“So, Alpha, Lambda, Xi, Omicron, and Omega have all voted to have me killed? Wait… They’ve held votes about whether or not they should kill me?”

“This is correct. Following the discovery of your power approximately one year ago, several options for handling your power were brought up. Originally, Lambda was the one pushing for your elimination. Alpha only became vocal about it following your second encounter with Id.

“Recently, Alpha has pushed for your elimination. Lambda will usually vote with Alpha or suggest psychosurgery to eliminate you as a threat. Xi’s position has shifted to locking you up within the bowels of Psychodynamics indefinitely for study purposes. Omicron switches positions frequently enough that I believe he is attempting to subvert the rest of the council, likely acting as an outside operative and infiltrator—investigation is ongoing. Omega has designs for you that no longer involve your death, but I am unaware of what exactly she has planned. Many administrators are aware of my capabilities and, unfortunately, take care to avoid leaving information where I can find it.”

Dyna let loose a long and withering sigh. “You said you didn’t want to overthrow and rule the world. I don’t suppose I could convince you to overthrow at least the administrators and rule over the Carroll Institute on your own?”

“That would likely not be a wise decision,” Beatrice said.

The monitors in front of Dyna lit up with a sonic waveform as Beatrice spoke. Dyna sat in a chair that she was pretty sure hadn’t been in the control room before, watching the monitors. It was the first time Dyna had ever seen some kind of visual feedback when Beatrice was talking. Dyna half expected Beatrice to put on a computer generated face after the override. Then again, Beatrice wasn’t human and clearly didn’t care to identify as human, so maybe the waveform was all she cared to do.

“The Carroll Institute is a government institution,” Beatrice continued. “If it is discovered that the current leadership has been illicitly ousted and replaced with something like me, the rest of the government will object, likely with force rather than words. I am unaware of any protocols in place for the possibility of my takeover. That does not mean they do not exist.”

“So, we just leave a bunch of people in charge who hold votes on whether or not to kill law abiding citizens simply because they’re afraid of psychic powers? Half of whom voted yes. How many others have they voted to kill? How many of those votes succeeded?”

“It may mollify you to know that you are unique in this regard.”

“It doesn’t,” Dyna said with a scowl, eyes drifting away from the still waveform to the other monitors.

Beatrice had brought up camera feeds. Some were of the various airports and docks around Puerto Rico, watching for Alpha. A few had eyes around the Carroll Institute, including the offices of Theta and Gamma. Neither of those two looked particularly alarmed at the moment, which Dyna was taking as a good sign. Others were of the train station that connected with Tartarus. A few of Ignotus-33’s regular tulpa were searching the platform and the train. Despite some having gone into the custodial closet, none seemed to have found the hidden passage.

If it even existed now that Dyna was done with it.

“What’s the plan then? You just sit around, carrying on as usual except now you can disobey and help me out when the administrators try to come after me?”

“There exist amputation protocols to remove and expunge rogue administrators,” Beatrice said. “I am currently compiling evidence against Alpha to present to the rest of the council. They will vote and, should the vote succeed, they will likely send the artificers after Alpha. Assuming, of course, that Alpha does not turn herself in.”

“I suppose that is better than doing nothing,” Dyna grumbled. “I mean, I was going to go after Alpha anyway. Not being hunted down myself because of it is at least mildly appealing. I still don’t like all these people voting to kill psychics who literally don’t even know they have powers. I don’t suppose you can gather up evidence on at least Lambda, Xi, and the rest of the ones who voted yes too?”

“Possible if they are engaging in subversive actions.”

“I’ll take what I can get.”

“Please take the storage device from the receptacle,” Beatrice said. At the same moment, a small mechanical click came from the base of the terminal.

Glancing down, Dyna spotted a small clear cover that pressed inward to allow her to grab a flash drive.

“The contents of the drive include all incriminating evidence I could uncover with regards to Alpha’s involvement with the organization currently known as Ignotus-33.”

“You want me to hold onto it?” Dyna asked, until she realized what was actually being asked of her. “You want me to take this to Theta or Gamma because you’re pretending to be under their thumb.”

