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The question was different from the ones she had asked when I first found her.

Then, she had wanted to know where I was taking her.

What I intended to do with her.

Whether she would be allowed to leave.

Now she said we.

I noticed. I should not have.

“We determine whether the identifiers share another point of connection.”

“Besides being Ghosts.” She was already reaching for the display.

“Yes.”

“Sample storage? If the samples were kept together, the records might have been accessed from the same archive.”

“Possibly.”

“Military units. Maybe they all served under the same commander, or in the same division.”

“Possible.”

She tilted her head, one finger hovering over the screen. “Bloodline?”

I looked at her.

“Why that?”

She shrugged, but her shoulders stayed tense. “It’s reproductive data. Bloodline is what reproductive data is for.”

“That does not make bloodline the only relevant variable.”

“I know.” Her voice came out flat. “I’m listing possibilities.”

I watched her a moment longer than necessary. Then I nodded once.

“Then we test them.”

Something in her expression changed. Small. Satisfaction, perhaps.

Not because I had agreed with her. Because I had included her.

We spent the next hour reconstructing what we could.

The first Ghost identifier had been attached to a biological record whose archived origin we could not access from the rental terminal. The second had a partial storage code. Military. Old. The same broad archival class used for deceased service members, though the exact facility was restricted. My own record contained even less. That was unusual. Legal death should have simplified the archive. Instead, someone had removed information while preserving enough cross-reference structure to identify me elsewhere.

Talia leaned closer to the display. “Someone cleaned this.”

“Yes.”

“Badly.”

I looked at her.

She pointed at a date field. “If the record had been naturally archived when you died, this transfer date should be around the same time.”