Conjured Memory

[Jaiysa t'Tamarak 0]

The pain was like light at the back of her eyes, like a roaring rush of sound, like sandpaper on the skin and fire on the nerves. It lasted, at its peak, only a second, but it was enough to tear a roar of agony out of Jaiysa's throat even as she strained to control herself against the strength of the diehvir and their Network. It was the pain of connecters applied to neural pathways, of synapses co-opted and rerouted from their normal function, of the sort of coercion and manipulation against which the brain knew instinctively to fight most vigorously. It was the warning cried out against intruders, warning her of what she already knew – that she was being taken over.

 

Were she coherent, she would have understood perfectly well what was occurring. Neurological scientific theory did allow for such devices. A sentient brain is, after all, little more than an extraordinarily complex computer; properly understood and harnessed it could theoretically be incorporated into a computer system such as the diehvir were using. She knew of research on ch'Rihan on this subject, the accessing of neural energy and function for the purpose of information.

 

And the use of such energy and function for the purpose of pain...well, that was considerably simpler, really.

 

These theories were not at the forefront of her mind, however -- not when she could feel the influence of the network spreading through her, painful and foreign, as her body slowly slipped out of her control. She could not think of anything at all, really. Her thoughts began to swirl, unordered, disjointed, synapses called into sudden use with sporadic, spasmodic activity, firing recollection and thought into coalescence and just as quickly burying them again. She could not think, could only watch as her brain played out memories for her as if for her own entertainment, controlled for purposes she could not understand...

 

The explosion of the Oppo facility in which they had been captured...the Echo lab outside Ra'tleihfi as she had seen it in the last moments before her departure, torn apart by the lloann'na teams and t'Bone...red blood sticking her fingers together as she pulled her hands from the inside of Vilanne's chest...

 

The grimy filth of the last ship she had taken back to ch'Rihan...her quarters in the Tehann base, as quiet, clean, and hostile as the man who shared them with her...the surgical suites of the training hospital in Dartha, rows and rows of shining, familiar instruments...

 

Remal, proudly showing their father his transfer orders so far away to ch'Revellion...Kaiva, and the anger in her face when tr'Jakora had come between them...a Rihan disruptor, shaking in her fingers as she was first taught to use it...the fire that had taken three rooms of the house near Apnex...

 

Memories, images, fragments of thoughts piled one upon the other, hardly marked by her incoherent mind, and she struggled to find a place to rest among them. She could not retreat, for even in the innermost reaches of her consciousness, the memories played out before her, mixed with a single recurring image...

 

A dark room...metal walls in dark grey, sucking in the light...a bed, a bright light, a console...a body...a neural interface...and a scream of pain...