It can't be true. There's been some kind of mistake. All this shit on Chorus, it's scrambled everything. Who knows what Charon was planning really? Misinformation is a powerful weapon and...

He flexes his hand, staring down at it. It moves; he can see the shift of muscles and tendons beneath his skin. He can feel the racing beat of his heart, like a panicked bug inside his chest. So it can't be true.

Except that the results of the brain scan are in the file in his lap. The wires running through his brain, the chips in his head. And all of Hargrove's research beneath that. He hasn't read it all. Just enough to know that it makes him feel sick, knowing what they'd done to him. No, that's not true is it? What they'd done to Agent Washington, the original, not the broken shadow that he apparently is, because Agent Washing died alongside Alpha and he's just...

He's not real.