The Bureau gave Mira one job: erase General Vael Tisseren from the world's memory. Forty years of his crimes sat in her terminal, ready to delete. But the machine didn't really delete. It digested. Every file she picked turned into a soft warmth that filled the room, like the data breathed out one last time before it died. Mira cracked her knuckles and opened the first file.

Mira started where the Bureau told her to: the early years. She picked the village massacre, the crime that made Tisseren famous. The room warmed. The file blurred and vanished. But the warmth didn't fade. It pressed against her skin, and for half a second she smelled smoke that wasn't there.

Mira kept going, faster now. Each file she fed the machine made the room hotter. Then a voice came out of the warmth, dry and amused. 'You're not deleting me,' it said. 'You're moving me. Into you.' She froze. The voice sounded exactly like the General.

Mira yanked her hands off the terminal. 'Then I stop now,' she told the empty air. The voice laughed. 'Too late. You've taken forty percent of me. Stop now, and I live inside you forever, half a monster with no body. Finish, and I'm all you.' She stared at the progress bar, sweating, and made her choice.

Mira chose to finish. She held down the key and took the rest of him in one long burn. When it ended, she stood up calm and clear-eyed. The room was cold again. She walked out of the Bureau knowing exactly how to run a war, and looking forward to it.