Page 187

His breath tore in and out. “She hated ceremonial music.” The projection flickered.

“More.”

“She cheated at orbit stones.”

The false Avarra’s face lost detail.

“She called my first command uniform a funeral curtain.”

The image collapsed as Dreven dropped to one knee. The ruins treated resistance as a calibration problem and increased the pulse.

Kesta’s own projection appeared next: Iven bleeding on the archive floor, asking why she had run without him. She knew it was false. Her body reacted anyway. The band tightened. Guilt became command. Dreven looked at the projection, then at Kesta. “Tell me something it does not know.” Her throat closed.

“Iven sang badly,” she said. “Old colony songs. He changed every third word when he forgot the lyrics.”

The image distorted.

“He kept candy in the sterile glove cabinet.”

It vanished. Nara watched them dismantle the conditioning with private memory rather than assigned contact. “The network cannot model meaning it did not record.”

“Then give everyone a real memory,” Kesta said. “Out loud. Something not in an imperial file.”

The chamber filled with voices. Jessa described Fen painting a hunting knife pink. Sera remembered her first patient biting her because anesthesia had failed. Keth confessed that Dreven once fell from a ceremonial platform during a victory speech. Even in pain, Dreven managed a murderous look. The nomads added names, jokes, meals, weather, and small humiliations. Human detail disrupted imperial categories. For several seconds the pulse weakened. Then the system changed tactics and drove current directly into the implants.

The first pulse took Dreven’s legs. The second went deeper, past muscle and balance, reaching for the part of him that decided what his body would do next.

He fell against the black floor with one hand braced beneath him and the other locked around his own throat. Silver light spread from the implant scar at his neck to the old restraint marks across his chest. His tail struck the stone hard enough to crack skin along its edge. Kesta dropped beside him. Nara caught the back of her tunic and dragged her away.

“Do not touch him during activation.”

“He cannot breathe.”

“He can. The network is making him believe he cannot until proximity produces the assigned response.”

Dreven’s eyes found Kesta, and for one instant she saw him clearly inside the pain. Then his pupils widened again and his body surged toward her under a command that did not belong to him.

Keth and Olan intercepted him. Dreven threw both aside without conscious force, stopping only when his own hand closed around a stone projection instead of Kesta’s arm.

“Leave,” he forced out.

Kesta’s band burned as symbols filled the screen beneath its surface: ANCHOR REQUIRED. COMMAND STRAIN UNSTABLE. PAIR CONTACT RECOMMENDED. The system was not asking for help; it was identifying her as the mechanism by which Dreven could be controlled.

“Recommended,” Kesta said through clenched teeth. “Not required.”

Nara heard her. “The system lies.”

“Then help me prove it.”

The nomads were collapsing around the chamber. One convulsed. Another began striking his own skull against the wall. Sera moved between them with sedatives while Jessa pulled the children into the passage. Dreven roared. The sound triggered every Kharovian instinct in the room. Keth froze. Olan lowered himself involuntarily. Even the nomads’ weapons dipped. Command strain. The empire had not only implanted Dreven. It had built obedience around his voice.

Dreven understood at the same moment. He bit through his own lower lip rather than give the system the movement it wanted, swallowing the next sound as blood ran over his chin.

“Do not obey me,” he said.

Keth shook once, breaking the response. “That is a difficult order.”

“Choose anyway.”