Surit rubbed aside the dust on the window. He wasn’t normally impatient, but he didn’t have much time. He was being held here until Oma could see him. She could try brainwashing him, but whether that worked or not, she wouldn’t get much use out of him. Surit would get one chance at her.

And in the end, as it turned out, that wasn’t enough.

As he watched the street outside clear, the Archer troops dispersing, he started to feel the prickling in the top of his spine that heralded one of the headaches. He tried to ignore it. He even got as far as sitting on the narrow bed and opening his letter to Elvi, a ten-screen attempt to explain everything to his alt-parent after Surit was gone, but within seconds the screen blurred.

This one was a bad one. The first real wave was like a pickax to the skull. Surit lost vision.

He surfaced in pieces, with a raging thirst and Archer medics leaning over the bed in worry. It took him long moments to remember how to move his limbs. That had never happened before. He didn’t even really have time to process it before the headache started again.

The third time he came back to consciousness, Oma was there.

“Lieutenant Yeni,” she said. “What in the paths of Guidance happened to you?”

Surit tried to lift his head from the bed, his vision swimming. He didn’t waste time wondering if it was a hallucination. He didn’t even waste time trying to converse.

“Oh,” Oma said, disappointed. It sounded like her voice was coming through water. “You’re dying.”

Surit had mostly ignored his architect abilities. They weren’t relevant. But they’d always been there, a deep well of energy in the back of his mind. He’d never thought that one day he would be too sick to use them.

“I can’t influence him,” he heard Oma say briefly to someone else. “He’s on his way out. Shame—we’re running out of accessible Rank Ones.”

Surit struggled to use something—anything—of his power. All he got was a weak suggestion that Oma didn’t even have to put in effort to brush off. She turned away. Surit’s vision faded to black again.

When he woke up again, it was to the diffuse gray light of dawn. He’d lost nearly a day and night to the attacks.

I failed, Surit thought blankly.

His throat felt like sandpaper as he sat on the edge of the bed, looking up at the tiny window. His bones ached from a disappointment so bitter that it was almost grief. He’d meant to kill Oma, and he’d failed.

List: Resources.