[X] Pay the old surviving members of the team a visit. (Choose one)
[X] Prowling Wolf
The Technocracy has been covering up what happened from within. We can't assume that any Technocrat linked to HELMETSHRIKE hasn't been tweaked, even if they don't know they've been altered. It's so easy to get someone in this line of business modified, because of their tendency to get shot and spend time in medical recovery. So who do we go to?
Why, the defector, of course. Oh, we'll get the Technocracy in the worst light. We'll get a different set of mistruths than we'd get from people redacted by the Technocracy. But the very fact that he was capable of defecting - and it's implied it happened quite soon after HELMETSHRIKE fell apart - indicates that they didn't get to him. And may have been what prompted the defection, if they knew they were coming for him.
Of course, this isn't an easy path to walk down. He'll likely assume that Jamelia is a Technocracy assassin sent to hunt him down because... well, that is her day job. It'll have to be very wary and done at arm's length, and probably using places like the Spy's Demise and TradWiki. Jamelia herself will need to cover up that she's not trying to hunt him down to kill or bring him in, or her Union enemies will use it against her. But if we want to get what the Union doesn't want people to know from a member of Squadron 7 while only having to sift out the Traditionalist bias and stop him trying to kill the assassin, he's the man to go to.
... if he'll even talk to her. Which may be an issue.
[X] Confide into one or more team members about it.
[X] Kessler
[X] Serafina
Two different levels of approach. Serafina gets what we told Bastion. She's Jamelia's doctor, and at the very least she might be able to look for microscarring which might confirm or reinforce the story (or something). I strongly doubt she'd be able to unpick it, because she doesn't have the Time to actually be able to access physically-removed memories. And by talking to Serafina, it's what Bastion would expect Jamelia to do if she'd only just discovered it.
Of course, that might prompt a little talk from Serafina about the same topic, and a certain scientific psychic [1] might come up in the conversation and then Jamelia can start going into paroxysm of paranoia about how on earth the childhood best friend of the daughter she didn't know she had wound up in her amalgam (and then she'll start fretting about how Serafina joining was predictable because Rose had joined
so who gave Rose the idea and doing all the cute things Jamelia does when she's paranoid [2]).
Kessler gets a more... evasive and yet more truthful talk. As I've mentioned before, he was there in the old days and has been part of wet-works teams. She'll be wary, of course. But he knows what it was like back then, in a way that Serafina (who was only a child) doesn't. There's common ground there. And of course, she listened into the conversation between him and Henriette (because Jamelia's gonna Jamelia) and he seems to hold appropriate opinions about the nature of humanity and how it's important to preserve it.
And on a pragmatic note, as the designated party facetank (he tanks things with his face), Jamelia is often going to be looking into these things and is going to want a bodyguard around. And it's a lot easier if he's there - and Rose is... not suited for the sordid details of Jamelia's past, as she is a) an idealist, and b) Conditioned out the wazoo. Meanwhile, considering what happened with the Agent, Jamelia is pretty certain that Kessler is entirely deConditioned - and she has certain... suspicions that her psychic powers tell her about things he does. Which of course she's not going to ask questions about, but he's a pre-1999 Iterator who
at the very least taught himself DSci from scratch.
...
Donald doesn't get it yet, because Donald and Jamelia's relationship doesn't quite support it in the same, and more relevantly he's a recent defector and is completely untrained in hyperpsych. And unlike Kessler, he doesn't have a braincase coated in primium. Plus, if he knew some of the things and her little doubt, he'd use them against her to make her take more time off and spend more time being human. And she can't be having that.
Donald. So annoying. [3]
[1] Goddamnit Alice you were involved in the creation of the original Blando.
[2] Paranoid moe.
[3] And then she freezes in shock, and groans at the realisation that Starling was also a seemingly easy-going but with massive internal drive womanising flirt fond of his drinks, who tried to persuade her to take more time off from work. She better not have a
type.
