Zin’s image winked out as he cut the projection. His smile fell off his face as he tried to settle his heartbeat. He hadn’t meant to worry her. He’d talked to her, though, he’d done it; wasn’t that something to be proud of? He scrubbed a hand across his forehead and decided it might not count.

He didn’t move for a long time. There was a buzzing noise in his head. That was a new and exciting hangover symptom. He should probably eat something.

“You’re still around?”

Tennal jerked up from his slump as a shadow fell across him. It was the bodyguard from last night. In the morning light, it was obvious she hadn’t been drinking like the rest of them: her clean, sharp-angled face was alert and guarded. “Your room’s not on this floor.”

“Gotta recharge the batteries,” Tennal said. “It’s a reader thing.”

She snorted. “It’s not.”

Her absolute certainty was as good as an admission. Tennal paused as a puzzle piece fell into place. He couldn’t tell from looking at her, but: “You’re a reader.”

“Full marks,” she said, turning away to draw some water from the cooler. “Why do you think I left you alone last night? You weren’t a threat.” She didn’t seem fazed that Tennal had publicly read someone last night. The advantage of this crowd was that nobody ever involved law enforcement.

An unexpected silence settled over the room, broken only by the hangover buzzing in Tennal’s head. He felt himself skate over a lot of things he normally tried not to think about. This bodyguard wasn’t in the army, so she hadn’t been directly neuromodified herself. Either her gen-parent or a gene donor must have been a military architect or a reader. Just like Tennal’s gen-parent. “How good are you?” At her expression, he broke off. “Oh. Army strength.”

“Not as far as the regulators know,” the woman said. She finished her water. “I was going to ask you how you got out of conscription, but on second thought, this was a fucking stupid conversation to start. You’re just hiding, aren’t you?”

“I’m not on the conscription list,” Tennal said. The legislator had never outright threatened that. A family member who was a reader was bad enough. A conscripted reader would be worse.

“Of course you’re not,” the woman said. “Or you’d be there already.”