PeterWatts_Blindsight

Peter Watts 265 Blindsight
a shucked clam. I upped the lumens long enough to assess its
handiwork; my repaired palm itched and glistened in twilight, a
longer, deeper Fate line running from heel to web. Then back to
darkness, and the blind unconvincing illusion of safety.
Sarasti wanted me to believe. Somehow he must have thought
that brutalising and humiliating me would accomplish that—that
broken and drained, I would become an empty vessel to fill as he
saw fit. Wasn't it a classic brainwashing technique—to shatter
your victim and then glue the pieces back together in according to
specs of your own choosing? Maybe he was expecting some kind
of Stockholm Syndrome to set in, or maybe his actions followed
some agenda incomprehensible to mere meat.
Maybe he'd simply gone insane.
He had broken me. He had presented his arguments. I had
followed his trail of bread crumbs though ConSensus, through
Theseus. And now, only nine days from graduation, I knew one
thing for sure: Sarasti was wrong. He had to be. I couldn't see
how, but I knew it just the same. He was wrong.
Somehow, absurdly, that had become the one thing I did care
about.
No one in the spine. Only Cunningham visible in BioMed,
poring over digital dissections, pretending to kill time. I floated
above him, my rebuilt hand clinging to the top of the nearest
stairwell; it dragged me in a slow, small circle as the Drum turned.
Even from up there I could see the tension in the set of his
shoulders: a system stuck in a holding pattern, corroding through
the long hours as fate advanced with all the time in the world.
He looked up. "Ah. It lives."
I fought the urge to retreat. Just a conversation, for God's sake.
It's just two people talking. People do it all the time without your
tools. You can do this. You can do this.
Just try.
So I forced one foot after another down the stairs, weight and
apprehension rising in lockstep. I tried to read Cunningham's
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