Page 41 of Claimed By the Wraiths

I kept walking.

“Free will is inefficient,” Vain said. “You’ve seen what uncontrolled bonds do. Ressh at Epsilon. Thoryn.”

The accuracy of the names was deliberate.

A probe.

Ressh’s bond had nearly gotten him killed. Thoryn’s had been used against him for years. And caring about Serak gave Vain another lever if he ever learned where to put his hand.

Those were facts.

Vain’s answer to them was the obscenity.

I looked back through the viewport at Subject 31.

His traceries pulsed like a metronome.

Ressh’s never did the same thing twice.

“How many people are you holding here to produce fourteen successes?”

“The facility population is not a denominator.”

“Your manifests showed more than three thousand six months ago. Tal’s routing traffic showed continued intake, and you expanded holding after capacity.”

A pause.

Small.

Enough.

“Four thousand?” I asked.

“Approximately. But the majority are not active research subjects. Control populations, medical observation, support⁠—”

Four thousand.

More than the manifests.

I stopped listening to the categories.

Fourteen people already rewritten. Thousands more available to become fifteen.

Vain turned us back toward the lift.

I counted the return.

Thirty steps from the research viewport to the security door. Twenty more to the main corridor.

We passed Vain’s conference room. Thirty steps beyond it, before the lift bank, a circular room sat behind reinforced glass.

Antenna relays. Transmission arrays. Console banks dense enough that I recognized the architecture before I saw the guards.

Two at the door. Two inside.

A service access panel on the wall behind the room.

Primary communications.