January, 1096?

I'm writing this down months after it happened, and I already can't be certain it was January. I'm going to write it as though it's happening, because that's the only way it stays.

The rain drums against the glass of my apartment and reduces the Sydney skyline to a smudge of charcoal. It's the kind of downpour that traps you inside a box of white walls and comforts you chose for yourself.

I sit on the edge of the bed with the iPad Pro heavy in my hands. Gemini blinks a cursor at an unformed prompt. YouTube thumbnails I've already scrolled past. Discord's red dots. Then the Arknights icon, dailies pending — chores I could clear with my eyes shut.

It's all so predictable.

I toss the tablet onto the nightstand. The thud against the wood is the loudest thing in the room besides the rain. I'm living in a loop and I know it; whatever was exciting about this life wore flat a while ago. Falling back onto the mattress, I stare up at the ceiling. There's a ridge in the plaster I've memorized, and I trace it with my eyes while the storm outside keeps time with the hum of the refrigerator.

The afternoon's boredom pulls my eyelids down. The grey light dims and the ceiling loses its edges. The tapping on the windowpane slows into something deeper, a pulse I can feel in my chest. The apartment, the rain, the unfinished dailies — all of it dissolves into a quiet dark.

I close my eyes. For a moment everything is still.

Then my eyes snap open. The white ceiling is gone. The world is bruised orange, the color of a rotting sunset seen through dust.

The air tastes of scorched wood and something metallic that scratches the back of my throat. I'm sitting on a floor gritty with pulverized plaster. The roof above me has buckled open onto a sickly sky, and the timber beams hang by splinters.

My hands reach for the cold glass of the iPad Pro I put down seconds ago. My fingers scrape plaster and broken tile instead. And where the thud of the tablet should be there's a roar, overlapping and directionless. It isn't the Sydney rain. It isn't coming from the street at all. It's inside my head.

A thousand whispers and screams and half-thoughts claw at the inside of my skull. The pressure builds behind my eyes until my vision shakes with it.

"Stop…" I gasp. The word is barely a breath.

The sound of my own voice frightens me more than the ruins do. It's thin and high and light, like a small bell struck in a vacuum. It sounds young. It sounds innocent. It doesn't belong to the life I know.

I scramble to cover my ears, breath hitching in short gasps that make my chest ache. As my hands lift into the orange light, I stop. They're tiny. The skin is porcelain white, the fingers delicate, stripped of my old calluses. I press my palms hard against the sides of my head to muffle the screaming, and my fingers graze something impossible. Instead of the curve of human ears, I find something long and tapering. My fingertips trace smooth skin narrowing to a sharp point that reaches past my hairline. They twitch under my touch, sensitive and real.

"What…" The storm in my head swallows the word.

Pressing my hands against these pointed ears is useless; the voices don't care about physical barriers. I drop my hands into my lap. I need to anchor myself to something I can touch, or I'll lose my mind before I work out where "here" is.

"I have to speak," I say out loud, using that melodic voice to cut through the static.

A curtain of hair falls over my shoulders, far heavier than I remember. I tangle my small fingers in it. Shimmering grey, like woodsmoke, pooling around my hips on the debris-strewn floor. As I shift to look at the grime-stained fabric of my dress, a tug at my scalp catches me off guard — a rooted weight, solid. I reach up. My fingers meet something cold. Hard. Smooth.

"…Horns?"

I trace them with shaking hands. They sprout from my crown, thick at the base, sweeping outward before straightening into points, and the space they enclose above my head is shaped like a heart. They feel like polished nails, each with a recessed ridge that glows a faint misty blue. The left one is longer. It gives my head a tilt my neck hasn't learned to support.

A pinching spark of pain shoots up my tailbone. I lurch forward, scrambling away from the masonry, and something behind me twitches — a blur of motion at the edge of my vision.

I go still and twist slowly around.

Coiled on the dusty floor like a sleeping snake is a tail. Slender, smooth, the same misty blue, its spade-shaped tip flicking against the grit.

