Sandro stepped through the door into his apartment, shutting it quickly behind him. He paused, surveying the library-like rows of shelves filled with books. Other shelves supported boxes of tools and equipment and clothing: all the research material he'd acquired over years in order to impersonate the people he'd met. A few boxes littered the floor, waiting to be sorted and shelved. The clutter took up nearly all the big living room's floor space, leaving no place to put a couch or chair, and made navigating his way to the other rooms a challenge. How ironic, he thought. I stand in my own home, my most private of places, and it's so full of other people's lives there isn't any room for me.

Halfway down the center aisle, a book slid half off the shelf as if pushed from behind the bookcase. But Sandro knew that the only thing behind it was another bookcase. He moved cautiously down the row until he could pull the book out. He took it into his hands and studied the cover: it was a beginner's guide to Web page design.

"You said you loved me," the book said in a young woman's voice.

He gasped and dropped it to the floor.

On the other side of the aisle, another book slid out. In a man's voice it said, "We sat across from each other on the metro for three stations. We spoke maybe a hundred words each. I gave you directions to a restaurant."

From a box behind him, a tennis racket spoke in a woman's voice. "We shared a table at my club for half an hour. You were half my age, but you were so charming, I thought you were trying to pick me up, and I was about ready to let you - until I noticed how your eyes kept straying to the man practicing returns from the machine. And you excused yourself as soon as he walked off the court. I would have sworn you were straight. I never felt so humiliated in my life."

"I'm sorry," Sandro murmured.

From another box, a book he hadn't got around to shelving riffled its pages, as if waving for his attention. He looked down at it: its cover showed a young ballerina in the middle of a performance. "We met on the roof of the hospital," it said in a young girl's voice. It took him a moment to realize it was speaking Russian. "I was so thrilled to hear a Moscow accent, and to be able to speak with someone. I tried to dance for you, but my leg hurt too much to put my whole weight on, and I was clumsy. And then you were called away."

"You didn't really jump," he whispered. "Did you?"

The book gave no answer.

"You're a lover of redheads, Sandro," said a woman's voice from the next aisle. "I saw that the moment we met on the Steps." She added regretfully, "I used that."

"You don't belong here," he said. "This isn't your place, these aren't your books. All your books disappeared with you." He walked to the end of the aisle and looked into the next. It was unoccupied.

"Alessandro," the woman's voice said from the next aisle, amused. "As if I never loaned you a book. Did you ever give any of them back?"

Sandro felt his face twist. "Why did you leave me?" When no answer came, he raised his voice. "I deserve an answer!"

"Darling man," she said softly, "making love to you was a moment of weakness, an awful miscalculation. From the beginning, I was training you to replace me when I left. I was done, burned out. I was tired to death of having to label my phones, and look at the name on each one as it rang so I would know who to be when I answered. I wanted a life of my own, a normal ordinary life, to be able to hold an opinion, cheer for a favorite team, make a book of recipes that I could cook over and over. I wanted someone to love me for who I was, and in so doing help me learn who I was."

"I loved you," he said, drifting through the stacks, following the sound of her voice. "I could have helped you discover yourself."

"You already knew who I was. La Machina. That was who you loved. If I had let you try to pull away the mask I hid behind, to find the real me, you would only have found another mask, and behind that another, because the masks weren't disguises, Sandro. They were me. La Machina was made of endless layers of deception, years and years of discarded disguises. What do you have when you've stripped the last layer from an onion? I had to start my new life as a new person, a stranger even to myself."

"A backwater matron, grubbing on her knees in the dirt of a vegetable garden. One you learned how to tend from a book." He remembered the dead plants in her apartment, the only thing that he had ever seen her fail at – and then he remembered another. Does she have cats now? Do they come to her and demand to be petted?

"Better a backwater matron than a living lie." Faintly, he heard a child's voice calling Mama. "Far better."

Sandro reached the last bookshelf. There was no one there, only another cluttered aisle. He suddenly realized that he could wander among these stacks forever, looking for her, conversing with her, and never find her.

"You're right," she said from behind him. "These are your memories. You could search through them forever and never find me, because you wouldn't recognize me if you were looking right at me."

He turned. Petrushka stood at the end of the aisle, regarding him with a cool amused look that had no place on her face. And the way she stood was unlike his cyborg's stance: poised, but with a sort of studied casualness, not filled with latent energy like his ballet dancer's. But the stance was familiar. "You're not Petra."

"Clearly not," the girl said in Rossana's voice. "I never had the courage to tell you I loved you." A sideways step took her out of sight. "You have trouble remembering what I look like anymore. That's one reason why you mix us up sometimes. Why you sometimes talk to her like you used to talk to me. Why sometimes you talk to her like you imagine you want to talk to me now."

Angry now, he lunged around the end of the bookshelf after her. "She's nothing like you. She'd do anything for me. She-"

He was no longer in his room. He wasn't even indoors. Bright sunshine blinded him momentarily, and when his sight returned, he saw he was standing on a flat expanse of tarred and stoned roof, broken by the boxy shapes of air-handling units. And suddenly he knew where he was.

Petra stood at the edge of the roof, facing him, the breeze stirring her hair. "Yes," she went on, still in Rossana's voice, "She would do anything for you. But she's not going to stay with you either, is she? A day from now, five years from now, she's going to leave you." She took a step back, one heel hanging over the edge. "She won't have a choice. Neither did I. She can't stop being what she is. I couldn't go on being what I was."

His throat closed. "Don't," he squeezed out.

