Pressing her lips into a line, Karen slides a look back to the samples in question, a shadow pushing in at the edge of her thoughts at the implications of what Kira's saying.

"Do you mean that..." she begins, but it's reflexive more than needing an answer — They both know what he means. "Clones," she says aloud instead. The word should sound ridiculous, should feel flimsy and easily-dismissable, but it doesn't. It's stolid. It sits there like a third person in the room.

This isn't the first time the notion has occurred to Karen at all, although it had taken Mark's notes to suggest it. Even then, even from such a supposedly great scientific mind, it had seemed to be scribbled down more out of thoroughness than because it was any great theory. It was part of a list of possibilities, and never further expanded on. She hadn't even thought about it again until just now.

But it fits. And Karen really doesn't know if she'd capable of processing something like that in any way that's helpful.

"Fuck," she whispers, and then flips the page in her notebook, beginning to jot down everything she can think of that points that way, beginning with Kira's list.