Surit brought back an unappetizing box and a report that they were settling into their final three-day trajectory to chaotic space, whatever that meant. Tennal wasn’t hungry and didn’t care. The blue tint had faded out of the cabin walls as the day cycle ended, leaving a warmer light, but Tennal didn’t feel the slightest bit tired. He waited the evening out with his eyes shut.

He couldn’t stop his brain from circling what it would feel like to be synced to an architect. Tennal tried floating the thought: maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. After all, Tennal had let people write him before. He’d asked for it; he’d even taken enhancers to let them—anything to turn his brain off for a few hours. Would a sync feel any different from enhancers? They both brought your defenses down and let someone else in. The only distinction was that enhancers were temporary: Tennal had come back to his own head, every time, prickly with aftereffects and his emotions ringing like a bell struck by someone else.

Because it had never been good enough, had it? Even letting someone else take control had never given Tennal the relief from his own thoughts that he wanted. It worked for a few hours, and then the dissonance got too much, and the jagged edges of Tennal’s thoughts reasserted themselves, and all Tennal could think of was escape.

There would be no escape from a sync. Tennal didn’t habitually acknowledge fear, but it was hard to ignore the crawling feeling on his skin, like terror was a slowly tightening net.

“Excuse me,” Surit said.

Surit was standing in front of the Guidance niche. Tennal couldn’t shake an absolute awareness of where Surit was from the tiny sounds he made, even with his eyes closed. Nor could he stop the surge of adrenaline as he opened his eyes. “What?”

“Do you mind if I take half of this?”

They’d stripped most of the elaborate decorations Tennal had put up, leaving only his personal Guidance icon, a glassed-over picture he now noticed was getting faded. He and Zin had picked that out years ago. It looked shabby without any lights around it.

It was such a reasonable request, Tennal couldn’t find the barb in it. “It’s a double niche,” Tennal said at last. “It’s supposed to be halved. Move mine to the side of the shelf.”

Surit hesitated. “Really? I don’t want to touch it, but I just need space for an incense burner…”

The noise in Tennal’s brain paused long enough for him to experience a minor shock. “You are rural.”

“I never said I wasn’t,” Surit said stiffly. He had put an incense heater at the very edge of the niche, precariously balanced. Some sort of rural cult.