He saw Surit’s shock as he grasped what Tennal meant. In the same instant, Tennal plunged headlong into his reader senses. The color and light faded out of the cell until it was only bare white outlines over the blackness of space, and the dim, closed-off presence of Surit in front of him like a ghost.

There was a part of Tennal’s mind that was exposed, that had been exposed ever since his aunt had dragged him back to Exana and chemically primed him. He didn’t know if there was any way Surit could perceive it. But Surit had nearly synced him twice by accident, so he must know it was there. Tennal ripped that part of his mind out of the depths of his head and brought it up to the light, letting go of any defenses he had left. “How much do you trust me?”

For the first time ever, he saw something crack in Surit.

Surit broke like the core of a planet fracturing. A bright fissure, a ray of white-hot light. Tennal had seen that light in others, but he was so used to Surit being quiet and unreadable that the light hit him like a furnace.

Tennal read him.

—failed and failed to end up here. Failed his unit. Failed Tennal. Surit couldn’t even think about Elvi, at home with the newslogs, hearing his child had ended up on the wrong side of a coup just like Marit. The fear. The cold cell air on the back of his neck. The desperation on Tennal’s face. Tennal had been so afraid of this, Surit knew, Tennal had been running on pure fear for weeks. He didn’t deserve this.

Don’t do this for me, Tennal.

Tennal felt like he’d been stabbed. “Your choice, Surit.” It was hard to keep his voice steady. “It’s not like last time, though, I promise. This time I’m in—if you say yes. My choice too. But I’ll be honest, your options are bad: it’s Archer Division or me.”

—or you, Surit’s thoughts echoed, and what had sounded disparaging from Tennal sounded different from him.

A shrieking, blaring noise came from the door. It started to open, agonizingly slow under the emergency controls.

“Five seconds!” Tennal said, with no actual grasp of how long they had. He threw himself into the thoughts coming from Surit, deeper than he had ever gone, as if they were skin to skin, and got—

—an endless sea in front of him, the endless astonishment of Tennal’s mind, a huge and terrifying freedom encroaching on the structured way Surit thought and lived, like a glimpse of the ocean from a dry valley. And over it all, the fear of knowing this was wrong. Tennal was going to put himself at risk, and all—

“For once in your bloody life, Surit Yeni,” Tennal said aloud, through gritted teeth, “focus on saving yourself.”