“I do. Absolutely,” Gaddis said sadly. “It’s a terrible idea. Clones aren’t welcome in Virginia. The last clone that got caught in the state was found hanging from a tree. But I know that none of that matters to you. I know nothing I can say will make you listen to reason. You have my absolute sympathy, but that’s why I can’t let you do this. If I’m right about what’s in your head, then it’s the only copy left anywhere in the world. If anything happened to you down there, it would all be lost.”
“Fine, if you don’t want to help me, maybe Brooke Fenton will. Honestly, I don’t trust either of you, but I’m giving you first shot. I’m going to Virginia one way or another. You say you know what I’m going through, well, then you know that this war you got going on between you and Brooke Fenton—I don’t care about it, or Palingenesis, or my aunt’s research. The only thing that matters to me is finding out what happened to my original. That’s it. When I get back, whichever one of you gave me a car can have what’s in my head. With my consent, which is the only way you can ever have it.”
Gaddis chuckled.
“What’s so funny?” Con demanded.
“You remind me of Abigail.”
“Do we have a deal?”
“I get a scan of your head before you leave?” Gaddis asked. “And I’d like my doctor to give you a physical before we turn you loose on Virginia.”
“Yeah, that I can do.”
Vernon Gaddis put out his hand for her to shake. “Then we have a deal.”
PART TWO
CROSSING THE RIVER
“I shall learn from myself, be a pupil of myself; I shall get to know myself, the mystery of Siddhartha.” He looked around as if he were seeing the world for the first time.
—Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Two days after her dinner with Vernon Gaddis, Con left Charles Island driven by a late-model, two-door electric compact with Virginia plates. It was the color of cold oatmeal and not much to look at, but that’s the way she wanted it given where she was headed. The less attention she attracted, the less attention she attracted. In addition to this sweet, sweet ride, Gaddis had also linked her brand-new, out-of-the-box LFD to a bank account that would last her at least a couple of weeks. It was early morning, the sky was clear, and she was in good spirits. The first day after waking in Palingenesis had been a mad scramble to survive. Life reduced to its most basic needs: food, water, shelter. Hard to make a plan when you were hungry, tired, and scared all the time. It had narrowed her focus to navigating safely from point A to point B. Now things felt different. She had a plan. She was on the move.
It was strange, really, how good she felt and how strange it felt to feel good. How self-aware. Awake. After the accident, she had lost all interest in herself, as if making amends for living while her friends had died. Now, she felt her curiosity returning as if she were emerging from the fog of a powerful anesthetic. She had lived those last three years like a negligent tenant in her own skin, paying the rent late and letting things fall apart around her. She felt quite certain that her original had realized the same thing. Only it hadn’t taken becoming a clone for her original to wake up and get out of DC. Con needed to know how she had done it.
The car shuddered as it left the Maryland state road and merged onto I-95, the federal highway that ran from Maine to Florida. It startled her, and she gripped the armrests like a life preserver, but it was only the car linking to the interstate traffic-control network, the algorithm that coordinated the millions of vehicles that used the road every day. Automatically, the heavy morning traffic shifted to create a space for Con without a single vehicle slowing down. Her car accelerated to eighty miles an hour, joining the immensely complex game of high-speed Tetris that was the DC morning commute.
She forced herself to let go of the armrest and shook the tension out of her hands. This was only the third car she’d been in since the accident. She reminded herself that it was illegal to self-drive on federal highways. There were plenty of holdouts, sure—purists who clung to notions of the “open road” and resented what they viewed as heavy-handed government oversight—but they hewed stubbornly to secondary roads rather than ever link up to a highway’s hive mind. Good, they could have those roads as long as they stayed far away from her.
Her momentary panic did make her stop and wonder what the hell she was doing. Despite all the warnings, despite everything she knew might be waiting for her, here she was crossing the Woodrow Wilson Bridge into Virginia, a state notoriously unsympathetic toward clones. Killing a clone in Virginia wasn’t even considered murder. It was considered destruction of property, a class-six felony. She’d rationalized it to herself—that she’d only stay a few days, just long enough to fill in the gaps in her memory. She promised herself not to get greedy. No one knew she was coming. She’d be fine so long as she kept a low profile.