Despair surged inside Tennal like a wave. The army chewed up readers. He knew they made great assistants to pilots—something about the sensitivity to fluctuations in space—but he’d never heard of a retired synced reader. What would the army do, just let them go? He was going to be tethered to a console, using his powers by the command of an architect, for the rest of his life. “Just send me into the army,” he said, though even saying it left a bitter taste in his mouth. He could recognize when he was fighting a last-ditch retreat. “You want me out of the way, I’ll enlist. Don’t make me sync with an architect.” Leave me a way out.

She didn’t respond immediately. Tennal took a breath and continued, “I won’t let them, anyway. You must know that. Not even your Rank Ones are strong enough to force me into synci—”

He broke off. She knew that. Whatever Tennal thought of his aunt, he had an ingrained respect for her ability to track all the threads of her plans. She would have factored in that Tennal was strong enough and stubborn enough to mentally refuse a sync, even with all the pressure she could bring to bear. So—“You’ve primed me,” Tennal said. It came out as a monotone that barely hid the spike of horror. He knew it was true because logically it had to be true, but a split second later, he connected it with the scrubbed-clean itch in his head. “You chewed me out for taking enhancers, and you’ve had your medics artificially prime me to sync.”

“Of course I have,” the legislator said, as if this weren’t horrific. “What did you think I was going to do? You’re a stubborn ass.”

“This is illegal,” Tennal said through his teeth, “even if it’s you doing it.” The military had used abandoned xenotechnology to make the first generation of architects and readers. A sliver of those alien remnants could mess up anyone’s brain; they could almost certainly prime his mind to sync. But Orshan’s remnants should have been locked up decades ago. They shouldn’t be able to hand them out to medics. “I could go to—” He had to stop there and think. He didn’t know who could enforce the law on the legislator herself. The regulators already knew Tennal had slithered out of consequences he shouldn’t have. She was probably covered under some national security loophole.