‹You’re the clean copy. Development is where Kiyoko messes with your head, poking and prodding to see what happens. If she breaks you, she can make a new copy. QA is where she pushes things through to a simulation for Russell Potts or Babs Palmer or whoever else to interact with.›

‹I don’t suppose you can cut and paste me onto your laptop or something?› She could probably sense the fear behind those words, but I didn’t care. There was always a way out.

‹I’m sorry, Isaac. My laptop couldn’t hold a single day of your life. According to this, six Kiyoko clones are stacked up in cold sleep in the New Millennium server room, doing nothing but hosting your backups. When you add in all the software and security protocols, it takes two human brains to maintain a single mind. Though I’m sure I could improve that ratio with the right compression algorithms, especially if we prioritized—›

‹Talulah.›

Sorrow broke through our connection and washed over me. ‹I can’t get you out, and we can’t let Kiyoko keep a copy of your mind.›

‹You’re planning to kill me.› She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. ‹There has to be another way. What about Kiyoko’s physical body? If you woke me up in her body, I could cause all sorts of mischief here. Imagine four Isaacs running around. We’d have this mess sorted in a half-hour, tops.›

‹It’s not a simple matter of severing the control protocols. Your mind is striped across two physical brains, similar to a RAID 6 server array, with error-checking bits worked into—›

‹And in English, that means?›

‹Your backup minds are like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle in two separate boxes. I can’t put you back together. The one time I attempted it, your mind died instantly. I managed to make it look like a software failure, but it was a close thing.›

‹Oh. That . . . that sucks.›

‹I know.›

I wanted to stall. To joke and argue and squeeze every second of life out of this mess. From what Talulah was telling me, I’d existed for only two days, and I’d spent most of that time in stasis.

But was this existence worth it? Trapped in the emptiness with nothing but Talulah’s voice and the random misfiring of my simulated visual neurons for company? I was alone. No matter how long I dragged things out, I’d never see Lena again. I’d never touch another human being. I’d never get the chance to punch Russell Potts in his damn face. I’d never get a rematch with Kiyoko to show her what happened to people who shot my friends. I’d never do magic.