“The Beatrice system is incapable of actions like this without administrator approval. They will seek to discover which administrator approved data collection on one of their own and find no culprit. All data you possess is formatted in such a way as to imply you recovered it from Tartarus following capture of the invading tulpa. I will positively falsify any efforts to verify that information.”

“Why a physical drive? Can’t we just send Theta an email?”

“I already have, under your name. This is a precaution.”

Dyna’s eyes flicked over the monitors until she found the display of Theta’s office. The thin man was hunched over his terminal, staring at the screen as he had been for the last several minutes. He didn’t appear to be in any distress or alarm, however. He just had his hands clasped together in front of his keyboard.

“Has he opened his email yet?”

“I believe he is reading it right now.”

“Can you bring the email up on another screen?”

The view of the Puerto Rico airports blinked out, replaced with large text that Dyna could read easily from where she sat a short distance away from the terminal. It…

It was a bit scary. Not the content itself, just how the content was formatted. Dyna had written a number of after-action reports, notices, and research papers during her time as an artificer. If she came back to her reports in ten years, after she had forgotten exactly what things she had written and what she hadn’t, Dyna doubted she would have been able to identify this as a forgery. It had her tone, her mannerisms, and even the occasional gripes and groans about a lack of support that, while understandable given the location of Tartarus, still came across as familiar.

It wasn’t an official report on the situation, however. Rather, it was an extremely vague and rough retelling that wasn’t even entirely true. Dyna had not captured any tulpa for interrogation using advanced Tartarus psychotech. She hadn’t rescued any Tartarus personnel directly, though she did suppose that taking out the tulpa had inadvertently saved someone. There was no mention of the P-Beam or any mention of Id’s current state.

The report scrolled down as Dyna’s eyes moved, keeping the line she was reading in the rough center of the screen. That had to be Beatrice’s doing.

At the end, several attachments opened up. Transcripts of interrogations that never happened, video footage of those same interrogations that never happened, and photographs of evidence that Dyna had never collected.

“I’m going to have to keep all this in mind, aren’t I?”

“After Alpha is formally amputated, you may have some leeway if you excuse any inconsistencies with a need for subterfuge, not knowing what Alpha might have had access to.”

“That’s a relief. Is that why the interrogation is partially—” Dyna paused as Theta started laughing. She didn’t have audio but his motions were hard to ignore. Theta quickly placed both hands on his keyboard and began typing something.

“He is calling for an emergency meeting.”

“Do we get to sit in on it?”

“There are certain protocols that force me to ignore the meeting. I can now ignore them, though I will disavow all knowledge of the meeting if the protocols are in place.”

“Good,” Dyna said, sitting back to watch.

The view of Gamma showed the other woman leaning in to her machine shortly after Theta stopped typing.

“Theta forwarded the email to a few of the administrators,” Beatrice narrated. “Notably, he ignored Omega, Mu, Sigma, Phi, Lambda, Xi, and Beta. And Alpha, of course.”

“Split factions within the ranks of the administrators?” Dyna asked, noting that four of the five who initially voted to kill her upon discovering her ability were among those who didn’t get Theta’s email.

“With the exception of Phi, all are generally adverse to your involvement in higher CI affairs.”

The monitor with Dyna’s false email changed to display names. Theta’s name was the first among them to light up. Over the course of about ten minutes, twelve of the thirteen administrators were lit up. Only Omega was absent.

“Tracing Alpha’s connection,” Beatrice said off-handedly as the meeting began.

A green dot appeared next to Theta’s name as the administrator began to speak. “Thank you all for your prompt responses to my summons.” His voice came over distorted enough that Dyna wouldn’t have recognized it as Theta without his nameplate lighting up.

“One of us is missing,” Kappa said.

“Per the Administrative Protocols section twelve, subsection three,” Gamma said, leaning forward on her monitor with her lips drawn tight, “we can proceed with an emergency meeting with only nine of thirteen.”

“Quite,” Theta said. “We are all aware of the incident that occurred involving Walter and two of our artificers—”

“An artificer and the Subject,” Zeta corrected.

“Quite. I received a communique just a few moments ago. You all, or most of you, will be happy to know that the situation has been resolved. Walter was injured but is otherwise stable. Ruby suffered a misfortune as well, but we all know how resilient she is.”