I didn't just wake up in a different room. I woke up as a different species.

This isn't a dream. Dreams don't have this grit, or this smell of ozone and rotting drywall. Earth is gone. Even if the wreckage around me looks like a modern building — twisted rebar, shattered concrete — the me that lived in that apartment is extinct.

"Where am I? And why won't the voices stop…"

I squeeze my eyes shut and try to filter the noise. It isn't a choir. It's a landslide. I can't pick out individual words, but the intent comes through anyway: suffering, a jagged edge of vengeance, and a grief that feels centuries old. It pulses in time with the throb in my skull.

My stomach twists and my throat feels like I've been swallowing sand. The horror of being a literal devil is being shoved aside by the very human, very urgent need for water.

I need to move.

I plant my hands on the debris and push, expecting my usual height and center of gravity. Instead my perspective stops short, and the world goes dizzyingly large. My brain sends the signal to step forward, but the weight of the horns drags my neck to the left.

Worse is the pendulum swinging behind me. The tail lashes out to catch my balance, unsynchronized with thirty years of muscle memory. It's like operating a machine with the wrong manual. It swings out for balance and hooks a piece of fallen timber instead.

A cry escapes me as I lose my footing. My knees slam into the grit, my palms scrape the broken tiles, and I go down hard.

I stay there face-down in the dust, waiting for the bone-deep ache that should follow a fall like that.

The sting comes. I look at my palms and find thin cuts where the debris bit in, a few beads of dark fluid welling up. But that's all. No bruising, no throb in the joints. That impact should have left me limping. My body feels sturdy instead. Denser.

I push myself up to sitting and stare at the scratches as the sting fades. My skin looks like porcelain and it's holding together against things that should have opened it.

"I really am a devil, then…" The proof isn't the horns. It's this — a body built to survive an orange, screaming nightmare. I'm not Iori anymore.

It takes a while, but I find a rhythm: a swaying gait that accounts for the weight on my head, the tail flicking out every few steps to catch me, the spade tip scraping the grit like a metal finger. I make it to the edge of the collapsed wall and look out.

The view is a punch to the gut.

It isn't ruins. It's the graveyard of a world. The wasteland runs to the horizon, rust-colored dust and shattered stone. If someone told me I'd died and woken in a circle of hell, I'd have no argument.

Poking out of the earth like the teeth of something buried are clusters of black crystal. They don't just sit there. They seem to grow, pulsing with a muted yellow light that bleeds into the haze. They're beautiful in a way that makes my skin crawl.

Then my view shifts higher.

Silhouettes cut through the smog in the far distance. Not clouds — airships, hulls dark and utilitarian, drifting with a slow mechanical grace. Below them, the jagged teeth of a skyline. Not the glass and steel of Sydney but black spires and tiered structures built to weather a hurricane.

It's a city, and it looks mobile. The skyline itself sits dozens of meters above the ground, heavy treads lining the bottom.

It looks sickeningly familiar. Why does it look so familiar? I look back at those black crystals and the way they hum with that amber light.

A shiver goes down my spine. The word comes up from memory, a term I've tapped on a screen a thousand times. I know those rocks.

"Or… Originium?"

My breath catches. It all makes a horrible kind of sense now. The voices, the suffering, the echoes of vengeance — they aren't madness. They're the scream of a race. I'm not just a devil girl. I'm a Sarkaz.

This isn't a game. I'm not playing Arknights anymore. I'm standing in Terra, and I am the thing the rest of this world fears most.

"Is this some kind of sick joke?" The words tremble in that unfamiliar voice.

I think about the apartment, the rain, the dull safety of the Lower North Shore. I wanted excitement. I wanted the routine to break. Some cosmic trickster must have been listening, and laughing, as they plucked me out of my bed and dropped me into the worst corner of the worst world I know. Oh, you're bored? Fine. Have some horns. Have a tail. Have a bloodline the entire planet wants dead. Good luck surviving the next hour.

The irony tastes like metal.

