He perched on a portable medical cabinet beside the bed, ignoring the perfectly good chair. Surit wasn’t in Medical but instead in the dormitory he and Tennal had been sleeping in. His shirt was off, and the ship’s air circulation prickled on his naked chest. Someone had slapped a transparent dressing over his collarbone. Under it was the red rash of a capper shot.

Surit said nothing.

This didn’t deter Tennal. “Apparently Oma told us the truth when she said brainwashing wouldn’t work on people who were synced and that she didn’t try it on you.” Tennal tried the awful smile again. “This was just a normal, trigger-based compulsion. Nice and straightforward.”

Just a compulsion. Just a compulsion, complicated by Surit’s architect powers, by the fact Surit was a weapon of war. By the fact Tennal had voluntarily synced with him, so Surit had a pathway into Tennal’s brain. If Surit had been even slightly more subtle, even slightly better at lying, they might be on their way to Archer Link Station right now, to fall into the hands of Oma’s allies.

Tennal was very pale. Surit remembered Tennal’s fear, back when they’d been shut in a room for three days straight: his fear of being a puppet. His fear of being used as a tool by someone else.

Tennal had fought the write commands like he was dying. Surit hadn’t given him any leeway at all, any choice. That was Tennal’s worst nightmare. Surit had done it to him.

Tennal heard Surit’s thought in their enmeshed minds and brushed it impatiently aside. “You didn’t have a choice,” Tennal said. “And this is nothing. One more incredibly dumb problem to baffle my therapist with. The important thing is, I’d be able to tell if you were brainwashed, and you’re not.”

Surit touched the blistered red skin on his chest. He had experienced capper shots before, during training exercises. “Istara knocked me out.”

“Well, yes,” Tennal said. “I offered them a commendation for shooting a senior officer, but they thought it might not look good on their record.” That wasn’t what Surit meant, and Tennal knew it because Tennal was in his mind. The bad smile slipped off Tennal’s face. “To be honest, we should have expected this. Oma did tell us she’d put a compulsion on you. I suppose even she didn’t realize it would become useful later. I didn’t think compulsions would work on you; I didn’t realize you were…”

“… vulnerable,” Surit said, completing the thought. The word felt unpleasant in his mouth. He had never been vulnerable to writing. Compulsions were more difficult than normal architect commands and even harder to make last beyond a few seconds; Surit had thought he was too defended to worry about it.