It was easier to lie in bed than stumble around the ship like a cripple. Which, if you want to be technical about it, I was. They had me on pain-blockers, but not feeling the pain didn’t change the fact that the fingers on my right hand wouldn’t move. My left arm still moved, but not the way I wanted it to. Lirian’s blind stabbing had caused muscular damage to my bicep and shoulder and everything was horrifically inflamed. And let’s not forget, of course, that if I wanted to go anywhere I had to hop on the leg that Lirian hadn’t gotten to. It wasn’t even my favorite leg.

Yeah, I could think her name again. Watch: Stupid Lirian. Lirian’s face is dumb. I hate Lirian. Lirian isn’t even good at her job. Lirian thinks she’s soooo much better than me just because her cloaking technology is memetic and not just etheric signal obfuscation. Well, you know what? Divine blessings are just cheating. When you rely on divine substrate to perform miracles it’s just wastefully overcomplex because gods don’t need to care about efficiency. So really my cloak was better, because it actually made good use of the power my soul generated.

I wouldn’t need to suffer much longer, though, because Val had finally completed repairing the translation engines. No more lounging around in the med bay for me! Just as soon as Val finished replacing his leg. He claimed it was because he wanted to test the system on something less critical before addressing my concussion, but like you can get blood clots from your legs, so he was definitely making that up. He was totally just doing this because he wanted his leg back first. When I said that, though, he retorted that I’d need to flash to a backup body if the procedure scrambled my brain, so I didn’t call his bluff. I was totally getting him back for this.

I watched from the neighboring bed as he extended the focusing relay from the wall and positioned it near the stump of his leg, now bare of the prosthetic he’d been wearing. The relay itself was a perfectly circular band of plastic, with multiple embedded channels to run both electric and etheric energy. Val typed a few final commands into his console and nodded.

“Commander, I’m set. Have you prepped the pig?”

You can build a leg from scratch with just the translation engines, but the energy costs are ruinously expensive. It’s stupid to do that when you can just get the requisite etheric energy by translating something conceptually similar to your target.

In this case, an iron bracer, a set of dentures, and a freshly butchered pig.

“One moment,” grunted Markus. “Wow, that got messy.”

“Have you never slaughtered an animal before?” asked Val.

“Not with a knife,” said Markus. “There was that war elephant on Juricha.”

“Boooo!” said the commander. I started laughing—this was a familiar argument.

“For shame, Markus,” said Val. “That was Abby’s kill and you know it.”

“I had him right in my sights!” Markus protested. “The bullet hit him right before she got him with the plasma cannon!”

“That thing was way too big to die to a single bullet, disruptor or not,” said Abby. “I’ll give you credit for this pig, though.”

“All hail Markus Swineslayer!” I said.

“Vanquisher of bacon!” Val added.

“It’s not funny, guys,” said Markus, actually sounding a little hurt. The other two just laughed at him.

“Maybe we should back off,” I said to Val. He considered me.

“Ah,” he said after a moment. “You missed a cue. The slight upward inflection on ‘guys’ acknowledged the blow.”

“So he was joking?” I said.

“It’s more like a sparring match,” Markus explained. “I tried for a minor social victory, but they caught me out of position. So I demonstrated that they got me to reset the field.”

“It’s the fact that he’s done this more than once that makes it a joke,” said Abby.

“Sabotaging your team is treason,” Markus replied.

“Neglecting your training is dereliction,” she countered.

“You’re both sabotaging my leg and Lilith’s everything,” said Val. “Is the pig prepped?”

“Yeah!” I grinned. “What he said!”

“Why yes, your majesty, it’s been prepped this whole time,” said Abby with an audible smirk. “Did you need it for something?”

“I’m owed some impatience, I think,” said Val, looking annoyed. “You should have said something. Starting—now.”

There was a faint hum, so low it was almost more tactile than audible, and the stump of Val’s leg disintegrated before my eyes. He watched it dispassionately. There would be no pain—any experiences along that frequency would get filtered to abstract knowledge by the surgical equipment. Blood sprayed over the bed, dissolving as fast as it spurted—the engines were retranslating it back inside his spleen—then eventually stopping as his blood vessels knitted themselves closed.

The bone materialized first. But we were Eifni. We could do more. The Ragnar turned the bracer into protection and strength. What Theria had reified in wrought iron, we instantiated as carbon fiber lacing designed to maximize the bone’s remaining calcium storage. There was still an effect on the body's calcium retrieval capabilities, I knew, but Eifni’s anatomists had compensated for that by inserting microfactories along the length of the shin and tibia. We used part of the denture energy to pay for that bit—they were modifications of the body.