I take another step, and round a half-standing wall hoping for a road, or a sign of life that isn't a mobile city kilometers away.

Instead my breath catches and stays caught.

The smell hits me first — thick and sweet, old copper and rotting flowers, and my stomach turns over. Spread across the grey grit and the shards of concrete are shapes. Not debris.

They're bodies.

Some lie face-down, their clothes soaked in a drying crimson that looks black under this sky. Others are slumped against the ruins with their eyes open on nothing. I can see the horns, the limp curve of the tails. These were Sarkaz.

They aren't only dead. They're becoming part of the landscape, their remains already being taken back by the black crystals growing out of the ground around them.

There's a hand a few paces from me. Small, pale, dust-covered. It looks so much like mine.

The boredom of my old life feels like a beautiful dream I'll never get back.

I sit down hard on the ash-stained ground as my legs give out. My chest heaves with a sob that feels far too big for this small frame, and the sound of it is nothing I recognize — sharp, high, tearing out of a throat lined with sandpaper.

I cry until my eyes sting and my head throbs in time with the voices. I cry until the salt cuts tracks through the dust on my cheeks and my body is wrung out. The orange sky blurs while I bury my face in my hands and my hair spills over my shoulders like a shroud.

"Did you hear that?"

The voice is muffled, filtered through something mechanical, and startlingly close. I freeze mid-breath. Between the voices and my own crying I never heard them coming.

"Survivor?" another asks. Softer, and not quite believing it.

I look up through the haze and the mess of my hair. Three figures come out from behind a tilted shelf of concrete, and they look like something out of a tactical fever dream — dark uniforms, heavy boots, faces hidden behind the insect lenses of gas masks.

Then I see the patch on their shoulders. A rook.

Rhodes Island.

The words land separate from the screaming, and hope in a place like this is almost painful.

The one in front is a Lupo; I can see the flick of his grey ears above the mask. He holds a sword low and easy, scanning the ruins behind me before he settles on my small shaking form. To his left a Feline adjusts the strap of a compact crossbow, tail twitching. Behind them stands a Liberi, pale feathers showing near her temples. She isn't holding a weapon but a short etched wand, and there's a pouch with a white cross on her hip.

"A child," the Lupo says, his voice echoing behind the mask. He doesn't lower the sword, but his shoulders come down a fraction. "She survived the Catastrophe."

Catastrophe.

The word hits like something physical. I look back at the black crystals erupting out of the ruins, the hell I thought I was standing in. It wasn't a war. It wasn't a collapse. It was the earth itself.

The Medic steps past the two Field Ops and kneels a few paces away, slow and deliberate. She reaches for a canteen at her belt, and the slosh of water in it is the most beautiful sound I have ever heard.

"It's alright," she says, gentle even through the respirator. "We're here to help. Let's bring her back to the landship."

I stare at her. The landship. Rhodes Island.

As she comes closer, whatever adrenaline was holding me together lets go. The ruins dissolve into a flickering haze and my vision narrows down to the metal sheen of the canteen. She presses it to my lips, and the cold shock of the water hits before my body gives out. I fall forward into the sudden warmth of her arms. Somewhere a clack rings out.

For a moment the screaming dims, drowned under the rhythm of a heartbeat that isn't mine.

Then I'm drifting.

I'm lying on something soft, which is not the grit and rebar of the wasteland. The air smells of ozone, antiseptic, and something faintly herbal. Beneath the mattress there's a low constant vibration, a mechanical pulse that carries through my bones.

The landship. We're moving.

Even with my eyes closed the world isn't silent. The voices have settled into a buzzing static, but something new has taken their place, and the only way I can describe it is taste. I can taste the air in this room, and it's thick with things that don't agree with each other.

To my left, a warmth like a sun-drenched field, protective and buzzing with worry. That must be her. The Medic.

"She's lucky we were nearby," someone says, low. The Liberi. Her voice is hushed, and the relief in it settles my stomach.

