Wash was caught in his own memories, and caught badly. It was worse than he'd expected, somehow - memories of shadows rushing at him, sinking claws and teeth where they shouldn't have been able to go, where his armor should have protected him, until his vision whited out from pain and his body came apart-

And he'd never forget it. He didn't even have the luxury, the broken coping mechanism of taking the worst of his memories and filing them away as Not His, as the product of a tortured, fractured AI that had burned its death throes into the back of his brain. This one wasn't Epsilon's fault; it was his. He'd died, and he wasn't sure he could live with that.

He'd tensed, head bowed, until his whole body was shaking and his face was twisted into a grimace. His eyes snapped open when Greg laid his hand on top of his, and he let out one strangled gasp, and then another - the sounds of someone trying desperately to put their broken psyche back together and failing miserably.