Crystal Heat

day 33

He couldn’t have installed the drugs and the delivery system in Backhoe any time after he assigned her to me. He had to have set this up before then. What did he say? Ah. ‘There’s a pattern that… shall we say, limits your usefulness.’ And this. ‘It just means I have to be careful.’ This is how he’s being careful. He fixed it so he could control me if he had to. I wonder if he has this kind of thing installed for all his agents?

Memories. They were some use after all, not just an additional torment, replaying for her what she’d been.

In the distraction of her struggle, she’d forgotten she was a mindrider. The image’s that appeared and reappeared in her efforts reminded her of this.

The only minds available on this ship were a few spiders, some anonymous insets, and a roach or two; manipulating them gave her a small triumph and drove back the grays that had been closing in on her as she exhausted every possibility she’d thought of to escape this trap.

At first she could only feel them, but the more she searched them out and the more she settled into one after the other, sending her tiny mounts scurrying here and there, the more access she had to that part of her mind. She was pleased with herself and delighted at this new joke on the certainties of superior techs.