Then a second presence cuts through the warmth. This one is cold and immovable, radiating a detachment that raises the hair on my arms. It doesn't taste like honey. It tastes like iron and old paper.

"Her presence is a security risk, Erika."

The voice is calm, measured, and carries the weight of centuries. I know that voice. I have heard it through my iPad speakers a thousand times, delivering long lectures on biology and international pragmatism.

Kal'tsit. The Old Well herself.

"Dr. Kal'tsit! She's just a child," Erika says, and her indignation spikes sharp enough to taste.

"She is a Sarkaz. A Djall, an ancient bloodline documented for empathic manipulation." Kal'tsit's words click into place like chess pieces. "We cannot currently ascertain whether the distress she is radiating is genuine trauma or a biological defense mechanism designed to lower your guard."

Emotional manipulation. I try to force my eyes open. I want to look her in those green eyes and tell her exactly how manipulative I feel, covered in Catastrophe dust. I try to draw breath to say it, and my body refuses. The horns are lead anchors, and the exhaustion of everything that's happened drags me back under.

The argument fades into a blur. The iron-and-paper taste of her is the last thing I know before the dark takes me again.

The air is sterile, scrubbed by industrial filters, and thick with the taste of the people in the room. I come back slowly.

Erika is a steady sun-warmed presence near the foot of the bed. But there's a new one, sharp and metallic and dancing with something predatory that makes the back of my neck prickle. Cold copper and expensive wine.

I force my eyes open. The ceiling is a grid of recessed LED panels, painfully bright. The sound I make trying to sit up comes out as a small chirp.

The weight of my horns is a jarring reminder of where I am. As I push upright my head tilts to the left, the longer horn pulling at my neck. My tail slithers out from under the medical sheets and taps the bed frame with a soft clink.

"Oh, look who decided to rejoin the living," a voice drawls, light and teasing with a clinical edge underneath. "You were starting to make me wonder if we'd rescued a vegetable."

I blink until my vision clears on a woman with skin like parchment and eyes the color of arterial blood. Her white hair is pulled back. Her lab coat is a size too large for her.

Warfarin. The pure-blood Sarkaz Medic I relied on in more operations than I can count.

She's leaning against a diagnostic console with her arms crossed, watching me with an expression somewhere between a scientist evaluating a specimen and a bored socialite.

"Can you speak?" she asks, tilting her head.

"Yes," I croak. My throat feels lined with sandpaper and the word comes out frail, without the depth of the adult voice I spent decades using.

Erika moves closer, the feathers at her temples fluttering as she smiles. After Warfarin she's a relief. "Do you have a name?" she asks, leaning in.

Iori. The name is right there on the tip of my tongue. I want to say it. Then Kal'tsit's voice comes back to me.

Security risk. Pure-blood Djall. Emotional manipulation.

If I give them my name the questions never stop. A Sarkaz child with a name out of Higashi, found in the middle of a Catastrophe zone in the heart of Kazdel? That's a red flag the size of a landship.

I shake my head slowly.

"No," I whisper. "I… I don't have one."

"Shocker." Warfarin taps a sharp pattern onto the glass console, eyes on the scrolling data. "A nameless stray from the Kazdel outskirts. Pick one or don't, little Djall, it makes no difference to me. I'm far more interested in your bloodwork. Try not to faint before the centrifuge finishes your infection rate."

Infection rate. Ice goes down my spine. I think about the black crystals coming out of the ground like a glowing cancer, and I look at my arms half expecting to find them already pushing through the skin.

"Do you want to pick a name?" Erika asks, bringing me back.

"A name?" I repeat, putting enough hesitation in it to sell the lie.

"A name," she says. "I'm Erika. That's what people call me. It's how we know who you are."

I look at the floor and let my hair fall forward to hide my face. The voices in my head are a muddy swirl of grief and anger, and none of it is mine.

"I don't remember anything," I lie, and it tastes like ash. "Is there a name for that? For someone who just… forgets?"

Warfarin finally turns from her console. She looks at me with an expression I can't read, her face framed in the clinical white light.

