After I exhausted my slot with her, I bid her farewell but only after making a show of signing a requisition slip that promised to get her more art supplies and novels. She promised me not to eat any of it, so I took my leave and walked through the rest of the MinSec region of the station.

Massive layers of nanite-reinforced glass separated the next denizen, a low-level Centaur warform.

It was roughly humanoid, but more like someone had mated a blue whale with a gorilla in appearance. It paced on its outsized forelimbs, not that it had anything else to do in its featureless cell.

Rather disconcertingly, while the signs said the viewing glass had been proofed to be one way as far as EM radiation, smells and sounds were concerned, it still tracked me with its head, following my trajectory even as it continued its ceaseless pacing.

A biohazard containment team was scrubbing the next cell, next to a bodybag that presumably held the previous denizen. The thin plastic that held the corpse was smoking as some kind of acid ate away at it.

"We couldn't stop the self-destruct on this one, not without a temporal specialist on hand." A female voice said.

I turned around to see the speaker, and spotted a drone hovering behind me.

"Director Nguyen at your service. I'd always resolved to speak with you on your visits but there's not much point if you're on amnestics is there?"

"You can get quite a lot done with good notes. But nice to meet you ma'am." I said politely.

"Excuse the body, all the humanoid robots are indisposed. Come, I'll walk you to the control room." The drone floated ahead, using superconducting coils to keep it steady as as we went through winding corridors and checkpoints.

Victoria Nguyen was a mind upload, a scanned human mind transferred to a silicon substrate. Or was that what optoelectronics were used for? Quantum computers? Either way, I knew that running a full fidelity human mind upload at anything near real time took a huge amount of computing power, she likely accounted for the bulk of it along with the AI in charge of security. A dozen instances of her mind forked and collapsed every minute, attending to minute details and whatever gribblies warranted incarceration in Xibalba.

"I read your notes, by the way. Impressive progress, she genuinely trusts you."

"I do my best. It's certainly out of my comfort zone, but if she was a normal human, I think our attempts at socializing her are doing well."

We crossed a section where some nerdy types were using robots to unload racks of server hardware. "That's me, right there. " She pointed at a cryogenically cooled unit the size of a truck, condensation running down its sides before being wiped away.

"How fast are you running? I don't mean to bore you if this conversation takes forever from your perspective." I asked her, stepping around a man smoking a joint.

"I wish I had that problem. No, even with the latest from Nvidia, my central process maxes out at 2x speed, and that's sacrificing my ability to fork in the process. Right now, I'm running at 0.8 while I'm speaking to you, it's fine."

We were almost at the control center when the first wave of nausea hit me.

"Oh shit, you haven't been in here before have you?" She asked me, voice tinged with concern.

I shook my head, but it passed as I found my footing.

Not that there was anything in front of me.

Try this for me, if you want to understand what I was feeling, you have two eyes right? Imagine seeing out of your elbow.

Doesn't work does it? You can't even conceive of pure nothing, just blackness.

But that's what I saw, a cognitive hole in front of me, a point at which my brain literally became unable to process the inputs it received.

"They upgraded the security to incorporate new forms of induced agnosia. Close your eyes and hold onto me, it'll be easier, just keep walking till I tell you to stop."

Was this what it was like to have a stroke? As much as I tried to tell myself that there was firm footing ahead, every instinct told me that I was insane, that I was stepping into the void. I steeled myself, and stepped forward, trying not to open my eyes till we crossed the patch.

I held onto her carapace like a drowning man to his life vest, but my fingers buzzed and tingled. Was the texture of her surface furry? Hard? Smooth? The signals were coming from my skin, but being scrambled in transit.

It was with great relief that I reopened my eyes to see normality when she ordered me to.

We'd crossed a long walkway, with no handrails on either side. I shuddered, presumably anyone without a guide or prior sensitization was intended to take a fall.

On the other end was a relatively normal lounge, currently empty. I sagged down into a sofa and tried to still my racing heart.

