“I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
“What the hell am I missing?” Shutting his eyes, he leaned back against a cluster of small pipes. His eyes flickered back and forth beneath his lids as he scanned some inner vista.
“They said their weapons tests failed,” Ru offered. “Could that have been an illusion as well?”
“Sure,” he said without opening his eyes. “They could have blasted the hell out of practice targets and never seen the damage. A real person would have gotten wounded—no sensory program could mask that—but if they never took the weapons into combat, they’d never have a chance to observe that.”
“Which caused them to abandon those weapons in favor of simpler tools.”
“Barbaric tools. Primitive warfare, bloody and intimate.” He looked at her. “Someone—or something—has been disarming these people through trickery. Manipulating them like pieces in some dark game, to get them to fight like beasts.”
“Or as an experiment,” she said softly.
He raised an eyebrow.
“Isn’t that what this station was designed for? Scientific experiments?”
“Yeah, but how long has this gone on? And how many have died here? Hundreds? Thousands? Beaten to death, starved to death . . . would anyone consider that a reasonable cost for experimentation? No.” He held up a hand. “Don’t answer that. I know some megacorp executives who would. But how could it go on for two years with no one interfering? Something like this couldn’t be kept a secret for that long. People on the outside must have been working to keep Shenshido isolated.”
A sudden thought occurred to her. It was disturbing enough that she hesitated to put it into words. “Micah . . . could all this be related to what happened on Harmony?”
His eyes narrowed. “You mean the terrorist attack?”
“They were playing some kind of game at the time. Multi-player virt.”
“Dragonslayer,” he said testily. “I wrote that game. There’s nothing in its code that would explain what happened. But . . .” His eyes narrowed slightly. “Players have to be in constant contact with a game controller, to make sure everyone who’s immersed in the virt is receiving the same data. If someone hijacked that signal . . . I guess it’s possible. But what makes you think that, aside from the fact that virts are involved?”
She put her water bottle down beside her. DANGER, the label said. IN CASE OF CONTACT WITH SKIN SEEK IMMEDIATE MEDICAL ATTENTION. “The players were in communication with someone—or something—off-station. The signal was coming from Shenshido. That’s why I was sent here, to gather information on it. My employer wanted to know if it originated here, or was being channeled from somewhere else.”
“So which was it?”
“Don’t know. I copied the communication log for him, from the time of the bombing, so he could analyze it when I got back. Not my forte.”
“Net it to me. I’ll take a look. Use tempcode . . .” He paused, consulting some inner databank. “SEV928A.”
She had her headset download the information she’d gathered earlier onto a data chip, removed that, and offered it to him.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“The data you wanted.”
“Just net it to me.”
“Sorry, but I’m not connecting to this station’s innernet just to pass you a list of numbers. Just plug this in.” She continued to hold out the chip to him.
He made no move to take it. Just stared at her. “You’re not connected?”
She shrugged. “It’s not a big deal for outriders. Most of our time is spent out of range of public networks. We don’t have the same hunger for constant connection that you do.”
“You’re. Not. Connected.” He said the words slowly, as if testing the weight of each one. “You, alone. Everyone else on Shenshido has an open channel to the station’s innernet. But not you.”
She lowered the chip as his full meaning sank in.
“Jeez,” he muttered. “That’s why you’re not seeing what everyone else is! The sensory input must be coming through that connection. And that’s how it’s getting the feedback it needs to run this thing . . . only you’re not providing any. Shit. Whoever’s running this may not even know you’re here.” He held out his hand. “Give me the chip.”
She did so, and he slotted it into his headset, right behind the dragon’s head. His expression grim, he leaned back and shut his eyes, focusing attention on some inner landscape where, presumably, the numbers and symbols of communication code danced a surreal ballet. His eyes flickered back and forth as he watched the display, an eerie simulacrum of dream sleep, and his fingers twitched periodically, like the paws of a sleeping animal.
She studied him as she waited, observing the markings that framed his face: tiger stripes, deep brown against his pale skin. She hadn’t seen many Sarkassans before.
“Signal wasn’t originally from here,” he said at last. “Looks like . . . Sector Nine.”
She exhaled in frustration. “That’s empty space.”
“No. Not empty. Undeveloped. Uncontrolled. Ideal for people who don’t want to be found. There are scavs and other unsavory types who supposedly take refuge there. Or maybe that’s just in viddies.”
People who don’t want to be found. She remembered how intent Ivar had been on escaping the station before a rescue team arrived. Was he connected to all this? “Can you pull up any information on Ivar?”
“As in, use Shenshido’s innernet to access data for you? So you don’t have to connect with it yourself?” He waved short her protest. “It’s fine. You need to stay disconnected until we know what’s going on here. And yes, I can access anything that’s public record, provided it doesn’t require a passcode.” He closed his eyes again and leaned back. A minute passed. “Not seeing that name on any station manifest.”
“Possibly an alias.” She thought back to her conversations with Ivar, trying to remember anything that could provide a clue. “He said he arrived about two years ago. Right before the trouble started.”
“All right.” A longer silence this time. “Not seeing any arrivals then. Official ones, anyway.” A pause. “Looks like there was a big fight with scavs. That’s probably when the outer ring got trashed.” He looked at her. “Station Commander thought they might have come from Sector Nine.”
Her heart skipped a beat. “Any prisoners taken?”
He took a moment to check. “One. He wouldn’t give his name. They assigned him a number.” Another pause. “Someone identified him as A.A.” He chuckled. “It looks like that was shorthand for arrogant asshole.”