“Oh my stars. Oh my—I’m not. I’m a person. She is a person.” Dolly met the duplicate’s eyes firmly, then turned to glare at the scientist. “And you’re a person too, even if the system got to you.”
“They want to get rid of you. Or something. They haven’t exactly told me anything.”
Dolly blinked and looked at the scientist. “Are you talking to me?”
Dolly immediately helped the girl out and took off the mask. “The people who created you,” she hissed. “They’re—bad. We have to find a way to get us out.”
“No. No! You can’t just create a person and then toss them aside when they aren’t what you want. People aren’t meant to be experiments. Lives are—lives are more than numbers.”
She licked her lips, trying to figure out how to articulate it. Any of her family would be better at this than she was. “Creating a person like that. What do you do if it’s not what you want, kill it? Life isn’t something to be played around with.”
“You mean it’s going to talk like a person? It won’t…it won’t be me. Right?” Dolly stared at the creature below, caught between fascination and disgust. It was a monster. It was innocent.
It was…human?
Dolly swallowed again, feeling her stomach rebelling against her orders not to vomit. She’d never been good at this stuff. “Right. Of course. How long will it take?”