Tila stands on the top step. She’s already caught sight of me, and her body is stiffly uncertain. Security drones circle her head like bees before drifting away to continue their perimeter check. She hesitates, and then begins to walk down the stairs.
It’s so very strange, watching her come to me. She’s no longer my reflection, now that I’ve changed my hair and my features back, but we’re more different from each other now than ever before. I have two scars she doesn’t have, and that’s only the physical ones.
My sister stops a few paces away. We don’t speak. She looks a little thinner. She glances down, takes something from her coat pocket. It’s a notebook.
“Here. I wrote this, when I was inside. It was sort of a goodbye to you, I guess. When I thought I was going to freeze.”
I take it from her, not touching her fingers. I swallow. My mouth is so dry.
“It’s not very good, but it … explains a lot of it,” she says. “I’ll tell you the rest.”
“I know some of the rest,” I say quietly.
“Some of it was curiosity, but in the end it was all to protect you. Even if I did a monumentally bad job at it.” She pauses, ducking her head to the side. “They told me you were shot. Did it hurt?”
I give her a half-smile. “Like a bitch. But not as much as getting struck by lightning when I was in Ensi’s head.”
“What—?”
“Come on,” I say. “Let’s go home. Figure it all out. And then move on from here. Any more secrets I should know about?” I’m only half jesting.
“I don’t think so.” With a strangled sob, she throws herself into my arms. I wrap mine about her, resting my head on her shoulder. We’re both shaking. I hold her so tight, like I’ll never let her go. We have a lot to work out. To get beyond. To heal from. But we will. We have to.
We stand together, forehead to forehead, chest to chest, our scars aligning, and beneath our bones our mechanical hearts beat, beat, beat.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As with any book, there are a great many people to thank. This was a fun book to write, but it was a departure from my previous fantasy, so I was nervous. Many people helped me find the confidence to keep going.
Thank you to my agent, Juliet Mushens, for invaluable early feedback, always being in my corner, and being fabulous and amazing. Many thanks also to her incredible assistant, Sarah Manning (not the Orphan Black character). To my original acquiring editor, Julie Crisp, and to editor extraordinaire Bella Pagan, as well as Louise Buckley and Lauren Welch. Everyone at Tor, both UK and U.S. (thank you, Marco Palmieri), has been amazing to work with and so enthusiastic about my work—it’s been a blast.