I learned more about information security in one day at Timothy’s place than I had in six months of college. Using his own R-Unit, as well as a number of other devices, some distinctly looking makeshift, Timothy and Margaret taught me a wide variety of what they called “survival skills”: things that I would need to know if I meant to go against Cyan Four Laboratories.

Crucially, I learned how to protect my devices from Cyan’s surveillance, how to use networks anonymously, and how to detect cameras, microphones and GPS trackers cloaked inside my house and clothes. From now on, Cyan would only know any information about me when I wanted them to.

I was also shown how to seep information off some of Cyan’s less protected databases, using backdoors and code exploits. This was the kind of thing Abby did, I realized. But even though Timothy and Margaret made their best effort to explain to me how all of it worked, I felt that it was just too much to learn in a day. As I left their house, by nightfall, we agreed to meet again two weeks later, in order to continue the lessons.

For the next few days, I worked on getting Cyan off my scent. They knew I was trying to get information on Rosa, because of my misstep with the new lens device, a while ago. In order to make them think I had given up on that task, I put my old lens set up for sale in a random website, just for show. Then I turned it off, took it to the subway station — one of the few places in town with absolutely no signal reception — locked myself inside a bathroom stall, and worked some magic in the set.

It was fortunate that I already knew most of the process from messing around with other devices in the past. I jailbroke the set, wiped the entire memory (apart from the BIOS, of course), flashed everything stock, manually altered the encryption keys and identification codes (which was technically illegal), then proceeded to corrupt several libraries which could possibly be used by Cyan to identify me, something that Timothy and Margaret had taught me how to do. When I turned them on again, they would be essentially a different device, one that Cyan had no knowledge of, and no means of finding out about.

So this is how I would use my two lens sets now: The new one, compromised, I would use in day-to-day life, because it would definitely be suspicious if all of a sudden I stopped using any devices Cyan knew about. Once I told Johnny the contact key to my other device, I could factory reset this lens set, and use it to talk to my friends and do college stuff, like usual.

As for the old set, which was now entirely Cyan-free, that’s the one I’d use whenever I needed to research sensitive stuff, as well as for talking to Johnny, Timothy and Margaret.

I left the subway station feeling modestly proud of myself. By night, when I had finished setting up both lens sets, I decided to call Helena.

She didn’t pick up. Minutes later, I got a text from her. She said she was in Congress, trying to score votes for law project 93/70, and that she would remain in the Capital until Wednesday, to make the most of the time she had left. We didn’t make any plans to meet, since Helena barely had the time to answer my texts. But she seemed optimistic about it all, or, at least, that’s what I gathered from the texts she wrote me. So I decided to surprise her. I’d have to skip a day of class, but it was worth it. If everything went right, this new law would mean Helena’s freedom from Cyan, and I just had to be there to celebrate it with her.

I took the bus to the Capital on Wednesday, with just a change of clothes and some books inside my backpack. I waited in front of the Chamber’s building for several hours, enough time to tear through a couple of pocket books. People would walk in and out at odd times, most of them very well-dressed. I was starting to convince myself that it was a really stupid idea to have come, when I finally spotted Helena walking down the steps in the entrance. There was a man by her side, with red hair like hers. I knew this must be her brother, Jayme, even though all I had ever seen of him was a picture, weeks ago.

I was about to call out to them, when I saw Helena’s brother wrap his arms around her. They didn’t seem happy. In fact, as I walked up to them, I realized that Helena was crying.

Shit.

Her brother saw me first, but evidently, he didn’t recognize me.

“Can I help you?” he asked, when I stopped by their side. Helena, who until then had her face buried in her brother’s suit, turned to look at me.

“Lucia?” she asked, her voice shaking. “What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to see you,” I explained.

Upon hearing that, Helena let go of her brother’s arms and dashed to embrace me. “Shhh…” I said, holding her tight. “It’ll be all right.”

“They rejected it,” she told me, between sobs. “The law. I’m still their property, Lucia.”

“I know,” I said, caressing the top of her head. I had realized as much from seeing how miserable she looked. “It will be all right. We’ll figure something out.”

