On Emerald, among the Vedillian Underground, Shirae’s Hunters – in the Palmyr, and even out here, she could never avoid it.

There had been, could be empathy, support – but that would never last. The pressure, the danger, the lingering doubts – the eventual choice always lurked; your friends or your life, death or survival, Macros or humanity.

“The inevitable betrayal,” she finished heavily. “Always.”

“But– that isn’t our biggest problem,” she forced out. “There’s something I haven’t told you.”

What is it?

“I can’t use my multiplexer,” she confessed. “The crystals are cracked; they won’t be able to handle the interface or the codestream. I don’t think we’ll be able to repair them here.”

Then you will need to find another way to interface with the Macro.

“I’m not going to risk you.”

You know the best alternative.

“I build a new array out of the local micronics,” she offered. It was not an impossible task, and it was a far better choice than what she knew he was going to suggest.

That is not your only choice.

“Finding a corpore to climb into would be a bit… risky.” A bit fatal, more like.

It is likely there are Macro implants on Makan.

“I would have to kill to use them Dorian,” she breathed with mounting horror. After Hadhalho, she had gone back to all the lost worlds she had visited to search for, and examine the Macros’ cybernetic dead.

Macro implants could handle the volume of trinary code she needed; but the organic components broke down rapidly after death.

“You know I’d have to remove the implants when they are alive. Even then…”

She had only tested the theory with laboratory grown brain tissue. Not yet in the field – hadn’t wanted to – but she had to agree with it would be the simplest, and quickest, and least dangerous choice, but…

Even just the thought of it made her feel sick.

“You think the Macro here has implanted people?” she wanted to know, dreading his response.

You must recognize that probability.

“Do you expect me to hunt for victims to murder, just so I can reduce my risk? Can’t you suggest anything else?”

Unless you can find or construct another array before you have to face any corpore, you must make the least dangerous choice. Otherwise, you might not free this world from its Macro – or ever escape it.

“Don’t ask me to do that,” she protested. “I cannot do that. I will not be like that! I am not like that!”

She could survive withoutNANcontrol. She could survive the cold. And she still had her imprints. It might take an anna, even two. But against his alternative…

“We are not going to murder people,” she insisted.