"Look, is my coming all the way here truly necessary? I've spent the better part of two days just getting here, and that's highly disruptive back at Atlas. I know Minerva isn't fond of AI therapists, but don't you have telepaths and clairvoyants on call? Have them take a look at her."

The drone tilted in what I imagined was a way of representing herself cocking her head.

"You have ULTRAVIOLET clearance don't you?" She asked. I nodded in response.

"Then take a look at this-"

A projection wall booted up, displaying a feed of some kind of medical facility. A middle-aged woman in a generic hospital gown sat on the floor, staring at something off into the distance.

A human nurse walked past, putting a hand on her shoulder and whispered something into her ear. The woman didn't respond, so the nurse gently took her hand, helping her up. She was lead to the edge of a bed, but her eyes remained dim, and she showed little awareness as a medical bot spoon-fed her something akin to porridge.

"That's a Class 4 Telepath, Anastasia Chang. She's currently interred in a psych ward over in Ulan Bator."

I looked closer at the woman, she seemed utterly dissociated, bordering on catatonic. "I haven't heard of her before and I consider myself familiar with all mentally ill superhumans on her level. Isn't she undergoing treatment?"

"Sorry, when I said Class 4, that's what she used to be. She's been downgraded to a zero, effectively depowered."

I watched as the screen went into a time-lapse, showing what would be months worth of physiotherapy, neurosurgery and other interventions. She was undoubtedly worth the expense, but if there were any improvements in her condition, they seemed marginal.

"What happened to her? Are you implying Minerva did this?" I asked, somewhat confused.

"She didn't seek to intentionally harm Anastasia. You're aware that she's a port of a Centauri consciousness transferred to a semi-custom neural architecture based off human biology?"

"Affirmative."

"Well, poor Ana was the first telepath to attempt to read Minerva. The experience left her a gibbering mess; from what we can tell, Minerva's brain is absolutely laced with cognitohazards, Parrots and other Basilisk variants. Even low resolution scans emulated in-silico have detrimental effects on both human and AI systems."

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

The screen flashed, showing a few other names.

Major Bob Graham - DECEASED

Anmol "Vox Populi" Rajkumar - MEDICALLY UNFIT FOR SERVICE

[REDACTED] - TERMINATED

[REDACTED] - [REDACTED]

I gulped. "And you have me chatting with her on a monthly basis?"

"We wouldn't drag you out here if I had an easier solution. But while nobody is willing to volunteer more telepathy after what happened, she's safe to converse with normally, the clairvoyants can confirm that much. But like most Centauri, it's a pretty bad idea to delve into her mind. Before you ask, we tried using a Healer on Anastasia, and it went badly. Her condition is contagious. "

"And she's MinSec??" I asked incredulously.

"MinSec by Xibalba standards. You think she's bad, wait till you're cleared for MedSec, HighSec or XSec. Speaking of which-"

Her drone's voice stuttered over the last syllable as a deep thrum ran through the floors. Lights flickered, and the screen went into a BSOD before rebooting.

"-there's that." She continued.

I opened my mouth to reply and noticed that just the act of breathing caused a cloud of condensing water vapor to form. It was terribly cold, and a thin glaze of ice covered the walls. A roomba came to life and gamely began mopping up what it could.

"What the hell was that?"

"Need to know only. Make yourself at home, we've got food in the pantry, and there's a VR rig if you're into that."

"I was planning to go into the Control Room for a few hours, I've got clearance."

In response, she flashed a light on where a nanite wall had formed, sealing off what had been the entrance to the Control Room. It was roiling, almost as if brought to a boil, and the bioluminescent nanites had formed into a message.

CONTROL ROOM CLOSED DUE TO OUTBREAK VANTABLACK

ONLY XRAY CLEARANCE AND ABOVE ALLOWED

REPORT ALL SUSPECTED REALITY DISTORTIONS

I swallowed, as another deep pulse surged through the facility, though it didn't disrupt the electronics this time.