Dual sterility fields, one encompassing the room and the other focusing on the bed, eliminated the risk of infection from any microbes that might try their luck piggybacking on the exposed surface of his new skeleton.

The reconstruction paused, and for a moment I took in the sight of Val just hanging out on the bed with one leg missing everything but weird, black-veined techno-bone. It looked like some weird kind of necromancy, the way the bed kept them all floating there. They gleamed with moisture trapped by the stasis field keeping them alive.

“Phase one is done,” he said. “Precision is within tolerances.”

The rest of us treated that with cheers. Val allowed himself a smug smile.

“Phase two,” he said.

His previously stopped-up circulatory system grew out of his leg stump like some kind of weird vine that grows on air. Except the vines also branched into fuzzy red clouds that more or less outlined the shape of his leg. Look, I was concussed, I didn’t have a better metaphor on hand, okay? It wasn’t just the blood vessels either, I also got to see his lymph nodes weirdly floating in the air. Presumably his nerves, too, but from across the room I couldn’t make them out.

Phase three involved the slow weaving of muscle fibers and tendons around the vasculature that had been, so far, floating around the bone. The spaces between the bones filled in with spongy-looking connective tissue and tendons. The bones themselves were wrapped in dark pink muscle tissue.

This was where the rest of the dentures came in. Interwoven in the fibers were occasional strings that looked like black threads—micropylons, the components of a system that would allow him to redirect muscle control from his nervous system to his comm. I’d heard of godslayers walking off broken spines with those.

Then a thin layer of fat sealed up the meat of his leg, capped off with skin. I’d expected the skin to come out nerd-pale, but it was just as tanned as the rest of his skin.

“Nervous system functionality is passing safety checks,” said Val. “This was the temperamental section. I’m happy to consider this the final test of the engines’ functionality.”

“Yes!” I cheered. “I get my brain back!”

“Was it gone?” Val asked. “I didn’t notice.”

“Shut up, bone boy.”

“Bone boy,” he repeated, deadpan.

“Shut up.”

The operation was nearly finished. It concluded with a final sweep by the system, targeting anything sympathetically tagged with “potential death” and translating it out of Val’s body. Any blood clots, cancers, etc. vanished in an instant.

“Done,” said Val. “I’m releasing sensation blockers.”

“Wait, wait, I want to see the look on your face when you do,” said Markus. Val pursed his lips and swiped a control on his console. He immediately grimaced, hunching forward with a grunt.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Every sensation,” he said through gritted teeth. “At once.”

“Aw shit,” I said. “Markus is gonna be here when it’s my turn.”

“Did you start already?” said Markus, not sounding particularly disappointed.

“Swineslayer,” Val grunted.

“Wow, that’s the best you could do?” asked Abby.

“Yeah, that was one of mine,” I gloated. The look he shot me promised vengeance. Don’t taunt your doctor right before surgery, I guess. I blame the concussion.

“I’m going to prep Lilith for her operation,” said Val.

“Wait, what? No one told me about this,” I said.

“It’s a brain operation,” said Val. “We’ll have to put you in stasis.”

“I’m like ninety percent sure you’re—”

Val swiped something on his console and

*

now I was on my back, staring at the ceiling.

“—making that up,” I said.

“What’s she talking about?” asked Markus, who was now standing in the corner of the room. He’d changed his shirt.

“He turned me off!” I said, but I was grinning too much for the complaint to have any bite. I was fixed!

“Lilith!” snapped Abby. “It’s not important right now. We found something in your system.”

“You were given a diuretic,” said Val, looking serious.

“What’s that do?” I asked.

“It induces your kidneys to release water,” said Abby. “Basically, you left the contest to piss because you were drugged.”

“I wish it’d been a fun drug,” I said. “Alceoi?”

“You’re suspicious of her because she’s salient,” said Val. “There were also three attendants and two cooks who had access to that food. Not to mention that Lirian could have been in that booth herself and you’d never have known.”

“I hate it when other people have cloaks,” I said. “Nerf, please.”

They all paused a bit at that.

“Don’t use that word while you’re undercover,” said Abby. “Velean doesn’t have an equivalent term, so we just got hit with competitive play adjustment brushed with irony.”

“Sure. Hey, my brain works now!” I said, wiggling my fingers and rolling out of the bed. “And my limbs! Thanks Val!”

