Surit had seen this type of picture before. It was a commemorative shot, the kind you took on a special project. A dozen young officers stared back at him with varying expressions of pride and uncertainty. His mother, barely twenty years old, was in the middle.

That wasn’t what had stopped him. Next to Marit—so familiar that Surit had to rub his eyes—was a person who looked almost like Tennal. It took Surit a moment to realize that it must be a younger version of the Orshan legislator. She had Tennal’s edged, unsettled air, and an impression that she was uncomfortable with her own sharp face.

Once he’d recognized her, Surit understood what this was. Marit had been one of the first volunteers to be made into an architect. So, famously, had the legislator. This must’ve been the unit that had gone through the very first neuromodification project.

What he hadn’t expected was Governor Oma, around the same age, with her arm slung around the legislator’s shoulders.

Surit checked for more files. But that was it. That was everything. If Surit had been expecting some sort of explanation, some sort of confession, he’d been a fool.

As he stared at the wristband, he realized he hadn’t tried the public prompt.

There was almost certainly nothing there. People used the public prompt for allergies and emergency medical information, not for anything they might want to keep private. Surit put his finger on the wristband and tried it anyway.

A light-screen opened in front of him. Text spilled into midair—but it was fragmented, unformatted. The underlying files had been corrupted. As if something had been transmitted and shoved hastily in here before its owner did something inadvisable.

—SHOULD PUBLICLY RELEASE INFORMATION ON—WHY HAS NARRATIVE TILTED TOWARD ARCHITECTS V READERS—YOU KNOW THE HISTORY OF THE OPERATION—

—OVER TEN THOUSAND ARCHITECTS AND FOR WHAT—

—HAS FOUND OPERATION NEUROMOD IS NO LONGER VOLUNTARY—

—THEY CAN’T JUST TAKE THE LOSING SIDE FOR EXPERIMENTAL NEUROMOD WORK—

—ABDUCTION OF SOLDIERS UNDER MY COMMAND—THREE OF MY READERS DIED IN THAT LAB—

That was it. The wristband’s reconstruction program, which had been trawling the corrupted data, beeped in resignation. That was all it could recover.

Surit stared at it for a long time.

Three of my readers died in that lab.

Surit was used to seeing his mother’s face in pictures and vids. It wasn’t as if Surit was grieving any more. He hadn’t been for years. It had taken him a long time to come to terms with the fact his gen-parent wasn’t the great general she’d thought she was, but just another power-hungry climber.

And now it turned out she wasn’t. If this was true. If this was true.