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“You argued with me while dying of thirst.”

“Another.”

“You touched my horn and stopped.”

“Another.”

“I followed your command at the condenser because you were right.”

His body began to unlock. Across the chamber, Keth and Jessa used the same method with the nomads: names, locations, chosen memories. Sera recorded every response despite blood running from her own implant scar. Tavi crawled toward the pulse node with a tool between his teeth and disabled it one conductor at a time. The last surge threw Kesta against Dreven. His arms came around her by reflex, then opened immediately.

“Stay?” he asked through clenched teeth.

She chose to remain. For three breaths she pressed her forehead to his and let their shared heat become something they were using rather than something using them. When the pulse finally died, Dreven collapsed forward. Kesta caught him.

The cost of his resistance was not symbolic. Two implant channels had burned open beneath his skin. He would carry fresh scars from choosing himself. Across the chamber, two nomads screamed as old implants activated beneath their skin.

Sera treated Dreven’s burned implant channels while Nara watched from the doorway. Nara expected sedation and restraints. Kesta refused both unless Dreven requested them. He endured the extraction of melted conductor fragments with his hands open on the table, naming each choice before Sera made it. The procedure became proof for Nara: Ash Camp could possess the same tools as the empire without using them the same way. When it ended, Dreven asked whether the other implanted prisoners had been given choices. Nara said no. His silence afterward carried more rage than violence would have.

Nara seized Kesta’s wrist.

“The pulse,” she said. “It found you.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The Pulse

The chamber began changing before anyone understood the attack. The pale wall lines shifted from H-PRIME access symbols into anatomical diagrams. Dreven’s body appeared in layers: bone, muscle, implant pathways, hormonal surges. Beside it, Kesta’s nervous system unfolded in blue light. Lines connected them across the air.

TARGET CONDITIONS:

PROTECTIVE AGGRESSION.

ANCHOR DISTRESS.

RIVAL PROXIMITY.

The system was not merely activating implants. It was arranging circumstances. One of the nomad men shouted when a wall panel opened and released a projection of an armed imperial soldier approaching the children. He fired into the image. The weapon discharge fed the ruins more energy.

“Stop reacting to projections,” Nara yelled. “It learns from response.”

A second image formed behind Kesta, this one showing Rath reaching for her band. Dreven’s head snapped toward the projection and his pupils widened, the ruins using recognition before his conscious mind could reject the bait. Kesta stepped through the false body, breaking the illusion. “Not real.” The system replaced Rath with an imperial medic holding Avarra by the throat. Dreven made a sound too low for language.

“It knows your memories,” Kesta said.

“Fragments,” he forced out. “Interrogation implants recorded them.”

The projected Avarra looked at him and said, in a voice no machine should possess, “Command me again, brother.” Dreven lunged. Keth blocked him and was thrown across the chamber. Kesta understood then that the pulse could not be treated only as electrical overload. It was a behavioral assault built from grief.

“Dreven, look at me.”

His gaze remained fixed on the projection.

“Avarra saved eleven thousand people,” Kesta said. “She disobeyed you because she chose them. This machine is using the moment after her choice. It does not own the choice itself.”

The projection smiled with Avarra’s mouth. “You always let women die when they leave you.” Dreven’s body shook. Kesta moved into his line of sight but stayed beyond reach. “Tell me something the recording does not know.” He stared through her.

“Something after the interrogation. Something you never said inside an imperial room.”