Rebirth The Mass Effect is old. part 22

A heavy hand landed on my shoulder, interrupting my heavy thoughts and bringing me back to the real world. I tore my gaze away from the sleeping Benezia and squinted at a wide palm with long, strong fingers ending in massive claws.

"Something happened?"

The hand disappeared, and its owner appeared in the field of view, sitting on the edge of the laboratory table.

"You tell me." Nihlus said calmly and held out a warm food container.

Did he bring me food? To the infirmary?

"Karin will be against it."

"No, it won't." a slight grin: slightly spread mandibles, a sly look. "Dr. Chakwas found me not long ago and ordered me to take you away from your work and feed you. Even forcibly. And send him to sleep."

And there's an abyss of irony in his eyes.

"Did she actually order it?" I looked skeptically at the pleased face. "And you agreed to obey her?"

"You know how angry our doctor is. Her sincere concern for the health of the sentients on this ship is close to... fanaticism. It's completely useless to argue with her. And it's pointless."

"Oh, how!" I was surprised.

Wow! Nihlus recognized the doctor's power over himself! Even in the field of health.

"At first, she wanted to catch Garrus, but Vakarian lay under the Mako, and she couldn't get him out. He pretends to be busy with repairs."

"Kicked off?"

"Rather, he just fell asleep and ignored all attempts to reach his common sense and sense of responsibility. He was wearing headphones, so the doctor's screams went down the drain. He just didn't hear her." Nihlus chuckled. "Rex technically shifted the scope to me and dumped me in the arsenal."

"Did you agree?"

The Turian cocked his head like a bird.

"Rin, she's right. You locked yourself in the infirmary as soon as you finished resettling the Asari and gave orders to the Joker and the XO. It's been almost five hours. You've been up for more than a day and haven't eaten since you landed on Noveria. Dr. Karin has reason to be furious."

"Is she furious?"

"If she were a warrior, I would say... in the pre-fight." Nihlus chuckled. "And so... She's just mad. She still couldn't bring you out of your trance, and I advised you not to disturb her. So eat up. As far as I understand, the doctor will come to check."

I didn't argue. I really wanted to eat, but a prolonged mind scan did not add to my cheerfulness. Knowing Karin, I can easily believe in her warning. He'll come and check it out! And God forbid if I find myself hungry at the time of this check. It will hit both me and Nihlus. To me, for having ignored the needs of the body upon returning from the mission, and to Nihlus for not following up. It can ricochet into everything else. Karin is VERY responsible about her duties! Her recommendations often sound like a direct and uncompromising order. As far as I remember, even Captain Anderson did not dare to argue with the doctor about the health of her patients.

After unpacking the box, I started eating. Interestingly, the container, divided into two parts, contained both types of food, and if the usual food contained some vegetables, then dextro can be described in one word: meat!

"Our chef definitely works wonders!"

Nihlus chuckled.

I was already touched. No, seriously! Wow, he remembered! And then I spoke as a joke, albeit truthfully.

The doors of the infirmary swung open noiselessly. Karin looked closely at me, who was chewing, and nodded benevolently to Nihlus, who bowed his head questioningly.

"Irene! You should be in your cabin and asleep in an hour!"

"I understood, I got into it, I'll improve!"

Karin skeptically examined my face and honest-honest eyes, shook her head, slightly pursing her lips. She didn't believe it.

"The Nihlus spectr. I hope for your prudence and responsibility."

"I'll make sure."

Karin retired to her cabin. The Iron Lady!

A spectr device, already familiar to me, landed on the laboratory table, jamming wiretaps and unnecessary prying eyes.

"What can you say about the matriarch's condition?"

"A lot of things. But maybe only in obscenities. Literary language is not able to describe what I saw. I'm afraid your mentor's mind will be even more in danger... in a deplorable state." I took a bite of the funny purple colored meat.

"But seriously?"

"Partial substitution of associative bindings and strict rough control for complete suppression. The Reaper didn't aim to subdue her gently. The invasion and capture happened quickly and not too neatly."

"How long will it take to fix all this?"

"In an amicable way, it's at least a decade. But I will try to remove the most critical before arriving at the Citadel. Bookmarks, anchor bindings, drill and mental channel. The violation of associative connections will have to be abandoned. Or edit it another time. I've finished the full scan, and I need to start removing the bindings. It will be just ten or twelve hours for the rest of the mind."

