The Thousand Emperors

‘Why?’

‘He was worried that what I told him might give an investigative committee reason to call my sanity into question, especially since I couldn’t prove much of what I said happened down there.’

She folded her arms. ‘Then I take it back. Start from the beginning, and tell me what really happened.’

He told her everything that had taken place after he had found his way to the lowest level of the Aeschere complex, leaving nothing out.

‘And when you encountered Antonov on the ship, he was still alive?’

Luc nodded. ‘He managed to take me by surprise and knocked me out. When I came to, he was in the process of putting some kind of mechant inside me.’ He shuddered at the memory. ‘It was tiny, like a metal worm. It crawled in through my nose and dug its way through my skull.’

She arched an eyebrow. ‘Delightful.’

‘So what happens after I finish telling you all this?’ asked Luc miserably. ‘Are you going to hand me over to the Sandoz for more questioning?’

‘Let’s just keep all this between the two of us for now.’ She paused, looking thoughtful. ‘What happened next?’

Luc remembered terrible pain. ‘As soon as he was done, Antonov put me back under. The next time I came to, he was dead. I did what I had to do in order to get out of the complex and save my own life.’

‘And then they brought you to Temur, where they found no trace of your instantiation lattice?’

Luc nodded.

Zelia regarded him speculatively, then made a gesture. In response, the floating images around them blurred and shifted, and were replaced by new ones, this time of Luc’s body in the hospital’s regeneration tank shortly after his return from Aeschere. He winced at the sight of his seared and ruined flesh.

She glanced back to him with an expression that almost bordered on sympathy. ‘They had to do a lot of work on you, didn’t they?’

‘When I had that first seizure, they ran scans on me to see if there were any abnormalities in my skull. But they found nothing. The medicians told me everything looked like it should.’

‘I’d agree with you that the worm-like mechant you described must be the means by which Antonov got the lattice inside your head. But if that’s the case, it doesn’t answer the question of why it showed up on my machines, but not those at the hospital . . .’

Her voice trailed off, and she leaned back against a table, drumming her fingers against its edge. ‘Instantiation lattices are just about the single most advanced form of technology in the whole of the Tian Di, apart from the transfer gates. Theoretically, a sophisticated enough lattice could fool certain analytical devices into thinking it wasn’t there. I can’t think of anything else that could possibly make sense. But it also begs the question – why would Antonov want to place such a sophisticated piece of technology inside your head?’

She looked at him as if he might be able to give her an answer.

‘If I could tell you the reason,’ he said, ‘I would.’

She nodded to the images floating around them. ‘Whatever Antonov had in mind for you, it wasn’t for your benefit. You’ve already had two serious seizures in a row, and I’d be an idiot not to think that lattice of yours is the reason why. Is there anything else you should be telling me?’

Luc told her about his strange dream-encounter with Antonov.

‘But you’re saying it wasn’t a dream?’ asked Zelia, once he’d finished.

‘I don’t know what it was, but he told me that if I survived, I had to open a specific record in Archives and make a small alteration to it.’

De Almeida nodded, her face neutral. ‘Go on.’

Luc shrugged. ‘He told me I had to add in a line about calling in a favour, then save and close the file.’

‘And did you?’

Luc nodded. ‘I wanted to see if it was real. If it didn’t exist, then that would have proved the whole damn thing really was just some terrible nightmare.’

‘What was the file’s reference?’

‘Thorne, 51 Alpha, Code Yellow.’

She breathed out through her nose, her mouth making a chewing motion. ‘Tell me what you found in the file.’

‘It described an incident on Thorne more than a century ago – some kind of illegal biotech research that brought about a number of deaths.’ He glanced at her. ‘You were the Director in charge of Thorne at the time.’

‘You’ve been looking into me?’

‘Not as such, but your name was attached to the file.’

‘I remember that investigation all too well,’ she said. ‘Tell me, Mr Gabion, have you discussed the details of this file or how you altered it with anyone else?’