Proof of Life

Mara Venn found the child in a queue meant for dead people. The claim had cleared intake, kinship screening, and collateral review. All it needed was an attribution clerk to compare the source marks and release it for service. Mara had released eleven that morning, every one of them an ordinary continuation: a machinist reborn in Cebu, a woman in Leeds who had once owned a failing hotel in Nairobi, twins in Salta who had divided the unpaid balance of a pharmacist from Cork. The engine assigned confidence and Mara checked whether the exhibits matched what the engine said they were. If every box held something, she clicked attest. The twelfth claim concerned a girl named Ilya Senn, age six years and two months. Her school photograph showed a narrow brown face, two uneven braids, and the gray collar the municipal primary schools issued. She had been caught halfway through pressing her tongue against a loose tooth. Somebody had opened a folder of forty of these and chosen that one for a…