The pod hissed open like a breath finally released.
Warm air surged out, laced with the scent of sterilized metal and old power. Thalyn Ka’el blinked against the low blue light, vision sharpening too quickly, clean, no pain or lag in the nerves where cold metal once fought flesh.
Her legs responded before she asked them to.
“Welcome back, mistress,” purred Arvie inside her head, smooth as synth silk and twice as smug. “New model’s a dream, isn’t it? Sleek, chic, and 93.2% less likely to malfunction when you sprint into idiocy.”
Elara appeared beside the pod, violet eyes sweeping her, before Thalyn had fully registered the room. Without a word, she settled a hand at Thalyn’s shoulder, body offering support before questions did.
“Easy,” she said. “Take a moment.”
Thalyn sat upright. Her fingers dug instinctively into her thighs. Muscle. Warmth. Skin. Her breath caught in her throat. The pain she'd carried so long, static-laced, everpresent, was just... gone.
Her old clothes hung comfortably on her frame now perfectly whole.
Elara's scanner hummed softly over her, drinking in data. “How do you feel?” she asked. “Any confusion? Disorientation?”
“No.” Thalyn's voice came out steadier than she expected. “Clear.”
“Do you feel like yourself?”
Thalyn considered that for a genuine moment. “More than I should.”
Elara held her gaze a beat longer, searching, then gave a single quiet nod. She stepped back but stayed close.
Jaxon stood at the chamber's threshold, hands on hips. His jaw worked once, but said nothing. His steel eyes didn't leave her.
She swung her legs over the side, boots hitting the floor with grace, little effort. Weight shifted like a dancer's, clean and easy.
Her gaze drifted to the pod beside hers. There she was. Or had been.
Curled like an artifact, her old body lay in tranquil repose. Scars lined the familiar angles. Metal clung to thigh and calf, ugly and stubborn. That frame had survived fire and fall, and failure. It had kept her alive when everything else wanted her dead.
This new body? It hadn’t earned a single scar yet.
Something twisted beneath her ribs. It wasn’t grief or loss. Guilt maybe, wearing both their faces.
She turned away.
Jaxon's eyes moved to the pod, to the metal-clad legs behind the glass. His jaw tightened. He didn't speak, but the look he gave the sleeping shell was the same one he gave fallen crew, sombre and brief.
The droid entered the chamber, light pulsing steady from its optics. It inclined its head with graceful calm. “Mistress.”
“What happens to the old body?”
“It will be preserved, if you wish, placed in stasis. No harm shall come to it.”
“Do it.” Something snagged in her mind, some wishful impulse born from grief and hope. “Nira,” she said softly. “Could you… restore her for me?”
The droid considered. “We can reconstruct a body identical to her original structure. But we lack full cognitive records. Only echoes remain in your memories. The result would be… incomplete. A replica. Not her.”
A beat.
Elara's fingers began tapping against her sleeve. She didn't look up from the scarred body.
Jaxon came to stand beside her. Said nothing.
Then Arvie: “Yeah, let’s not resurrect ghosts just because the wardrobe’s open, boss. Half-made souls tend to make terrible roommates.”
Thalyn stood silent, pulse ticking behind her teeth.
“No,” she said finally. “If it’s not her, it’s not her. We let her rest.”
She drew breath, let it settle.
“We need Korr,” she said to the droid. “Send a guide.”
The droid inclined its head. They didn't wait long. Korr swept through the archway, panting, eyes hunting. He stopped dead.
His gaze moved from Thalyn, standing, whole, to the pod beside her, and the sleeping body within it. Back to Thalyn. Back to the pod. His mouth opened. Nothing came out.
“Korr,” Thalyn said.
“There are…” He pointed at the pod. Pointed at her. “You're… there are two of you.”
“The facility gave me a new body.”
His eyes went very wide and bright. He stumbled forward, nearly pressing his nose to the glass. “Do you understand what this implies about their understanding of our bodies…” He caught himself, pulled back. His eyes narrowed. “Are you actually you?”
“Yes.”
He stared at her, visibly running some internal diagnostic. Then, suspicion got shelved: “Fine. But I want access to those pod reports.”
“Later. The control devices. That's why we're here.”
Korr's expression shifted. The brightness curdled slightly. “Right. Yes. The leashes.” He glared at the droid.
Thalyn turned to the droid. “The control devices. We need them gone.”
“Your new vessel is clean. The others can enter the pods to sever the control links.”
Korr folded his arms. “Sure. Let a corpse-machine tuck me in. What could go wrong.”
“I just walked out of one with legs,” Thalyn said.
“You walked out of one as a different person!”
