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scooping piles of indistinguishable food.
    I watched her, silently pondering my next course of action. I tried to tally what little information I had, but all I knew for sure was that The Bishop had sent me here.
    When she brought me the small plastic tray, it was piled with a small mound of something brown and a bowl filled with a yellowish liquid.
    I thought to push myself into a sitting position, but winced as soon as my back muscles tensed with anticipation of movement.
    "Stay down. You'll break the healcast," she ordered, as she settled to the floor cross-legged next to my head. With care that seemed out of place with her blunt, unforgiving demeanor, she folded another sheet and placed it under my head so my mouth would be higher than my chest. With gentle, deliberate movements she spooned some of the liquid to my mouth. Some of it leaked out over my lips, stinging the dehydrated, cracked ridges. I winced, but tasted good. Salty. Like tears.
    Cutter offered small mouthfuls of water from a plastic bottle. In a few minutes I was done and she told me to wait, to let the broth settle.
    With the hot soup gliding down into my stomach, my head cleared enough to process my predicament. I desperately wanted answers.
    "Are you going to torture me? What could I know that you would value?"
    Cutter stared at me for a moment. I knew if she were on the outside then she had finished her advanced training. Wraiths are masters of silent observation – the flicker of a pulse, dilation of a pupil, the pace of one's breath. To the untrained, her stare would have seemed innocent of any intent. But I knew better. I was being evaluated, measured. I just didn't know for what.
    She reached behind her and pulled out a long silver strand.
    "This is a tracking unit. Nanomorphic symbiotes were implanted in you at birth. They're programmed to migrate from the injection site in your hip to your spinal column. Each symbiote attaches to a vertebra and continuously transmits biometric information to the Creche. They can also be controlled. If the Mandate orders it, the symbiotes can paralyze you. Or kill you." She paused for a second and her eyes flashed silver. "I took them out."
    She laid the gleaming thread back on the floor. I magnified my short range vision and examined it more closely. Sticky threads of blood still clung to the silk of the string and small bulbs protruded like a fingerling branch. At the end of one of the veins a tiny spiderlike form clung, crushed and mangled, with broken legs and severed heads.
    "There were more of those?" A shiver slithered down my back at the thought of the bug inside of me, and a new wave of white pain enveloped my back.
    "Many."
    "What happened to them?"
    "Most, I just killed. A few, I stuck inside some alley rats and tossed them into cargo buckets at one of the uplifts. By now they'll know you're not wired anymore. They'll question the lift crews. Probably kill a few to show they're serious."
    Expressionless, I stared at her for a minute or more. I knew she was telling me the truth. But the thought of people dying, simply because one of my tracking sensors ended up in a lift pod on their shift, made me sting deep behind my eyes. Why had the Bishop sent me to her? Was it so important to find me that they would go to such lengths? But the obvious question was the one I asked, "If they could have paralyzed me why didn't they do that as soon as I cleared the Cell? Why bother chasing me?"
    "Because sometimes the paralysis is permanent. Sometimes you just die."
    "And why would they care?"
    Cutter sighed as if she was considering calling me stupid again. "Because, my little Proto-wraith, you're obviously far more valuable to them alive." She laughed, a throaty sound, amused for reasons I didn't understand.
    "Me?"
    Cutter picked up the small plastic tray again, slowly scooped a spoonful of the brown stuff, and then offered it to me. I lifted my head, a few centimeters, as much as my strength would allow, and opened