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Almost.

Not really.

And how was any of this even theoretically possible? Did they keep a cloned body on ice, ready for just this eventuality? A body perhaps a few decades younger, with a few genetic enhancements compared to the original?

Becausethatwas incredibly fucking disturbing.

Not to mention, I was pretty sure every single part of this was illegal, even beyond whatever they planned to do with Rucker’s original body.

Cloning humans was illegal, wasn’t it?

Black grunted. For the first time since we’d left the parking lot of Prometharis, he gave me a faint smile.

“I think it was pure wishful thinking, doc,” he said in his deep voice. “We’ll have our own geek squad look at it, of course, and I still want to get our hands on one of those chips, but this is pure fantasyland on their part, the idea that they could ‘recreate’ a person this way, much less grant them immortality.”

He snorted in a contemptuous way, his gaze turned inward.

“Reviving that fucker from a primitive mechanical implant and a bunch of stem cells doesn’t strike me as remotely realistic,” he added, matter-of-fact. “Even with the most advanced organic tech, you could never be successful in this… believe me, thereare those on Old Earth who tried. Even beyond the fact that humans here don’t understandaleimiand how it functions to keep living bodies alive, they don’t even understand what ‘life’ is, doc, or consciousness, or how the mind works… or self-awareness. They think we’re all just dumb computers, that we run on collections of data and processing. But even a worm isn’t that, much less a seer or a human. Their ignorance and hubris and the sheer childishness of it all makes any success with this kind of tech completely impossible. Any idea that humans would have success with this, even in the distant future, is unlikely in the extreme.”

Black shrugged, his voice flat with that same shrewd certainty.

“It wouldn’t have been successful even in a perfect scenario with highly advanced organic tech, a pristine implant filled with every memory of every experience and feeling and thought Lucian Rucker had since birth,” Black added cynically. “Whatever they cobbled together from that, it would have only a dim, exceedingly superficial relationship to thememoryof Lucian Rucker, much less a living, thinking, self-aware version of him. And human memory is shit, anyway. It would be like creating a movie about someone’s life, only stripped of feeling and context and comprehension, and with enormous gaps and fabrications woven in.”

From the back seat, Nick grunted.

I saw him grimace in the rearview mirror, like the very thought of it grossed him out.

As for me, I was definitely leaning towards calling the cops.

Even if Black was right, and they had zero hope of success with their morbid plans, I didn’t want any part of Lucian Rucker or his company.

So far, all we’d seen was extensive evidence tampering, illegal handling of a dead body, obstruction of justice, failure to reporta capital crime, and circumstantial evidence of multiple, much worse crimes, most of which I couldn’t label accurately because I wasn’t familiar enough with the penal codes around legal scientific research and experimentation.

If they had a half-dozen clones of Lucian Rucker on ice somewhere, that was another load of crazy I was more than happy to see them get busted for.

I hadn’t even gotten the impression they actually wanted us to find the killer.

In fact, everything they’d done pointed to the opposite.

So yes, I wanted to call the cops on them. I highly doubted anything we saw at Rucker’s house would make me change my vote.

I sincerely hoped Nick and Black’s were feeling the same.

Black surprised me by reaching out and clasping my hand warmly.

I am feeling the same, ilya,he assured me.Absolutely. We go here, we find what we can, maybe get blueprints of this implant and some more information about what it does. Then we call the police, and Angel does her magic with her old friends in the S.F.P.D. Okay? Maybe you can even testify against them in court. Or I can.

I felt the tightness I’d been carrying in my chest for the past hour begin to relax.

Okay,I sent, relieved.That’s great, Black. I agree.

I just want a look at what he’s got at the house before the cops swarm the place,Black added, his mental voice a touch colder, but not towards me.Most of all, I don’t trust Rucker’s people not to destroy and hide documentation and evidence across the board, so I’d like to get there before they can strip the place of whatever fuckery Lucian was up to. For all we know, Prometharis and Rucker Industries have got multiple paid agents in S.F.P.D., or in one or more other governmentagencies who might help with that. I got a lot off Wicker, but I’m beginning to think Gorren is the mastermind here. There’s a lot Wicker and Morgan don’t know. Without being able to read Gorren, we have to assume the worst.

I felt my chest relax even more.

I agreed with that, too.

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