"Almost two years," he corrects, utterly unhelpful. Utterly unhelpful is a way to cope, when Ty is here, warming his hands over a fire like they're back in a section of subway instead of a bunker under the mountains.

When he's saying shit like the boundaries of the human soul in a room where people's clones come out of incubation.

Kira draws deep on the cigarette and settles his gaze on the tubes, empty for now, bubbles of air traveling up toward the ceiling. At any moment they could increase, a flurry of displaced water, and they could be staring at a new face through the glass. Or an old one.

"You make it sound almost noble," which is the kind of optimistic shrug Kira expects from him. "Most of the time I just think we're rats in a maze, and the people who put us here are starved for other entertainment."