The strange tingle washing over me is an odd cross between pins-and-needles from sitting on my legs too long and that flushed, dizzy feeling I get after Tess drags me through another round of “intimacy practice”—minus the awkward giggling and blushing like an idiot.

  Then my ears explode. Not literally, but the riot of klaxons, hisses, clangs, bangs—an entire junk drawer of noises more reminiscent of forks in the garbage disposal than a properly functioning anything—shoves the rest of my body fully awake.

  My nose stirs next, feeding me a choking cocktail of burnt plastic, overheated metal, and something acidic that scorches my sinuses.

  Something is very, very wrong.

  And then, as if on cue, my eyes start to throb and burn.

  “What the hell…” I force them open. The LED strips overhead stutter, not like a clean flicker but in uneven bursts, throwing sickly light through the haze inside my tube.

  Click-click. Somewhere under me, a relay snaps into place.

  “Please exit the reformation chamber,” says a deep, monotone male voice.

  I sit up with a groan. “What’s going on?” My fingers reach for my hair—and find only bare skin. One glance down earns a sigh. My body is perfect, minus the tattoos, the scars, and… well… I’m essentially a twenty-something newborn. “Um…”

  “Miss Loren. Please exit the reformation chamber, and don the EVA suit.”

  “Yeah, yeah… what’s got your knickers in a knot?”

  “A detailed report will be provided once the balance of your team has been reformed.”

  The words settle in as I zip up the gold-trimmed orange suit. Reformation chamber?

  Silence. Except for the low, aching groan of stressed metal and the faint hiss of leaking air somewhere I can’t see. “Mira?”

  No reply.

  I turn back to the marred stainless steel tube beside mine and swipe the view plate clean with my sleeve.

  And then I vomit. Bile splashes over the edge, hot and sour, but I can’t look away.

  Inside, a brain blossoms in wet, glistening folds, knitting itself together from the inside out. A sharp, copper tang rides the air, mixed with the warm scent of raw meat. It slams me back to the Highlands—a stag strung up between trees, steam rising in the cold as Dad showed me where to cut. Blood pattering into the grass, iron-sweet in the winter air. For a breath, I’m home again, young and sure-handed with a knife.

  But here, it’s wrong. So very wrong.

  Bone locks into place over the forming brain, muscle twitching as it crawls across the frame. Skin stretches and shades, sealing it all, smoothing into a face. Eyes. Nose. Mouth.

  Tess shivers—and opens her eyes.

  Her pod hums, clicks, and shudders open. I ignore her first words to the ship’s AI and step toward the next chamber.

  My eyes refuse to look away. Another brain, half-formed, floats higher in the gel, folds knitting with slow, obscene precision. This one’s probably one of the guys.

  Whirr-pop-buzz.

  A tray slides out on a slender robotic arm, carrying its cargo with absurd care. My gaze follows it to the last pod. I race over.

  On the tray, suspended in a wireframe cube, rests a brilliant yellow sphere no bigger than a golf ball, and furrier than a Highland hare. Not fur, I realize, but countless prongs, twitching like grass in a storm. The light inside it glitters faintly, too alive for any machine.

  My skin prickles. The air itself presses on me, heavy, until a metallic tang creeps across my tongue. And then—something deeper. Not in my ears, not in my eyes. In my chest. In my bones. Recognition. The way the prongs bounce, the shimmer of its glow—my soul knows what my head refuses to say.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Jenny.

  I reach toward the cube, trembling fingers ready to touch, when Tess’s hand clamps around my arm.

  “Don’t.” Her voice is sharp, breath still ragged from her own rebirth.

  “But—it’s her,” I whisper.

  Tess shakes her head, eyes hard. “Not yet. Not like that.”

  Reality slams into me like a charging buck—twelve points of antlers aimed at my chest, and only one arrow left to fire.

  I begin to shiver. Tess pulls me close, warm and solid, her hands trembling in mine.

  The robot lifts the Soul Core from its cradle and slots it into a pillar of… something. I don’t know what, but it looks like a half-melted chocolate bar squashed into the floor of the tube.

  I rub the back of my head, half-expecting to feel melted chocolate—and laugh weakly when it’s only skin. A morbid giggle bubbles out of me.

  “What’s funny?” Tess asks.

  “Now I know why she’s always so—”

  “Be nice…”

  “Sweet?”

  “I was sure you were about to make a shit-for-brains joke.”

  I blow a raspberry at her.

  Doc’s familiar baritone cuts through the cacophony of disaster-movie sounds. “That’s biogel, a specialized version. It acts as fertilizer, feeding the Soul Core and giving her nanobots the updates to her genetic recipe.”

  We watch with morbid fascination as lumps sprout across the surface of the biogel, swelling and shifting with the unsettling speed of a time-lapse fungus colony.

  Doc’s warm hand settles on my shoulder. A second later, a chocolate-covered granola bar waggles in front of my face.

  I choke. “No… thank you…”

  “Eat it,” he orders. “Your digestive tract is empty and your newborn body needs fuel.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “It’s this now,” he warns in his best bedside manner, “or a bottle later when you pass out from hypoglycemia.”

  My eyes dart to Tess, searching for reassurance. Instead, I get her smirking as she nibbles on her own candy bar.

  “What? Eat it.” She jiggles her chest. “Don’t expect me to feed you when you flop to the floor.”

  “I meant an IV,” snickers Doc.

  I snap the bar from his hand and jam the end between stiff lips. Oh, wow… A moan escapes before I can stop it.

  “Down girl! It’s a granola bar, not a—”

  I slap my free hand over her mouth. “Mmm-mmm.”

  “Your skin is reddening,” deadpans Doc as he pinches my wrist and takes my pulse.

  My blush spreads.

  “Let me check your blood sugar—you might need that IV after all…”

  “I am eating your candy bar!”

  Tess snickers.

  My blush deepens. “That’s not what I meant!”

  “Ah huh,” Tess laughs.

  “I have no idea what you are talking about,” Doc deadpans. “Now, give me your hand.”

  “Why?”

  “I need to poke you—”

  “Nope.” I scoot back, tucking my hands behind me.

  “Do you have a needle phobia?”

  “She’s afraid of being poked—”

  “I am not!”

  “Sure,” chuckles Tess.

  The pod behind me clicks. “Jenny, tell them I’m not afraid of being poked.”

  “Geez! Let me wake up before asking me to lie for you.”

  I bite back a scream.

  Jenny blinks, then grins. “I mean, it’s been what—ten thousand years since you got busy?” She bounces into her EVA suit with far more energy than anyone freshly baked out of a reformation pod should have.

  “I give up,” I sigh, scanning the room. “Where’s Frank MacGregor?”