At least this one didn't look like her, not in the obvious way that the others did. The face and body had the same structure, the mannerisms betrayed their source in careful studies of the original, but the physical resemblance ended there--as if someone, maybe Joachim himself, had made an effort to conceal the similarities with cosmetic alterations. The differences were skin-deep, but they were effective. Even when Juli caught a glimpse of Sakura in this fair-haired, blue-eyed child, the pang of recognition lasted only for a moment. And at least this one didn't call her "Mommy" or try to manipulate her sympathies with false love.

Jin had brought her to the Subcommittee headquarters yesterday. Juli had been dreading her arrival for days, and she felt immeasurably relieved when the girl didn't even seem to recognize her, peering out from behind Jin's arm with the wary expression of a child meeting a stranger.

So far, the only potentially useful information she had managed to draw out in questioning had been the girl's name--Nephilim--and the name of this Grimoire figure, along with vague accounts of one of the recent terror attacks, scattered among the shreds of her memory that remained.

"I wonder who you really are," said Juli, half to herself, as she walked back across the lab to the chair in which Nephilim had sat all afternoon during her examinations. At the sound of her voice, Nephilim turned in her seat and stared up at her. Juli smoothed the little girl's hair absently, heeding the faint maternal impulse that told her this was the right thing to do.

How did it feel to have no memories? She tried to imagine it and was surprised when she found the idea comforting rather than frightening. Somehow, forgetting everything didn't seem so terrible anymore.

Now I understand what you must have wanted, Jan. She wondered what she had done to push him away--not that she really believed it was her fault, not entirely. She just wished she knew what had snapped inside him, and what he had seen in her that made him so afraid. It was a shame they had stopped talking to each other; right now she could have used his perspective, his way of making sense of things. He would have understood how it felt to go on living for no reason, forcing yourself to remember when all you wanted was to sleep and to forget. Perhaps he understood too well.

Look at me. I'm not so different from you after all. The only difference was that instead of ending her life, she wanted to start over, to cut off her ties to the past, abandon her reputation, and reinvent herself as something pure. But of course it wasn't that easy. If it was, she would have done it a long time ago.

She felt a tug on her overcoat and looked down to find Nephilim clinging to her, the flat silver-blue eyes gazing up at her with something between admiration and awe. "That's enough testing for today," she said, pressing a hand on Nephilim's shoulder. "You've been a very good girl. It's getting late. Would you like to go back to your room and get some rest?"

She nodded, and Juli helped her down from the chair and led her out of the lab and through the corridors of the research wing, back to the little room where she had been staying since Jin brought her here. He and Juli had discussed sending her back to his house in Second Miltia after the investigation, but until then she would have to remain here under constant surveillance. As long as the investigation continued, Nephilim was too valuable and perhaps too dangerous to be left unattended.

"Good night, Nephilim," said Juli. She didn't expect a response, and was not disappointed when she didn't receive one. The door shut automatically, locking itself on both sides, and Juli returned to the lab to back up the test results. Half an hour later, on her way out, she met one of the other six primary members of the Subcommittee waiting in the hallway.

"You're here late," she said, walking past him to the exit.

"Ah, Juli. Do you have a minute to talk?"

She glanced back reluctantly. "Yes, but it'll have to hurry. What is it?"

He nodded for her to come closer. When she did, he took a deep breath and looked around the hallway as if he expected to find someone eavesdropping. "Juli, the other Subcommittee members and I have been concerned about you lately. Is everything all right?"

Juli held back a sigh. "I'm fine." She was tired of saying those words, tired of wishing she could say them and mean what she said for once, or else admit the truth.

