+Your sisters. You’re worried about them. They were taken… wait… Yes, they were taken from the scholam. Without your consent.+

‘Just kill me, you bastard, or leave me alone!’

+Please, Patience, don’t speak. They’ll hear you.+

I was moving fast now. The jagged ruins of the slum-tracts slid by me on either side. Rocks and catapult bullets occasionally clattered off my chair’s armour. Where was she? Where was she?

+Patience? Can you still hear me?+

‘Leave me alone!’ she sobbed, crawling deeper into the damp cavity. ‘I can’t do this! I can’t do this any more!’

+Yes, you can! Just keep it together! Focus! Focus on something!+

Patience twisted in panic, clawing at the sides of her head. I was scaring her. My voice. Something about my voice. Not just the fact that it was coming, disembodied, into her mind. Something else.

What?

As I steered my chair out across a long sea of trash and debris, I gently peered into her mind, into the panic and turmoil. Into the fear.

I saw it. It was my voice itself. I sounded like a middle-aged, well-educated male. Reasonable, polite, refined. Exactly the sort of man who had betrayed her for her entire life, her fellow pupils, her sisters. I saw she had formed a picture of me already. It was part Cyrus, part Ide, part Loketter, part some ginger-haired man. It was all of these, blended into one monster.

Immediately, I switched the focus of my telepathy.

+Kara?+

I found her at once, bleary and sick. Nayl was helping her along a rubble ledge back towards the gig.

‘What?’ she asked.

+I’m sorry, Kara, but I need to ware you again.+

‘Throne, no!’ she whimpered.

‘She’s had enough, boss,’ Nayl said.

+It’s important. Really important. I need her voice.+

Kara looked at Nayl and nodded wearily. He caught her as her wraithbone pendant flashed, and she fell.

I left her body limp in Nayl’s arms, and put on her personality like a skin-suit. My psychic-voice became Kara Swole’s soft, reassuring tones.

+Patience?+

‘What? What?’

+Patience, my name is Kara. My good friend Gideon has asked me to talk to you. Time is very short, Patience, and you need to listen to me if you want to stay alive. Trust Gideon. Do exactly as I say.+

I could feel the girl giving way to panic.

+Patience, focus! Hold on! There must be something you can hold on to! Something you can hold on to so you can keep going! Your sisters, maybe? Your mother? Patience?+

She had found it at last. It was something so small and dark and hard in her mind that even my telepathy could not unlock it. She held on to it, tight, tight, as the dark closed in.

Her panic waned. Her breathing slowed. I was close now. I could reach her.