‘Sorry.’ He handed them over.

She shook her head and forced a weak grin. ‘I was only kidding. You said you had questions?’

‘I want to talk about Josef Marados.’

Her expression stiffened immediately. ‘What about him.’

‘Someone tampered with the news feeds, while we were still in the Sol System. So the report of his death was deleted from the Hyperion’s records.’

She shot him an angry look. ‘You know, you actually sound like you’re accusing me of something.’

‘Let’s face it, you’ve been acting very strangely.’

She laughed, but the sound was harsh and edgy. ‘This coming from a Freeholder?’

‘Dakota, listen to me, I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m just trying to get to the bottom of things. Someone fixed the transceiver feed so certain specific items were flagged and deleted.’

Now Dakota looked bewildered and frightened. ‘Well, if you must know, I picked up on that too. I thought there might be an intruder on board, because there were alterations to the stack records.’

‘There wasn’t any intruder,’ Corso stated. ‘Not anything physical at least. You made the alterations yourself.’

She shot him a glance full of anger and suspicion. ‘Look,’ she swallowed, ‘I don’t deny I might have made some changes to protect myself. But there were other changes that had nothing to do with me-the kind of stuff you probably couldn’t pick up on unless you had a Ghost riding in your head.’

‘So you’d say the Shoal AI was responsible.’

Dakota nodded.

Corso shook his head. ‘That’s part of it, but not all. Just before we got to Nova Arctis, I saw you walking away from the airlocks leading into the cargo bay. I went up to you, and you completely blanked me. It was like you didn’t even know I was there. It was the same behaviour the time I found you on the bridge, looking at maps of the Magellans. Except you didn’t seem to remember that.’

‘Corso, this is ridiculous. I…’A brief look of uncertainty crossed her face, and she changed her tack. ‘Look, I don’t understand what you’re getting at.’

‘When I came across you that time by the external airlocks, it was less than an hour after Severn was murdered back in Ascension.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Lucas! The man led a dangerous life. This is ridiculous.’

‘Dakota, do you remember at all what happened on the bridge just now?’

‘Why?’

‘Do you even remember killing Udo Mansell?’

‘I…’ That look of uncertainty flickered over her face again. ‘Yes,’ she said, a little more quietly. ‘I did. I’d… I don’t know. I hadn’t forgotten. I just… couldn’t place the memory. Except…’

‘Except what, Dakota? Except it didn’t feel real, maybe? When I got there, you had this blank look on your face like you weren’t really aware of what was going on around you. It was exactly the same look you had that time I found you running trajectories on the bridge, and that time by the airlocks. Like you weren’t really quite seeing anything around you? You know, you almost managed to kill me back there.’

Dakota shook her head vigorously. ‘I don’t remember anything like that. Besides, it was Udo attacked me. Then…’

Corso cocked his head. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing,’ she replied, staring off into space. ‘I just can’t…’ She put one hand up to her head and dragged it through her hair, her fingers trembling.

‘Can’t remember?’

She flashed him a hostile glare. ‘Lucas…’

‘Are you still having trouble remembering? After you killed Udo, I had to actually knock you out before I could start dragging you all the way down here. I’ve seen some weird shit in my life, but I’ve never seen anything quite like that. Not even back home.’

‘I didn’t kill Severn, I swear. I don’t know what makes you think I even could. I… it was complicated. We were close, back in the old days. The same goes for Josef Marados.’

She sounded calmer now. ‘There’s no reason for me to kill either of them,’ she stated more defiantly. ‘But there was plenty of reason to kill Udo.’

Couldn’t agree more, Corso reflected, but he didn’t say a word about that. ‘You do realize I just had your ship rip a shitload of invasive routines out of your skull? Stuff that shouldn’t have been in there at all.’

Her head snapped back up. ‘What?’

‘I’m saying the Hyperion isn’t the only thing that was compromised. So were you-or your Ghost was, at any rate.’

‘But that’s…’

He could see the realization dawning on her.

‘There’s no one else with the access privileges and the skill-including the support of your implants-to enable you to alter records and hide your movements the way you did with the Piri Reis. But there’s plenty of precedent for your conscious mind being taken over.’

‘I remembered everything that happened at Port Gabriel, Lucas. That was the worst thing about it. I remember exactly how good the Uchidans made me feel when they turned me into a murderer.’

‘But it doesn’t have to be just like that, does it? What about a fugue state where your conscious mind thinks it’s doing one thing, while something altogether different is happening in reality?’

She twisted around and tried to strike him, but he anticipated the blow, catching her fist in his own and pulling her towards him.

She gripped his shirt with her free hand and began to weep. He held her close for a while, feeling her shoulders heave.

‘I’m sorry, Lucas. I had such bad dreams-I don’t want them to be real.’

She slid out of her seat and he let her drift until she snagged a piece of trailing fur and pulled herself in close to one wall. He let her just float there for a minute, before he continued.

‘What do you remember?’

‘I thought I was imagining it. I had… nightmares, about Chris Severn and Josef. I saw it happening. I just pretended it wasn’t real, because it couldn’t be real.’ She wept.

She stiffened again, then twisted around to face him. ‘The figurine.’

Corso said nothing. She pulled herself slowly upright and stared through him as if he were not there. Her expression was sphinx-like now: calm, eerie, deadly. ‘The figurine the alien gave me-Belle Trevois.’

‘I know. I-’

‘I remember now.’ Her tone was soft and calm, but something in its tone unnerved him. ‘I mean I’m starting to remember. Trader knew I was on Redstone during the massacres; he was just playing a game with me. I knew the figure was of Trevois as soon as I opened the box, but then I touched it and… I forgot.’