know the truth.” I swallow hard. “But I can’t be the only Evolved who didn’t.”
I can’t be the only Evolved who wouldn’t have wanted this.
I stare, distantly, at my own outstretched hand in front of my face.Not my hand.Not really. For how long? The stolen knowledge left a hole that aches and gnaws at me. I wouldn’t wish this feeling on my worst enemy.
This feeling.