"Will it take a long time?"

"Not really. If you want, I can show you how it happens."

I've noticed more than once that Nihlus has VERY expressive eyes when he wants to! That's how it is now. I finished my meal quickly, closed the container, and put it away. I have about an hour until Karin's deadline passes. And we'd better get out of the infirmary by then!

A simple mental command brought Lady Benezia out of her sleep, transferring it to a light form of trance, so convenient for work.

"It's not worth working with a sleeping reasonable. This requires a lot of effort and attention: consciousness is turned off, the personality is in contact with the upper level of the subconscious and may briefly immerse itself in the realm of instincts. Protecting the core of the personality and mind is one of the basic instincts of a reasonable person, and he can easily react to the slightest careless action. The result will be unpredictable, up to and including physical aggression. Believe me, based on naked instincts and reflexes, without mind control, the body can work wonders. Quite... scary miracles."

Nihlus nodded slowly.

"How dangerous is it?"

"Extremely dangerous. I know an example of how this instinct works. The result is forty corpses of varying degrees of dismemberment, partial metamorphosis of the body, removal of blocks from the area of genetic memory, and an intelligent predator. Consciousness turned on only three days later, when ALL reasonable people left the complex. And it was just a human teenager! A fifteen-year-old girl."

Nihlus did not complain about imagination and fantasy, and he was able to imagine such a thing without much trouble. His expressive face stretched out, his mandibles twitched nervously and pressed against his cheeks.

"Dangerous."

"Yes. But the waking mind gives unnecessary interference, complicates work, bookmarks and bindings can work if the patient is ill... well, or the victim will feel something. To avoid both extremes, a mental trance based on oneiroid catatonia and amentia has been developed. The victim is awake, but not in contact with reality. When coming out of a trance, all hallucinations are erased from memory. Lady Benezia is in a trance right now."

Nihlus nodded slowly.

"How can you show me your work if I'm not a mentalist?"

"Diving through my consciousness. This method is used to train mentalists under the supervision of a mentor. Look into my eyes. "I met his gaze, easily penetrating his mind." * Don't resist. Now I'm going to pull you into the outer region of my consciousness through a mental channel.*

Interestingly, the Turian really didn't resist, even though I saw his fingers tighten on the edge of the table. I turned my gaze to my victim, and lo and behold, we penetrated the mind of the matriarch. Nihlus didn't understand much about mental projection, but even he was moved by what he saw. I use imaginative visual perception, and the mental drill looked like a creepy spiked tentacle from the outside.

* What you see is an imaginative perception, recreated in a form that is convenient for me. Every mentalist creates a comfortable environment for him. Some people generally use non-visual modeling: music, smells, sensations of touch. Which is convenient for whom.*

* What kind of dirty trick is this?* Nihlus' attention pointed to the dipstick.

* A mental drill. Rough, but powerful. Such trash independently makes its way to the core of the personality and changes it. Or destroys it.*

* Did he go deep?*

The image changed when I shifted the point of perception.

* Reached the last veil.*

* What needs to be done?*

* Pay attention to the thin dark strands coming from the drill. You can't touch the drill itself until all bindings are removed, otherwise, Chaos alone knows how and what will work when it is removed.* I brought the largest and strongest weight closer. * This is anchoring. I'm going to shoot her first and right now.*

*What is an Anchor?*

* The key image that invasion and coercion are tied to. In our case, the collective one is Saren.* The film disintegrated into a series of images of the above-mentioned intelligent in VERY interesting variations. * Of all the variety, this and this look are real. Everything else is a phantom. The image is attached to the associative link: lord-Saren-Soveren. The middle links can ALWAYS be omitted or changed. The first and last states are firmly fixed. Take away the excess, and you will get *lord Sovereyn* — the true Anchor, but the tap goes to Saren. If you remove or break this bookmark, all the negativity will be transferred to it.*