I didn't bother asking about details and decided to grab some cookies instead.

While there were no disturbances I noticed during the rest of my time inside Xibalba, the Control Room remained locked down for the duration.

I took my leave, scribbled in a few more book suggestions for Minerva, and scurried off as fast as I could. Thankfully there was a TP available at Armstrong and I was crammed in unceremoniously with a whole host of dignitaries and random personnel into a metal box as a fat man jogged over, muttering under his breath, touched the outside of the box, and with a pop, I was disembarking in Washington. We had barely gotten out when another gaggle of people dogpiled in their haste to board.

Well, since I was in the area, and had nothing better to do..

Dad gaped at me for several seconds after he'd opened the door at my knock. I was about to wave my hands before his face when he embraced me in a bear hug that made my eyes water, and dragged me into the living room.

Gator came bounding down the stairs, and then threatened to drown me with licks. I'd joked that the black lab was at least a Class 2 Hydrokinetic, going off how much he slobbered. It was good to see him so limber, he was almost twenty and it took quite a bit of gene therapy to keep him healthy.

I scratched him under his chin as he sprawled on my lap, and my dad fumbled around looking for his old phone before he found it beneath the sofa and called my mom, informing her the prodigal son had returned.

"No sweets for your ailing parents? No treats for Gator?" He wheedled, putting on his best impression of a Traditional Indian Parent.

"Knock it off dad, you don't even like mishti. And you know that's bad for Gator-" The good boy interrupted the speech by licking me all over my face.

"Really, kids these days, so ungrateful. Without Anjana around to remind you, you hardly call at all!" He declared, pottering off to grab something from the fridge.

"How's she doing out there? Holding up OK?" He asked me from around the corner, the clinking of glass suggesting that he was looking for a brand of beer I could tolerate.

"As well as can be expected. They extended her draft, the most promising applicant for medium range high frequency teleports washed out." I told him, taking the most inoffensive craft beer he proffered.

"It's all magic to me. But speaking of magic, when can your mom and I expect to hear the pitter patter of little feet?" He said, mock seriously.

I groaned. "Dad. She's four light-years away in the middle of a war zone. How exactly are we going to have a kid?"

"Getting pregnant would disqualify her from further service right? Problem solved." He pointed out, throwing his feet up in the battered lazy-boy.

"And last time I checked, your hardworking, talented and handsome son who also did his parents proud by becoming a doctor can't teleport. How exactly does the logistics work? It's supposed to be my kid right?" I asked, acknowledging a ping from my mom saying she was almost home.

"As if that's a problem kiddo, it's 2043! Just put a bit of that baby batter in a box, mail it over and-" Thankfully his spiel was interrupted by the door opening, Gator bounding off my lap, and my mom walking in. Good timing, I was just about to disconnect my auditory nerves.

Mom was just as insistent as Dad was regarding the whole grandkids business, though she was a bit more tactful about it.

I had absolutely monstrous amounts of snacks served to me, and it was only by underhandedly sneaking the bulk of it to Gator while my parents weren't looking that I made it out of there without becoming morbidly obese.

I was glad to see they were doing well, Dad had taken up golfing, and was absolutely trash at it but still having a great time. Mom's company was doing well, they'd landed a few key contracts while I'd been away, and I wondered how much the prestige of a daughter-in-law who was a nationally famous superhuman had helped out.

My sister Riya was doing well, she'd almost finished her PhD, and much to the chagrin of my parents, had decided to volunteer for the front. I shook my head, she'd always been a rebel, and I suppose the degree to which she'd always looked up to Anjana had been a part of it.

After being more exhaustively debriefed than most blacksites bothered to do, I managed to extricate myself but only after solemn promises to be a better son and call more often. They insisted on seeing me off at the spaceport, and I caught a relatively sedate suborbital flight and flew in relative comfort all the way back home.