“I hope you’re keeping track of where we’re going and where we’ve been,” Callie said. “Once we find Hans and Ibn we’re going to need to bring them back this way. It’s the only exit we know about.”

“Mmm. We won’t be able to come back exactly this way, through these service tunnels, unless we can commandeer a bio-drone. Which might be possible.”

“We’ll worry about that part later. Focus on the job at hand. What’s this reeducation camp like?”

“Reconditioning. I am unsure. Those who returned from the centers were usually quiet, and obedient, and did not record their experiences. According to the information in the museum of subjugation, those who were sent for reconditioning sometimes seemed to possess… diminished capacity afterward.”

“What, like, lobotomies?” Elena said.

“Is that the thing with the leeches?” Ashok said.

“No,” Callie said. “You’re thinking of phlebotomies. Lobotomies are the ones where they hit your skull with a chisel to let the bad spirits out.”

“That’s trepanation,” Elena said. “I mean, it’s not exactly, and phlebotomy doesn’t involve leeches either, but – no. Lobotomies were considered crude even in my time. It was used on people with violent mental disorders, and on anyone else the doctors wanted to use it on, honestly. You slide a long spike into a particular portion of the frontal lobe. It was essentially directed brain damage, and it made people placid and easily led.”

“Then yes, it was something like that.” Lantern did the shuddering thing with her tentacles. “There was always a struggle for balance. Intelligent slaves were useful, but intelligent slaves were also prone to rebellion, so the Axiom… adjusted things as needed.”

“Anybody who tries to put a spike up my nose is going to hit metal before they get too far,” Ashok said.

“They went in through the corner of the eye, I think,” Elena said. “You could do it with an icepick. But that wouldn’t work with the biology of the Free, I don’t think.”

“It may not be so invasive,” Lantern said. “They might have used magnetic stimulation, or direct implants. My people do have a large nerve cluster in our central bulge, but it’s not quite analogous to the human brain – most of us have distributed nervous systems, with clusters of nerve cells strung throughout our bodies and limbs, allowing for multiple redundancies in case of injury.”

“So, wait,” Callie said. “If they tried to ‘recondition’ Hans and Ibn, who have entirely different physiology, what would the process do to them?”

“Maybe nothing,” Lantern said. “Or maybe it would injure them, or kill them. I have no idea whether the procedure is invasive or traumatic or not.”