Althea

She’d enlisted Kyso’s help to drag the man’s unconscious body back into his tent. She wasn’t going to try extraction out in the snow.

“How is it done?”

Althea ran a hand over Amek Goa’s skull, through the man’s lank hair; her scanner easily pinpointed the interface point of the implant. The bone, skin, hair, was completely healed, the only trace of entry – a small metal point. He was still alive, the implant would be active – she’d be able to control it, if her theory worked in the field.

She looked back at Kyso, wondering what he thought of her now, how much he still believed in her. He didn’t stop her, didn’t fight her. She couldn’t decide if that should be a comfort, or appall her.

“Like this,” she told him, thumbing the controls on her projector.

She adjusted it for a setting that would be enough for cutting through the skull, but not into the brain. She took in a breath, cut a wide circle around the interface point. A thin column of smoke rose where the stream burned away his hair.

In moments, it was done. Carefully, she pried off the bone, revealing the gray folded tissue of his brain. The interface point, a skein of fibers glittering wetly. She touched the surface metal. The man’s body spasmed, his head moved, mouth emitted a horrific wheezing sound, a choking intake of breath.

Kyso gasped.

Only one injection was necessary, the programmed nantech would work their way into the gregga’s brain, sever the implant’s connections, make it possible for it to survive extraction intact.

She waited a three, and then took in a breath.

Gritting her teeth, Althea held the man’s head hard to the tent floor, feeling through the folds for the solidity of the implant. It was there; she could feel its solidity underneath the soft brain tissue, underneath the spike of metal. She looked up at Kyso. He wasn’t looking at her; he was staring at the twisted body of the man, mouth open in a frozen grimace. She turned back toGoa.

Althea closed her eyes tight, then opened them, thrust her fingers into the tissue, gripped the implant’s main cylinder, slowly pulled it out. The thing resisted. She tightened her grip, grimacing at the feel of the warm, sticky, gelatinous tissue – pulled hard. Her other hand shook, struggling to keepGoa’s heavy head steady. She heard Kyso gasp again as the man’s body reacted to the pull – shuddering and convulsing again. She pulled against the suction, her hand coming out, sharply colder in the open air, gripping the thankfully intact implant. It was indistinguishable from modules she’d seen before, the bumpy cylindrical shape, mix of organic and non-organic, strings of fibers extending from it.

Would it remain active in her hands?

A strong salty scent wafted into her nostrils making her stomach turn. Althea swallowed hard, held it down. Quickly she wiped off the implant, then wiped her hands roughly, furiously on the man’s blanket.

The first step done, Althea located the transmissive fibers, locked it into her scanner – began the search through trinary frequencies for an active response. Repressing panic when it didn’t come, she ran the scan again, and again, and again, and again.

She was beginning to believe she had just killed a man for nothing when a weak trinary signal came through. Relieved, she disconnected the secondary fibers from the man’s brain, clamped them into the base unit she’d jury-rigged back in Kyso’s workshop. Too weak on its own, she needed the block to regulate power, provide transmissive stability to it, and the other implants – hopefully, successfully – for as long as needed.

Finished, she glanced back at Kyso. He stood back staring at her mess. She couldn’t think of anything to say to him, so she just started packed up her equipment.

“Do you have to do it to all of them?” Kyso asked.

“If I want to destroy the Macro,” she told him.

Two of her extractions failed. When she finished with Nur, she told Dorian it was done.

Two of the implants are damaged.

“Four should be enough,” she whispered.

There is one more.