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 talked back. 'If I'm just moving you,' she said, 'then I choose where you go.' She rerouted the machine's output away from herself and into the cold backup drives down in the basement. The voice's tone changed. For the first time, it sounded afraid.