Chapter 7
SEVEN
She’d been thinking about trying something risky for three cycles.
The image database the Baylans had given her contained thousands of entries.
Faces, places, objects, symbols. Some were generic, like common weapons and star charts.
but some were specific, like Virilian architecture and Sifter insignia.
She’d been using them in sessions with Jarran, and the results had been consistent.
He responded to desert-like landscapes, bladed weapons, and children.
He averted his eyes from Sifter imagery.
Even though his neural responses showed he didn’t recognize them, they made him feel uneasy.
But Evie wanted to push harder. The fragments were coming faster now, more vivid, and his neural patterns were showing increased connectivity between his procedural and episodic memory systems. The pathways were rebuilding.
Slowly, unevenly, but rebuilding. If she could give him a strong enough associative trigger, something specific to his personal history, she might be able to unlock an entire memory cluster instead of loose fragments.
She’d spent two evenings combing through Coalition archives. Criminal trial records from the Virilian High Court. Sentencing documents. Public proceedings. Most of what she found was redacted or classified, but the trial images were public record.
But she had found an image of Taron Bando from his sentencing hearing.
He was younger than in the recording she’d received, obviously, but also thinner, harder, and haunted-looking.
All that tracked. He’d been exiled from Virilia at his sentencing.
The image was dated from the early years of Pella Rin’s rise, when he had found Taron and convinced him to join his band of raiders.
If the laughing boy in Jarran’s dream was Taron, this face might shake something loose.
It might also blow the session apart. She knew the risks. Autobiographical memories tied to close family relationships were the most emotionally volatile. If Jarran recognized this face, the response could be overwhelming. Thankfully, the implant would be able to regulate him.
She loaded the image into her tablet alongside the rest and headed for the bay.
Jarran was waiting in his section. He looked up when she came down the aisle and his expression shifted.
It always shifted when he saw her. A loosening around his eyes, a slight easing in his shoulders.
She’d started cataloging these micro-changes, telling herself it was clinical observation. It wasn’t.
“Morning.” She sat across from him, her usual spot, and pulled out her tablet.
“Morning.” He wiped his hands on his pants. “Toramdo fruited overnight. Six clusters.”
“Look at you.” She grinned. “Bay manager by next cycle.”
His mouth curved. That almost-smile was beginning to turn into an actual smile. The sight of it was impossibly breathtaking.
She set up the scanner and activated the recording. “I want to try something different today. I’ve got a new set of images. Some of them are from public archives. They might be more specific to your past than what we’ve been using.”
He studied her face. He did this whenever she introduced something new, but lately, he appeared to study her with more intensity. His gaze was getting sharper.
“Okay,” he said.
She started with the standard warm-up. Desert landscape.
Neural spike, mild. Stone corridor. Spike, moderate.
Curved blade. Spike, strong, but he held steady.
His breathing quickened and then evened out.
He winced and rubbed the back of his neck, so she figured the implant had given him a quick pulse.
He appeared to find it annoying. Interesting.
“Good,” she said. “You’re managing these well. Your regulation is improving.”
He nodded. “Getting used to them. The blade still…” He flexed his fingers. “Still feels real.”
“That’s procedural memory reinforcing through repetition. Every time you see the blade, the neural pathway strengthens. Eventually, we might get context around it. What it means to you. When you had contact with it.”
“Not sure I want to know,” he said, barely audibly.
She moved through several more. A Sifter insignia produced no significant response.
A cargo ship. Flat. A marketplace on a planet she didn’t recognize produced a mild spike, accompanied by a muscle flex in his jaw that she noted but didn’t comment on.
A set of mining tools laid out on a workbench. Nothing.
She was stalling. The face was next in her queue and her own pulse had started climbing. She took a breath and reminded herself that she was a professional with years of clinical experience and that her hands had no business trembling.
Then she pulled up the face. Blond hair. Green eyes. Young. Defiant jaw, sharp cheekbones. A male who only slightly resembled Jarran, but with eyes that had his same intensity, and a jaw with a similar set. Family resemblance lived in the structure, not the coloring.
Jarran’s body went rigid.
