Some time after the truth comes out, she looks up every personality she's ever had except her own. She reads their names, personas, parameters, clients, commits them all to memory. She stands in front of her mirror and tries to piece together a whole person from what the files explain. Jennifer grew up here, so she must have had this accent. Alex studied this type of dance, so she must have stood like this. The notes are detailed; there's not much Claire has to extrapolate.
She learns a few things. That Crystal's southern drawl falls off her tongue easier than Gwendolyn's lilting vowels. That the way she imagines Ellen smiled pulls uncomfortably at her scars. That she'd been a doctor named Elizabeth once before she'd been a doctor named Claire. That nine of her imprints shared the same favorite book. That fully two-thirds of her engagements had been romantic.
None of it means anything to her. All she really gains is a sick, nauseated feeling that permeates her whole body as she reads on.
She finishes her thirty-sixth engagement notice (Desiree, a girl from the wrong side of the tracks who falls in love with the client after he helps her out of a hard spot) and suddenly realizes that she's spent a long time in the Dollhouse, longer than her memory tells her. How close Whiskey had been to avoiding Alpha's rampage altogether; her contract was almost up at the time.
Claire frowns. How close she had come to never existing. Her grip tightens on the file, and she throws it roughly to floor with the others.
She knows who she is. She does.