The First Experiment of Level Three Was Not to Erase Her Dead Husband

Morning sunlight came through the window of the room in the officers' quarters. Helga was still asleep, holding on to my hand.

When she opened her eyes, the first thing she asked was:

"Is the power the same?"

"Yes. Level 3. And last night's promise still holds, too."

We dressed first, then sat facing each other across the desk. Tested on the bed, pleasure and judgment could never have been separated.

Helga laid the two pages of rules written the night before side by side and compared them character by character. One copy had been kept in my pocket, the other in her scabbard. We had agreed that if even a single line differed, the experiment would be called off.

"Identical."

"Let's verify memory as well. Last night, during the coin test — why did I stop?"

"Because the reading opened past the memory of me choosing the silver coin, all the way down to the market memories."

"And the ninth rule?"

"What was permitted yesterday is not thereby permitted today."

Helga answered without a hitch. Then I took the same questions and answered them myself. If the excitement of the awakening had left even one of us remembering the agreement differently, I had no intention of using the new ability at all.

"You still want to go through with it now?"

"I do. But I write the sentence myself, and I can revoke it at any time."

"First we have to confirm that saying 'I revoke it' actually lifts the effect."

"And if it can't be lifted?"

"Then a sentence whose possibility we can't accept never gets applied in the first place."

Helga ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠rewrote the sentence on the paper three times. The first draft was 'I must live.' The second was 'I'm allowed to be happy.' Both were too broad. I must live could smear into a command to retreat from dangerous missions, and happiness was far too easy for someone else to define on her behalf.

The sentence that survived at the end preserved her memories and her present choice at the same time.

Helga chose the sentence for the first experiment.

Sentences like forget your husband, erase your guilt, love me — all of those were excluded. What we meant to change was not memory or affection, but a single act of self-punishment: the belief that a survivor must not be happy.

"If I start to disgust you, or feel like a stranger, tell me at once."

"Begin."

First we recorded a baseline. Remembering Arnon's face: guilt, nine out of ten. Regret over waking beside me: seven. Conviction that last night's choice had been her own: eight. The numbers were not the truth, but they were markers enough to keep either of us from revising our story between before and after.

Helga read the sentence aloud in her own voice three times. Each time, I asked what it meant.

"Does it mean you intend to forget Arnon?"

"No."

"That you're obligated to repeat last night?"

"Not that either."

"A promise to stay by my side for good?"

"No. It means that after today, too, the choosing stays mine."

Only after confirming the sentence hid no second meaning did I begin.

From two paces away, I laid [Non-contact Suggestion] on her. Unlike before, the sentence didn't slide off the surface — it descended along the layers of her emotion. With [Emotion Manipulation], I separated the love and the guilt that rose whenever she thought of Arnon. Love stayed untouched; only the guilt was unhooked from her present choice.

Helga closed her eyes, then opened them slowly.

"I can see Arnon's face. Clearer than before, if anything."

"And?"

"I feel less sorry for waking up next to you. It hasn't vanished — but I no longer feel I have to punish myself just for being sorry."

I asked, one by one, the memories I'd heard from her the night before. The color of the flowers at her wedding. The taste of the soup Arnon ruined. The nick in the hilt of the sword he'd come home with. What she had said in their last fight. Helga answered every one, dodging neither the sweet scenes nor the agonizing ones.

"Any blurring in the memories?"

"None. If anything, they're so clear your questions are getting annoying."

"Any sense ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that your feelings for me suddenly swelled?"

"None of that either. I like you — but no more than I did a moment ago."

"Then we run the rebuttal test."

I wrote opposing sentences on a sheet of paper and handed it over.

Helga read it for a long while, then shook her head.

"The weight of Arnon's death and my laughing today are two separate things."

"No. Both of them happened."

Helga's brows shot up fiercely.

"Go on, read that one out loud one more time — and I'll throw it straight out the window for you."

