The second servo-skull bobbed cheerily from its storage unit, tiny arms clicking as it flexed its joints. The projector in its left eye flared, spectral images materialising around me. The quality varied significantly. Here was a grainy shot of a scowling child, the data-source unknown. Beside it was an official holo-portrait, where a young woman with pallid skin and flame-red hair glared into the recorder. She would have been an adolescent, having just enrolled in the schola progenium following her parents’ deaths. No doubt she still grieved their loss, but there was little sorrow in her eyes, only a cold fury. Her lip was unscarred then, the injury earned at some point during her studies.

I turned to the most recent image, captured a few months ago. It must have been taken post-battle, the squad celebrating their victory. They were cropped so only she remained, clad in full dress uniform, hand resting on the pommel of her sabre, the other cradling a glass. Her eyes were fixed straight ahead. She must have been aware the pict had been taken, but there was no smile, though the scar twisted her lip into something between a grin and a sneer.

Having now heard her speak, I wondered if the expression was a reflection of her disposition rather than an injury.

‘Attempt data-splice.’

The seer-skull bobbed in acknowledgement, its inner mechanisms whirring as it began assimilating the various files. The blurred pict of the cockpit slowly condensed into something clearer, as the seer-skull mapped Shard’s features onto the pilot. Her eyes were cold and calculating as she took the shot, but her mouth was stretched wide in a battle cry, as she basked in the savage joy of combat.

But it did not look right; the expressions did not tally. Though the technique was impressive and the final product convincing, it was artifice, an imitation spun from light and memory. I could not know whether it truly captured that moment, or was a facsimile born from data-scraps and my own preconceptions.

‘Erase splice.’

The image vanished, though I wish the same could be said for the temptation. Splicing unrelated images to forge a sanctioned narrative was a propagandist’s craft and trade. Indeed, before his interment and new life as my seer-skull, Propagandist Fiwel Iwazar had been renowned for his ability to weave image and audio with the flair of an artist and the precision of a surgeon, crafting stunning works from data-scraps. He could blend disparate images and sound until even the most talented propagandist would struggle to separate his facsimile from raw footage.