“Like hell we will,” she said, still not letting go of our embrace. It broke my heart to hear her saying this stuff. “There’s nothing we can do. They’ll kill me, Lucia.”

“Don’t say that. I’m here now, you’re safe. Me and Jayme, we’ll keep you safe, won’t we, Jayme?”

I looked at him. He was evidently confused about that situation.

“Umm… I don’t think we met,” he told me.

“Sorry,” said Helena, letting go of our embrace, but still clinging to one of my arms. “Jayme, this is Lucia, she’s my girlfriend.”

“Pleased to meet you,” I told him, extending a hand to offer him a handshake.

His facial expression changed from doubt to realization. “Oh, I’ve heard of you,” he said, as he shook my hand. “Len said she had got together with a college student. She has been on cloud nine ever since you two started dating.”

I smiled. “Oh, has she?” I asked, turning to look at Helena’s face.

“Don’t tell her that,” she complained to her brother.

“What do you want to do now?” he asked her. “Are you going back to the hotel?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I think I need some time to… process what happened here.” She turned to look at me. “Are you hungry, Lucia? My brother probably knows some good restaurants around this area.”

I didn’t feel particularly hungry. Besides, if we did go to a restaurant, Helena would have to sit there just waiting for us to eat, and I didn’t want to do that to her, then. I wanted to do something for her, and not the other way around.

“I’m fine,” I declared.

“Then… is it okay if we go to the hotel, now? I feel like I need to rest.”

We all agreed, and took a car to a nearby hotel, where Helena was staying. I discovered that her brother did live in the Capital, most of the time, but the flat he currently lived in was property of the Law firm he worked for, and as per company policy, Helena and other outsiders weren’t allowed to sleep there.

We walked inside the hotel room, where Jayme immediately poured himself a shot of brandy.

“Lucky,” said Helena. “I wish I could drink. I’d love to forget about this awful day, even if just for a little while.”

“That’s not impossible,” I told her. “I mean… if it’s just simulating the effect of alcohol in your brain, someone could write code to do that.”

“Don’t go giving my sister any weird ideas, miss girlfriend,” Jayme told me.

“It’s probably better that I don’t drink, anyway,” said Helena. “I don’t wanna become dependent on the stuff.”

Helena walked to the bed, then let herself fall down on it, with opened arms, and stared at the ceiling.

“Someone wake me up!” she yelled at the universe. “My life’s a nightmare!”

I leaned against the wall and stared at her, sadly. Helena turned her head to look at me.

“Except for you, Lucia,” she told me, smiling slightly. “You’re a sweet dream.”

Jayme scoffed. “What?” he said, exasperated. “I’m offended.”

“You’re not a nightmare,” Helena argued. “But you’re not my dream, either. You understand, right? There are things Lucia can do for me that you can’t.”

Jayme crossed his arms and stared at Helena, amused. “Well, forgive me for not wanting to have sex with my sister,” he joked.

I felt my face heat up, and had to place a hand in front of my mouth, to hide both a smile and a blush.

“Thankfully,” said Helena, still sprawled on the bed, “the feeling is mutual, Jaymie. Aren’t you going to leave, by the way? I wanna start kissing my girlfriend, already.”

He laughed. “You’re lucky that I can’t stay, I’ve got a meeting right now.”

I watched Jayme rescue his suitcase from underneath a table nearby, then make his way to the door.

“Hey, Jay-jay…” said Helena, sitting up on the bed. Jayme stopped in the doorway, and turned around. “Thanks for being there for me, today,” she told him. “I mean it.”

Jayme smiled. “I’ll always be here for you, sis,” he said. He walked outside the room, but came back a few seconds later. “Also, stop calling me Jay-Jay.”

“What?!” Helena protested. “But it’s the perfect nickname!”

He rolled his eyes. “See you later, Len. You too, Len’s girlfriend.” I waved at him, and he left the room again, closing the door behind him this time.

Helena dropped back down onto the bed. “Oof,” she said, “this mattress isn’t half bad, you know? Although I guess it doesn’t really matter to me, though. My body won’t get sore even if I sleep on the floor. No muscle pain, no cramps… being a replica isn’t all bad, I guess.

