I covered my mouth with a shaking hand. How a slur for fractured Sources could be spoken inside the Vault like that, where fractured Sources or their loved ones might hear, was indecent.

“You know, ever since they started hiring nurses, I’ve been more than a little concerned about just how many people have access,” one said as though in direct response to the previous subject. If I hadn’t known better, I might have thought the three were neither listening to one another nor keeping track of their conversation’s point. “They say this is a discipline of science.”

“It used to be, anyway,” another interjected.

“But if you ask me, girls will be girls,” the woman concluded, as though the irony were lost on her.

“And if that weren’t bad enough, what are we to make of his dragging a Source to court? Where will that end?”

“You know which Source it is, don’t you?” The teal velvet leader quieted them with the promise of an answer. “Dolores. Shepherd.”

“The Dolores?”

“Have you met her or the Mem?”

“I haven’t, personally. Frankly, I find those galas an awful bore.”

“Oh, so do I.”

“Have you met them?”

“No, no, I haven’t.”

“But that’s worse, isn’t it? Dolores Shepherd made him what he is. If he’ll quarrel with her, why, none of us are safe.”

Which was why, I told myself, the three women were retrieving their Mems today, this instant! Professor Toutant wouldn’t be taking ownership of their personal memories, thank you very much.

“And all because they say the Mems were quarreling.”

“Talk about impossible.”

“Who knows what they’ve gotten up to in this Vault.”

I’d turned to face them several moments before they noticed, the room’s contained fire no match for the heat rising up through my neck. It was anger that kept me from looking away, even when their leader raised a suspicious eyebrow in my direction and the others fell quiet.

“She can’t understand us, can she?” another of them asked finally, cautious enough to drop her voice.

“My stars, that’s her.”

“Is it?” Two of them leaned together, aghast, and tried to hide their whispers behind cupped hands.

“Of course it isn’t,” the leader answered without disengaging her glower.

“Oh, I’m mortified, she’s one of Dolores’s.”

“One of them,” she spat. “Not the one.” But her disdain was too palpable. Perhaps my recall hadn’t received the attention of my life before, but she had to know I was the famous extract. There was no other explanation for her contempt. “After all”—she took a step in my direction—“it’d be worse than pitiful, wouldn’t it, to go from celebrity to a cell?”