The capacity for rebuttal remained. At least within everything I verified on the spot, the sentence had not bled into obedience or affection.

I did not plant a second sentence right away. First I had to see whether a single change could survive a full day.

"If you used this on someone in secret, there'd be almost no way to catch it."

Helga's assessment was exactly right.

"That's why I made my first use of it in front of you, Instructor. More than the fact that I can do it, I wanted us both to remember exactly where I stopped."

"Not 'Instructor.' Helga. But when you need stopping, I'll tell you like an instructor would."

"And if you asked me to release it right now?"

"Not yet. Let's see whether it holds until this evening — then I'll decide."

"This evening I'll ask again about revocation, too. Before I've brought up the subject of us first."

Below the baseline, Helga wrote the numbers from immediately after the application. Guilt, six. Regret, four. Conviction, eight. No emotion had vanished entirely, and her certainty in her own choice had not been artificially inflated either.

"Don't write this down as a success."

"Why not?"

"I don't yet know whether less guilt made me healthier, or just cost me an important warning. Watch what decisions I make today, too."

The one receiving treatment had now corrected the experiment's own evaluation criteria. Instead of success, I wrote: immediate change observed, conclusion withheld.

After the meal came the real work: Lebran — the demon spy inside the Order.

"Helga. Ah — Instructor."

"What."

"It's about Adjutant Lebran. He's a demon spy."

A blade slid into the grey eyes. Half a second for the woman's eyes to become a knight's.

"Your evidence?"

"I confirmed it with [Memory Reading]. In Lebran's memories there was a record of meetings with a demon courier. I read it when our paths crossed during training."

"And you're telling me this now, why?"

"If we arrest him on memory alone, the moment Lebran denies it, nothing remains. I can't rule out the chance that I misread, either. So I planned to catch the handoff and the physical evidence together at the scene."

"You should have told me first."

"You're right. I told myself the leak surface stayed narrow, since Lebran manages your reporting line and the shift rosters — but that wasn't a call I should have made alone."

Helga did not let the anger go easily.

"When the operation's over, we review that judgment separately. A good result doesn't make a procedural violation disappear."

"Understood."

"The trap?"

"I leaked false information so he'd pass it on. A different package for each target."

"How did you leak it?"

"I pretended to share it with you at the training grounds — at a distance where Lebran could overhear comfortably. When a person's ears are open, information he believes he stole gets passed on without a shred of suspicion. People doubt what's handed to them, but treat something secretly overheard like gold. It's an old bug in the human brain."

"The eastern supply route you leaked yesterday?"

"That was the first marker. Besides it, Lebran also overheard a second bundle: that the Queen's procession would switch to the western road, and that a three-minute gap would open in the east gate rotation. To the other adjutant, I leaked a different combination — the southern road and the north gate."

"Did you record who received which information?"

I handed over a sealed note. It marked the targets A, B, and C instead of by name, listed the false information given to each, and had been entrusted to a palace liaison officer the day before, with the time certified. A record made so that no one could claim, after seeing the results, that it had been the plan all along.

"And if Lebran passes along the western road and the east gate today?"

"Lebran is the only person who heard that combination. Even so, we have to secure his words and the goods at the scene."

"The false information isn't moving real troops, is it?"

"Neither the Queen's procession route nor the east gate rotation has changed. No supply detail goes to the eastern route — just an empty wagon and a watch team kept well back. The bait doesn't put our own people in danger."

"Shit, you really are a psychologist."

"That's a compliment, right?"

"It's a compliment. Did you check?"

"Checked this morning. Tonight he meets the demon courier in the forest north of the castle."

The verification didn't lean on [Memory Reading] alone, either. There was a record that Lebran had applied for a night pass, unlike his habit, and had left a commoner's cloak not at the stable but in the north gate locker. The parcel he addressed to an herbalist outside the walls had a false bottom heavier than its contents, and inside, along with kingdom gold, sat a single silver coin bearing a different mint's mark.

