Regenesis

“Too risky,” Jordan had said then. “I want this man to live to talk.”

“So do the rest of us,” Ari had said, as gently, as reasonably as she could, even when she wanted to jerk Jordan sideways. “Honestly, Jordan.”

And she said it before Justin, drawing a deep breath to argue, could say anything.

“Well, let’s look at it,” Jordan had said, then, in the same reasonable way, and with a dark glance at Justin, who kept his mouth shut. “How fast can Library cough up a tape, if we can ID it?”

They’d kept from each other’s throats today. They got Hicks calm, and instructed, “We’re going at this in a way that will protect him from stress,” she’d said to Hicks at the outset, “and we’re not going to lose him. We have an idea what the problem is. But to make our fix work, we have to have youdo it.”

That had gotten Hicks’ attention. He’d been angry, he’d been scared, he’d figured out she was dead serious, and he’d listened to the program.

“You can do it,” she told him now, in the room with Kyle, and she laid an encouraging hand on his back. “Just go sit down by him, take his hand, tell him you’re here. Ivanov will give you specific signals, and have the script on the monitor. We’re here, we’re all here if we have to improvise. We don’t want to. But if we do, those lines will be in red, so you’ll know. You’re high beta. We trust you to know how to do what you need to. For his sake. That’s all we’re asking of you.”

They drew far off from Hicks and Kyle, who lay on a white‑sheeted table, under restraint for his protection and theirs. There was lighting in Kyle’s area, none in the observation post–just the soft light from the vid screen and the readouts. Ivanov was right at hand with Kyle, with the same readouts, and Hicks–Hicks sat on a tall stool and set his hand on Kyle’s shoulder, talking to him, just giving him legitimate reassurances, while the machines, flashing with lights, scrubbed the trank out of Kyle’s bloodstream and fed in a mild dose of kat.

Kyle came awake slightly. “Weak,” he complained.

“You’re fine,” Hicks said. “Kyle, are you hearing me all right?”

“Yes,” Kyle said. “Where are we?”

“Stronger dose,” Jordan said to Ivanov sharply, through his earpiece.

Ari thought she would have waited for Hicks to calm him down, but that was all right. Hicks had deviated just a hair off the permissions they’d given him, they were taking Kyle right under again, and it wasn’t going to hurt him, it was just going to prevent him taking closer notice of his surroundings. He’d hear. He’d see. For the first half hour they’d just run his base sets, primer tape, from way, way back in his childhood. They had a list of what his intermediate base had been, and of what the military had had access to, therefore what they might have illicitly used. Their best guess was a conversion of beta tape from the best of the marine units, something to instill aggression into the alpha that had to be patching them up and advising them, doing the work a Reseune‑trained born‑man should have been doing.

They didn’t dare take their guesswork for granted, not until they had their theory confirmed–or not, in which case they had to abort and hope they could patch their way out.

“We found a mistake in your sets,” Hicks said gently at one point, right down the script. “Kyle, you haven’t felt altogether right for some time, and we’ve found the cause. Somebody gave you wrong tape. It’s beta. It was when you were in service, on the lines. Do you remember getting tape then? I’m your Supervisor. I can ask this. Did you get tape when you were on the lines?”

Kyle’s brow contracted. “Sometimes.”

“They gave it more than once?”

“More than once.”

“You know who I am. I’m Adam. I’m your Supervisor. Someone once gave you a beta tape. What was the number? Where does it start? Can you find it for me?”

“Viking. October 13 shiptime, 2320, US Amity.”

“Keep going. Find it.”

A long pause. Then: “Tape sequence B14‑2818‑6.”

Jordan nodded sharply in Ari’s direction.

She spun around to the console keyboard, called Base One, and made a fast key entry–deep in tape archive, no question. The number enabled retrieval; retrieval enabled an exact excision of what had gone in; and Base One pulled it out past gateways that would have hidden it from any ordinary search.

Let him sleep,Jordan sent to Ivanov, then. They hadn’t been at it thirty minutes, and they dropped the subject back into kat‑induced limbo.

But this time they had substance to go on. They had a foundational tape in a sequence that Kyle himself had cobbled into an alpha level routine. They had one piece of a jigsaw of accommodation; but it was a piece with the design on it.

“Hicks, come in on this one.” she said, and that didn’t please Jordan, but Hicks was qualified on beta, he’d made a good go at handling an alpha, and he had the glimmering of a hope of understanding the issue as well as the specific azi they were trying to fix.

He sat with them in an adjacent conference room, and Jordan flipped through what he’d pulled up. They went over it independently. It was short, simple. It gave a line soldier permission to kill without conscience where ordered by the Bureau.

“Conflict,” she said. “The minute he takes it out, he’s got conflict with other programming.”

Jordan nodded. “Insert an exception: he may remember killing or arranging killing in the past. This is gone now. It was a temporary condition. He’s not guilty.”

Hicks looked sharply at Jordan, and Jordan didn’t even look his way. Jordan was as clinical, as detached as an Alpha Supervisor had to be…even when he was talking about the specific crime he’d been sentenced for. Not guilty. No karma.

“He’ll attach to Hicks for any future permissions,” Paul said, and Jordan nodded again and inserted a line.

Ari found her arms tightly folded, as if there’d been a chill. Florian was close by. Catlin was. They’d know what Jordan was doing. Their own alpha tape enabled killing. Readily. They were hair‑trigger, both knowing what personal issues Jordan was dealing with, what a dangerous thing Paul was saying, with that “Attach to Hicks.”

But Hicks was ReseuneSec. He was, at least by his provisional certificate, entitled to have that responsibility.

“You’re the Supervisor,” Jordan said then, looking straight at Hicks, and said it in his best clinical voice.

“Agreed,” Hicks said. Hicks had arrested Jordan, in the long ago. Helped send him to Planys. He’d arrested Justin, multiple times.

Jordan gazed at him a moment, then nodded, quietly still, deathly quiet in the room.

“Say;” Ari said, “He also has to respect the authority of Reseune Directors. That won’t conflict.”

“Good idea,” Prang said, and that went in.

“Then we’re go with it,” Jordan said. “We go with heavy kat and unwind it.”

Jordan got up. They all did. They went back to the room, where, for Kyle AK, time had stood still.

Now time started up again with the specific beta tape, and they played it under instructions, relayed via Hicks, to erase it, step by step, from memory.

Reaction. Slow, at first, but Kyle was alpha; cross‑referencing told him in the first instant he was going to be in trouble.

“Deeper,” Jordan said, and Ivanov frowned, and deepened the kat.

Kyle was calmer, then. “Come on, Kyle,” Hicks said. “It’s Adam. I’m here. Listen to me.”

Lines on the monitors had spiked all over the place. They sank abruptly. Ticked way up. And down again. That much kat was a risk.

It took two hours and forty‑five minutes to get him stable. And while Ivanov was working, word came from the airport that Councillor Chavez had just come in, with two aides. With her mind strongly elsewhere, but with the assurance nothing was going to happen soon up at the hospital, Ari made the trip down to welcome the Councillor officially, to see him up to Wing One, and for him to meet with deFranco in a conference room and deliver the news from Novgorod as of three days ago. It wasn’t much news, but it wasn’t good, military police were patrolling the streets of Novgorod, to the exclusion of Novgorod police.