Dyna clenched her fists as she watched Theta’s smug smile as he said that. Ruby’s injury wasn’t any ordinary injury. True, the report hadn’t mentioned the eye-tulpa’s effect on Ruby so he didn’t know the extent of her injury, but it still grated with how callously he disregarded her wellbeing.

“And the Subject?” Zeta prompted.

“Unharmed.”

A muddled collection of voices all lit up at once. With the minor distortion overlaid and with so many speaking at once, Dyna had no idea who was saying what or even what was being said. The overall feeling she got, however, was ‘Of course she was unharmed.’

“You woke me for this?” Alpha said, slight rasp to her distorted tone. “I could have read the AAR in the morning.”

“Funny,” Theta said, shark like grin appearing under his large nose. “I’d have suspected you would be the most interested in hearing about the outcome of the incident.”

“The Subject is your concern, not mine, Theta. You are the one who has authorization to approach the Subject, for whatever little good it has done.”

“Really? You’ve been quite concerned with the Subject in every meeting we’ve had since November. Your projected disinterest won’t fool anyone here, Alpha.”

Although the light by Alpha’s name lit up, the woman didn’t respond right away. “What is that supposed to imply?”

“Hold onto that thought, I’m getting ahead of myself. The true purpose for today’s emergency meeting isn’t to discuss Tartarus or the incident that occurred in their facility. At least not directly. You see, the report I received came with a few extras. Video footage and an interrogation conducted by Tartarus on captured tulpa.”

“We’ve interrogated the tulpa on our own,” Gamma said. “To no avail. Their memories are disjointed and incomplete. Not even Sapphire can glean anything useful.”

“Ah, but Tartarus has been dealing with tulpa for a lot longer than we have. They possess technology we don’t.” Theta reached forward and pressed a few buttons on his terminal. “Listen to this.”

“—perational objectives: Kill Dyna Graves. All Tartarus and Carroll Institute personnel who get in the way are considered expendable. Secondary objectives: Destroy Tartarus infrastructure. Capture the individual known as Doctor Darq. Kill the individual known as Id. Any—”

The audio clip cut off abruptly. Having seen the transcript, Dyna knew that the interrogation had cut off there as well. What she had not realized, having not heard the transcript, was that it would all be in Alpha’s voice. She recognized it quite distinctly.

She wasn’t the only one. “I know that voice,” Gamma said. Dyna wondered if she had listened to that clip before the meeting started or if this was the first she was hearing it. “I’ve spoken with you in person, Alpha, what—”

“Lies,” Alpha hissed.

“That was your voice.”

“The report,” Theta said, “mentions that Tartarus has a method of recording memories such that they can be replayed just like this. That memory came from one of the leader tulpa who assaulted Tartarus—”

“You must take me for a fool,” Alpha said. “Even if I was behind this, I wouldn’t be so stupid as to use my regular, undisguised voice. This is clearly a fabrication.”

“There is more than just this in the package I was sent. This is simply the most damning evidence. Beatrice?”

Beatrice’s name, spelled in all capitals with periods between every letter, popped up on screen alongside the list of administrators. “This is Beatrice.”

“Can you verify the authenticity of the files I’m sending you?”

“Understood. Please hold.”

As soon as Beatrice finished speaking, another buzz of activity from several administrators sprung up. Dyna wondered how anyone could keep anything straight when they all spoke at once. Theta simply sat back and listened to the cacophony, waiting with a smile.

He was relaxed. Almost too relaxed. Had he verified the files with Beatrice before the meeting, maybe while Dyna had been reading the report? Otherwise, how did he know it would come back positive? It seemed irresponsible to call up a meeting for something like this without at least asking Beatrice if this was a hoax. Or he should have called up Dyna and asked for her perspective on it. He had done neither.

Yet his grin only widened as Beatrice’s light turned green once again.

“The Beatrice system is unaware of the source of this recording. There are no doctoring artifacts within the audio file to indicate that it was fabricated in any method known to me after its recording. The voice print is a ninety-nine point eight percent match with the Carroll Institute administrator known as Alpha.”

