The man with the kind face played the video clip again. Claire watched. She had to. The screen was behind her eyelids, like when you imagine things, only brighter. Topher and the woman were sitting at his computer looking at a brain scan. The light hurt Claire's eyes. The man said "He's in love with you." And Claire heard the gun shot. Cause and effect. If X then Y. If the words are said, the gunshot must follow. If X then Y. If X then Y. The images were gone. The man was detaching the wires from her scull. A sigh of relief escaped her lips and she hated herself for the moment of relaxation. She knew better than to relax. Actives are weakest when they sleep. Keep tense, remember the important things, but she couldn't remember. She knew that Alpha had sliced up her face, but she couldn't picture him. She'd said something important. "I'm not your friend in here Echo." And the Caroline persona had accepted it at face value. She'd been frustrated, but she couldn't remember what Claire meant. Claire is me, she reminded herself, what I meant. Couldn't remember what I meant. She remembered crawling into bed with Topher. Her heart racing as she waited for him to wake up. She remembered waking him slowly. She remembered how long it took him to realize who was lying next to him. His shock. The way he scrambled away from her and turned white. She remembered the way the light filtered into the room, and the way he'd hung his pants on the ceiling. She remembered how he'd called her human. It felt so real that it was probably fake. She dropped the memory in disgust. Insanity was the repeated performance of a task with the expectation of change. If X then Y. If X then Y. If X then Z. But Doctor Saunders wasn't insane. She knew X lead to Y. She knew that "He's in love with you" meant gun shot. She could sometimes tell the difference between truth and non-truth. Saunders1.3 would fall in love with the kind faced man. That was true. The man had said so and he hadn't been lying. Topher Brink would fall in love with the woman. Gun shot. True. She knew that she'd trusted the kind-faced man before. She'd known his name. She'd opened the door when he'd knocked even though he'd been with the Dollhouse. Dollhouse. It was an important place, maybe the name was code for something. She couldn't remember. The man would be back. He'd tip back the chair and she'd be someone new. The new Claire would fight on the side of the man with the face. She'd be just like the old Claire. She'd be a doctor with computer skills and a bland office, but she'd be whole. Three months of vacation, healing time, returned in tact to do her job. Her job? Then she remembered. "He's in love with you" Gun shot. She understood. Truth was past and present and sometimes future and Claire knew what she was being designed to do. She couldn't move. She was bound to the chair until it was time. It was too late. She wasn't human anymore. Just a tool. Aim and fire, nothing more. Just the voice that spoke the words. "He's in love with you" gun shot. She held her breath and counted. 100, 200, her brain was loosing oxygen. Maybe she could stall the system, but her lips burst apart and she was gasping and there were tears rolling down her face. All the paths in the maze had been cut off except for one. That was what truth was. Truth is what you get when you run out of choices. She was beyond excuses. Inexcusable. But she had to be what she was for another seven hours until the chair tipped back and made her a murderer. She lay still. Letting her thoughts go by the way a waterfall treats droplets once the mill's burned down. She tried to picture the active's faces. She remembered Victor's scars. Lying in the dark, she twisted her mouth, making her own scars stretch. "I know who I am." And it was true.
"Is that really what you think happened?" She asked.
Topher sat up in the chair and shook his head. "I don't understand."
"I don't think you're supposed to. If you understood, there'd be no use for me. I think, therefor I am. If you understand everything I think, then I'm just a tool. Again. You never thought about what it would be like, did you? Living breathing Doctor Saunders. I was just an idea to you. Just a means to an end but I'm not yours anymore, Topher. Not for a long time now." She sighed, her eyes lost focus, then snapped back to him with new precision. "I looped the security feeds and I left the chair on. Ah, you'll be needing these." She unrolled the analog cables and attached them to his temples.
"Doctor Saunders?"
"Goodbye." She said, and kissed him on the forehead. She walked away slowly, gun in hand. If he craned his neck, he could see the corpse, still slumped over the work bench. There were tears on his face, and he was mouthing the words over and over. "I'm so sorry." The chair was tipping back. Lights were stirring behind his eyes. He was being launched forward and falling backward at the same time. A stream of images, sounds, emotions and he was still thinking how fitting it was for him to die living out the fantasy of his fantasy, the tool of his tool. He held the thought until the last of the images had faded. Then he let it go.