Nyx scratched absently at the shallow cut along her shoulder where she’d stumbled in the Ismaran cave. It was like some small, universal rebuke for the pain she’d caused Rhea. A reminder of what her friend had gone through.

Eris looked up from unloading the food, weapons, spare disguises, and uniforms. She seemed exhausted. None of them had slept since leaving Ismara. “You should get Cato to look at that. Put some healing ointment on it.”

“I’m not going to waste our medical supplies on a scratch.” Nyx shook her head as she stacked the bags of food. “I’m concerned about Rhea, Eris. She felt my emotions toward the Evoli back on Ismara.”

The other woman let out a breath. “You can’t help the echoes of your programming, Nyx.”

“Maybe not. But it’s Rhea.”

“Listen to me,” Eris said. “If you still had the Oracle in your mind, you would have held a Mors to her head. Being deprogrammed doesn’t mean you erase what the Oracle said and did to you; it means you can make the choice not to pull out the gun. Rhea knows that.”

The echo of a sharp cry down the hall made them pause. Cato. Another deprogramming session.

Nyx’s deprogramming had taken place in Rhea’s room in the Pleasure Garden, where anyone might have heard such agonized cries. Rhea would turn music on. She’d touch Nyx’s skin—which Nyx now recognized as the other woman using her abilities—and even that couldn’t dull the pain entirely. Lasering the thorns from her flesh had been nothing in comparison.

Ariadne had broken Nyx down into little pieces and built her back up into something different. Eris was right: once the Oracle had left her thoughts, answers weren’t easy anymore. They weren’t commands that repeated through your thoughts until you were certain—absolutely certain—that every action was for the glory of Tholos. Those old orders were just memories to be ignored.

Her mind, now her own, was sometimes too quiet.

“I wouldn’t have even questioned what we saw back on Ismara, would I?” she asked Eris, afraid of the answer. Needing the answer.

“No.” Eris’s voice was surprisingly gentle. “You wouldn’t have.”

Nyx couldn’t stop thinking of those skeletal faces, the withered, flaking skin and twisted fingers, reaching out for help none of them could give. An entire planet thrown away. Not a large planet, or populous, but its purpose was clear: it was an experiment. The beginning of something larger. The soldiers who left them there weren’t just following orders—they were programmed to think their actions served the glory of the Empire.

Another of Cato’s screams echoed down the hall.

Eris wordlessly hefted a bag of food onto her shoulder. “I’m going to take these to the canteen. Tell the others we’re having a meeting in an hour.”