* How to remove it?*

* Look.*

Anchoring is removed in several stages. I was the first to change Saren's Name to Nazara, which untied the vast majority of bookmarks from the Anchor. The Reaper made a very common mistake: he was not anchoring to the Anchor's Condition, but to its Image. On Saren Arterius. It's much easier and doesn't require any hard work. The name always evokes associations and draws an Image with it. Change the Name, and you change the Image without touching it directly or causing aggression from the defense. The substitution was easy: I built additional connections: Sovereyn of Nazara-* Sovereyn *-Ship-affiliation-Saren, pulling on suitable memories and concepts from the victim's mind. So they do not cause rejection, because they are not foreign. Based on this associative chain, Nazara name was tied to the Anchor, and then replaced at the point of conjugation when I shifted the emphasis. As a result, the Anchor was now attached to the associative link *lord-Nazara-Sovereyn*, which was NOT a lie: Nazara is the Sovereyn, and therefore did not cause a conflict in the control points that monitor the integrity of the bookmark. Then it was easier. After removing the attachment to Saren, I disbanded the associations based on Benezia's own knowledge, easily CONVINCING her mind that the Sovereyn of Nazara is a sentient being, and *the Sovereyn* is a ship, albeit an extremely strange one. In other words, DIFFERENT images. The Anchor, stripped of its anchors, disintegrated on its own.

* That's something like that.*

I took us out of the matriarch's mind and severed contact. Nihlus twitched, blinked, regaining control of his body, Benezia lay back on the bed, her trance smoothly turned into a dream.

"You can do that..." Nihlus waved his hand vaguely, "convince of anything."

"May. There would be time and desire." I shrugged, rubbing my sore temples with my fingers. As you can see, a well-composed cutting of true images and facts allows you to create false associative connections. You haven't seen how you can distort memories and twist the semantic component. It's totally creepy out there."

"How much time and effort will it take to bring you to this state?"

"For about a decade with constant exposure under ideal conditions: the victim does not resist, and no one distracts. Otherwise, it will take about a month."

"How long will it take to get it all off?"

"The same amount. Maybe more. If the bookmarks have an integrity monitoring system and protection, you have to remove them very carefully so as not to disturb the control points. The matriarch has one, albeit a rather primitive one."

"Somehow, the concept of *primitive* doesn't really fit the Reaper's actions." Nihlus said with some skepticism.

"I suppose Reapers are natural mentalists. Or were created from them. But! The impact is rough and quite careless. The bookmarks are too clearly positioned, and the protection is too conditional. It seems that the Lord of probability does not even allow that someone else can interfere with the mind of his victim."

"Why such conclusions?"

"Usually, experienced mentalists hide their creativity well, disguising it as natural formations and the influence of the subconscious. The protection is aggressive and multi-layered. And here..." I spread my hands. "Everything is in plain sight. There's not even an attempt to cover it up."

"How much can you hide?"

"I have seen the master's work: the mind is almost completely reprogrammed, everything that is possible is in bookmarks, and externally there is not a single trace of influence."

"What's your opinion?"

"There are only two explanations: lack of knowledge and negligence. I don't believe in the first one. Bookmarks are set correctly. Negligence? Maybe. The Reaper simply has no reason to hide the impact. It's not that I haven't seen mentalists here, but I haven't even met a banal empath!"

"What is the reason?"

"It's hard to say what exactly caused it. But all these are consequences of the degradation of natural protection." Seeing the misunderstanding in the green eyes, I explained." When a child is born, his mind is practically nonexistent, his body is governed by instincts. The core of the personality is open, the soul is weak. That is why in the developed magical worlds a child's name is given ONLY after three months of life, when the soul is finally fixed in the body and the first Veil appears around the core. Gradually, with the growth of the child and the development of the mind, the natural defense unfolds and finally strengthens towards puberty. At the same time, the formation of the basis of personality ends. As they grow older, the protection strengthens, and the development of the so-called "zone of influence" begins, tied to the aura. The aura is larger in size than the physical body, sometimes significantly so. This is exactly what is called *personal space*. Everyone has their own opinion. Everything that falls within the boundaries of the aura can be affected by its owner. And that's when empathy can manifest itself. A reasonable person begins to feel other people's emotions. Weakly at first. Then..." I grimaced. "Then you have to learn how to close. After showing empathy, it quickly grows stronger and begins to develop into mentalism. At the same time, active or combat shields are raised. That's to explain... roughly and simplistically.