I.

The rain in Los Angeles doesn't wash things clean. It just makes the dirt slicker. I sat in my office on Sunset Boulevard, watching the neon sign from the diner across the street flicker through the window like a dying heartbeat. The bottle of rye on my desk was half empty. The case file on my desk was half full. The client who hired me was somewhere out there in the rain, and she hadn't given me a name.

The envelope had arrived by mail. No return address. Inside were photographs—dozens of them—of a building called Lance Biotechnologies, and a note in handwriting that looked like it had been written by someone who didn't want to be recognized: "See the truth. Before it sees you."

I should have thrown it away. I'd learned that much in fifteen years on the force and five years as a private eye. When someone sends you photographs and a warning, it usually means you're already in over your head. But one of the photos caught me— a woman's face, pale and beautiful, and for a second I saw Ellen's face. My wife. Dead three years from that cursed genetic disease that the doctors couldn't name until it was too late.

I picked up my coat and my gun.

II.

Lance Biotechnologies had been a giant in the pharmaceutical business until it collapsed six months ago. Bankruptcy, the papers said. Fraud, some claimed. The building on Wilshire Boulevard had been sealed by the authorities, all records destroyed. Clean as a whistle.

Too clean.

I found the former employee in a bar near Venice Beach. She called herself Lily. Twenty-something, beautiful in a way that made me uncomfortable—too perfect, like someone had designed her rather than born her. She sat across from me at a corner table and didn't touch her drink.

"Dr. Lance was a genius," she said before I even asked. "But genius and sanity don't always travel together."

"What did he do, Lily?"

"He made people."

I stared at her. She didn't blink.

"Not like that," she said quickly. "He worked on something called the life formula. Cell reprogramming, telomere extension—stuff that was supposed to be impossible in his time. He was trying to stop aging. To stop death."

"Did he succeed?"

Lily's eyes went distant. "He succeeded in ways you can't imagine. And failed in ways you can't survive." She leaned forward. "You need to stop asking questions, Mr. Morrison. Some doors, once opened, can't be closed."

I went back to my apartment that night and found it turned upside down. Drawers pulled open, books thrown on the floor, my briefcase rifled through. Nobody had taken anything. They'd been looking for something. Or making sure I hadn't found something.

On my desk, written on a card in black ink: STOP.

I poured another drink and smiled for the first time in three years. Someone was scared. That meant I was getting close.

III.

The submarine base under Santa Monica Beach had been abandoned since the war. I found the entrance behind a seafood restaurant that smelled of garlic and old grease. The stairs went down into darkness, and my flashlight cut a weak cone through air that hadn't been moved in years.

The laboratory was below.

I'll never forget what I saw. Fifty glass cylinders arranged in rows, each one filled with a yellowish fluid, and inside each one— a person. Some were adults, floating with their eyes closed. Some were children. Some were just embryos, tiny and curled like fists.

Dr. Lance wasn't dead. He'd been dead ten years. The man I'd seen in photographs, the man who'd shaken hands with presidents and funded hospitals—he was the seventh copy. The original had expired, and the formula had kept going, creating replication after replication, each one thinking they were the real Victor Lance.

And then I saw the report on Lance's desk. My name was on it. Morrison, Edgar—Batch Seven. Blood type A positive. DNA match to Lance: 99.7 percent.

I'm not a man. I'm a product.

The door opened behind me. I turned slowly. Lily stood in the doorway, holding a automatic pistol. Her face was calm. Her hands didn't shake.

"I'm sorry, Jack," she said. "I'm Batch Eight. And Lance doesn't like toys that ask too many questions."

The shot came from the shadows behind her. Lily jerked and fell. A man stepped into the light—Detective Mike Kovac, LAPD, Lance's friend, Lance's cleaner.

"Lance先生 doesn't like disobedient toys," Kovac said, and raised the gun again.

I fell against the wall and watched water stain the ceiling. I wanted to laugh. I was a copy, a man manufactured to be a private eye, now being disposed of by the original. My last thought was: at least this time, I know the truth. And in Los Angeles, the truth is more lethal than any bullet.

IV.

The rain was still falling when they found me. Or maybe I was already dead and the rain was just falling for everybody else. I don't know. I don't think about it much anymore.

But if you're reading this, if you somehow found your way to this submarine base and you're standing in front of those glass cylinders, let me tell you something: the formula doesn't grant immortality. It grants repetition. Every Lance, every Morrison, every copy that floats in that yellow fluid—they're not alive. They're echoes.

And echoes don't last forever.