The nurse behind the desk handed him a new set of files and rattled off a list of appointments, he nodding and drawing the notepad from his pocket. Before I could make my case, he motioned for me to follow him.

“I’ve only got a moment.”

He led me into an empty dormitory. When he closed the door behind us, I sat on one of the stripped beds, but he didn’t join me.

“Where are they all going?” I asked, running my hand over the naked mattress.

“To their homes or another private facility.”

“Are you worried?”

“There is no shortage of Sources on this island, so that part of the project will no doubt continue as before. This just means we’ll have fewer Mems in our care to study.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Is this what upset you, Elsie? The Mems being repossessed?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t need to.”

I tried not to be offended, taking a moment to glance above the beds. There were no stained-glass windows in this dormitory, only the overhead light. No armoires either. Before I could ask, Harvey cleared his throat impatiently.

“They think I’m lying, for one thing—that Walter’s Mem and I quarreled and he didn’t attack me at all.”

“This isn’t about you,” he said, shaking his head. “They think the Professor is lying. He’s the one giving testimony to legal counsel. And they don’t anyway; they’re only upset at what it could mean.” He’d corrected me as though unsurprised that I knew, but now he looked at me curiously.

“I overheard some women talking, that’s all. Sources in the hall just now. And worse, they were accusing the Professor of taking ownership of people’s Mems and reprinting them at his discretion.”

Harvey nodded, as though it could possibly be true.

“Why would he do that?”

“He hasn’t. Not yet. But if a court finds it in the general interest and if the board agrees, violent Mems already housed in the Vault, Mems like the Walter who assaulted you, will become property of the clinic and subject to immediate reprinting.”

Immediate reprinting.

“But what will they be reprinted with?”

“Whatever Dolores can’t live with this time, I suppose.”

When I began to smile again, it was different. Along with an unfamiliar rush of blood, it came from somewhere so much deeper than my skin, from a place I’d never known of and that I hadn’t felt before.

Reprinting was an expiration sentence. But I needn’t be the one reprinted.

“You proposed this,” I said. “For me.”

“Selective repossession and reprinting would be a universal mandate,” he began.