“That she’s Quell?” I sighed and scooped up a handful of sand. Watched it trickle away through my fingers and off the sides of my palm. “I believe she believes she is.”

Virginia Vidaura made an impatient gesture. “I’ve met wireheads that believe they’re Konrad Harlan. That isn’t what I asked you.”

“I know what you asked me, Virginia.”

“Then deal with the fucking question,” she said without heat. “Didn’t I teach you anything in the Corps?”

“Is she Quell?” Trace moisture from the swim had left tiny lines of sand still clinging to my palms. I brushed my hands together brusquely. “How can she be, right? Quell’s dead. Vaporised. Whatever your pals back at the house might like to wish for in their political wet dreams.”

She looked over her shoulder, as if she thought they might hear us. Alight have woken and come stretching and yawning down to the beach after us, rested and ready to take violent offence at my lack of respect.

“I can remember a time you might have wished for it too, Tak. A time you might have wanted her back. What happened to you?”

“Sanction IV happened to me.”

“Ah, yes. Sanction IV. Revolution called for a bit more commitment than you’d expected, did it?”

“You weren’t there.”

A small quiet opened up behind the words. She looked away. Brasil’s little band were all nominally Quellists—or neoQuellists at least—but Virginia Vidaura was the only one among them with Envoy conditioning.

She’d had the capacity for willful self-deception gouged out of her in a way that would permit no easy emotional attachment to legend or dogma. She’d have, I reasoned, an opinion worth listening to. She’d have perspective.

I waited. Down the beach, wavecrash kept up a slow, expectant back beat.

“I’m sorry,” she said finally.

“Skip it. We all get our dreams stamped on from time to time, right? And if it didn’t hurt, what kind of second-rate dreams would they be?”

Her mouth quirked. “Still quoting her though, I see.”

“Paraphrasing. Look, Virginia, you correct me if I’m wrong, but there’s no record of any backup up of Nadia Makita ever made. Right?”

“There’s no record of any backup of Takeshi Kovacs either. Seems to be one out there though.”

“Yeah, don’t remind me. But that’s the fucking Harlan family, and you can see a rationale for why they’d do it. You can see the value.”

She looked sidelong at me. “Well, it’s good to see your time on Sanction IV didn’t damage your ego.”