"I'm not him." The protest is weaker, but it is still there. "None of us are. Some people have come to some kind of peace with it, but it doesn't make any sense. Not physically, not spiritually, not philosophically. We aren't the same. We aren't."

"They can return us to the way we were, just a snap of the fingers. It doesn't help those souls they're trying to rescue. But we remain separate. Or there wouldn't have been anything of you left. There wouldn't be anything of Gentiana left now."

Mariko is knowingly throwing every single thing that he's been worried about back into his face. "I can't prove it." And then it hits him. His gaze had been dropping again, but now it settles into a full-on glare right back, challenging. "You're getting those memories, the same world as I am."

"Then you know about the concept of a stand alone complex."