Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
The medical lab looked different now. The Baylans had rebuilt the damaged sections with newer equipment.
The machines they were now working with were more advanced than what had been there during her original posting.
Her white lab coat was freshly pressed. Her hair was up in a bun, pinned tight, because today she was Dr. Evie Carr and not a woman whose partner was sitting on a lab table.
She stood behind the main computer bay, a curved wall of screens and input panels that displayed Jarran’s neural architecture in real time.
The scans glowed blue and white against the dark display.
She’d spent weeks studying these scans, noting every altered pathway and marking every trace of the conditioning that Xill Rin had carved into a sixteen-year-old boy’s brain.
She knew Jarran’s neural landscape better than anyone’s.
After he’d been deemed not an immediate threat, they’d lived here together, in her old quarters, which was secure but also more accommodating than his old, small room.
The last month, since he’d been cleared to be alone with her, had been good, all things considered.
They’d gotten closer, learned each other’s habits, and when he wasn’t answering endless questions, he’d been allowed to work with the crops in the agricultural bay. He still really seemed to enjoy that.
Across the lab, Jarran sat on the edge of a padded examination table wearing a thin medical robe and nothing else.
His dark hair had grown longer in the past two months, and the Sifter tattoos on his forearms were visible where the sleeves of the robe fell back.
His feet were bare and his legs and tail dangled off the side of the table, and he looked, for all the world, like a very large, very patient male waiting for a routine checkup.
Silca stood beside him, attaching electrodes to his forehead.
The Baylan physician had survived the Sifter attack on the Korath-7, which had relieved Evie.
Silca had overseen the repairs to the base ship’s medical wing, upgraded half the diagnostic equipment, and still managed to make Evie feel slightly inadequate every time she handled an instrument.
Silca pressed the final electrode into place above Jarran’s left ear. She straightened up and called over her shoulder. “Dr. Carr. Are you ready?”
Evie met Jarran’s eyes across the lab. He smiled at her, warm and steady. It made her professional composure wobble. She gave a thumbs-up.
Silca stared at her raised thumb with a blank expression.
“What is that?” Silca gestured at Evie’s hand. “The finger thing.”
“Oh, sorry.” Evie winced. “It means ready. Or good. Or okay.”
Silca’s brow furrowed. “Humans have too many strange finger signals,” she muttered, and turned back to Jarran. “Are you ready for one last procedure?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Lie back, please. Try to relax.”
He lowered himself onto the table. The robe shifted as he settled, and he folded his hands across his stomach. His dark green eyes fixed on the ceiling. He looked calm. Evie’s heart beat so hard she could hear it in her ears.
She took a deep breath and pressed the sedation control on the console. On the screen, his vitals shifted. His eyelids drooped, then closed. His breathing evened out and the neural display softened into the gentle, rolling patterns of deep sleep.
Silca crossed the lab and stood beside Evie at the console. She looked at Evie with a serious expression. “Are you really ready for this?”
Evie swallowed. “Yes.”
“Good. Because once we begin, we cannot stop the process.” Silca pulled up a secondary display and began entering commands.
“The nanobots will target the artificial neural connections that bind the Pella Rin personality construct to Jarran’s brain.
They will sever and reroute each connection individually.
The procedure will eliminate Pella Rin permanently. ”
“I know what the procedure does, Silca. I helped design it.”
“I am aware.” Silca’s fingers moved across the console without pausing.
“I am also aware that the patient is your mate, and that emotional proximity can compromise clinical precision. So I will remind you. The nanobots will operate autonomously once deployed. There is a small but measurable risk of damage to adjacent neural pathways. Memory loss is possible. Personality alteration is also possible. We have minimized these risks, but we have not eliminated them.”
“I know.” Evie’s voice was steady. Her hands were not. She pressed them flat against the console. “We’ve been over the risks. Jarran has been over the risks. He wants this.”
“He wants this very much,” Silca agreed. She glanced at Evie. “The sixty-five cycles he waited since arriving here must have felt very long.”
That was an understatement. Jarran had returned to the Korath-7 willingly, as promised, and had spent most of his time with one Virilian intelligence officer or another, sharing everything Pella Rin had known about the Sifter network.
Locations of hidden outposts. Weapons caches.
Recruitment channels. Codes and passwords and secret transmission frequencies.
The tech and methods that produced the hybrid females.
Everything. He’d sat in room after room, answering question after question, for weeks.
It was a condition of his release, along with providing all materials that could be used to dismantle what Pella Rin had built.
“He did what he said he would,” Evie said quietly. “All of it.”
“He did.” Silca brought up a new screen showing the nanobot deployment interface.
