There was a long silence. “I would,” she replied softly.
“Incredible. We’d say you were lying, but we know how well the serum works on you humans. Still, you’ve stated a belief, not a certainty. If you truly had to choose between yourself and him, you might find that self-preservation is a stronger instinct than you thought.”
“No, I’ve stated a certainty. Having nothing to do with his importance to the Federation. If I could save him, I would, even if I had to die to do it.”
“That’s so noble of you,” said Kussmann in disgust. “Which means it’s really going to hurt tomorrow when you die by his hand.”
I gasped internally. Incredible. Another piece of the puzzle. The Swarm had orchestrated everything. It explained why I couldn’t control my own limbs. Why I had made a decision so uncharacteristic of me. The Swarm had planned for me to put a bullet in Tessa’s brain before the idea had ever come to me. Which meant that the idea had never been my own in the first place.
“One final question,” said Kussmann. “Our AI and intel both said the Federation wouldn’t inject Jason with nanites. So where did we go wrong? How did that happen?”
“I made it happen.”
“You?” said the Swarm through Kenneth Kussmann, its tone one of disbelief. “How?”
“The Federation AI advised Nari not to do it, not until long after he revealed himself and Jason proved his willingness to work with us. It deemed that injecting Jason with nanites before then was too risky for a number of reasons. If Jason discovered them early, he might be freaked out. Or furious at not having a choice in the matter. At having complex alien machinery injected into his veins without his knowledge or consent. Who knows what calculations the damn AI made, but it was very clear on this matter.”
“And you changed that?”
“I did. After I fell in love, I insisted he be injected, even though it made things more complex. I didn’t care what happened to a grand plan some AI put together that we couldn’t fathom. I only cared about what happened to Jason. And I wanted him to have a nanite insurance policy. When Nari refused, I threatened to walk away. Blow the whole gig up. Nari knew I was serious, so he had no choice but to give in to my demands.
“Later,” she continued, “Nari lied to Jason and the colonel. He told them he had provided the nanites to us based on the AI’s strong recommendation. But it was just the opposite.”
“Interesting. Love made you take an irrational step. But in this case, it was a step that turned out to make the implementation of our plan more challenging.”
“Good to know,” said Tessa. “Because love is why Jason Ramsey will ultimately come to my rescue.”
Kussmann, or at least the man who used to be Kenneth Kussmann, snorted. “You’ve been reading far too many romance novels,” he said in contempt.
43
As the playback came to an end, some part of me realized I had absorbed it all in just a handful of seconds. And also that when I had awoken that morning, I had also been possessed by the Swarm, although not as completely as Kussmann.
Of course I had been. If it wasn’t so preposterous I’d have realized it much sooner.
Who has to wrestle with their own body?
I had decided at the time that this internal wrestling match had occurred because I was so deeply conflicted and confused about Tessa. But of course that wasn’t the case. And I had awoken this morning feeling hollow, like a shadow of myself, and now I knew why.
Because I was a shadow of myself.
The Swarm hive-mind—which thought of itself in the plural, but which I still thought of as a single, compound entity—had given me access to my own body, but it had been conditional access. As long as I was doing what it wanted, it let me think I was in charge. But now that I had broken from its playbook by refusing to kill Tessa, it had taken full control, relegating me to an onlooker in my own brain, trapped in a hidden corner.
And it was clear that it could, and had, read my mind and all of my memories. Every last one, from birth until now. Which is how it had implanted such a beautifully crafted scene of betrayal and battle into my mind.
The hive-mind knew of my previous interaction with Bob Baga, and every word he had chosen to speak, so it and its AI could come up with convincing dialog to put into Baga’s imaginary mouth. It knew of everything Nari had told me, and how I felt about it all. It knew every last detail about my relationship with Tessa, how we tended to phrase things, and that Tessa was the queen of pop-culture references.
The content of the Swarm’s implanted dream had been nearly perfect to achieve its goal of turning me against Tessa and the Federation. It had made sure she didn’t come across as pure evil, or entirely irrational.
Imaginary Tessa had argued her position as well as possible, arguments the Swarm knew from my mind I would find abhorrent, but not entirely unjustifiable. She hadn’t been portrayed as someone willing to betray her own species, but as someone willing to commit whatever atrocities were necessary to preserve it.
She had been icy cold, but had also expressed regret that she was forced to turn me over to dream Michelle, rather than laughing maniacally like a cartoon villain.
Yet deep inside the recesses of my subconscious, I had rejected the Swarm’s portrayal of Tessa like it had been a bad organ transplant. Just enough that I was able to resist the implanted compulsion to kill her, forcing the Swarm to add more and more weight to my finger to get me to pull the trigger. When I had managed to withstand even this escalating pressure and knock myself out, it had decided it needed absolute control, invading my mind so it could take over for good.
I gasped internally as another obvious truth made itself known to me.
When it had invaded my mind, I had invaded its mind.
The implications of this were truly staggering.