"Lethe," she says. Short, sharp, and carrying something I can't place. "The river of forgetfulness in Minos. If you've truly washed your past away, it's as good a label as any for a nameless specimen."

Erika shoots her a flash of annoyance, then turns back to me with her eyes softening. "Lethe. It's a beautiful name. Do you like it?"

I test the word. Lethe. It feels cold. It's a name that admits the void where my old life used to be.

"Lethe." I test it out loud. "Yes. I'm Lethe."

Warfarin looks at the data slate in her hands, the blue light reflecting in her eyes. She taps a line of scrolling figures and her boredom sharpens into something satisfied.

"Well, Lethe. Let's dispense with the pleasantries. Your Cell-Originium Assimilation is sitting at 6%. Blood Originium-Crystal Density is 0.14 u/L. You have Oripathy."

The word hangs there.

"Oripathy?" I ask, because I'm supposed to. I know what it means. It's a death sentence.

Erika steps closer and rests a hand on my shoulder, and her feathers twitch in a quick protective rhythm.

"The Originium crystal…" she begins, working to keep her voice steady. "The black crystals are in your blood, and some part of you is… turning into crystal."

She says it slowly, the way you'd explain a broken toy to a toddler.

Warfarin has no such filter, and scoffs.

"Worry not, little Lethe. You're a Djall. Consider your assimilation rate. You'll have a few centuries to live; you're far more likely to die of something else entirely."

Centuries. The word is louder in this room than the machinery. I think about Warfarin, who has walked Terra for over two hundred years watching empires rise and fall while her blood stayed cold and her face stayed young.

The air snaps with a spike of frustration — Erika's patience fraying at the edges of Warfarin's coldness.

"Dr. Warfarin, you're just confusing her!" She steps between me and the doctor, then looks down at me, earnest. "No, Lethe. You aren't going to die. We're a hospital. We heal people."

"Charming," Warfarin drawls. "Erika, get her basic biometrics. Height, weight, horn length. Standard intake profile. Do try not to break her; she looks like she might shatter if you breathe on her too hard."

Erika gives her a sharp look and turns back to me, and her voice comes back to its soft cadence. "Come on, Lethe. Let's get this over with. It won't hurt at all, I promise."

She reaches out with hands that are very gentle, supports my shoulders, and helps me slide off the mattress.

My bare feet hit the brushed steel floor and the cold shoots straight up my legs.

Erika walks me to the measuring station in slow, deliberate steps, treating me exactly like the traumatized child I'm pretending to be. She straightens my posture against the scale and adjusts the scanner so it doesn't clip the points of my crown.

"Just stand still for a moment," she says, watching the readout.

She reads the numbers out as they come. 143cm in height. 36kg in weight. Left horn 14cm, right one 12cm. Tail 1.2m.

Erika says the weight twice — once off the display, once under her breath — and writes it down without comment. A meter of muscled tail and two horns of something denser than bone are in that total somewhere. She doesn't do the subtraction out loud.

"Now." Warfarin picks up a large, pristine syringe. "I need one more vial of blood. Sit back on the cot, roll up your sleeve, and try not to squirm."

I look at the gleaming tip of the needle and panic takes me completely. My back hits the wall behind the cot. I pull my knees up and try to make myself small.

"No, please, no…" My voice breaks. I'm hyperventilating and the cold air burns my throat.

Warfarin doesn't soften. She tilts her head, watching me with amusement, then steps close enough that her shadow falls over me. She leans in, her face centimeters from mine, and her lips curl back off the points of her canines.

"Unless you prefer my fangs, little Djall."

It's said as a purr and it freezes the blood in my veins. The image of an ancient Vampire putting her teeth in my neck and draining me directly overrides the needle phobia with something older.

Erika wedges herself bodily between us. Her feathers come up and her voice loses every bit of its gentleness.

"Dr. Warfarin, that is completely uncalled for! She's already terrified. Threatening to bite your patients is a direct violation of medical protocol!"