I walked up to her, and sat on the edge of the bed.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“Tired,” said Helena. “I worked so hard for today, it’s really painful to know that it was all for nothing. I wish I could go to sleep for, like, a year. Sorry you had to see me like this, Luce…”

“Don’t be. I want to be with you in the bad moments too, you know.”

Helena smiled. “Why, aren’t you sweet?” She sat up, and hugged me. I held her tightly. Helena cried again. For the better part of an hour, none of us said anything. I was happy to just be there to support her. Eventually, though, we started exchanging a few words. I told Helena about college, my friends, and the books I’ve read. Helena asked me a lot of personal questions, about my hobbies and the things I liked. She insisted that I must be hungry, and bothered me about it until I conceded and ordered delivery from a nearby restaurant. We watched a movie together, and I showed her cute animal videos. Her mood seemed to improve a little since I had met up with her, hours before.

“You know…” she said, once we had both lain down on the bed to sleep, “…despite everything that’s happened, I don’t regret it one bit.”

“About what?” I asked.

“Myself,” Helena told me. “Replication, that is. I know I can’t answer for the person I was before, the organic Helena Norwood, because technically, I’m not her. But at the same time, I am her. I have her mind, and her memories. I think how she would have thought, had she been in my place. And in that respect, I don’t regret having gone through replication in the least…

“It’s like… I knew my life was going to end soon. And I knew that replication wasn’t really the cure I was looking for, even if that’s what Cyan and all these other companies were trying to convince me of. But still, I felt that if I could give myself the chance to live a while longer, it was worth it, even if the person I am now and the person I was back then were still two different, separate individuals.

“So, yeah, it was me who convinced my parents to pay for my replication. They were very against it all along. They’re really religious, the both of them, and you know how religious people abhor replicas. My brother was the only one to support my decision. Looking back at it, I should have guessed that things would turn out this way. But I had believed that even if I wasn’t organic anymore, my parents would still love me as their daughter. I was really naïve, I guess.

“But what I’m trying to say is… even after I was rejected, and even though I have to fight a battle every single day just to remain alive… I think it’s still worth it. Life is a wonderful thing. I’m glad that my past self has decided to do this.”

We were facing each other in the bed. I reached closer and gave Helena a kiss on the forehead, the started to caress her face.

“I’m glad you’re here too,” I told her. Helena giggled.

“It’s funny,” she said. “I used to hate you, years ago. Because you had a father who loved you, and cared for you, and I had just been rejected by my own parents. I was green with envy, even if I had never met you in person before… And right now? Right now I’m completely in love with you.”

Helena leaned in and gave me a kiss. A long, gentle, soft kiss. Our tongues touched, and my body was filled with bliss. I held her in an embrace, feeling her skin under my fingertips, and Helena responded by placing one hand on the nape of my neck, and the other on my tights.

“Hey,” she whispered.

I opened my eyes, to look at her. She was so beautiful. I don’t think I had truly understood how much I loved her until that moment.

“What is it?” I whispered back.

“I want you to touch me, tonight,” she told me.

Her words ignited a fire inside my chest. It spread slowly through my body, filling every centimeter of my skin. I nodded, and started kissing her again. I kissed her chin, her ear, and her neck. She held me tightly in an embrace, and moaned softly. I was about to take off her shirt, when Helena placed both her hands on top of mine, to stop me. I pulled back a bit, surprised.

“Er… Lucia?” she said, hesitantly. “Please... turn off the lights.”

I smiled. She giggled. And then we both laughed.

Of course! Helena didn’t want any of those nosy scientists from Cyan Four to see what we were about to do. I got up from the bed and flicked the light switch next to the door, leaving the room in complete darkness. We didn’t need light. In the dark, we would understand each other with our bodies, with our touches. The feelings that we would share that night would be ours alone.

I went back to the bed. Helena found me in the darkness, and we started kissing. Slowly, we took each other’s clothes off. I touched her, and she touched me. We loved each other for hours that night. And even though it was our first time together, each of us understood the other one perfectly. For the first time, ever since I met her, I felt that Helena and I were truly connected to each other.