The Whisper Market had offered more than memories in jars. Within the secure case, traded for a fortune in black-market credits and a dangerous vow, lay a sliver of technology so forbidden it was barely a rumor: a Neural Introspection Module. An artifact from the Authority's early days, it was a diagnostic device designed to detect and rectify emotional deviations by forcing the subject to confront an ideal simulation of their own mind. It had been labeled too unstable, too dangerous, and scheduled for demolition. Nema had been hunting this last surviving unit for years.
"It's a mirror," she said, her hand tracing the weathered ports of the device. It looked like a silver crown, baroque and cold. "But not the sort that reveals your face. It reveals your psyche. The Authority used it to fi
