The Thousand Emperors

explosion, or whatever the hell it was, brought the roof down on half the complex. It’d take months, maybe years to dig down far enough before we could even begin to verify your story. Come to think of it, it was probably sheer damn luck you didn’t wind up buried under half a million tons of rock along with everything else.’

‘So you think Antonov was never there, that I hallucinated the whole damn thing. Is that it?’

‘No, he was definitely there,’ Lethe replied. ‘We managed to get visual corroboration of that much, at least, from Black Lotus’s own security networks just prior to the raid. It looks like he died there as well. Whether I believe there was a transfer gate or not doesn’t really matter, not without hard evidence. With no CogNet data and no proof to the contrary, any committee you wind up in front of is going to dismiss every word that comes out of your mouth.’

Luc opened his mouth to protest, but then realized that if their roles had been reversed, he’d have said exactly the same damn thing. He’d have assumed the story about the transfer gate was a delusion, triggered by the dreadful trauma of having half his body burned away.

But it had been real. He could feel it, deep in his bones. The proof was in his skull, put there by Antonov. All he had to do was tell them, but even the thought of doing so filled his head with a furious ache.

‘I was pretty torn up, right?’ Luc managed to blurt. ‘When they pulled me out of that cryo unit, they must have scanned me pretty thoroughly, inside and out.’

Lethe frowned, then gestured at something behind him. A mechant drifted forward until it hovered just centimetres above the bed, its sensors directed at Luc.

The ache grew worse. It took all Luc’s strength just to force the next words out.

‘Listen to me,’ he gasped. ‘In my head. Antonov put—’

The pain escalated beyond all endurance. His body snapped rigid as something tore at the inside of his head. He was vaguely aware through the haze of agony that two human orderlies had come rushing into the room.

The mechant reached out and did something to his arm where it lay on top of the sheets. Everything began to recede, as if he were seeing the hospital room and its occupants from down the far end of a long, dark tunnel. The pain wasn’t any less, but he found he no longer cared about it.

He experienced a kind of fugue, and the next thing he knew lights were slipping by overhead as he was taken somewhere else. Then there were more mechants, and other, unfamiliar faces, and finally another room where he was given into the care of a machine that pressed in close all around him.

Whatever they’d pumped into his veins, it felt good.

He came to, and saw Eleanor standing by a window, staring out across the rooftops of Ulugh Beg. Night had fallen. There was no sign of Lethe.

‘What . . .’

She turned and blinked red-rimmed eyes at him, almost as if she’d forgotten he was there.

‘. . . the fuck?’ he finished, his voice a harsh croak.

She came over to him. ‘You had some kind of seizure. They’re still not sure what happened.’

He managed to push himself upright in the bed, and saw he was back in the same room as before. ‘Well, that’s less than reassuring.’

‘They ran a bunch of scans on you to see what triggered it, but they didn’t find anything.’

Luc stared at her in disbelief. ‘What kind of scans?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘You’d have to ask one of the mechants.’ She nodded towards one that hovered inconspicuously by the door.

Luc did. ‘Deep tissue and tomographic scans were carried out,’ it replied, drifting closer. ‘No lesions or other possible causes of a cerebral seizure were found.’

‘What about Merlino, the medician?’ Luc asked, turning back to Eleanor. ‘What exactly did he say?’

‘He said they can’t be sure of anything until they carry out further tests. He didn’t exactly say it, but from what I can tell they don’t have the faintest idea just what happened to you.’

‘But the scans must have found something,’ Luc demanded, turning his attention back to the mechant.

‘Nothing of note was found,’ the machine replied, its voice soft and neutral.

He turned back to Eleanor. ‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s not possible.’

She stared at him uncomprehendingly. ‘Luc . . . what else should there be?’

‘Antonov put something inside my skull,’ he replied, then halted in amazement. The last time he’d tried to say those same exact words, he had been subjected to more pain than he thought was possible. It didn’t make sense.

He told her everything he remembered about his encounter with Antonov, leaving nothing out this time, and she listened with one hand over her mouth. It felt like cauterizing a wound. Once he’d finished, she called the mechant back over and asked it more questions of her own.

In response, it displayed projections of the interior of his skull. Beyond some minor lesions that might have triggered a grand mal fit, nothing untoward or unexpected had been found.

Luc listened in grim silence, and began to wonder if perhaps he really had imagined the whole thing.

‘If you think I’m crazy,’ he said after she had sent the mechant away, ‘try and keep it to yourself, will