“Ah, yes, you should expect a sense of euphoria as—” he started, then was cut off as I glomped him.

“I love you too,” I told him happily.

“What about me?” Markus asked.

“You too!” I said. “C’mere, you big cheater!”

“You surpassed expectations on that one,” Abby told him as he crushed me in a bear hug. “Again, excellent job.

“The outcome was never in doubt,” said Markus, releasing me. “I’m just too manly.”

Abby got a hug too. It was only fair.

“So what’s the plan?” I asked her.

“You’ve got a trauma debrief with Markus,” said Abby. “We’ll debrief the op afterward. Then we need to plan your re-insertion with the Vitareas family.”

“They’re not expecting us yet,” said Markus. “I met with them briefly and organized a search for you. Right now their concern is that the Cult of Silence vanished you.”

I smiled. That hypothesis almost certainly came from Roel. Markus matched my smile and nodded at me, as if to say I was correct.

“Why don’t you grab a board game?” said Markus. “Something simple for us to do while we chat. I’ll meet you in the study.”

*

“So the commander tells me you almost died today. Tell me about it.”

I like to think I’m good at chess. I used to think I was bad at it, because there’s just too many pieces and it’s hard to figure out what needs to move where. Then I discovered that you can just keep forcing your opponent to take trades. Either you both lose a piece and the game’s easier to think about, or they run away and you get an advantage.

Markus almost let me set up the thing where you fork the opponent’s queen and rook with your knight, but he got his own knight into position to deny it right before I pulled the trigger. Suddenly my side of the board looked like a house of cards and I’d have to actually think about how to get out of it. I sighed and actually answered the question.

“I was worried about the dumb bathroom thing, so I didn’t notice she was about to jump me,” I said. “I fucking hate that people just piss on the side of the street here.”

“You’ve said before that the nudity taboo is stronger back home,” said Markus. “We can work on that if you’d like.”

“Ew, I’m not a pervert,” I said.

“You know that’s not how I mean it,” he said with a smile. “Your move, by the way.”

Eh, fuck it, threaten the knight to keep the house of cards going.

“Isn’t there some kind of, like, etheric surgery we can do to get rid of it?” I asked. “Actually wait, culture’s in the brain, right? If I switch bodies, does it just go away?”

“Culture is complicated. Sometimes it’s better to handle things the natural way,” he said. “And even if flashing was a viable solution, you’d have to be okay with it before it was a live option for you. Which brings us back to your near-death experience.”

“It was totally unfair,” I said. “I still did really good. Didn’t say anything even though it hurt.”

“You did a good job of showing why that style of torture doesn’t work,” said Markus. “Lirian made you look really cool for resisting it.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And I still got her before she killed me. So that was cool too. It’s still your move, right?”

“I think so.” He took a pawn. “Did you consider flashing?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Thought I could win.”

“There’s a tradeoff here,” said Markus. “If you flash too early, you might lose out on a winnable situation. If you flash too late, the pain can result in changes to your soul that carry over to your next body.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Trauma is one,” said Markus. “Grief is another. Most grief isn’t avoidable by flashing, but it’s been demonstrated that a sufficient threshold of violence can cause existential damage as well as physical. The affected usually describe it as losing some kind of fundamental belief in the safety of the world.”

—

My parents only watched and prayed to their god. I shouldn’t have gone, but it was this or homelessness.

“In the name of Jesus, I cast out these demons of depression!” cried Pastor Barnes, placing both hands on my skull.

Nothing happened.

“Feel the Spirit in your heart, Morgan!” he yelled at me.

But I didn’t. Instead, something tore inside me. I screamed at the deepest pain I’d ever felt.

Gunfire. Pastor Barnes’ head snapped forward, splattering me with blood. My mom was screaming now too.

“Target hit!” yelled a man, stepping out of nowhere. “Get the civilians out!”

The world blurred, people shouting, more gunfire, Pastor Barnes’s body riddled with holes. My parents dropped to the ground.

The pastor growled.

“We can’t!” shouted the first man. “Godfire! The girl’s still alive!”

There was an otherworldly screech as the pastor’s body lifted off the ground. I heard the office splintering. A woman screamed and dropped wetly to the floor. There was a sound like a massive gong and Pastor Barnes was flung across the room. I was in someone’s arms.

“Are you okay?” he asked me.

I realized with horror that I had forgotten how to speak.

—

“Oh, is that all?” I said to Markus. “No worries, man. That train left the station a long time ago.”