“It did worse things than you know. Sebastien has become a megalomaniac. He believes the aliens who built this place were gods – the implant whispers such things to him. But instead of being frightened, he was invigorated. Sebastien wishes to take their power, and become a god himself.”

“Great. That kind of thing never goes badly. So why aren’t you in the grips of megalomania?”

Uzoma shrugged. “I suffered from seizures as a child. I have a deep brain stimulation electrode implanted in my brain, to control them. I believe the neural manipulator interacted poorly with the DBS system, perhaps perceiving it as an existing implant. The manipulator seems to have shut itself down, but some damage was done – I am now vulnerable to seizures again. I would appreciate medical attention. I cannot remove the manipulator without the risk of damaging my brain, but as far as I can tell, its impact on my mental state is negligible.”

Callie nodded. Sebastien had seemed off to her from the beginning, and she’d put it down to subconscious jealousy instead of trusting her instincts. Uzoma seemed strange, but didn’t trigger that same discomfort, so she decided to trust for the moment. You could fret over things forever, or you could do something, and she was forever and always from the tribe of the doers. “I’ll assume you’re on our side until I have reason to believe otherwise, then.”

“I am glad. You must have a ship, and I would like to leave this place on it. Does your transport have weapons? Powerful ones?”

“It does.”

Uzoma pulled aside a panel in the wall and revealed a roughly hexagonal screen, wired into some exposed cables. “I have tapped into the control room, though I cannot meddle too much, or Sebastien will notice, and shut me out. I can, however, open a hangar door. Your ship can pick us up, and then fire through the open door, and perhaps do enough damage to kill Sebastien, or cripple his ability to continue his work. We should go now.”

“As soon as we save Elena.”

“Ah.” Uzoma nodded, once. “That will be more difficult. Sebastien may already have compromised her. If we do not stop him…” Uzoma shook their head.

“What’s he trying to do? I offered him a ride home, and he wasn’t interested. Is he building his own ship with a wormhole generator or something?”

“Not one ship. A fleet of them. Each ship full of neural manipulators. He intends to enslave the galaxy. He sees himself as the heir to the aliens who built this place.”

Callie closed her eyes for a moment. Thought about millions of brain-spiders flooding across the stations and moons and asteroids and planets of humanity, a silver wave of erasure. She opened her eyes again. “Let’s stop him from doing that, yes.”

Lantern bustled toward the panel, holding the sphere. “May I?”