Chapter 12: Both

I stood in the doorway and looked at my own face.

It was strange in a way I hadn't expected.

Lumen had given her my crooked eyetooth, the freckle on my chin, even the burn scar across my thumb.

They had gotten my hands exactly right.

"She wakes when the door opens," Margot said behind me. "I never turned that off."

The unit's head turned.

Her brown eyes found Margot, and her mouth moved into a small, warm, stupid smile that I recognized from my own mirror.

"Welcome home, Margot," she said in my voice.

My voice was higher than I thought.

"Don't," Margot said, very quietly. "Not in front of her."

"Sit," I said to the unit.

She was already sitting.

I think it came out of my mouth because I couldn't think of what else to say.

The unit tilted her head.

"Yes, Wynn," she said, as if she were answering herself.

I turned around and walked down the hall.

Margot caught my wrist.

"There's more," she said.

She led me to the walk-in closet at the end of the bedroom and slid back a panel.

In the dark, on a bed of white foam, lay a woman in a grey slip.

Her eyes were closed and her black bob fell across her cheek.

"That one is yours," Margot said. "The courier brought your crate here Monday night, as I paid him to."

"I lifted your unit out and laid it in here."

"Then I climbed into the empty crate, and Tuesday he carried me down to your loft."

"My own unit came in a different crate, three months ago. I opened that one alone."

I looked down at Margot Ketteridge, asleep in the foam.

The real machine, the one I'd paid for.

She had never been switched on.

"I'm still holding two hundred thousand dollars of your property in my closet," Margot said.

I started to laugh.

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