The clone was a ghost in a palace of noise.
It stood just inside the entrance of The Gilded Cage, a silent, unmoving shadow in a river of beautiful, laughing people.
Miles, sitting in a sticky diner booth miles away, felt a wave of sensory data so intense it almost made him drop his fork.
The music was a deep, physical thing.
A bass line that vibrated not in his ears, but in his bones.
The air was thick.
It smelled of a hundred different perfumes, of spilled champagne, of money.
So much money.
Clara was saying something about the Yalta Conference.
He tried to focus on her voice, a calm, steady anchor in the storm of the nightclub.
"So, Roosevelt's primary goal was to secure Soviet support against Japan," she was saying, her finger tracing a line on a map in her textbook.
Miles nodded, pretending to listen.
"Right," he said. "Support."
"Very supportive of him."
Through the clone's eyes, he was taking in the architecture.
