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“Impossible,” says Doman, while Gallien’s eyes flick to me in surprise, his normally unreadable face betraying a hint of his emotions.

“Three of them.”

“How?” Gallien says the single word, while Doman is shaking his head in disbelief.

“It takes between six months and a year, and most spies can’t undergo the process successfully. It’s done on Etherion. Hypnosis and trances used to create a second personality, with a second set of memories, down to a new childhood. The three spies don’t even know they’re working for us. When they go out into the city, they meet with our agents, who activate them, and for a brief period, their primary personality comes out again. They feed reports and re-enter their second identity. We used to have a fourth spy, but he cracked the first time he was activated. He couldn’t re-integrate into his second self.”

The two aliens are stunned by the revelation. There have been human workers on Colossus for all of known history, working in the palace itself, and while they accepted the inevitability of spies on their home planet, none believed that they could be in the royal palace itself.

“If humans found a way to get past the Interrogators’ vetting, the Priests will have as well. Obsidian could have spies in the palace. On this very ship.”

“That’s not a certainty,” I say, ignoring the insult. “Don’t underestimate humans. The Priests and Obsidian don’t have Etherion. The people of that planet evolved differently than therest of us, and they are nothing like Aurelians.” I raise my finger. “Plus, you’ve got records of your men, from their very birth in the cryo-chambers. If there was a second personality, you would know. This is no simple process. It’s the implantation of a complete set of memories, over a long period of time. If one of your soldiers suddenly started talking about wars that never happened, he’d be outed in a second.”

“True,” says Doman, and the uncertainty leaves him. “This is a new resource. We use it. When we get to Colossus, I’ll speak with my brother Bruton. It doesn’t sit well with him, Fay being captive. And now we have three more resources to work with to make this escape clean.”

The speed with which he turns a shocking revelation into part of his plan impresses me. His meteoric rise in the Aurelian Empire had nothing to do with nepotism.

“How’s Titus?” I ask, shifting the topic.

Gallien focuses for a moment. “He’s angry. He’s not used to people defying him.”

“You can feel that?”

“Yes. When you’re linked to us, you’ll feel our emotions as well.” He touches the Orb-Ring on his finger unconsciously, twisting it.

“Where did he go?”

“I can feel him aft. In the diplomatic chambers, made for human guests.”

I nod. “I’m going to go see him. I can’t have him at odds with me.”

“Bad idea,” says Doman. “When he gets like this, he needs time to cool down.”

I sigh, running my hands through my hair, trying to tame it. “You don’t become Prime Minister without being able to cool down hotheads. Could you ask some guards to escort me to him?”

“I’ll take you myself,” says Doman.

I shake my head. “No. I want to see him alone.”

“Very well.” The doors open automatically as he walks towards them, and he barks out a command in Aurelian. Two triads are standing at attention, and they bow their heads as I walk into the hallway. “They’ll take you right to him, but don’t expect him to be happy to see you,” says Doman in a low voice, just for me. Then, in a moment of tenderness, the harsh commander of the ship softens for a second. He reaches up, tracing my jaw. “I can’t lose you,” he whispers.

“You won’t,” I say, sounding more confident than I feel, the memory of that grasping hand appearing in my study out of nothing, blood drenching the walls filling my mind.

A triad of soldiers fall in behind me, another leading the way in pristine white robes. They match their pace to mine, and I walk with my head up, despite the tangles in my hair, the rips in my clothes, the ache in my knee from where I banged it against something in the panic of escape.

I survived an assassination attempt. I just survived my first live military operation, attacked by enemy combatants. This morning, I woke up just a Prime Minister, but now I’ve changed, in a subtle way, gone from a politician removed from the fray to a player in the thick of it.

After ten minutes of walking, updating my mental map in the twisting tunnels of the warship, the two triads stand at attention, lining themselves up against the wall, three on each side in front of a normal-sized door. As I step forward, the doors, sensing my DNA, open automatically, and I enter a room built for a human. It’s jarring when I’m used to everything being oversized, as if I have suddenly grown.

I feel like I’m seeing my species through Aurelian eyes. A small nook with a human-sized couch that looks like you could sink into it with a low coffee table, on top of it a vase with freshflowers in blue and red hues. The dark, wooden central table, surrounded by plush, cushioned chairs with curved armrests and high backs. The floors and walls are jarring, for they are the cold, impersonal marble hue omnipresent in the warship, but there are patterned rugs underfoot and artwork in a mismatch of styles adorning the walls.

I pause as the door closes behind me. They view us as a species that is soft—needing relaxation and comfort, yet, also as one that is highly creative, but whoever put together the décor had no knack for it, placing a long, thin watercolor of a bridge and stream next to a glossy modern style that incorporates holographic images of a universe, as if they went to an art dealer and asked for one of everything. There’s more life here than anywhere else in the warship, flowers in the nook for sitting back and watching programs on holo-vid, the far wall a live wall of vines and plants.

There’s the sound of water running in one of the adjacent rooms, and I walk towards the wooden door, sliding it open to reveal a simple bedroom with a king-sized bed that seems small after the giant ones in the royal chambers, and a wall that shows a feed of the cosmos. We are too deep and protected within the warship to get a real view.

The door is ajar to the bathroom, where Titus is standing, his bulk filling the glass walls of the shower, water raining down his thick muscles, dripping from his thick black mane of hair down his broad shoulders, his beefy chest, his chiseled abs. His thick, heavy cock hangs between his legs as he washes himself, splashing water on his face and throwing back his hair as he turns the water off, gets out of the shower and wraps a towel around his waist. It’s a human-sized towel, and it barely cinches around him.

He steps into the bedroom, considering me with those hard grey eyes.