“He doesn’t match any Partial model I’ve ever seen,” said Samm. “I’ve been thinking about it all night—he’s not a general or a doctor or anything else, which means there are two possibilities. One, he’s a model like you, one we haven’t seen yet and wasn’t mass-produced. I think this is unlikely, most obviously because you don’t emit link data, and he does, and you age, and he clearly couldn’t be as old as he is if he started as a child seventeen years ago. The second, more likely scenario is that he’s like Morgan, a human with gene mods to use the link. Which leads to one pretty obvious conclusion.”

“He’s also a member of the Trust,” said Kira. “Given everything he said about his history with ParaGen, that makes a lot of sense; he’d worked for them since the beginning. He was probably one of their senior scientists.”

“It also means he can incapacitate me if he chooses,” said Samm. His voice was calm and matter-of-fact, despite the seriousness of his words. “He didn’t give me any orders last night, but if he ever does, I don’t know if I’ll be able to disobey him.”

“You disobeyed Morgan.”

“And it took me a few minutes to do it, and with extreme concentration,” said Samm. “Their control is almost impossible to break, the Trust even more so than the regular officers. If he really exerts himself, at close range, I don’t know that I’ll be able to do anything about it. Even in the best-case scenario, he can incapacitate me long enough to come after you.”

“And in the worst-case scenario,” said Kira, “he can control me, too. Assuming he even knows what I am.”

“Morgan didn’t,” said Samm. “But that doesn’t mean anything—obviously your father and Nandita knew that you were a Partial, but Morgan didn’t. We don’t know what Vale does or doesn’t know.”

“I’m beginning to realize the Trust couldn’t have been very . . . trusting,” said Kira. “It’s as if there were at least two different groups, with two different agendas.”

Samm nodded. “That explains some the existence of some contradictory evidence, but it doesn’t exactly explain what any of that evidence means. We need more information.”

“Which is probably in that center spire,” said Kira. “The building we were in yesterday seemed like it was exclusively medical. If Vale gives us the runaround again, that spire is our next priority.”

Samm nodded in agreement, then paused for a moment. “Did Nandita ever control you?”

“You mean with the link?”

“Yes,” said Samm. “Did you ever get the impression that you were being forced?”

“Not that I remember,” said Kira. She looked at him, feeling a pang of sadness for some of the things he’d been through. “What does it feel like?”