“It won’t matter.” Desperation forces Ify to pace back and forth in a small orbit behind her desk. “When they see . . . when they see what he is, they’ll be forced to act. Céline, you don’t understand. He was built specifically for war. His body—his organs, his skeleton, his tendons, his muscle—all of it is entirely false. Manufactured. They made him in a lab, Céline. If I were to scan him, I’d see that his memories are nothing more than mnemonic and sensory data taken from other people and inserted into his braincase. Specifically to simulate human feeling!”

“Ify, calme-toi. S’il te plaît.” She pauses. “You saw him plug into a patient. Maybe he’s only a partially cyberized boy—”

“We have to stop him,” Ify cuts her off, lost in thought. Knuckle to chin, she resumes her pacing. “He’s clearly on some mission. Just masquerading as a human.” She looks up at Céline but doesn’t see her, sees only the completion of her own mission. “Maybe he’s even had a hand in the illness affecting the refugees. He was plugged into a refugee. I could pull the security footage from that hospital ward and show him plugged into the refugee in the bed he’s sitting next to. There. Done.” She wipes her hands of invisible blood. “There’s the problem, wrapped up in an airtight package and fired off into space to sit alongside the Refuse Ring circling Alabast.”