"Amethyst," I say, "I don't know what you think you heard, but—"
"We have a delicate balance on this world," she says. "I know you think you know how precarious it is, but it is so much less stable than that. This little experiment at the edge of Imperial space. Do you know why they call our planet Euphoria-1? It's because it's the first time the Empire has seen fit to authorize a communist settlement. That authorization was written fifty years ago. They have not written another since.
"That is the balance we are in. That is the knife's edge of our world. If we don't stay in perfect harmony, if we give them any reason to doubt the success of our setup here, they'll rescind our authorization and excise us from the Imperial charters. That means no more supply runs from the core worlds. We'll be on our own."
"That might not be so bad," I say. "We could learn to survive on our own."
"No one is willing to take that risk," Amethyst says. "Everyone takes the Imperial-stamped medicine because no one trusts our ability to survive without it. And with a thief in their midst, I can sympathize with that hesitation."
"You can't prove I stole anything," I say.
"I don't need proof," says Amethyst. "My role here isn't detective, medphase. My role here is to maintain the peace."
It hits me, then. The peace the moderation team has been tasked with protecting. It isn't harmony within the community. It isn't our sense of belonging. It's peace with the Empire. Because the alternative is extinction.
"It is in everyone's best interest, in fact, if there is no proof. If there is no crime. If there is no criminal." Amethyst tilts her head toward me. "Do you understand?"
I glance at the cliff. "You're here to kill me," I say. "To eliminate any record that a crime was committed, so that the Empire doesn't come asking questions, so that they can keep running their simulation here."
"Exactly right," she says.
"What's to stop me from running?"
"You can't phase fast enough to get away from me, medphase," Amethyst intones. Their voice is practiced, cool – this is not the first time they've given this speech, had this conversation, carried out this grim task.
I have to get away. I close my eyes, searching for a thread to pull that will take me as far away from her as I can—
And in the darkness behind my eyelids a bloom of orange pain blossoms, as Amethyst drives her fist into my stomach.
"Phasogen does present a challenging problem," she says, grabbing hold of me as I gasp for breath. "But the director has given us a gift in these little vials. I asked them to develop this one especially for you."
She brandishes one of the new syringes in front of my face. I want to grab it, to push it away, to knock it out of her hands. But my stomach is reeling, all I can do is double over. And in the next moment, the needle is plunging into my arm, pouring chemicals into my shoulder. The injection stings, but the fluid is cold, spreading out across my body faster than my heart seemed capable of carrying it.
"That will stop you phasing," she says. "It's experimental, we don't know how long it will last. Then again, all of these vials are experimental. The one I was given, they didn't even tell me what it would do. I'm still waiting for the effects to kick in. But yours, you should be feeling any moment now."
And she's right. I can feel the threads pulling away from me. It's not just that I can't see the web anymore; the web itself is retreating, avoiding me. When I reach for a thread, it thrums and darts away from me like a scared snake.
"I didn't want to cause any trouble," I said.
"But you did, medphase," says Amethyst. "You tried to convince Annelise to abandon her vocation, so that the two of you could live out your utopian fantasy. You stole blueprints from the archives so you could carry out a heist on the community supply. You never stopped to think about what the consequences would be for your community, for our planet. I can think of nothing more incompatible with the needs of Euphoria-1 than that empathic deficiency. And it's time we put an end to that."
A sudden searing pain lances through my thoughts, worse than a headache, arcing across the darkness of my closed eyes.
Except my eyes aren't closed. They're open – I just can't see. I can't move. I can't speak. All I can do is scream, into the empty void that now surrounds me.