Since the moment they’d synced, the sea had come in roaring, a glorious, terrible torrent. Where there had been ordinary rooms and cabinets and stairs in Surit’s neat mental house, there was now a tumult of swirling water, deep-sea caverns instead of foundations, whirlpools instead of floors. Fish chased each other down the corridors and seaweed grew through the windows. Surit’s own consciousness tumbled along with the tide, and part of him just wanted to embrace the elation of it, the intoxication, but he could not think like this. He could not think while Tennal was part of him; he could only experience. And that wouldn’t work.

So he built walls, and he shored them up, and he forced their minds to separate as far as they could. The maelstrom battered at his doors, and Surit doggedly made himself a small, clear space to think and talk. It was easier if he didn’t look at Tennal. If he glanced at him, all he wanted to do was take down the walls and let himself dissolve in the storm. And they had to navigate their way out of this mess.

The Fractal Note was meant for a crew of two hundred. The ragtag collection on board now wasn’t even a fifth of that; they barely had enough soldiers to cover a bridge rotation and skeletal maintenance shifts. But even that was more than Surit had expected.

“It seemed like the right thing to do, sir,” Basavi said, staring at the wall behind Surit’s ear. “Can’t really say why, sir.”

She had collected not just all the remaining members of Retrieval Two but a disparate group of soldiers who had been on the Note when Archer division had impounded it. Not the officers: those had been traded back to their division. But Basavi must have secretly been in contact with a dozen Cavalry rankers outside her unit, while they all quietly worked for Oma.

Surit recognized his own poker face in hers. “Very good, Private,” he said, just as neutrally. “Would you join us at the command desk?”

That threw her, but Surit didn’t wait, just walked past her to do a circuit of the bridge. Everything had to look normal, even in this, the most irregular situation possible. Orshan’s military was at war with itself—no, temporarily disrupted—and it wouldn’t help the straggling of soldiers to know Surit was on the edge of falling apart.

Don’t think. The storm was at Surit’s door. His walls were paper-thin. If he started thinking, he might not stop.

The remainder of Retrieval Two saluted him swiftly; salutes came slower or not at all from Basavi’s new recruits. Some of the faces were familiar.

“Oh,” one of them said, with a faintly surprised look, “you’re still alive.”