She almost cringed away from it, from its strange and assessing presence. There was something about its unseen gaze that felt too keen—too knowing. She was still at the doorway of the room, several feet away. “Who are you?” she asked, even though she half-thought it wouldn’t hear. She could not stop thinking about the other man’s dead body, hovering and floating somewhere in the room behind her. “What—why are you here? How do the androids know about you? Are you the—what they call ‘the sleeping god?’ Or is it whoever’s frozen over there? Or behind me?”

The HARE did not answer for a moment, instead only watching her. All at once Park couldn’t take it anymore; she felt a savage desire to hurl something, to tear it to pieces in her hands. In her teeth. She could not bear the uncertainty or the terror, the not knowing, any longer; she tore across the room and slammed the button that would light up the last cryogenic pod in the corner. If it was Wick—hell, if it was Keller—she had to know. She could not take the unanswered questions anymore.

Then she screamed. The sound was terrible, raw and bloody-sounding, as if someone had stabbed her. She felt stabbed; she could not make sense of what she was seeing. She nearly fell backwards from the pod; instead she bent at her knees, curled in on herself, as if she had suffered a terrible blow.

It was the stranger. The stranger was in the pod, the same stranger she had seen in the mess hall. There was the same white-blond hair, the tall, awkward gait—the pale and ghostly blue eyes. She’d seen him, she’d seen this very man—and yet he was dead. And by the looks of it, he had been dead and frozen for a very long time.

Park nearly retched. “No, no, no,” she heard someone moaning; she looked around to see who it was and met only the blank, indifferent gaze of the HARE. “It can’t be,” the other person said. Only belatedly Park realized that it was herself, her voice low and strained from the way she was clutching her own knees. Trying to steady herself. “No. I saw him. He was alive—he was up there—” Her brain scrambled for an answer. A twin? A clone? A holographic projection?

The HARE shifted from foot to mechanical foot. “Please forgive our appearance,” it said. “We’ve vacated that old body for this one. Don’t be concerned. It doesn’t hurt.”

Park stared at it. “What?” She blinked; her vision swayed. “What—who are you?”