Warfarin rolls her eyes and leans back with a theatrical sigh, though she doesn't lower the syringe. "Oh, calm down, Erika. It's called building character. I was giving our little Djall a choice."

Erika ignores her. She turns her back on the doctor, and the tartness in the air smooths out into something desperate and soothing as she looks down at me. I'm still flat against the wall, shaking, eyes blown wide with panic that isn't pretend at all.

She reaches into one of her pouches. What she pulls out isn't a medical instrument.

"Here, Lethe." She holds out a small crinkly wrapper and pitches her voice low. "It's a lollipop. Strawberry. Just focus on the sweet taste, okay? Don't look at her." She guides me back to the cot.

Artificial strawberry floods my tongue, a sugary anchor in the middle of a sterile room. With the stick firmly in my mouth I fix on Erika and refuse to look anywhere else.

Then comes the sting.

The pinch almost makes me jump, and I force myself still. Every instinct screams to jerk my arm back, but the reality of my situation won't let me. If Warfarin misses the vein she'll run out of patience, and a frustrated ancient Vampire with a needle is worse than an amused one. I bite down hard on the plastic stick and whine through my nose.

I can feel the pull as the vacuum tube engages and my dark, Originium-laced blood goes up the line.

"There. All done." Warfarin slides the needle out with a motion quick enough to make me wince and presses a cotton ball into the crook of my elbow. "Hold that. Don't bleed on the cot."

She turns away and holds the vial up to the light. The dark blood sloshes. Her eyes gleam with scientific hunger.

"Now. Let's see exactly what kind of monster you're hiding inside those cells, little Djall."

The centrifuges spin down to a halt and leave the room very quiet. The strawberry barely covers the metallic taste of fear underneath it.

"Interesting. Very interesting."

Twenty minutes of silence, and that's what she opens with.

My stomach drops. In a medical facility, interesting is never a compliment. Coming from an ancient blood-obsessed scientist it's the last thing I want to hear.

She turns from the monitors and fixes on me with an intensity that makes me want to sink into the floor.

"How very interesting, little anomaly. Just where did you crawl out of?"

I press back against the padded backrest and wrap my tail tighter around my waist like a shield. "From… from the ruins, no?… That's all I remember…" The plastic stick clicks against my teeth.

She waves that away, and whatever she's reading has made her certain about something.

"It doesn't matter where you're from. You aren't leaving now."

"What… what do… you mean?" My voice squeaks.

She paces toward me, tapping a fingernail against her slate.

"Your Arts assimilation rate is high. You're a pure-blood Sarkaz, so high is expected. But yours? With cell assimilation at only 6%? Your Arts assimilation rate is unnaturally high, little anomaly. So you'll stay here until we work out exactly what makes you tick."

I run the numbers in my head, but the amnesiac child has to ask. "Wh… what is an Arts assimilation rate…" I mumble, taking the lollipop out with shaking fingers.

Erika answers for her. "Arts assimilation means… how strong your Originium Arts are. How much control you could have over Originium. Could."

Warfarin is looking at me like the most beautifully dangerous puzzle anyone has ever handed her. The lollipop slips out of my fingers and clatters onto the floor.

"Okay… Dr. Warfarin…"

She turns back to the monitors. "We need a brain scan tomorrow to know more."

Tomorrow. A scan to map the exact shape of my madness.

They leave, Erika stopping at the door to ask me to finish my meal.

So I'm alone.

I look down at my arm. The skin is pale enough to be almost translucent, mapped with faint blue veins like a river system. A needle is taped to the back of my hand and a clear tube runs up to an IV bag dripping on a rhythm.

On the bedside table there's a glass of water and a silver-foiled pouch. The Rhodes Island rook is printed above the words Apple Flavor in a clean sans-serif. It's the kind of high-calorie nutrient paste you give a refugee, or a lab rat. A meal for a body that has forgotten how to be a body.

Across from me a large diagnostic monitor hangs on the wall, powered down, its surface dark polished glass. In this light it makes a very good mirror.

