Decoherence by Liana Brooks

“Excellent. Thank you, Officer.” He checked his watch. “We will adjourn for two hours, so everyone can find some food. The cafeteria upstairs is open, and there is a shopping plaza down the street, where several food trucks park. I recommend the tacos. We’ll resume at eleven thirty to watch an autopsy.”
    Ivy stepped aside as the college students hurried away.
    Runiker pulled the sheet over the dead woman’s face and stripped his gloves off. “You support clone rights? That can’t be good for career advancement in a small town. I’d think that, at least publicly, you’d support the Higgins Proposal. The whole ‘sentient but lesser’ idea that clones aren’t fully humans. Only publicly, of course. I’m sure very few clones who support Higgins’s movement actually believe they’re lesser.”
    â€œI’m a clone,” Ivy said with a shrug. “And a good cop. I can’t support Higgins without underperforming so the rest of my department looks good. If I do that, nothing will get done. One day, the police department will have to decide if they want to promote talent or bigotry.” By the time they got around to that, Ivy hoped to be gone. The Caye Law, and Agent Rose, meant she didn’t need to settle for a second-­rate police department in a small town. There were better things in store for her.
    She nodded to the dead woman. “Who’s handling this case?”
    â€œNo one right now. She’s from Tampa, and the CBI is still debating who has jurisdiction.”
    â€œShe really doesn’t have any ID?” Ivy asked before realizing that’s not what he’d said. “She has a clone marker?”
    â€œNo clone marker,” Runiker said. “But no ID, no matching fingerprints, no gene match on file. She’s a ghost.”
    â€œAn illegal immigrant?” In Florida? “How?” She understood ­people crossing from Brazil into Panama on the Commonwealth’s southern border, but Florida? The nearest foreign nation was across an ocean.
    Runiker shrugged. “Could be an illegal immigrant, could be a black-­market clone, could be a kid raised off the grid by antigovernment types. Not everyone wanted to join the Commonwealth. Especially not down here in the South.”
    â€œYeah.” She’d heard all about that in August, when her personal hero was put through a public trial. CBI Agent Rose was the only clone working for the Commonwealth Bureau of Investigation, and she was everything Ivy aspired to be. When Agent Rose’s district had been charged with corruption, the local news stations had accused her of everything from being in an incestuous relationship with her estranged father to plotting the murder of her senior agent. They’d buried the part of the story where the senior agent had plotted to undo the Commonwealth because he didn’t want women of color taking his job.
    They were good at burying things like that.
    With a gloved hand, she lifted the sheet and peeked at the woman again. “She looks like she was going to a party. Look at the clothes.” The girl had done her makeup, dressed up like she owned the world, and now here she was, unnamed, in the morgue.
    â€œI noticed,” Runiker said. “I’m not completely unsympathetic, you understand, but I can’t do anything until the CBI releases her into the morgue’s custody.”
    â€œWould you mind sending me a copy of the autopsy if you get to do it?”
    â€œWhy?”
    Ivy shrugged. “To read, I guess. I’m going to be a full officer in January. I might catch a case like this, help the CBI or something.” Like apply to the CBI and handle the case all on her own. “I figure I’ll do better if I have something to study.”
    â€œYou read autopsies?”
    She nodded.
    â€œThat’s morbid. Even for me. And I’m a medical examiner!” Runiker shook his