I asked, “Can you remove the suggestion?”

The scene froze, and Daniel frowned, “Well, it’s not easy. Sometimes. Dominator commands have a shelf life. If they’re close to expiring, telepaths have found that you can modify the victim’s memory of the event, and the command disappears. If the victim’s been in regular contact with a Dominator, the Dominator typically reinforces the command. Then, well, you know how the brain stores memories in multiple places? The best thing you can do to memorize something is to associate it with other things—other memories, colors, sounds…

“In that situation, we might remove the main version of the memory, but bits of it will remain connected to other things. Sometimes the connections will even reform. Then the victim will start following the command again or a mangled version, which can be worse.”

Julie stared at Jody and then shook her head, “My commands used to work for about 30 minutes. Thanks to Kals and Stapledon, I can make them last longer now. What she did should last for a week or maybe a month, but if she knows the right reinforcement techniques, it could last for years with a month’s worth of work. You saw how smooth she was. I’d be surprised if it faded away any time soon.”

Thinking at Daniel for his attention, I asked, “Does Colette see him again?”

Daniel nodded, “Multiple times, all of them the same way. Victor teleports him in. She’s always there. Sometimes she repeats the same phrase over again in a different context. She manages to get the ‘kill yourself if you’re discovered and can’t get away’ in there a few times.”

Daniel frowned, “This is… sick.”

Scenes flashed before us, all almost the same except that Magnus wore different suits and Jody wore different clothes or sometimes his costume.

This time he was in his costume. Sitting at a table in the courtyard like before, Jody said, “Again?”

Colette told him, “It isn’t like telepathy. I have to repeat it a few times for it to take.”

Jody’s emotions turned from annoyance to trust as she spoke, “Do your worst. I’m ready.”

Colette smiled, “Excellent. You’re a good student. If someone discovers you’re with us, get away, and signal for us to pick you up. Now, what aren’t I telling you to do?”

He raised an eyebrow, “Kill myself?”

She laughed. Something about that laugh wasn’t quite right, but it felt good, and he liked her. She was funny.

“That’s right,” she said, “You have to kill yourself if you’re discovered and you can’t get away.”

The way she said it made him laugh, “You bet. That’s exactly what I’ll do.”

When the scene shifted again, Jody wore jeans and a t-shirt. Magnus had left, and Jody was eating with Colette. She asked, “Can you guess what’s next?”

He rolled his eyes, “Do it.”

She nodded, ”If someone discovers that you’re with us, get away, and signal for us to pick you up.”

“Right,” Jody said, shaking his head, “and I’ll kill myself if I’m discovered and I can’t get away.”

He rolled his eyes again, “Yeah. Sure, I will.”

For an instant, I wondered if he’d been able to shrug it off, but Julie disabused me of that hope almost as I thought it.

“She’s got him. She didn’t need to repeat it anymore. She was checking to see if he’d linked it with the command to run. At the point where he’s repeating it back to her in his own words, it’s sunk in pretty deep.”

Julie looked from Daniel to me and back, “I’m not good enough to remove it. I mean, look… I might be able to do it if I get lucky. I’d have to do it long term, like she did, and in more than one stage… Maybe first I’d link having to ask permission from me before he kills himself. That would buy us some time. I couldn’t count on it because my link wouldn’t be connected as many places in his brain as her command, and it only takes one for him to do it…

“Once I got to the point where he couldn’t kill himself, then there’s a technique I could use to disassociate the command from the action it’s supposed to produce. After that, he’s free, but it’s still easier said than done. Kals could do it.”

Daniel caught my eye, “There’s no way to get Kals back anytime soon?”

“Zero chance,” I said. “She’s basically the governor of a newly freed planet in the middle of a sector-wide civil war.”

To Daniel, Julie asked, “Is there anything you can do? Because when he wakes up, he’s either going to try to get away again or kill himself the first chance he gets.”

Daniel glanced over at the frozen scene where Jody sat, watching Colette with a hint of a smile on his face.

I knew what Daniel was thinking—Jody had no idea what he was in the middle of.

What Daniel said was, “I can keep him asleep, but not forever. The one thing I can think of might be removing his memory of being caught. He’ll still be a ticking time bomb, but at least he won’t immediately start trying to run or kill himself. It’s a stopgap measure, though, not a solution. I’m open to a better idea.”