I look at the reflection and for a moment I don't breathe.

My eyes are enormous in a face that is all soft curves and porcelain. Misty blue. My hair is a waterfall of light grey over my shoulders, pooling on the white sheets.

It's the top of my head that holds me. The horns go straight up from the center of my skull, curve outward at the base to make that heart-shaped space, then taper to points sharp enough to look like they could go through the ceiling. I look like a doll someone left in the ruins. A fragile thing the world forgot to finish breaking.

My stomach growls, hollow, and reminds me I'm running on nothing. I tear the top off the pouch and squeeze.

I'm hungry. Properly, honestly hungry.

The paste is thick and cool, and at least it isn't sweet — none of the cloying artificial hit I braced for. It tastes like apple mush. Bland, grainy, utilitarian. I squeeze the pouch flat and get every last bit of it into my mouth.

I lean back and the cold water washes down the starch.

I don't know how much time passes. I never thought I could be this bored. There's nothing in this metal cell but the drip of the IV and the muffled thrum of the engines.

At least the ancestral screaming has quietened as the landship moves away from Kazdel. The overlapping choir of vengeance and suffering that nearly split my skull in the ruins has faded to a murmur, like dark ocean waves through a thick wall.

I don't know when I fall asleep, or how.

When I wake, the medical bay has shifted from the amber of the night cycle back to a crisp daylight simulation. I blink against it and push myself up the pillows, the base of the horns pulling my head left.

Warfarin and Kal'tsit are both here. Warfarin looks unnervingly serious, her eyes on her slate rather than on me. Beside her Kal'tsit is immaculate and unreadable, and very still. Behind them Erika hovers near the back wall looking stressed.

A halo-shaped scanner came down from a ceiling track earlier and hummed at a frequency I felt in my teeth while it mapped the inside of my skull. It retracts now into its housing and leaves a heavy silence behind it.

I sit frozen on the edge of the mattress.

"Dr. Warfarin, what does the result say?" Erika asks.

Warfarin taps the glass, and her brow furrows. Whatever usually buzzes around her has gone flat into pure academic bewilderment.

"It doesn't make sense."

Kal'tsit steps forward. Her eyes narrow by a fraction of a millimeter. "What do you mean, it does not make sense?"

"Her temporal lobe is showing Originium lesions." Warfarin points at a cross-section of my brain, a cluster of dark anomalies sitting deep in the tissue. "Which normally means her memories have been compromised or fabricated by the infection. But the lobe is also far too active compared to the rest of her brain."

She zooms in, her fingernail on a hyper-saturated heat map laid over the black crystals. "Everywhere else is healthy. Originium is doing something here we haven't seen before."

My heart hammers and the blood rushes in my ears.

Does that mean Originium is downloading Iori into my brain? Or is it driving hallucinations so vivid they feel like a human soul?

I look up at Kal'tsit. She's staring at the scan, motionless. Her expression hasn't shifted, but the weight of her fills the room.

Then she turns her head, and her green eyes lock onto Warfarin with an authority that drops the temperature.

"Warfarin. Disconnect the terminal. Wipe the scan files from PRTS."

"Are you out of your mind, Kal?"

Warfarin's voice shatters the quiet. She whips around. "Wipe it? This is an unprecedented localized mutation of Oripathy. This is once-in-a-generation data. We don't even know the upper bounds of her assimilation and you want it in the incinerator?"

Kal'tsit doesn't flinch.

"I said wipe the files. Disconnect the terminal. This data does not enter the main PRTS registry. Am I understood?"

"Kal, you cannot just—"

"Am I understood?" Her voice drops a fraction of an octave and stops being a blade. It becomes a weight. The argument freezes in Warfarin's throat.

Warfarin glares, gripping the slate hard enough that the casing creaks, and severs the terminal connection.

Erika is still at the back wall with her feathers pinned flat against her head. She watches the light die, and her eyes go from the blank air to Kal'tsit.

