Now

Andy's car won't open on the driver's side—in fact, it's duct-taped closed. I'll have to crawl in through the passenger side.

I open the door and a god-awful stench washes out. Ugh. No wonder we took my car to the Thai restaurant. There's fast-food trash all over the place—on the passenger seat, shoved onto the dashboard, covering the floor. How can someone so wealthy and intelligent be such a slob?

As I crawl in trying not to touch anything, I accidentally kick a Chicken McNuggets container. It falls out of the car, onto the parking garage floor...and something pale rolls out. I can't help but notice it's not shaped like a Chicken McNugget.

I backtrack and duck out of the car. The smell of oil and asphalt rises as I lean over the object.

Oh my God. A finger, pad-side up. Despite my recent damper modifications, revulsion courses through me.

Cringing, I grab a brown paper bag from the floor of the car and use it to prod the finger, revealing the ink I know so well.

Josh's arrow tattoo.

Fuck.Yes, I needed definitive proof that it was Andy. But now that I have it in the form of this sick trophy, grief is shredding me, a reminder that even though the volume of my physical pain is low, my emotional pain is more intense than ever, as if the fog of physical pain is lifting off a landscape, revealing just how great the range of my loss is, just how jagged the cliffs of Andy's betrayal.

I roll the finger back into the box and return it to Andy's car.

I'm barely aware of the drive to campus. I'm completely in my head, thinking of all the bullshit Andy fed me. Acting like he cared after Deborah's attack when all along he built an even greater victimhood within me. Pretending to be a friend while he played god. Of everyone in my life, Andy has objectified me the most deeply, and the most cruelly.

I park in the garage nearest to Wekstein Memorial. Campus is dark and mostly empty, with only a few clumps of students walking here and there. The night air is chilly, the moon just appearing through a few wispy clouds. Andy's building rises against the dark sky, grand and forbidding, a temple of hard angles, heaviness and judgment. I pass Laura's statue. "I'm sorry," I whisper as I walk by. It's strange to think of the commonality we share in Josh.

If Andy hadn't murdered my husband, would Josh have eventually ruined my life as thoroughly as he ruined Laura's? How far would the wreckage have gone?

I'll never know. Andy made sure of it. Andy took away our chance at redemption and gave misery the last word.

I take the steps two at a time. Above the doors, a banner shouts WELCOME TO THE 10th ANNUAL NORTH AMERICAN ROBOTICS CONFERENCE!

I stop under the banner to dial 9-1-1.

"I have an anonymous tip," I tell the woman on the other end. "Andy Wekstein's car is parked in the North Garage on IU's campus, level D. Inside the car, there's a Chicken McNuggets box containing Josh LaSala's severed ring finger. Andy murdered him, not the Synth everyone's after." She starts to ask a question, but I hang up.

I punch the code into the secure door, hoping it still works; the door clicks open. Inside, the hall is as white and bright as ever, but instead of the black-and-white pictures lining the concrete wall, there's a new display, no doubt put up especially for the conference. It's me. A dozen me's, standing upright in plexiglass boxes spaced evenly down the hall leading toward Andy's lab. As still and silent as guards, in different stages of design.

The first box holds a titanium woman who looks like an unrealized sketch. A constellation of computer chips encrusts the large board at her chest, like a green, glittering heart. A big card on the wall next to her holds a lot of printed information I don't care to read, but the bolded title jumps out. JULIA–Prototype 1–The Dream Takes Off!

I move forward. The second Julia is mostly a skeletal structure, also in metal, but with a soft center of organs in brightly colored rubbery material. The uterus is tomato red, cross-sectioned to show the model of a pink baby, surrounded by various tubes in royal blue.

The prototypes evolve. They gain more organs, skin, eyes, a more defined face, and finally, hair. As I track my evolution, I have to wonder—what would I have been made for if Eden hadn't voiced her crazy idea? Was there ever an option of being made for myself? But who would sink millions into making a person who wouldn't return some sort of profit?

I lay my palm on the plexiglass surrounding the final Julia.

She looks exactly like me, and since we're the same height, we stand eye to eye. She's in a white sports bra and brief-style underwear—I suppose she looked too much like a real woman to make full nudity acceptable for display. But somehow, it's the dignifying presence of clothing, however sparse, that hits me so hard. She felt enough like a person to someone, even in this iteration, that they had to cover her.

But not enough like a person to be kept awake.

The card reads FINAL JULIA PROTOTYPE–Ethical Algorithm and Organo-Synthetic Systems Testing.

I look into her eyes, which are open, though they see nothing. How did they test the algorithm? Was this prototype conscious? How long? Did she have to endure traumatic testing situations to make sure she defended the correct human in violent scenarios, or was it all run through a computer? I'd almost prefer if she looked more like a crash test dummy. As it is, I can't help but put myself in her shoes. At some point, someone turned her off. Andy? Eden? Some lowly intern? This version of Julia couldn't fight that. Did she want to?

I could stay here all night, facing what I might have been, or what might have been me, and running through the track record of pain Andy has inflicted not only on me but possibly—likely—on these prototypes. But at some point, I have to move away from these Julias and choose myself, because no one else has, and no one else will.

I finally face the door to Andy's lab. Lay my hand on the lever handle and push it open, into what could either be my end or my second beginning.

The lights are off inside, save a glowing area at the far end where Andy's back is outlined in the light of his screen and a small desk lamp. He's wearing headphones, so he hasn't noticed my presence yet.

As I step inside, I feel the vastness of the lab rising around me, the darkness cut through with the glimmer of parts and scraps on the long metal table. And the glint of Lars behind his glass, winking at me like the reflection of a knife.

I told myself once upon a time that reality was formed by choice. Naive again, Julia. Choices aren't pure. They can be manipulated, bent like light through water, and if choices are based on lies, all they build is a house of cards. No—reality is static, a core nucleus, the truth about who you are in some vital convergence of atoms and essence, of energy and intent. Reality is the inalterable who that lies under the skin.

When the door closes behind me, Andy swivels around and lowers his headphones. "Who's there?" He doesn't sound scared. But he will in a second.