User:Taln Fan/Summary:The Original
This page contains a chapter by chapter summary of The Original. We hope this summary will make it easier to find specific areas of the book, as well as providing a quick plot refresher for anyone who doesn't want to take the time to reread the entire book.
Chapter 1
- Characters
- Summary
Holly wakes up in a hospital bed, disoriented and confused. A doctor asks her questions, wanting to know the last thing Holly remembers. Holly asks where her husband, Jonathan, is, but the doctor doesn’t answer any of Holly’s questions, which frustrates Holly. The doctor asks more questions about Holly’s past, and then signals to one of the men in the room. The man pulls a knife out and moves to attack Holly. She responds quickly, stopping his attack and wrapping her IV line around the man’s neck. She released, him, aghast and wondering how she’s gotten those skills. The doctor tells her that she is a provisional replica, a clone of her original self but with special skills edited into her. The third man in the room, Skyler, hands Holly a pamphlet about living as a provisional replica, then informs her that she has murdered her husband.
Chapter 2
- Characters
- Summary
Holly sits on the edge of the bed, holding a gun in her hand. The gun feels disturbingly confrtomble in her hand, due to the muscle memory edited into her. Holly is assigned to kill her original, because she killed her husband and went off grid. Her gun is set to only harm her original, and Holly is given four days to hunt her original down. If she fails, she will die, and if she succeeds, she can replace her original and returned to normal. Skyler shows Holly a virtual replication of the murder scene, which took place in their apartment. Skyler doesn’t include the body in the simulated room, but there are signs of a struggle. Skyler plays a recorded report of the murder, and the report lays out the details of the murder. Jonathan was killed with a knife, and his head was mutilated, spiraling lines carved into it. Angry but with little other choice, Holly sets out to find and kill her original.
Chapter 3
- Characters
- Summary
Outside the hospital, Holly is taken aback at the blank white surroundings. Without her personal theming, everything seemed strange and different. She walks past some slums, and encounters an old woman who asks if she’s a checkout. Holly struggles to understand what happened with Jonathan, and can’t imagine herself ever killing him, much less them getting into a fight. Holly comes to the conclusion that maybe her original was framed. She decides that she needs to find and talk to her original, and find out what happened,
Chapter 4
- Characters
- Summary
Holly goes to the Riverside Market, and is again shocked at how different the market is without her theming on. She walks to the citrus stand where she first met Jonathan and where they often hang out. She suddenly realizes that there might be dangerous people out to get her if her original was framed, and that she had just come to the most obvious spot people would look for her. She surreptitiously looks around her, and spots a sniper in a third story window. The woman fires her energy rifle at Holly, and she is knocked unconscious.
Chapter 5
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- Summary
Holly wakes up, but feigns unconsciousness. She is dumped onto a table in a restaurant, and she listens to four people talking about what to do with her. Holly, using her edited skills, uses their voices to discern where everyone is in the room. She moves slightly, and the team sees the movement is alerted. Holly leaps into an attack, attacking one of her opponents and taking back her gun. She shoots him, but her gun can’t harm him. Holly runs into the kitchen, using a set of knives and a cutting board there to fight her attackers. She is familiar with the restaurant because it belongs to a friend of Jonathans, and she opens a manhole and escapes into the sewer.