Regenesis

Jordan…silenced.

Their installation set up at Planys, with Giraud’s consent.

And their own man, Hicks, or Abban, with easy, constant access to Giraud’s office.

But there was a problem with that line of reasoning.

Hicks himself had been a victim.

Somebody put a Rafael type in Hicks’s office–and Hicks–or somebody–put an identical into my security organization.

So whose were they to start with?

Hicks didn’t have the wherewithal–didn’t have the knowledge to create them. He had the authority to order it done. But how did he get it past Giraud?

And how old is that set? When was the first one setted?

2373. Fifty‑one years ago.

Fifty‑one years ago. On the first Ari’s staff. An azi named Regis. And who could have done that?

How to excavate that much history? Who’d been in a position to do that in those days?

Jordan? Not old enough. Giraud himself…when he first started Operating. He could have.She’d been down this track before, but mostly Not old enoughkept coming round and round and round, troubling any conclusion aiming at the people she’d liketo blame. Chi Prang, head of alpha azi–holding that position a long, long time…that was the best candidate to have created someone to infiltrate the first Ari’s staff.

But why? Whose? Chi Prang had never done a thing on record but do her job.

Shoot off a letter to Chi Prang and just ask; did you infiltrate the first Ari’s staff, and Hicks’ staff, and now mine? It just didn’t make sense. And it kept coming down to…

One who had been alive, and in office a hell of a long time. One who played his own side of the board, consistently, and generally not too quietly.

In between the outbursts, you tended to forget.

Ya

Not necessarily a bad set of motives. But worth questioning.

Maybe Hicks had somehow figured out there was a double agent in his office–one he daren’t touch. But he could bestow the same gift elsewhere. As Giraud had been doing. Spying on the station. Spying on the military.

Two games had been going simultaneously. The military moving in on Planys, and getting a hold on Hicks; and Hicks knowing his own Director, Giraud, was spying on him, but Hicks moving very carefully to get at manuals in that office, so Giraud hadn’t known.

Hell. There was one contrary possibility in that scenario.

“Sera.” Catlin came in. Florian was right there with the coffee–three coffees. Florian knew her.

“Sit down,” she said. “Wait. I’m thinking.”

She hit the keyboard again. Pulled up Hicks’s age as 102. Not that old. But old enoughfifty years ago. He’d taken his alpha certs when he’d acquired his assistant, who’d been from Giraud’s office–

–AK‑36, Kyle, alpha, for God’s sake…military alpha.

She stared at the history on the screen.

Could she be so blind? Contracted first at eighteen to the military, military intelligence, no information available, reverted to Reseune, assigned to ReseuneSec after restructuring. The law said–decommissioned alphas had to come home to Reseune. This one had come to the most natural home for his abilities. Straight from the War, year of the Treaty of Pell being 2353, to Reseune, with the decommissioning of his unit in 2358.

Put into labs at Reseune for retraining. The routine was supposed to require the axe code, partial wipe, re‑Contracting. She looked for that specific date, that specific session.

Didn’t turn up until 2362.

God.

Whohadn’t given the code early on? Why not?

Somebody wanting to debrief Kyle AK‑36, and learn what he’d been into, and what he’d done for the military? Somebody who thought they’d just ask questions and mine him for all kinds of information–somebody who was an expert interrogator–and who might have reason to suspect the military?

Somebody who wouldn’t leave traces and records in the system? Base One could do that. Up to a certain limit, Base Two or Three could do it.

The first Ari could do that. So could Ya

AK‑36 himself had specialized in security. And he was alpha. He was one of those the military had used to analyze azi behaviors, to actually serve as Supervisors, before Reseune had pitched a fit about the practice and demanded that mentally damaged azi be taken out of action and returned to Reseune, no matter the inconvenience to the military In 2350 Ari had gotten that measure through Council and snatched back azi who were routinely being mentally and physically patched together and sent back into combat. She’d had a famous row with Admiral Azov. But she’d won, which had outraged the military and set the stage for years of uneasy relations between Science and Defense…so long as Azov was in office.

And Kyle AK‑36 had been with the military for a number of years after the Treaty of Pell. Served in a classified function from which there were no records accessible. Then in 2358, by law, all remaining alpha and beta azi had come back to Reseune. Reseune, namely Giraud, must have tried to unravel him for four more years after that, learning things, maybe, maybe just trying to understand what his history really was. It was worth looking for those sessions, of which there was no readily available record. That period had ended in 2362.

After the axe‑code that ended his Contract to the military, Kyle AK‑36 had been with Giraud, a skilled psych operator, skilled interrogator, trusted aide until–around 2404, when Ari died, Giraud had passed the ReseuneSec office to Adam Hicks…and passed Kyle along with it, as the one, maybe, to keep the office on an even keel under a much weaker administrator…and who could keep on reporting to Giraud.

And who hadordered production on the Rafael types from the outset, in those years between 2358 and 2404? Search failed. But one of them had ended up in Ari’s household. And another in Hicks’s staff.

Who’d settedthe other B‑28’s? No signature. That could mean Ari herself. It could mean anybody down to Giraud…or somebody working for him. Once AK‑36 had finally had the axe code and become, allegedly, a Reseune azi, he’d been Giraud’s specialist assistant, between 2362 and 2404. The axe code, designed to revoke a Contract–could be a wide‑ranging wipe, but wasn’t, if the azi was well setted. Ideally it just reset the Contract to None and erased specific areas of knowledge and belief, an organized amnesia. You wanted an azi to know things he could later completely forget: you linked them to the axe code. But the military theoretically couldn’t do that on his level–because they theoretically didn’t have military Supervisors at his level.