She looked at him with pity in her eyes. "We all have so little time, and we make so little of it. Look at you, standing like a park statue with your arms half raised. Just two quick steps, and she would be in your arms. But you're so afraid of losing her that you can't even reach for her." The wind suddenly rose, and a gust pushed at her. Her eyes were still filled with pity as her shoulders swung backwards over the edge.

"Noo!"

He jerked upright, and his skull stuck something. "Sandro! Are you all right?" Petra's voice. A light came on beside the bed, dimly illuminating the rented bedroom. Petrushka stood over him, a hand pressed to her cheek just below her eye.

He came back into focus. Venezia. Undercover job, gathering intel from an Albanian smuggler. "I was dreaming."

"I know."

"Your face."

"I was bending over you. You came up like a rocket. Are you all right?"

A spot near the crown of his head was tender, and his neck was already starting to stiffen. "I'll live. We seem to be making a habit of this sort of thing." He glanced at the other twin bed opposite the night table, its covers thrown back, then back to his partner, wearing just a long tee and panties, her dark red hair a poofy mess. "I woke you up?"

"You were talking. You seemed so upset. I wasn't sure if I should wake you up."

He pictured her bent over him as he murmured in bed, their faces a hand's width apart. "What did I say?"

She looked uncomfortable. "I couldn't make out much of it. Only when you raised your voice. You were shouting at someone, I think."

Sandro threw back the covers and planted his feet on the floor, making her step back. "What did I say?" He repeated.

She looked over his shoulder. "You said, 'She's nothing like you. She'd do anything for me.' Is… Were you talking to that woman from Siena, the one with the little girl?" Your old partner, her eyes said.

"I don't know," he lied. "Are you okay?"

"Just a bruise, I think. Makeup will cover it. Otherwise Signore Guillermo may think you like to knock your women around."

"Hm. That might actually be useful. Don't cover it too well." At her look he said, "What?"

"You've never laid a hand on me. Not that way, anyway. I was sure you found the very idea offensive. But you don't mind this man thinking you beat me, because when you're with him you're another person. When you talk about your aliases, you sound like they're real people, people you know. Am I ever going to know who you really are?"

He found himself uncomfortably aware that they were both in their underwear, in a rented bedroom far from the Agency. Her bare leg was almost between his knees. Am I ever going to know who you really are? A girl I met on a roof once, now wearing the face and body of Duvalier's first crush? Or a robot animated by a dead girl's brain? Or something else? "You'll know when I do," he said breezily. He waved her back and stood. "I'm up for the day. Get dressed, and I'll take you to breakfast."

"Who should I dress as? Lina? Or me?"

He scoffed. "Just wash your face and do something with your hair. Don't bother with makeup, you're already too good-looking." At her blush he added, "To avoid notice, I mean."

"Right." She watched him walk past into the tiny bathroom and shut the door.

Sandro stared into the bathroom mirror. It was the same face he shaved every morning, but today it was looking back at him as if he was a stranger.

Who should I dress as? She had said. He scoffed. I tell myself she's a made thing, a machine. But it's all smoke. She has a stronger sense of identity than I do.

He plugged in his electric shaver and ran it over his face. Was it really all just programming – not just for her, but for him as well? Was there nothing of the little ballerina in his partner but a set of learned behaviors and personality traits? Was there nothing of him but an amalgam of the people he spoke to, emulated, impersonated? Wasn't there something more to a person, something that couldn't be reformatted or subsumed?

Was there really such a thing as a soul? Had Elizaveta's survived the conversion process? Had Rosanna reclaimed hers when she had deliberately shed the strictures of her own conversion to la Machina?

Was his in jeopardy? If so, how might he safeguard it without giving up his work?

Tapping at the door brought him out of his reverie. "Hey," Petra said through the panel. "Are you almost done in there? I need to use the bathroom too, you know."

He realized he was standing blankly staring at the mirror, shave finished, the shaver still buzzing in his upraised hand. "Just done." He shut it off and opened the door. Petrushka was already dressed in one of her favorite outfits, a trousers/crop top/jacket ensemble that wasn't part of any of the personas he had crafted for her. It fit her well, he thought, and looked quite flattering. "You look good in that."

"So you've told me," she said.

He paused. Was this how she dressed when she wasn't on the job, whether she was with him or not? Or was she wearing it for him? What did she really think about it? Or did she think about it at all? He thought about how the first generations lined up on their handlers like iron filings on a magnet. If she was wearing it for him, was it really by choice, or…

"Sandro," she said, "you're being strange again."

"Sorry." He moved sideways to clear the door without touching her.

The hotel restaurant was just opening; the single server on duty looked in seeming annoyance at the young couple waiting to be seated. "You two have no business being up so early," he said. As he led them to a table, his eyes flicked from Sandro to Petra, following two steps behind. "If I were you," he said to Sandro in a low voice, "I wouldn't be out of bed before noon."

Petrushka studied the menu. "I think I'll have focaccia with prosciutto and mozzarella, with couple of apricot croissants, fruit salad and a cioccolata calda." As usual when not on the job, she ordered a meal big enough for two, to satisfy the demands of cyborg metabolism.

Sandro stared at the menu, breath shortening. Instead of sampling the items in his imagination as he read them, he found himself comparing them to a second list generating in his head, a list of cover identities. Gennaro likes this. Isaia likes this. Jacopo hates these. Karsten doesn't eat breakfast at all…

He turned the menu around. "Pick something for me."

Petra's brow creased, but the corner of her mouth turned up. "What?"

"Come on, I've ordered for you often enough. Choose something for me this time. Something you think I'd like." He smiled. "You probably know what I want better than I do."