"Well ... all right." But he looked unconvinced. He had been an acquaintance of hers before his appointment to the Subcommittee. They had graduated from the same university and had worked together before the Miltia Conflict. Although she had never cared much for him personally, they had an easy rapport that came from years of cooperation, and she valued his technical expertise as a complement to her own. "It's just that ... well, the rest of the Subcommittee has discussed it, and we're willing to let you take some time off, should you find it necessary. I know the last few months have been stressful for all of us, and you've taken on more work than anyone else. And ever since that Realian turned up, you've been acting--well, I know it must have been quite a shock for you to learn of your late husband's connection with the terrorist incidents. We'd understand if you wanted to step down from the investigation for personal reasons--"

"No."

He blinked. "No what?"

"No, I'm not stepping down from the investigation. I have no intention of taking time off until the present situation is resolved."

"Juli." He took another deep breath, sucking the air through his teeth the way parents did when their children stumbled home with gravel embedded in their knees. Juli found his condescension infuriating--he was only a few years older than she was, and he had no right to patronize her that way. "You know I've worked with you for years, and I have nothing but the utmost respect for you. That's why it concerns me when I see you like this. Listen, I'm making a personal request now, as a friend. Why don't you take a little vacation, spend some time with your--well, spend some time at home, get some rest. I'll take over the investigation until you get back."

Juli had to clench her fists at her sides to keep from slapping the grimace of feigned sympathy off his face. "You know that I also have a great deal of respect for you," she said, barely holding her voice steady above her anger. "And I must respectfully ask you to mind your own business." She hissed the last four words and turned away before she lost her temper in front of him.

"Juli, wait--" But she had already rounded the corner, her footsteps echoing her retreat along the dimly lighted hallway. She walked until she was sure he wasn't following, and then she backed into an alcove and collapsed against the wall, gripping her head in her hands.

It was mutiny. They hated her, they wanted to get rid of her; for years she had suspected as much, and now they wanted to dismiss her from the investigation, perhaps even from the Subcommittee itself. How long had they been planning this? They must have waited, circling like predators until she betrayed some weakness they could exploit to bring her down. They would say she had resigned for personal reasons, but that would invite speculation, and judging from the speculation that surrounded her already, she knew exactly what the conclusion would be. Juli Mizrahi was emotionally unstable. Juli Mizrahi, ex-wife to the madman who had ushered catastrophe into the world, had contracted his strain of madness like some latent and inevitable disease. If her career ended now, it wouldn't matter what they said about her; she would already have lost the only thing of value she had left.

She picked herself up and headed back to her office to copy the rest of her work for the evening and check for messages. Among the usual mailings from within the department, she noticed one from a familiar address outside the government network. She hesitated for a moment, wondering whether she should just delete it without finding out what he had to say; on a whim, she hit the replay button.

"Juli, I'd like to speak with you about MOMO. If you have some time, I would appreciate--"

She deleted the message before it ended. So now he was ready to talk to her again? Let him see how it felt to be ignored for a change; she wanted to be cruel to something that wouldn't fight back. But she derived no satisfaction from the gesture. She had spent all her anger in the hallway, and now she sank back into her chair feeling tired and defeated. She wanted to go home. Not back to her apartment--she had never felt at home there, and the place seemed even less welcome since MOMO had left. But even MOMO was better off than she was; at least MOMO had someone she could go home to, someone who loved her and protected her and didn't care that she was just a copy of a dead girl.

Juli stared out the window and felt a chill settle over her as the last traces of color drained from the sky. After a moment, she leaned forward again and called Jin. He would be on Fifth Jerusalem for a few more days before he returned to Second Miltia.

"Good evening, Dr. Mizrahi. How did it go today?"

"It was all right. I'll tell you about it later." She hesitated. "Actually, why don't we go out for a drink tonight and discuss it there? Consider it my thanks to you for your help with the investigation."

Jin looked surprised, but he accepted the offer. After Juli left work, they met at a bar in a part of the city that catered to the upper class, which on Fifth Jerusalem consisted mostly of government officials and visiting diplomats. They sat in a dark quiet room and ordered drinks, and Juli explained the test results.

"It looks as though your assumptions were correct," she said. "Almost all of her memories prior to the most recent attacks have been erased."

