Twelve women. Five were dead. Some had died in the stripping. One had gone from the fast gas. That left them with seven women, any of which could be the cycle spy.
A cycle spy!
His stomach rolled.
It was forbidden.
The wiping of memory was one thing, but implanting fresh ones was tricky and dangerous. The circuits placed into a cycle spy’s brain were placed so that everything the cycle spy saw or heard went into storage that was then transmitted via the circuit to an interface. And those circuits could be very long range. Galaxy wide, in fact.
The part of him that recoiled the hardest was the one who knew that no brain could continue that sort of thing before breaking down. Eventually, usually in a matter of months, the cycle spy would simply wear out. The organic matter in their brain would collapse and liquefy. They’d die abruptly and without warning but all the while inflicting damage on whoever they had been sent to spy upon.
Who could it be?
Not Clara.
Her mother had been right where Clara had said she would be. Her father and brother too. She had skills no mind wipe or memory install could have given her. The muscle between her thumb and forefinger was spring tight, something that dealers only had happen after decades of play.
So not her. The others? He considered that. His heart dropped as he realized that everything could be compromised now. His legal activities notwithstanding, the woman who was a cycle spy would have seen his face, which meant whoever had sent her must have seen it too. And the faces of his brothers.
Now might be the best time to pull stakes and head out.
Not that he could, and staying where he was just then was not such a huge risk. It was possible that the cycle spy was dead. Perhaps she had even been the woman with low rot. He calmed himself by thinking through all the possibilities in as rational a way as possible.
But the only real thought that kept coming back was that he had to make sure that it was not Clara. But if he had her chip removed so soon, she would want to know why. Cycle spies had no idea what they were, but if she felt threatened, the person watching might execute a kill order into her brain.
But it was not Clara. Could not be.
Could it?
