“But you must know something,” Tennal said impatiently. “This ship used to have dozens, hundreds of architects on it. You had a Rank One on the ship! What if the sync went wrong?”

The medic gave Tennal a slight frown, looking between him and Surit. “Has it? Gone wrong?”

Tennal and Surit shared a glance. Maybe, one of them said. Tennal couldn’t tell which one of them it had come from, and he felt a stir of fear.

It was Surit who looked back at the medic and said, “Is a sync supposed to get more intense as it goes?”

The medic looked startled. “No. It’s not a disease. It’s a protective mechanism for the pilot.”

Protective mechanism, Tennal said—or heard—disgustedly in their combined thoughts.

“Ours is,” Surit said. “Getting worse.”

“Is there any way to reverse it?” Tennal demanded. “They told me it’s supposed to be impossible, but you know what else was supposed to be impossible? Brainwashing. The army’s been doing shit with people’s minds for twenty years, and fuck knows it never told the civilians much until soldiers started having kids.”

“There has to be something you can do,” Surit said.

The medic hesitated. “There’s an experimental procedure,” he said. “It’s been around for quite some time. I understand they had … deaths in service. I’ll be blunt: we’re all mortal. One of the pair has to die first just by the laws of nature.”

“Encouraging!” Tennal said. “Can we split without both of us dying?”

“What I’m trying to say,” the medic said, “is that we can save the reader.”

“That’s—” not helpful, Tennal tried to say. But in his head, Surit faltered, and the words never reached Tennal’s throat.

The medic continued as if Tennal hadn’t spoken, in full lecture mode. “Readers are more stable. If the architect dies, they’ve had some success with treating the reader to keep them alive. But there have been no surviving cases the other way around.”

“You could save Tennalhin?” Surit said.

What does that have to do with it? Tennal demanded, in the privacy of their thoughts.

“It requires a temporary coma and some specialized scanning equipment with traces of remnant infusion—I won’t go into the details. The reader comes out of it altered, but alive.”

The storm in Tennal’s head grew louder, as if trying to crack his skull apart. Again, Tennal couldn’t tell who was thinking what: What if this keeps getting worse? and Nobody’s going to die, fucker swirled around like thunderclouds. The last one was probably him.

“What do you mean, the reader comes out of it altered?” Surit said.

The medic seemed to consider how to describe it, as if this might be unwelcome news. “In practice, the survivors exhibit traits we associate with architects.”

“You mean,” Surit said, then swallowed. “Like something is left behind. Something of the architect.”