But Ondo's reply came back far more quickly than she'd expected. The Radiant Dragon was nearby, well within the cage around the system.
Her spoke to her brain-to-brain, a strange edge to his familiar voice. “Hello, Selene.”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
His face appeared in her mind's eye, the familiar backdrop of the Dragon's cartography deck behind him. But his words were utterly unexpected.
“You really don't understand even now, do you? Did you honestly believe that I rescued you, rebuilt you out of the goodness of my heart?”
Her brain was a whirl as she tried to make sense of his words. “Ondo, I don't…”
The grin on his face was cruel – an expression she had never seen him use in all their time together. “I used you, Selene. I needed you to be strong, resourceful, someone who could face the dangers I could not. And that's exactly what you've been. My useful tool. How amusing it was to hear you talking about Kane being the puppet of Godel, how he was changed by what they did to him, and it didn't occur to you that you were describing yourself perfectly.”
“Ondo, this makes no sense.”
“It makes perfect sense. You are not the person who left the surface of Maes Far, I made sure of that. You are mine, Selene. You are Concordance's. Did you really think all your miraculous escapes were down to your own abilities, your own good fortune?”
“What are you talking about? What the hell is going on?”
“You've made such impressive discoveries. You've been so angry, so filled with desire for revenge, but all along you've been playing the part that I – we – assigned to you. All your traumas and struggles really have been amusing to watch. And, finally, you have led us to Ansider and given us the answer to the secrets we need to unlock.”
“Ondo, no.”
“Yes, Selene. There is no escape. The Periarch's ship is incapable of escaping the net around this system and your control of the Dragon has been removed. Bring the object you retrieved from the surface. Or don't, it makes little difference. There is nowhere you can run to, nowhere left for you to hide. I…”
The comms stream from the Dragon cut off. Ondo's voice came to her again, but this time it was the version she carried in her own skull.
“Selene, do not listen to him. That is not Ondo talking. That is not me.”
He was literally there in her head. He had been all along. How could she fight an enemy that was part of her? He'd rebuilt her. As she'd once feared, he'd twined his command pathways through her brain and body, operating with such skill and artistry. She could never separate the two. She was whole, yes, but she was not her own. He'd been under Concordance control all along, altered long ago to act as – what – a convenient scapegoat that they could use to unite the galaxy in fear? Yes, that. And, also, as a magnet for dissidents and trouble-makers. People like her and Hessia. They had sleepwalked into the trap.
“Fuck off, Ondo. I'm going to expel your engrams from my head now.”
Beyond their inner conversation, she was aware of Hessia studying her with an alarmed expression on her face. Outside, the glowing edge of Ansider's limb curved away as they crossed the atmospheric boundary and entered low orbit.
“Think, Selene,” said her inner Ondo. “If they have control over you, why are you still you? Why are you still fighting, looking for a way out?”
“Why should I listen to anything you say?”
“You shouldn't, but what I'm saying is obviously true. If I'd had control of you all along, I wouldn't have needed any deception. You'd have accepted your role gratefully, like any Void Walker.”
She was breathing fast, adrenaline shaking through her. But … he was right. So far as she could tell, she was still herself. Why would he point all that out to her if he'd betrayed her? She filled Hessia and Eb in on her conversation with the Dragon.
“I don't believe it,” said Hessia. “He's annoying and eccentric, but he's no traitor. I'd know, right?”
“Can you be sure? His true nature might have been very well hidden.”
“I've known him for a long time. If he's been under secret Concordance control all this time, then they're playing a very subtle game. They had no way of knowing you'd attempt to escape Maes Far. All the things you've found, you've found for yourself. I know there is no duplicity in him. I've picked through your emotional states very carefully, believe me, and I'd swear that the Ondo you thought you knew is the real Ondo.”
“Godel's message,” said Selene. “That has to be it. When they hit Ondo, knocked him out. They did something to him that we missed. The migraines he's had ever since are because something in his head has been fighting him.”
Hessia thought about that. “It's possible they triggered a bug they'd put there when he was one of them as a young man. If it was dormant, I wouldn't have picked anything up.”
“Then he's compromised,” said Selene. “It doesn't matter how they did it, we can't trust him or the Dragon, and that means you shouldn't trust me.”
Her inner Ondo's voice was calm in her mind, talking to all of them across their shared comms connection. “If they've triggered something, seized control of the real Ondo's conscious actions, that doesn't mean we stop and give up. We can still find a way out of this. We can still think.”
She breathed deeply, slowly, as she'd learned to do long ago when terror threatened to overwhelm her. Okay. Whatever the truth of it, they needed to deal with Concordance first. She modelled the movements of starships and gravitational bodies around her. The Radiant Dragon, the Falling Fire, the Cathedral ships and the Void Walker attack craft: they were
