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It was simply for fun, taking this one.
The boy was small, perhaps nine or ten, with no hint of that stubborn rebellion in his eyes. There were no files that marked him as particularly useful, nothing to make him a person of note to the Corporation. The Corporation would not miss whatever thin store of knowledge lived behind those wide, terrified eyes. Kao had simply seen him among the latest sweep - another face in the line of the newly arrived prisoners - and had felt the familiar, low pull in his chest.
He had ordered the child brought to the laboratory, and that was where they now were. As it always went.
The restraints were almost unnecessary. The boy did not struggle. He only watched Kao with the pure attention that could only be given from the very young. That was part of the fun already: the complete absence of adult paranoid calculation, the soft and open readiness of a mind that had not yet learned to fear what Kao could do.
The air in his lab was cool, a soft breeze from the vent ghosting over Kao's skin. He preferred it that way. Warmth made the sensations blur; cold kept every edge sharp. And Kao always wanted to feel everything.
He stepped close and laid his bare palm against the boy's forehead.
The contact was always intimate. Skin to skin. The slight dampness of fear upon their brow. The rapid, birdlike pulse beneath his fingertips. That first touch was always the same, no matter who it was beneath his hand - an immediate, private claim. For a moment the rest of the laboratory ceased to matter. There was only the warm curve of bone under his palm and the mind waiting, bright and unprotected, just beneath.
Kao closed his eyes and let the first current rise.
"There now. No need to be brave, little one. Bravery is such hard work, don't you think? It would be so much easier to just..." He spoke softly, the way one might speak to a nervous or wounded animal, "let me in."
The mind opened for him with almost no resistance. Children's minds always did. They had not yet built the thick, scarred walls adults developed. With children, everything was close to the surface, bright and unprotected. The first layer came away like tissue paper, delicate and almost translucent.
The thoughts came in broken pieces, the way they always did at first - the most recent memories, disconnected and tumbling out under the pressure of his hand.
So hard to be brave...
Where is...
Mama said stay quiet...
I see them...
Don't take me...
Please...
Hide...
I don't want to...
...where am I...?
None of it was useful. Kao took them anyway.
He preferred the earliest memories. The ones still wrapped in sensory softness of ideation rather than firm remembrance. The particular weight of a soft blanket pulled up to the chin. The feeling of a much larger hand wrapped around one much smaller. The uneven rhythm of a lullaby sung off-key by someone whose face was out of focus. Those memories were the richest. They were pure. Untainted by the bitterness or cunning that adult minds acquired. When he took them, the contrast was exquisite: the clean, luminous simplicity of what had been, and the clean, luminous emptiness that remained.
He drew the first of the memories out carefully, almost tenderly.
A kitchen. A flickering yellow light. A woman's hands kneading dough, flour dusting her slender wrists. The boy's own small fingers reaching up, allowed to press a thumbprint into the soft surface. Twin giggles, wrapping around each other and echoing throughout the room. The memory carried the faint, yeasty scent of rising bread and the absolute safety of being small enough to be lifted, held tight against the warmth of someone who loved the boy with all their being. Kao lingered over it, turning the moment slowly in his mind the way one might turn a polished stone to catch the light. Perhaps he would fetch her next. It was always a delight to collect a matching pair of memories - two halves of the same soft world, both reduced to the same perfect silence.
Soft...
Warm...
You promised a bite before bed...
Tuck me in...
Don't go...
Stay...
Kao exhaled through his nose, a quiet sound of satisfaction.
"Oh," he murmured, "oh, that's lovely," he smiled. "Thank you."
He took the memory. Not roughly - he had learned that haste dulled the pleasure. It was better to peel slowly, to feel each filament of association stretch and then part. He savored every moment as the memory dissolved into him like sugar into warm tea, and with it came the first real wave of sensation: a spreading heat behind his eyes, a bright fullness in his chest that made his breath catch for half a second. No other sensation on Earth could compare. For a few heartbeats he felt almost weightless, as though the act of taking had lightened him as well.
