Your body so soft and light in my arms, your back so smooth-

“No, Virgil. Hit her on the back, do not press.”

She coughed after the first hit, the fluid splashing into the curve of the tank where a small fan drew it out of the air. Despite the machine’s effort, bits of fluid floated around the medical bay. She continued to cough.

“She’s breathing.” He put the mask on between coughs. “Can’t we have some gravity here?”

“Not until we are certain of her bone strength and heart capacity. She will require extensive tests to-”

The clone screamed. Her voice wailed inhumanly, unlike even the cry of a baby. It was a shriek of bestial madness.

Feral Death Angel, fear all things new. So many years in warm floating and now air instead of water, light instead of dark.

“All vital signs positive,” the computer stated flatly over the howl. “Administering ten ccs of DuoTranq to depress excessive heart activity and hyperventilation.”

Virgil looked at the syringe moving toward her arm. Duodrugs! So now I serve the Master Snoop. Death Angel you brought this on yourself when you tried to play Snoop against Nightsheet for Wizard’s sake. So many games you’ve been playing but I’m still in control. Sleep, Death Angel, and awaken renewed, reglued.

“You may remove the monitoring contacts-I have remotes on her. Then detach the primary and secondary umbilical tubes and units, initiate the cleansing cycle in the unit, and remove her to the recovery room. Make certain no direct light gets in her eyes.”

“She hasn’t opened them yet.”

“I can see that.” The computer was beginning to sound impatient to Virgil, almost annoyed.

Virgil carefully moved Delia’s clone into the recovery room and sealed the hatch, then returned to the bay to prepare the boxdoc.

“Is she ready?” he asked.

“You mean, is the original Delia Trine ready for RNA leeching?”

Virgil almost said something, then swallowed the comment. “Yes. That’s what I mean.” He leaned over the stainless steel container to observe Delia’s torn body.

I can’t have you like this, Death Angel. And you don’t want this. I know, I’ve cracked your code. You don’t want this. You wanted to die but picked the wrong way. I’ll throw the rebirth in for you, this time, gratis. Died satisfied, didn’t you? No, you didn’t. Death Angel.

A wheel whirred into action. The computer told him that process C1204 stood by for his order.

“Begin process See-One-Two-Oh-Four,” he said.

The disc moved from its housing above her head, all life support tubing and electrodes withdrew from her body. It quivered several times, then stopped moving. A red globule from the hole in her chest grew, shaking like jelly.

Virgil watched the spinning disc approach the hairless skull. The abrader hummed even through the thick, insulated walls of the boxdoc. It edged closer, eroding the first few layers of epidermis on her scalp. It backed off for moment, then moved on its path toward the other end of the tank.

The first spatter of brain and blood against the glasteel startled him. He looked away.

Death Angel this magic box makes you disappear and you’ll reappear in the other room the same as you were, please, be the same Delia so cold and thinking with that brain lying in pieces all through the box.

He forced a look inside. A pale, thin liquid filled the tank, holding the grindings in suspension. The disc reached the top of her eyes. The upper half of their orbits missing, their lids ripped away, the eyes shook and twisted madly about. Then the disc bit into them.

Virgil kicked away from the machine and covered his face. His shoulders thudded against the other side of the room, but he did not notice.

Death Angel, it will work. Trust me. I haven’t killed you. You’re alive. First your body, then your soul. I’ll take your mind and soul and everything that’s you and carry it in a bag to the next room and you’ll be you again. I promise.

The computer tried chimes to get his attention, then a buzzer. He floated unhearing near the hatch to the recovery room, his back to the boxdoc, watching the door.

“Virgil, the memory RNA and picotechs have been completely leeched, recovered, and are ready for injection into the clone. Immediate assistance is necessary.”

Virgil watched the teardrops hanging before his eyes, watched them pulsate dreamily to the actions of air motion and drift slowly toward the air grills, until the computer added, “The RNA degenerates quickly at room temperature.”

His feet rotated, kicked against the bulkhead and twisted around to ease him to a stop beside the boxdoc. The inside had been washed out. The light on the waste tank at the foot of the machine glowed yellow, indicating matter awaiting disposal. On the side of the machine, a three liter sack floated, filled with a gray liquid and connected to the suction pump. Virgil disconnected it, grasped the intricate zero-gee transfusion tubing next to it, and entered the recovery room.

She floats so calmly, her long black hair stiff and dry in frozen sweeps and curves. She breathes lightly, her chest rising and falling. A look so like a child I almost regret the adult I hold in the sack. Like a bottled djinn Delia, djinn and spirits to dribble inside you, an instant loss of innocence.

He fastened the needle collar to her neck and aligned the crosshairs of the device over her interior carotid artery. He activated the pressurizer in the bag, adjusted the valves in the tube, and let the device do the rest. The needle slowly jabbed into the white flesh of her throat and stopped. Some blood pumped into the tubing, past a photocell. With gentle pressure, the blood and fluid began trickling into her bloodstream.

“How long?”

“Less than fifteen minutes,” replied the computer. “Then, the period of integration will take an indeterminate amount of time.”

“Don’t you have medical files? What’s the picotech integration period for cases like this?” Fast, Delia, make it fast.

“I know of no experiment in transferring RNA to a clone. Few people could both think twelve to twenty years in advance and afford the equipment for growing and maintaining a full clone. On brainwipes, the integration period is just under a week. Since we are dealing with a clone, the time factor may be lower. It may, on the other hand, take longer. That depends on whether it is easier for the picotechs to patch the RNA onto established neural paths or to create new neural paths on a blank slate.”

“What you mean is, you don’t know.”

“Correct.”

“Should’ve said so.” Virgil left the recovery room, saying, “I’ll be back in a minute. Keep an eye on her.” The computer said nothing, but its other vidcams in the bay switched on and focused in. Virgil returned with a package of bulk protein and two bags of glucose solution and a zero-gee pump. Connecting the tube of the first bag to his wrist port, he wedged into one padded corner of the room and started nibbling at one of the protein bars. Except for an occasional trip to the head, he hovered watchfully above Delia’s clone.

The bag emptied, transfusing Delia’s persona into her clone. Virgil pulled over to disconnect it. The needle collar sealed the hole in her artery with microlasers.

No longer coral skinned, she turns to pale white. She’s been born.

He smiled. Born again.

He washed her decades-long hair and tenderly combed it out while it dried.

Hair so long that it could wrap ten times around your throat. Would you dare such a tempting of Nightsheet? How much do you remember? Me, I hope.

He trimmed her soft, corkscrewed nails, then used a microfile to shape them.

He washed her taut, muscled flesh and rubbed her with emollients.