"Did you open the parcel?"

"I took a rubbing of the seal's edge and put it back exactly as it was. If he suspected we'd seen it, he'd cancel the meeting."

"So the evidence is still in Lebran's hands."

"Then we seize it the moment it changes hands tonight — the payment the courier brings, the documents Lebran delivers, their conversation, all of it."

Helga's face went hard. A low, dangerous voice.

"How long has this been going on?"

"About two years. He seems to have been bought during the period after you lost your husband, when running the Order was beyond you."

Helga's jaw clenched.

"It's my fault."

"It isn't."

"It is my fault. I spent two years living as an empty shell."

I did not immediately raise this morning's sentence like a shield. Telling her not to blame herself just because her guilt had lessened would, in the end, mean picking the right answer on her behalf.

"The responsibility an instructor missed, we can investigate. But don't take Lebran's choice — taking money to sell information — onto yourself as your share too."

"Those documents passed under my signature."

"Then let's make a list of which control mechanisms failed. Only by separating one man's malice from the organization's blind spots can we stop the next spy."

Helga sank into self-reproach for a moment — then repeated the morning's sentence to herself.

"I am allowed to live, even while remembering Arnon."

Three deep breaths later, the knight's edge was back in her eyes.

"...All right. I won't erase the past. I'll do what has to be done now."

A professional, through and through. The training to accept an emotion without being devoured by it lived in her body.

"We draft the operation this afternoon, prepare the tail in the evening, and take them in the act at midnight."

"We're taking them alive, right? Though I'd like to cut them down."

"Interrogation comes first — we need the full scope of what leaked. You hold at the forest entrance; I confirm the meeting's contents near the cabin with [Memory Reading], then send the arrest signal with a mana pulse."

"The courier?"

"I'll subdue him with [Suggestion]. Lebran is yours."

"Both alive?"

"Both alive. The demon side will carry more information. I need to open his memory myself."

"And Lebran?"

"We hand him to the Queen once the interrogation is done. His punishment belongs to the crown."

Helga spread a map of the northern forest across the desk. What I had imagined was a single cabin and one approach road; she marked the waterways and the wind direction, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the angle of the moonrise, even which paths would leave mud after rain.

"Your operation has no way out."

"You mean a way out for the courier?"

"A way out for us — if the two of us fail."

Helga pressed a finger to the dry creek west of the cabin. If the contact party numbered three or more instead of two, we would not fight — we would follow the creek back toward the castle. If my [Suggestion] failed, one whistle. If I was pinned mid memory-read, two. And if Helga did not come, I was not to attempt the arrest alone — confirm the scene only, then withdraw.

"I'm Level 3, you know."

"And nowhere in the status window does it say that means you can't die."

I had no rebuttal.

We didn't leave the arrest to just the two of us, either. Helga entrusted a sealed order to Marta, a veteran she trusted: if there was no red signal flare by twenty past midnight, she was to bring six and come to the northern forest's entrance. The destination was written only inside the seal, and Marta was forbidden to open it until just before departure.

"If there's another spy inside the Order, won't the support team leak?"

"That's why Marta picks the personnel at the last moment. While you filter them with ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠psychology, I block the leaks through the command structure."

Roles divided. The power to read human hearts could not stand in for every security measure.

"Evidence handover?"

"Bag Lebran's and the courier's effects separately, note where each was found, and have two people sign. The memories get sealed separately as reference records. And don't mix the scenes you saw and the objects from the scene into one sentence."

"Let's re-preserve Arnon's battle records the same way."

Helga's finger stopped on the map for a moment.

"Don't ask about that until it comes out of Lebran's mouth first. If I'm standing there wearing a face that wants an answer, even your interpretation could be pulled toward it."

"Understood."

Helga drew her sword and slid it back into its sheath. Steel rang briefly against the scabbard. The smile of a hunter before the chase.

