Suddenly the image of that bastard pointing me out blazed into my consciousness, clear as if I were reliving the moment.
And then all the rest of it came back too—every blank spot in the memory suddenly filled with hard force, almost painfully jammed in.
I had to stop.
I had to stop to grieve for the crew of the Chandler. To grieve for the few friends I had made there, and for everyone else who I did not know but who did not deserve to die, just as I did not deserve to live instead of them.
It took some time. But as I said before, I had the time.
I took it.
And then when I was done I started fiddling with the problem again.
Why was I taken? Because Secretary Ocampo knew me. He’d been introduced to me even before we’d gotten to the Chandler, we took the shuttle ride over, and I came to him when I had questions about our change of destination.
He knew I was a pilot, but he also knew me as a person—probably the only person he knew on the Chandler other than Captain Thao and Vera Briggs.
It’s possible he picked me simply because he knew I was a pilot. He knew there were other pilots on the ship—he’d probably seen Bolduc on the bridge—but I was the first that came to mind. Because he’d met me. He knew me. Or thought he did.
So maybe he didn’t just pick me because I was a pilot. Maybe he picked me because he knew me as more than a random crew member. Maybe he saved me because there was a personal connection there.
And wasn’t there? Didn’t I feel like I could go to his stateroom and ask him about the orders he’d given the captain? Wasn’t he at least a little impressed that I had figured it out?
So, yes. Maybe he picked me because he knew me. Maybe because he liked me. Maybe he even thought he was saving me. Maybe he thought he was doing me a favor.
Picking you to have your brain plucked out of your body is not my idea of a favor, some part of my brain said.
Good point, brain, I thought, ignoring that I was now speaking to myself. But the point is not what I thought of it, it was what Ocampo thought of it, and me. I wasn’t flattering myself that I was important to Ocampo—I thought back to him telling Commander Tvann it was up to him whether or not to tell Vera Briggs to stay out of the lifepods. If Ocampo was like that with his own assistant, who he’d worked with for years, he wasn’t going to care much if I got uppity and troublesome.
But until then, there might be something there to work with.
What? And for what purpose?
I didn’t know yet.
That wasn’t the point. The point was that I was now listing my potential assets. And one of those assets was that Ocampo, for whatever reason, picked me to pilot the Chandler—to become the Chandler.
So that was one thing.
Another possible asset: what Ocampo didn’t know about me.
He knew my name. He knew my face. He knew I was a pilot.
And … that was it.
Which meant what?
It could mean nothing. Or it could mean that when they hooked me up to the Chandler’s systems, they wouldn’t know how much I already knew about the systems. Or how to use them.
Don’t get too excited, that other part of my brain said. You’re a brain in a box now. And they can see everything you do. They’re probably looking at you thinking all this right now.
You’re depressing, I said to that other part of my brain.
At least I’m not talking to myself, it said back. And anyway you know I’m right.
It was a fair point. I had to accept that leaving me alone with my thoughts could be part of a test that I was being given, to see how I would respond. If they were able to follow my thoughts right now, I had to accept that they would use that information to decide what to do with me—kill me or torture me or whatever.
But I had a feeling they weren’t. I had a feeling that the day alone with my thoughts was for another purpose entirely. It was to dominate me. To terrify me. To remind me how alone I was and how helpless I was. How utterly dependent I was on them now for my survival.
And you know what? They would be right about that. I was alone. I was dependent on them for survival. I was terrified.
But I wasn’t going to be dominated.
Yes, I was isolated. Yes, I was scared.
But I was also really, really pissed off.
And that was the thing I decided I was going to work with.
If they were listening to me when I was thinking this, they could kill me at any time. In which case they could get on with it, because otherwise they were just wasting my time and theirs.
But I didn’t think they were.
I don’t think they thought they had to.
Which was another possible asset. They assumed they had the upper hand in dealing with me.
Again, fair enough. I was a brain in a box and they could kill me or torture me any time they wanted. That’s a pretty good definition of having the upper hand.
But the fact was, they needed me.
They needed a pilot for the Chandler. They had me.