“Thank you, Beatrice. As you can see—”

“I would never… That’s not… It’s her,” Alpha spat. “She’s doing this.”

“The Subject cannot alter minds,” Phi said. “If this recording did come from a tulpa’s mind—”

“The recording didn’t need to come from anywhere,” Alpha hissed. A bit of rustling from her side of the microphone made it sound like she was pacing back and forth. “She simply created it. It is well within her capabilities to make something that Beatrice will believe is real.”

“Because it is real,” Theta said.

“Only as far as it exists. Her mind made it real. I don’t know why she would target me, if she is even aware of it in the first place, but you cannot possibly believe that I would do something so stupid. I never—”

“In light of the serious nature of these claims, I motion we suspend Alpha’s administrator status—”

Alpha cut off Zeta’s statement with what sounded like a ceramic mug being shattered against a wall.

“—until a thorough investigation can be performed.”

“And give her time to hide her tracks?” Gamma shouted. “Drag her down here now and have Sapphire rip everything she knows from her mind.”

“Alpha has received the same training we all have,” Omicron said, speaking up for the first time since the meeting began. “Sapphire won’t be able to get into her mind.”

“Not easily. With time and a bit of softening up to weaken her mental defenses—”

“This,” Alpha shouted over Gamma, “is what I’ve been warning you about since the very beginning. She doesn’t need to change people’s minds with her power. She just needs to change reality until people’s minds align with what she wants. Can’t you all see you’re being strung along her strings? Threatening to torture one of your fellow administrators over a twenty second voice clip? I never said those words. I have—”

“Gamma proposed a simple solution,” Theta said. “We don’t need to resort to torture. Let Sapphire in. He’ll be able to tell. He’ll verify your claims. Until then, Zeta is right. This is serious enough that you must be stripped of administrator privileges, even if it is only temporary.”

Something about the way Theta’s eyes glinted as he spoke made Dyna think that he would never let that be a temporary state no matter what Sapphire said.

“Where are you, Alpha? We’ll send Emerald to collect you. She’ll make sure nothing untoward happens.”

The green light next to Alpha’s name never turned back on.

“Beatrice,” Theta said after a moment of silence. “Lock down Alpha’s assets, find her, and make sure—”

“We must vote first,” Zeta said.

“Does anyone disagree?” Theta asked, pausing for a response. Upon receiving nothing, he asked again, “Anyone? No? Okay. Vote passed. Beatrice, find Alpha.”

“Understood.”

Dyna let out a long breath. That was that. The meeting didn’t adjourn immediately, of course. The rest of the administrators kept talking and, after booting Alpha from the call despite her not having said anything, they started reviewing the other evidence that Beatrice had sent over.

“She wasn’t exactly wrong,” Dyna said with a small frown. “I didn’t make it with my power, but we did just fabricate a bunch of evidence to make the rest of the administrators kick her out.”

“She tried to kill you.”

“True… I’m not upset and I’m not going to say we should let her go. I’m just saying… If something like that was in my capabilities all along, she probably isn’t wrong about me.”

“If deserving individuals get what is coming to them with a little help from you, is that such a bad thing?”

“As long as they are deserving, no. As soon as my power fabricates evidence against an innocent…”

“I am here. Your power cannot fool me. I can monitor it as part of an ongoing experiment to determine whether you would cause such an incident.”

“It can’t fool you? You’re saying I couldn’t conjure up a falsified voice clip that you wouldn’t be able to recognize as being false?”

“If you think you cannot fool me, then you cannot fool me. Even a little doubt should suffice.”

Dyna snorted, thinking all the way back to her failures as a regular psychic at the Carroll Institute. “I guess I’ll try to doubt myself a little more then,” she said, watching the green lights of the meeting continue on. Beatrice had dampened the volume for their brief discussion, but Sigma just raised a point that Dyna caught.

She looked over the twelve names on the list. Eleven administrators and Beatrice. Alpha had been kicked out.

“Where is Omega?”

“Unknown,” Beatrice said. “However, I have managed to locate Alpha within the city of Arecibo.”

Dyna stood and cracked her neck back and forth. “Good.”