“I'm the same person.”
“That is exactly what a different person would say!”
Jaxon cut across them. “What exactly does the procedure involve?” He asked the droid.
The droid turned to him. “The implanted control architecture is accessed via the neural mesh and dissolved at the node level. There is no surgery. No sedation needed. The process would not take long.”
“Side effects?” Elara asked, moving closer, eyes curious.
“Mild disorientation upon emergence. Temporary sensitivity in the skin around the spine. Nothing that persists.”
Elara studied the droid for a long moment, then looked at Jaxon.
“The logic is consistent with what I'd expect from a such a procedure,” she said. “If the neural mesh is being addressed at the node level, it's a cleaner method than anything we have access to.”
Jaxon's jaw worked. His hand moved to his cybernetic arm, rotating it once at the joint, the decision-making tell. “And you trust it?”
“I trust that Thalyn is standing in front of us.”
Jaxon looked at Thalyn. The look was not warm, exactly, decision forming behind those eyes.
“We were leashed,” he said. “Now maybe we have a chance.” He crossed to the nearest pod without further ceremony, positioned himself at its edge, grunted and lay down.
Elara followed, pausing only to pass her satchel to Thalyn with a brief half smile
Korr lingered. He was muttering something under his breath, a low rapid stream of objections and counter-objections argued privately, his fingers working on different signatures in his pocket.
“Korr.”
“I know, I know.” He didn't move. His eyes went back to the sleeping Thalyn in the pod. “It's just — the ethical implications of unsupervised consciousness transfer in a facility of unknown origin, operated by entities of unknown allegiance, performing neurological procedures on…”
“Korr,” Thalyn said again.
He shut his eyes and walked to the pod with the expression of a man sleepwalking.
“If I come out wrong,” he said opening his eyes, “someone document it. The experience deserves it.”
He lay down. The pod sealed.
Thalyn stood beside the droid, arms folded.
The glyphs began to flow, slow at first, then quickening up the walls in cascading currents, light chasing light. The hum that rose from the pods was low and resonant, felt in the guts more than heard. Charts bloomed across the panels in slow spin, collapsed, bloomed again. The light shifted from blue to gold to something that had no name in her experience, and then the hum crested and fell away.
Silence returned like the tide.
The pods opened with gentle sighs.
Jaxon emerged first. He sat at the pod's edge, blinking at the distance. “Felt... odd.” He rotated his arms once, checking. “No pain.”
Korr shot upright, hair spread in every direction, and immediately looked at his hands as if expecting to find someone else's. Apparently satisfied, he looked at Thalyn. Then at the pod that still held her other self. He pressed his lips together and said nothing, which for Korr was a kind of eloquence.
Elara got out of the pod and took her satchel back from Thalyn with a nod. She moved to Jaxon, drew her scanner and passed the beam slowly along his spine. Amber light pulsed once, shifted, settled green.
“No remnants,” she said. “No traces of injected device.” She moved to Korr, who submitted with unusual patience. The scanner read the same. She straightened. “It's done.”
Thalyn turned to the droid. “Thank you.” The droid inclined its head.
They walked back to command center under a drifting silence.
“We could bolt now,” Jaxon said at last. “Slip into Revantis. Sell what we’ve got. Trade fire for freedom.”
“Elara?” Thalyn asked.
“There’s a Kaelen village nearby. Cindraal. Safer path, if slower. We trust your folk.”
Korr grumbled. “Better we stay. Mine more thalorite. Study the relics. We still have time.”
They turned to Thalyn.
“The throne’s done. The sequence finished. I’ve unlocked something, don’t know what yet. But this place listens to me now. I want to know why.”
Arvie slipped in like smoke through a crack in the wall. “A mystery facility full of obedient ancient machines, Elder-grade technology, and a throne that chose you specifically.” A delighted pause. “Wherever shall we begin.”
Thalyn's brow twitched.
The crew's voices continued, plans folding into counter-plans, until the talk began to thin at the edges.
She fell quiet, then asked Arvie: “Why did I see another memory in the pod?”
“Oh that,” Arvie replied, casual as ever. “New body defaults to a cleaner diary config. It’s set to drip-feed you parts of my master’s life, whenever you conk out. I can change that, or stream reruns whenever you’re bored.”
Thalyn rolled her shoulders. The strength in them startled her again.
“Don’t change anything yet. Let’s see what’s next.” She sat down beside a cracked stone column. “Fire it up.”
The world dimmed. Lines dissolved. Noise softened, as Vex’s face took shape, half in shadow, eyes sharp, watching her from across a gulf of time.403Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡE8ql9gQ4oQ
and then Add to home screen.