“But you’re choosing the path those who made you a slave would have you follow,” Cainen said.
“It’s my choice,” Jared said. “If Boutin wants to harm us, I want to stop him.”
“That means you might become like him,” Wilson said.
“I was supposed to be him,” Jared said. “Being like him still leaves room to be me.”
“So this is your choice,” Cainen said.
“It is,” Jared said.
“Well, thank Christ,” Wilson said, clearly relieved. Cainen also appeared to relax.
Jared looked at the two of them strangely. “I don’t understand,” he said to Cainen.
“We were ordered to bring out as much of Charles Boutin in you as possible,” Cainen said. “If you had said no, and we refused to follow our orders, it probably would have been a death sentence for me. I’m a prisoner of war, Private. The only reason I’m allowed what little freedom I have is because I’ve allowed myself to be useful. The moment I stop being useful is the moment the CDF withdraws the medicine that keeps me alive. Or they decide to kill me in some other way. Lieutenant Wilson here is not likely to be shot for disobeying the order, but from what I understand CDF prisons aren’t very nice places to be.”
“Insubordinates check in, but they don’t check out,” Wilson said.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Jared said.
“Because then it wouldn’t have been a fair choice for you,” Wilson said.
“We decided between us that we would offer you this choice and accept the consequences,” Cainen said. “Once we made our own choice on the matter, we wanted to be sure you had the same freedom we did in making your choice.”
“So thank you for choosing to go on,” Wilson said. “I nearly crapped myself waiting for you to make up your damn mind.”
“Sorry,” Jared said.
“Think on it no more,” Wilson said, “because now you have another choice to make.”
“We’ve come up with two options we think will spark a larger cascade of memories from your Boutin consciousness,” Cainen said. “The first is a variation of the consciousness transfer protocol used to put Boutin in your brain in the first place. We can cycle the protocol again and embed the consciousness a second time. Now that your brain is more mature, there’s an excellent chance more of the consciousness would take—indeed, that it could all take. But there are some serious possible consequences.”
“Like what?” Jared asked.
“Like that your consciousness would be entirely wiped out as the new one comes in,” Wilson said.
“Ah,” Jared said.
“You can see how it’s problematic,” Cainen said.
“I don’t think I want to do that one,” Jared said.
“We didn’t think so,” Cainen said. “In which case, we have a rather less invasive plan B.”
“Which is?” Jared said.
“A trip down memory lane,” Wilson said. “Jellybeans were only the beginning.”
NINE
Colonel James Robbins looked up at Phoenix, hovering over him in the sky. Here I am again, he thought.
General Szilard noticed Robbins’s discomfort. “You don’t really like the general’s mess, do you, Colonel?” he asked, and jammed more steak in his mouth.
“I hate it,” Robbins said, before he quite knew what was coming out of his mouth. “Sir,” he added, quickly.
“Can’t say that I blame you,” Szilard said, around the beef. “The whole thing of barring non-generals from eating here is six kinds of stupid. How’s your water, by the way?”
Robbins glanced down at the sweating glass in front of him. “Delightfully refreshing, sir,” he said.
Szilard motioned with his fork to encompass the entire general’s mess. “This is our fault, you know,” he said. “The Special Forces, I mean.”
“How so?” asked Robbins.
“Special Forces generals would bring anyone in their command structure in here—not just officers, but their enlisted too. Because outside of combat situations, no one in Special Forces really gives a shit about rank. So you had all these Special Forces troops in here, eating the nice steaks and ogling Phoenix overhead. It got on the other generals’ nerves—not just that there were enlisted in here, but that they were Ghost Brigade enlisted. This was in the early days, when the idea of soldiers less than a year old gave you realborn the creeps.”
“It still does,” Robbins said. “Sometimes.”
“Yeah, I know,” Szilard said. “But you people hide it better now. Anyway, after a while the realborn generals let it be known that this was their own playpen. And now all anyone else gets in here is one of those delightfully refreshing glasses of water you’ve got there, Colonel. So on behalf of the Special Forces, I apologize to you for the inconvenience.”