"First time in two years I get to do this. Save your strength for running your mouth — you'll be busy tonight."

"The operation?"

"That too. And when it's over, we test whether today's sentence still stands."

In the afternoon we ran the approach three times in an empty warehouse. On the first run, I blocked Helga's line of entry. On the second, I sent the signal too early and lost the imaginary courier. On the third, I turned my back on the exit trying to read a memory.

"Psychologist."

"Yes."

"Stop watching only what's inside people's heads. Watch the paths a blade can come in through, too."

Helga chalked a line on the floor and reset my position: one wall between us, but a spot from which I could watch the window and the door at once. After sending the signal, I was not to dive into the scene — I was to fall back behind the big tree, in that order. My job was confirmation and support for the takedown; the direct combat was Helga's.

In the final drill, Helga threw a wooden stave without warning. I failed to dodge, and it cracked against my shoulder.

"If that had been an arrow, you'd be done."

"If you'd told me it was a test, I'd have dodged."

"Would be nice if enemies were that courteous."

My shoulder throbbed. The euphoria of gaining Level 3 sank all at once.

Eleven thirty at night. We came out of the instructor's quarters. Nothing but moonlight.

Helga strapped on her sword and buried her silver hair beneath a black cloak. The instant the silver vanished into the cloak, she became an entirely different being from the woman who had been in my arms only minutes ago. A knight. An instructor. A huntress.

"Instructor."

"What."

"Be careful."

"You be careful. You're not a combat type."

Right. A psychologist. Swordsmanship: zero.

"Which is why you're handling the fighting, Instructor."

"Let's move."

We slipped out of the castle along the blind spots of the night patrol. Natural enough — the one who has those routes memorized is the knight instructor. The northern forest. Insect song and cold night air.

At the forest's edge, Helga stopped.

"I hold here. Send the signal, and I'll be there in thirty seconds."

"Thirty seconds?"

"Might only need fifteen."

It wasn't bravado. With this woman's blade and body, it was possible.

I went into the forest alone. Darkness. Moonlight breaking between the trunks. I killed my footsteps, avoided the dry leaves, and chose only wet moss to step on. Five minutes later, the cabin came into view. No light. No one there yet. I hid behind a large tree beside it and waited. The rough bark pressed against my back. My breathing, kept as low as it would go. The sound of my own heart pounding somewhere behind my ears.

At midnight, I heard footsteps.

Lebran. Early thirties, brown hair, a perfectly forgettable face. Order adjutant and demon spy — the man whose administrative skill had earned him the post. His sword work was middling, but he handled every last document, which was why even Helga had used him unchanged for two years. He opened the cabin door and went inside.

Two minutes later, a second set of footsteps came from the far side of the woods. Small frame, hood up. The movement was wrong for a human — the joints bent through too wide a range. The demon-kin's characteristic build. The courier slipped into the cabin.

Now. I pressed my ear to the wall. [Memory Reading] grows more accurate the closer the physical distance. One wall between us.

"Fresh information."

Lebran's voice.

"The Order's movement routes have been changed. Western route for the Queen's procession next month. And a three-minute gap in the east gate watch at the castle."

False information. Leaked by me. The real route is east, and the east gate rotation has no gap.

The instant he swallowed the bait — and it feels disgustingly good. A man who spent two years selling off everything the Order had is offering the false information I carved for him to the demons like a sacred relic.

"We'll work it into next month's plan of action."

The courier's voice. Slightly off from a human's inflection — the vowels drawn out long.

"Payment — this month the same as always?"

"Fifty gold. As always."

Meticulous as hell. Running a spy ring and still verifying the ledger. This was the kind of man who had sat inside the Order for two years.

I sent a short pulse of mana. Like a heartbeat. Toward Helga. The insect noise seemed to cut out for an instant, then resumed.

Fifteen seconds. No — ten.

The wind moved. A black cloak billowed open, and Helga arrived.