Evie watched the neural readings explode across her screen. Limbic system activation spiked so hard the graph maxed out. Autonomic surge. Heart rate climbing.
The implant fired. She could see it on the readout and it coincided with a groan from him and his hand clamping on the back of his neck.
She knew the device was pumping regulatory signals into his brain stem, trying to pull him back from wherever he’d gone, but it wasn’t working.
The emotional response was too massive, too deep.
The implant couldn’t suppress something this fundamental.
His hand shot out and grabbed her wrist.
The grip was iron. His fingers wrapped around her forearm and locked, and the force of it sent a jolt through her whole body.
His hand was enormous, his fingers overlapping, and she could feel his pulse hammering through his skin into hers, but his grip never tightened to the point of pain.
It was more like he was using her as a lifeline to ground himself. Or trying to.
“Jarran,” she said, trying to keep the alarm from her voice.
He didn’t hear her. His eyes were wide and unfocused, staring through the screen at something she couldn’t see. His pupils were blown. His nostrils flared. The implant increased to the point where it was audible to her.
She didn’t pull away. Well, she couldn’t have broken his grip if she tried. Instead, she kept her arm still and her voice steady. “Jarran, I’m here. It’s Evie and we’re in the agricultural bay. Can you come back to me?”
His mouth opened. Closed. His throat worked.
The neural readings were unlike anything she’d recorded from him.
A full memory was surfacing, dragged through whatever barrier the terti had erected against it.
She could see it happening in real time on her scanner: pathways lighting up, connections forming, a whole section of his brain activating for the first time since she’d started treating him.
His grip on her wrist tightened. Then his face crumbled.
“Taron,” he said brokenly. His eyes filled and tears spilled down his face, over the lines of his jaw, dripping onto his shirt. He wasn’t wiping them. He didn’t seem to know they were there.
“Taron. My brother. He was… He followed me.” He pulled in a raspy breath.
“Everywhere, he followed me. I can hear him laughing, talking. We were always together.” He choked and his eyes squeezed shut.
“I loved him. I still love him.” His whole body shook.
The tremors ran through his arm and into her wrist where he held her.
Evie heard boots on the metal floor. Two guards, alerted by the implant’s distress signal, raced down the central aisle with stunners drawn. They stopped ten feet away, assessing.
“Dr. Carr.” The taller guard’s voice was clipped. Professional. “Move aside.”
“No.” She didn’t look at them, but raised a hand, palm out. She kept her eyes on Jarran. “Stand down. He’s not hurting me. This patient is having a major breakthrough.”
“His implant readings are—”
“I know what his readings are,” she snapped. “I’m monitoring them. Please put your weapons away.”
A pause. Evie heard the sound of stunners sliding into holders and let out a shaky breath.
Jarran leaned toward her and she braced herself as his forehead dropped against her shoulder.
The weight of him hit her. Not just physically, though that was noticeable.
His head and his shaking body pressed into her, his hand still gripped her wrist, and his breath came in ragged, heaving gulps against her collarbone.
He was sobbing. Deep, wrenching sounds that she felt in her own ribs.
This enormous, broken male was falling apart against her because he’d remembered that he had a brother whom he loved.
Her free hand went to his hair. She didn’t decide to do it. Her fingers slid into the dark strands and held. His hair was thick and smooth as satin. Virilian body heat radiated off him, almost feverish, soaking through her shirt and sending shocks of awareness over her skin.
She held him while he cried, with wary guards standing nearby. The scanner beeped on the ground beside them, still recording. She ignored it all.
Minutes passed. His breathing slowed. The tremors eased from violent shaking to a fine vibration, then to stillness.
The implant’s hum dropped back to its baseline frequency.
His grip on her wrist loosened, his fingers uncurling one by one, though he didn’t let go completely.
His forehead stayed against her shoulder. Her hand stayed in his hair.
She turned her head and pinned the guards with a hard gaze. “His neurological readings have returned to safe parameters. Give him some space and privacy, please.”
The guards blinked, but nodded and retreated, leaving them alone. What Evie didn’t say was that she needed the space and privacy, too. This was a lot for both of them.