The boy made a small, confused sound beneath Kao's hand.
Kao's voice remained gentle, "Shh. It's all right. I'll take good care of these for you. You'll feel so much lighter afterward, I promise."
He moved deeper.
A scrap of a lullaby. A sweet and silly name for a stuffed animal whose ear had been chewed soft, stuffing gone lumpy with age. He could see the particular way sunlight had once fallen across a cracked floor in long golden bars. He could feel the exact temperature of the air in that remembered room, the slight grit of dust under small bare feet.
Each detail arrived fully formed and then, under the steady pressure of his will, began to unravel. He did not rush the unraveling. There was an art to it - an almost musical pacing. Too fast and the pleasure became blunt. Too slow and the mind began to thrash in ways that muddied the clarity. He had refined the balance over years.
None of those moments mattered to the Corporation. None of them would ever appear in a report. That was precisely why he wanted them. Useful memories were work, work, work. They always rushed the process, wanting results to be given at the snap of their fingers. They never gave him time to enjoy. And that's what these moments were for, they were pure indulgence. He could feel the difference in the quality of the rush currently flooding him - it was sharper, cleaner, almost sweet.
He spoke again, conversationally, as the next layer gave way beneath his power.
"You had a sister? Or a cousin. Someone smaller. Oh, I see - they're not here anymore, such a shame. You used to let her win at whatever game you played. That was very kind of you."
The boy said nothing regarding the memory, only blinking slowly as Kao took it, too.
It was coming time for his favorite part. The precise, exquisite moment when the sense of continuous self began to fray. He could feel it happening under his hand: the quiet, internal collapse of personal identity. The boy's breathing had gone shallow. His eyes were still open, but they no longer tracked. Kao watched the change with open fascination. It never got old, no matter how many times he saw it happen.
"Almost finished," he said softly. "You're doing so well."
He saved the brightest ones for last. The purest. A single afternoon of running through tall dry grass until the air burned in the lungs. The first time the boy had managed to whistle, his parents applauding as they watched. The brief, blazing certainty that the world was large and safe and full of people who would always be there. These final memories carried a particular brightness, like the last light on water before dusk. He took them with deliberate reverence, stretching each one, letting the sensation bloom fully inside him before allowing it to fade.
The last fragments were barely words at all.
...who are...
...
...Dad...?
...
...where did...
...
...Mama...?
Kao took them one by one, slowly, letting each dissolve fully before reaching for the next. His free hand had curled into a loose fist at his side. His mouth had fallen slightly open. He was no longer entirely aware of the laboratory, or the fact that an underling waited just beyond the door. There was only the warm skull under his palm and the bright, dissolving stream of a life that had never done as much as stolen a single sweet.
When the last coherent strand of memory parted, the emptiness that followed was almost blinding.
Kao stayed like that for several long seconds, palm still pressed to the warm forehead beneath them, riding the final crest of sensation until it began to ebb. Only then did he open his eyes.
The boy's face was slack.
The eyes remained open, but nothing looked out through them. The small body sat obediently in the chair, breathing, present.
Empty.
Kao felt the familiar little disappointment. There was nothing left.
He withdrew his hand, and immediately missed the warmth as the cool air caressed his palm. He flexed his fingers once, feeling the residual tingle running through them. Already the quiet, familiar hunger had begun to stir again at the edges of the satisfaction.
It never stayed quiet for long.
He smoothed the boy's hair back from the forehead in a gesture that, from the outside, might have looked almost paternal.
"There we are," he said, voice light, almost fond. "All finished. You see? Nothing to be afraid of."
The words sounded almost exactly like something a nurturing mother might have said.
Kao smiled.
He had always been very good at learning what people needed to hear.
He turned toward the door, already mentally composing the mild, professional report that would list the child as processed and of no further intelligence value. The Corporation would accept it without question. They never asked too many questions about his reasonings when it came to picking candidates for a Mind Wipe. They asked the most surface level questions and that was all. Kao did not mind. The official reasons were for them.
The real reason was simpler, and entirely his own.
He had wanted to.