“And it worked. The intelligence he provided allowed a coordinated strike across fourteen systems. The Sifter network has been dismantled. Their remaining cells are fractured and surrendering. The outposts have been seized.”
“And the females?”
“The engineering data Jarran provided gave our researchers the framework they needed to understand the hybridization process.” Silca’s voice carried a note of cautious optimism.
“Deprogramming protocols are underway. It will take time. Some of them may never fully recover, but they have a chance now. A real one.”
Evie closed her eyes for a moment. “Good.”
“And now that the Sifter threat has been neutralized, the Baylan and Virilian authorities have approved the final step.” Silca’s fingers hovered over the deployment control. “Complete removal of Pella Rin from the patient’s mind.”
“So he can have a normal life.” Evie looked at Jarran’s sleeping face on the monitor. He looked so peaceful. “I hope we can both have a normal life. One day.”
Silca smiled. It was small and brief and very Baylan. “I hope so, too, Dr. Carr.”
She initiated the deployment sequence.
On the screen, Evie watched thousands of nanobots release into Jarran’s brain.
They appeared as tiny points of light on the display, spreading out in a controlled wave, seeking out the artificial pathways Xill Rin had built tericycles ago.
Each point of light found its target, paused, and then the connection severed.
One by one. Tiny flickers on the screen as pieces of Pella Rin were methodically, permanently erased.
Evie cleared her throat and looked away.
She’d helped design this procedure. She understood the science, had reviewed every simulation, and approved every parameter.
But watching it happen in real time, in the brain of her true love, made her stomach clench.
She fixed her gaze on the vital signs instead.
Heart rate, steady. Respiration, normal.
Neural stress indicators, within acceptable range.
“The procedure is progressing normally,” Silca said after several minutes. “Eighty percent of targeted connections have been severed. No collateral effects detected.”
Evie nodded. She didn’t trust her voice.
“Ninety percent. Ninety-five.” Silca watched the display with the focused attention of a physician who had been doing this for longer than Evie had been alive. “One hundred percent. Deployment complete. The nanobots are entering their dissolution phase.”
Evie exhaled. She pressed her hands harder against the console and let her head drop forward.
It was done. Pella Rin, the constructed personality that had stolen Jarran’s life and terrorized a quadrant, was gone.
Permanently. The pathways were severed, the connections dissolved, the cage dismantled.
“Initiating wake sequence,” Silca said.
Evie moved to the examination table. She stood beside him and watched the sedation reverse. His fingers twitched first. Then his breathing changed and his brow creased slightly. His eyelids fluttered.
He opened his eyes.
For one terrible second, Evie held her breath. She searched his face. His dark green eyes focused on her, and she looked for any trace of that cold, contemptuous emptiness she’d seen in the way station docking bay.
Jarran blinked. His gaze found hers and held. “Hello, beautiful.”
Evie’s knees went weak. She gripped the edge of the examination table. “How do you feel?”
He considered this. He raised one hand and touched his temple, pressing gently where the electrodes had been. “Clear,” he said. “My head feels clear. Quiet.” He paused. “There used to be a pressure. A weight at the edge of my thoughts. It’s gone.”
“Any confusion? Memory gaps?” she pressed. “Do you know where you are?”
“The Korath-7 medical lab. You are Dr. Evie Carr, the love of my life. You are wearing your hair in a bun, which I like very much. The Baylan standing behind you is Silca, who has cold hands and no sense of humor.” He glanced at Silca. “No offense.”
“None taken,” Silca replied. “My hands are a standard Baylan temperature.”
Evie laughed. It came out shaky and wet and she pressed her fingers to her mouth. “Do you feel like yourself?”
“I feel like myself.” He reached up and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. His touch was warm and gentle and entirely Jarran. “Completely. For the first time, there is nothing else in here. No shadow. No pressure.” His eyes held hers. “I am just Jarran.”
She leaned down and kissed him. His hand came up to cup the back of her neck and she let herself sink into it for a few seconds before pulling back. Silca was watching with a neutral expression. Of course, she had likely seen far stranger things in this lab.
“I’m glad you’re free of him,” Evie said. “I’m so glad.”
“So am I.” He sat up slowly, swinging his legs off the table. The robe shifted and he tugged it closed with one hand.
“What would you like to do next?”
“I was going to ask you that,” she told him.
He looked down at himself, barefoot and rumpled, wearing a medical robe and a head full of electrode gel. “I’d like to get dressed.”
She laughed. A real one this time, bright and loud, and his face lit up at the sound. “Fair enough,” she said. “But what I meant was, what do you want to do for the rest of our lives?”