Bel brought her over, still in a chokehold, her capper pressed under the trooper’s chin for a fatal shot. “Let’s make this very simple,” Bel said. “Get him out of that or I shoot you.”
“I can’t,” the technician said.
“And I’m the Emperor,” Bel said. She adjusted the angle of the capper. Gairad was holding on to a crate, looking sick. “One more chance.”
Kiem’s head was flooding with anger like incendiary fumes. He took a breath of it, let it fill his head, let himself use it as fuel. “Wait, Bel,” he said, turning away from Jainan. He smiled at the technician. Bel raised her eyebrows. “I think this is the Tau field machine, isn’t it?” he said. He didn’t let himself shout. Instead, he forced his voice to an even, conversational tone that sounded like it was coming from someone else entirely. “We all thought it had been abandoned. You know, since the remnant it was built on was supposed to be surrendered to the Resolution. But I get it, you’re trained on it, and someone senior told you to use it. But this isn’t exactly a normal detention block, and you’ve taken off your insignia. Call me stupid, but I think you’re doing this unofficially, aren’t you? For my friend Major Saffer, by any chance?”
The technician didn’t reply. Bel’s eyes had narrowed as she looked at Kiem.
Kiem’s composure was snapping thread by thread like a fraying rope. Every minute Jainan was in the machine counted—Kiem didn’t know how long someone could be in a Tau field without brain damage—and he had no idea how to bring him out without persuading this technician. “You could come out of this so badly,” he said, forcing his tone to sound coaxing. “Court martial. Execution. The military had permission to interview Jainan, not commit a war crime, so they’ll have to come up with some story about an overenthusiastic junior soldier. Saffer will throw you to the wolves without a second thought.”
That got a reaction. The technician’s eyes widened, only slightly, but it was a crack. Kiem seized on it. “This is way above your pay grade,” he said. He couldn’t let her see his fear. “When the authorities come in, you don’t want Saffer to leave you holding the bag.” He jerked his head. Bel picked up the signal and slowly removed her capper.
After a long moment, the technician said, “The field has to run its course. I can’t turn it off. I programmed it for eight hours.”
Kiem didn’t even feel relief at her capitulation. He couldn’t feel anything past the furious terror that hovered at the edges of his vision like static. “How long’s he been in there?”
“Four.” The technician’s voice was still flat.
Control yourself. Jainan would be able to control himself. “Four hours. What were you trying to do to him?”
“Alter some memories,” the technician said, still reticent. “He’s got strong thought patterns. We haven’t made much headway.”
So that either meant Aren was trying to make Jainan forget the embezzlement and the murders—unlikely, since other people knew as well—or he was trying to frame him. Kiem stopped trying to think. “How do we stop it?”
In a sudden moment of animation, the technician looked at the console. “If we get what we need, we can sometimes go in and get them to cut the simulation short themselves. Bring them out early. They have to believe it’s a simulation, though—most people want to get caught up in their memories.”
“She could be lying,” Gairad said. Her voice was thick with pain, and she’d used the sleeve of her good hand to try and staunch the nosebleed. She looked on the verge of collapse.
Bel jerked her head at Gairad, though her eyes were still on Kiem. “Kid, you’re walking wounded. Go and sit down.” She jabbed a thumb meaningfully toward the docking hatch. Gairad’s eyes went wide, and she turned and disappeared into the dark.
Kiem couldn’t make himself care about anyone else. He forced himself to parse the technician’s words through the static of his fury. “You’re saying if we convince him it’s really all fake, he wakes up?”
“He rejects the brain pattern the field overlays,” the technician said. “I can try.”
“And how do you make sure you don’t get caught in it?” Bel said skeptically.
“I can shape it,” the technician said, with an edge of almost condescension. “They’re not my memories.”
Kiem’s gaze went to Jainan’s shivering, wide-eyed form on the bed. “No,” he said roughly.
The technician’s eyes narrowed. “You said—”
Kiem didn’t have to look at Bel to know she shared his visceral revulsion at letting the technician mess around in Jainan’s head any more than she already had. “You’re going to send me instead.”
He knew it was a bad idea. Invading Jainan’s privacy like that would probably be the end of anything between them. Kiem wasn’t even sure what they’d had between them, but there had been something that had made Jainan smile when Kiem came into the room, something Kiem had been trying desperately not to hold too hard, in case he broke it. He might be breaking it now. But the alternative was letting someone else—a stranger, someone who had already hurt him—into Jainan’s mind again. “You’re sending me in,” Kiem repeated. “And you’re going to do it now.”
The technician nodded, slowly. She pointed at the helmet that had rolled away in the struggle. “That will make you part of the simulation,” she said.
“Great!” Kiem said. He strode over to pick it up and smiled at the technician. For some reason, her face went even stonier. “Bel—”
“Already on it,” Bel said. She rested her hip on one of the crates and pointed her capper at the technician. “I’ll keep watch. If you take more than ten minutes, though, I’m pulling that helmet off your head and shooting someone.”
“Don’t do that,” Kiem said. “I won’t take ten minutes.” He put the helmet on.
CHAPTER 27
For a nauseating moment, Kiem could see two images overlapping each other. He blinked hard, suppressing the lurch in his stomach. His muscles ached in a strange way, as if he wasn’t fully using them. He stretched out his hand. It looked normal.
When he blinked again, the refinery warehouse had disappeared. In its place was a light, airy space with grand marble arches that he recognized: the lesser banqueting hall back at the palace, in the middle of some sort of formal dinner. He was sitting at a long table with people around him, and at first he looked around wildly, because that seemed impossible. Then he realized they must be hallucinations, laughing and talking like real people.
Now that he was looking properly, he could see the gaps in his surroundings. The arches and tables were clear enough, but the corners of the room were fuzzy and indistinct. When he looked at them straight on, he saw they were actually a gray, unformed fog, as if the projection didn’t reach that far, but as he kept watching, detail would start to creep in: a chair appeared, a patch of wall, a side table with ebony inlay. It made his brain itch. More unsettling still was the realization that some of the people farther down his table were also incomplete: they gave the impression of bright uniforms or court fashions from the corner of his eyes, but when he turned to look directly at them, they were only patches of color with a gray oval for a face. Color and features flowed across them as he watched like they were being brushed on. Kiem frowned as he placed the new faces—a friend from prime school, his tutor in university. This looked like a military dinner. The Tau field was putting these people where they had no reason to be.