Page 11 of Dark Chains: First Link
But now the circumstances were adjusting the plan for them.
The rescue, if it happens, will not be imminent,Number One redirected.Even if the clan agrees to help us tonight, the logistics will take weeks, possibly months of planning, so there is time, but we cannot compromise Dimitri's cognitive function during such a vulnerable period. He needs his mind intact and unencumbered to negotiate with these people.
The merge, even if Dimitri agreed to it, would have to wait.
In the quiet that followed, with Mattie's heartbeat steadying, Dimitri staring at the phone, and Petrov's foot maintaining its rhythmic tapping, Number One's thoughts drifted somewhere that wasn't collective territory.
Sullha.
The image arrived with a vividness that surprised him, sharp and detailed. The way she had stood in the yard, putting her body between them and the children. The young boy pressedagainst her side with his fists clenched. The way her eyes had moved across all eight of them and lingered on him, just for a fraction of a second longer.
Something had happened in that fraction of a second.
Number One hadn't internalized it at the time because the collective had been processing too many simultaneous inputs, but in the days that followed, the memory had surfaced repeatedly, each time with a little more clarity, a little more definition, until what had been a flicker became more substantial.
He had felt something.
Instead of the muted, analytical observation, he started to register something warmer that belonged only to him, to the mind that used to belong just to Yaaf.
Perhaps we will not need Dimitri after all, Number One shared with the collective.Perhaps this is something I can grow on my own and share with you.
The collective's response was immediate and multifaceted, seven perspectives converging on the thought from seven angles.
For that to happen, you would need to separate from us,Number Two thought.You can't even tell Sullha about our connection, or she would want nothing to do with you. She will never respond to us as a collective, but she might respond to the male she knew as Yaaf.
The name felt familiar, but at the same time foreign to Number One.
He knew every detail of the life that name represented. The childhood in the enclosure, the brutal training in the camp, thepainful enhancement project that had nearly cost him his sanity and his life. Those memories were cataloged and accessible and fully integrated into the shared consciousness, but they were no longer felt as just his.
Possession wasn't the same as ownership. The memories belonged to a person who no longer existed. Yaaf had been one mind in one body, a singular consciousness with singular feelings, operating within the limited bandwidth of a single perspective. Number One was one-eighth of something vastly larger, a node in a network that amplified everything.
Going back to that, even partially, even temporarily, was a thought that produced something the collective rarely experienced.
Fear.
This wasn't the collective's response. This was personal, originating from the part of Number One that was still, despite everything, an individual.
It was the fear of emptiness, of silence, of the vast, echoing void that a single mind would inhabit after living inside a consciousness shared by eight.
Life was rich with seven constant companions, seven streams of thought that ran parallel to his, reinforcing, challenging, refining, and comforting. The collective never experienced loneliness. It had turned into an abstract concept, something that Dave was aware of happening to other individual minds.
If he separated, the silence would be intolerable.
How would he endure the isolation of being trapped inside a single skull with only his own thoughts for company? Howwould he function without seven other minds to share his existence?
The thought of operating alone, of thinking without the constant feedback loop of the collective refining and amplifying his cognition, was more terrifying than dying.
He needed the hum of seven minds processing in parallel. He needed Number Three's analytical precision, Number Seven's spatial intuition, Number Eight's emotional sensitivity, and Number Four's stubbornness that sometimes annoyed the collective but also prevented it from moving too quickly past ideas that deserved more examination. He needed all of them.
I can't do it, Number One thought, and the thought was raw in a way that thoughts in the collective rarely were.I can't imagine functioning without you. It would be so empty. So lonely.
The collective held the thought with care. Seven minds cradled the vulnerability of the eighth, not dismissing it, not analyzing it into abstraction, just holding it the way Sullha had held the boy against her side in the yard.
You wouldn't be alone, Number Five thought.Separation doesn't mean disconnection. We would still be here, just muted.
We don't have to decide anything now, Number Two added.
That was the second time tonight that a decision had been deferred to the future. They were facing too many unknown variables to reach definitive conclusions and actions. Some problems could only be acknowledged and then set aside until the conditions for solving them existed.
