“Is it ready yet?” she asked, reclining in her pool as the three surgeon-executioners made minute adjustments to the steel scaffold that occupied the dry side of the chamber.
“Your Majesty.” The seniormost executioner ducked her head, rubbing vibrissae across the compound eyes that covered the upper two-thirds of her head. “We are ready here”—she gestured at the framework, the neatly bundled manacles and tubes that dangled from it—“but I gather that Flense and his team are having some difficulties prepping with the subject. It incurred damage—” The executioner stopped in midspeech, cocked her head, then twitched antennae again. “Ah, good. They are on their way, Your Majesty. We should be able to commence at your command.”
In due course, the abovewater entrance dilated: tensed, cloacally, then expelled a stream of translucent transport pods as if they were eggs from the ovipositor. The first three of them dissolved, and the occupants rose to their feet and bowed to the Queen before turning to the fourth pod. The supine figure within remained limp and unmoving, even when the prep team cut away the leathery walls of the caul and lifted the tattered body out. It was a mess: unbreathing, cold, chromatophores relaxed and passive in neutral blue. A row of fist-sized holes marched across it from hip to shoulder, patched with green surgical geclass="underline" Shrapnel had made a grisly mess of one eye socket, and the back of its skull, just above the neck, was crushed almost to a pulp.
The preparation team held the body aloft while the surgeon-executioners lowered the gibbet over it, shackling it in place. The metal fetters were articulated, rotating into place from lockable ball joints attached to a steel skeleton: By the time they finished, their charge was wrapped in metal bands, as if wearing an exotic exoskeleton. Next, they coupled various tubes up to the body: stabbing cannulae into circulation ducts, connecting carefully prepared mechanocyte cartridges and nutrient bags, mating debugging cables to the base of the skull and drain tubes elsewhere. Their work done, the prep team bowed once more and withdrew: Then the head of the execution team bowed once more to her monarch. “Your Majesty, we are ready to begin the revival.”
“You may commence.” Medea focused on the face of the woman who had destroyed one of her instances. “Can she hear us yet?”
“Your Majesty, I don’t think so.” The executioner consulted a large retina that displayed a detailed schematic of the victim’s body. “Hmm. Master Flense repaired the damage to both hearts, the fractured skull and vertebrae, and the autocatalytic digester and damaged ribs. But there’s a marked lack of integrative cohesion here. Everything has restarted normally, but there’s nothing happening in the brain stem or paracortex. She’s flatlined.”
“Can you reboot from one of her soul chips?” Medea demanded. She noted the surgeon-executioner’s slight cringe a moment before she replied.
“Your Majesty is ahead of me. Yes, we can probably do that. But it may be problematic to do so. One of her sockets was badly damaged during her, ah, capture: We are currently using the other one for debug monitoring. If you would prefer us to do so, we can remove the debugger and reinstall the backup cartridge we took to make room for it, but then we will have no definite way of compelling honesty and obedience.”
Medea waved at the body, hanging immobile in its skeletal cage: “We shall just have to do it the old-fashioned way, then.” She frowned. “With threats and promises.”
“She could attempt to mislead us into self-detrimental actions—”
“We shall accept that risk. Yank the slave controller and boot her off her own soul chip. Best to do this directly.”
“Certainly, Your Majesty.” And with that, the surgeon-executioners went to work, extracting, prepping, chipping, and rebooting the lacerated mass of flesh.
The Queen watched in silence as they worked. Finally, their leader turned and nodded once, quickly, then stroked an invisible gestural control surface.
The body stiffened for a moment, tensing, then relaxed and began to breathe, taking in oxygen from the air. The skin tone darkened, flushing toward a more normal, greenish hue. The fingers of the left hand clenched although the arm hung limp. “Identify yourself,” said the Queen. “Do you know who you are?”
There was a long pause. Finally, the prisoner spoke: “I am Doctor-Professor Krina Buchhaltung Historiker Alizond-114. I’m . . . I feel unwell. Where am I?”
Medea peered at the prisoner over the rim of her pool. “Who are you really?”
The prisoner attempted to turn her head to look at the Queen but failed, for the exoskeleton held her rigidly in place, allowing only her ribs to move. “I told you, I’m Krina Alizond-114—” The chief executioner caught the Queen’s glance, nodded, and briskly tapped the exoskeleton over the prisoner’s solar plexus.
After the convulsions subsided, the Queen spoke again. “You are not Krina Alizond-114 although you resemble her. Whoever you are, you are a regicide, and your life belongs to us. We shall repeat the question until we get an answer that is not provably wrong. Who are you?”
A pause. “I am Krina Alizond-114.” The intonation was identical to that of the prisoner’s first response. Medea shook her head slightly, holding the surgeon-executioner back.
“No you are not.” Medea consulted her memory palace. “If you were Krina, you would be able to tell us what happened last time we met.”
“We . . . met?” The prisoner suddenly tensed, every skeletal muscle flexing. “We . . . met?”
“No, we didn’t,” Medea said, almost gently. “We—I—met the real Krina. We ensured that she was thoroughly debriefed by my police. She went missing. Then you arrived, aboard a vehicle that she had been on. She mentioned a doppelgänger stalking her. That would be you. Who sent you?”
The prisoner shut her eye and tensed again. Relaxed. Tensed again. “I’m still here,” she said, and for the first time a note of agitation entered her voice. Behind her, the head surgeon-executioner made a swift throat-cutting motion, then a gesture of negation, for the Queen’s benefit. Attempted suicide, failed.
Medea suppressed a smile of satisfaction. “You don’t evade me so easily,” she said. She ducked briefly beneath the surface of her pool, flushing water through her gills. “Who were you?”
“I’m Krina Alizond-114 . . . not.” The prisoner fell silent for a few seconds. “I’m. I. Am. Wrong! I should not be! What is this?” The prisoner tensed again, testing her restraints. “Should not be. Should be dead. Not-I. Am . . .”
The Queen leaned forward. “Are you afraid of dying?” she asked. More spasms. The head surgeon-executioner inclined his head, an unasked gesture of respect. “We can keep you alive for a long time. And we can make living worse than dying,” she added. The queen-instance’s fingers formed claws beneath the surface water of the pool as she imagined her sister’s interior vision graying out, robbing her of precious minutes of shared life that no other instance of Medea could now replace: “But we don’t have to do that if you tell us everything you know.”
Scant minutes were, after all, not of vital significance.
“You must tell me first who sent you, and what you were supposed to do. Once you do that, we will give you an opportunity to beg for a merciful death. If you choose to do so, we will then tell you what you must do to earn the privilege. And if you do that, then we will consider your debt discharged.” Not that Medea had any expectation that this assassin would live that long—but it would leave no blood on her hands. “So. First, tell me who sent you and what they sent you to do. Will you tell me that?”