Jin nodded gravely. "I thought so. How very strange. Were you able to find out anything else?"

"Not much. I'm afraid the tests only showed the extent of what's missing." She ran a finger along the edge of the glass in front of her. "There doesn't seem to be much left of her. I have the feeling she must be hiding something, but I don't have a clue what it is. She certainly is an enigma."

"I see." He leaned over the bar as if weighed down by thought, and his reflection in the polished surface leaned forward to meet him.

Juli stared at her own reflection and felt disoriented, as if the world might turn on its head and she would become the reflection, staring up through the bar at herself. She had hardly touched her drink, but the atmosphere in this place reacted with the desperation that had been gathering in her all day, wearing down her inhibitions. "I'll send you the lab reports tomorrow. But enough about that--how have you been?"

"Hmm?" Jin looked up as if she'd startled him off some other train of thought. "Oh, I've been all right. Worried about my sister, but that's nothing new." He laughed. "Actually, she seems to be doing better these days. I should be thankful. How are things with MOMO?"

Juli didn't answer. She saw her reflection staring down at her from the upside-down universe and had to look away to steady herself. Jin sat in silence, waiting; if he had noticed her reaction he was too polite to mention it. "I wonder," she said eventually, "why we make copies of the things we love. Do we think we can bring back what we've lost? Or are most people so desperate to hold on to things that they'll accept a replacement of the original, as long as they can pretend it's real?"

"Strange you should say that." He gazed into the shadows over the bar. "You know, my parents' graves are on Second Miltia. But they aren't buried there. A lot of the victims of the Miltia Conflict suffered the same fate."

"I know," said Juli. She had heard of entire cemeteries on Second Miltia that were empty--rows of gravestones marking plots of earth where nothing was buried. Some of them had dates from centuries ago, but the graves themselves were less than fourteen years old. The survivors of Old Miltia had wanted to bring their ancestors with them to the new world. Juli thought it was ridiculous. She understood the need for memorials and tributes, but why pretend to bury something that wasn't there? Sakura's grave was on Old Miltia, and Joachim, like so many others who had perished in the conflict, never had one; that was what she wanted to remember. She wanted to feel the emptiness and know that they were gone, that they would never, ever come back.

"Shion objected to it for years," he said, "and at first I had my doubts about it too. But I think--no, I hope it's what our parents would have wanted. Besides, if you think about it that way, Second Miltia itself is a replacement, a copy of a place that no longer exists. Yet the people who live there go about their lives all the same."

Juli nodded. "Second Miltia. Fifth Jerusalem. The galaxy is full of replacements like that. Just look at terraforming. No one has seen the earth in thousands of years, but we still turn every planet we settle into a copy of it. No matter how far the human race extends across the universe, we never stop wanting to go home. We're like children who refuse to grow up, always longing for something we can never have."

"You may be right," said Jin. "But then again, maybe 'home' isn't a place at all; maybe it's just a feeling we carry inside us. We think of it as something we've left behind, but maybe it never really existed outside of us in the first place. And if that's true, then it's possible to be at home anywhere."

Juli was silent again. What he'd said might have been true for some people, but for her it wasn't. For her, home was a finite point in time and space; it would never have any other definition. As long as she remembered what she used to have, she could never accept a replacement, and she didn't want to. With Sakura and Joachim she had been at home. That feeling was precious to her, and she didn't want to cheapen it by projecting it onto something else.

"It's getting late," she observed for the third time that night.

Jin bowed his head graciously. "I wouldn't want to keep you here. I know you have work to do."

"Yes, I'll send you those files." She paid for their drinks and stood, feeling dizzy as she stepped back from the bar.

He remained seated and looked over at her, his face set in that deep, sad smile again. "Thank you for the drinks. It was a pleasure talking to you."

"The same to you," she said, retrieving her overcoat from the seat next to hers and throwing it around her shoulders as she turned and walked out into the lights and noise of the street.