Of course Oma wanted Surit. Tennal kept forgetting, because Surit was so bloody quiet about it, but by raw power Surit was probably the strongest architect on the station after Oma.

Of course she wanted that. And Tennal had left him defenseless.

“Go on to the docking bay,” he said to the aide. “I’ll catch up with the prisoner.”

“Can’t, sir,” the aide said apologetically. “Governor’s orders take precedence.”

So that wouldn’t work. Tennal’s thoughts swung from one thing to another like a bird throwing itself frantically around a cage. He could probably get the drop on this aide, who wouldn’t be expecting a senior officer to tackle him. If he timed it right, he could do it when they’d reached Surit’s cell. But after that? There were guards, alarms, prisoner sign-out procedures. It had taken them days to break out Birimi, and Oma hadn’t even been paying attention to them. He couldn’t get Surit out of there with a distraction less than a full-scale war.

He’d have to let Oma brainwash Surit. Surit wouldn’t be completely lost—like readers in a sync, the architects seemed to be their own person unless Oma wanted something. Maybe there would be a way to undo it, like Oma had promised him a way to undo his own sync. That would at least give him more than five fucking minutes to solve this.

He could see Surit’s stupid poker expression in his head. Tennal knew Surit lived and died by his principles. He might’ve thought of himself as a good little soldier, but the first time he’d been given an order he really didn’t like—syncing Tennal—he’d gone rogue without a second thought. Without even a first thought. Surit was a menace and a danger to the military, and Tennal would rather die than let Oma control him.

Surit had gotten Tennal out of his worst nightmare. Now it was Surit in trouble, and Tennal was as much fucking use as a fish in an airlock.

Tennal didn’t have time to come up with a clever distraction. Time drained away with every step he took. He had minutes.

The next thought Tennal had made him miss a step.

He stared at the wall. There was one answer.

Surit sat on a hard bench in a detention cell with his head in his hands, and tried to tell himself he had been in worse situations.

He’d failed to get his unit away and he was under arrest, it was true. But there was no point in feeling sorry for himself, or in going over the list of his own mistakes yet again. He tried pulling together another list: Tasks Completed Successfully.

Item: Some of Retrieval Two had already been transferred. Surit had been quietly reassigning people for days. There were only a dozen soldiers left.