"Dr. Kal'tsit…" Her voice trembles. Kal'tsit shifts her gaze to her, and Erika pushes through it anyway, because a field Medic's logic is putting this together in real time.

"The temporal lobe… that's where memories are stored and processed." Her breath hitches. She looks at me sitting frozen on the mattress, and whatever she's feeling burns. "If the lesions are concentrated entirely there… that explains her amnesia."

She takes a hesitant step forward, hands clenched in the sides of her coat. "Dr. Kal'tsit… what will happen to her memories in the future? If the infection is there…"

Kal'tsit closes her eyes. The sigh that escapes her carries centuries in it.

"The placement of the crystals is not a coincidence." Her tone is flat, delivering it like a diagnosis, which it is. "The hyperactivity Warfarin observed is a byproduct of consumption."

Warfarin's head snaps up, her curiosity reignited.

"Consumption?"

Kal'tsit's eyes come to mine and stay there. "Your Arts assimilation rate is exceptionally high, Lethe. Originium requires fuel. The Originium in your temporal lobe is using your memories to power your Arts. That is why the lobe is hyperactive. It is burning them."

She does not pause to let me absorb it. "And for a Djall this is not an occasional expenditure. Your subspecies survives on emotional consumption. Every day you exist and feed on the people around you, you are using your Arts."

To survive in this body I have to eat emotions. To eat emotions I have to cast Originium Arts. And to cast Arts the crystals in my head burn my memories. Whatever composure I'd strung together comes apart.

The tears arrive before I can stop them. I woke up in the bruised orange aftermath of a Catastrophe surrounded by the remains of my own kind, and I survived that. But this — being told the cancer in my skull is eating my memories to keep my lungs working?

I curl into a ball with my face against my knees. My shoulders shake and a high, jagged sob tears out of me and I can't stop it.

Erika's hand lands on my back, and it's shaking. The room is thick with her.

"Dr. Kal'tsit," she says, tight and desperate. "If she's locked in this quarantine ward — if she never leaves this room — she'll never make any new memories. She'll have nothing to replace what the Originium takes. Her mind will consume everything she has left until she's hollow."

Kal'tsit does not flinch.

"Her containment is not cruelty, Erika. It is arithmetic. Unchecked, feeding on the crew without knowing she is doing it, her potential output makes her a danger to this population. I will not risk a psychic cascade."

Warfarin scoffs, exasperated, and rolls her eyes.

"Oh, please, Kal. You're acting like she's a walking Catastrophe waiting to detonate." She taps a fingernail against her dead slate. "We have technology for this. Have Closure fabricate a monitor collar. Calibrate it to suppress her Arts to a manageable baseline, lock it around her neck, and let the little anomaly stretch her legs."

"A monitor collar suppresses active and passive channeling both, Warfarin. If her innate abilities are suppressed she cannot passively absorb the emotions of the crew. As a Djall, she will starve."

Kal'tsit steps closer, and her shadow falls over the edge of the mattress.

"The only way she could feed while dampened would be to channel her suppressed Arts manually, through a designated Arts Unit. I will not authorize handing a lethal Arts Unit to an amnesiac Sarkaz anomaly with a hyperactive Oripathy."

The sobbing breaks down into wet, exhausted hiccups. I wipe my face with the back of my hand and smear the tears across my cheeks.

"When…" I swallow, and it scrapes. "When did you find me? What was the date?"

Erika glances at Kal'tsit before she answers, and her eyes are full of an aching sorrow. "It was the 2nd of January, 1096."

The 2nd of January.

I take a shaky breath. "Then… then I want that to be my birthday."

The decision settles in the quiet of the room. The life I knew, the boredom, the world before Terra — all of it is being incinerated right now to keep this body alive. If I keep mourning who I was, I'll starve to death in a sterile windowless box, and I'll never leave this cell.

I make myself look up and meet her eyes.

"I want to be useful," I say, and my voice cracks. I mean it to sound resolute, like an adult bargaining for her survival, and through this small frame it comes out as a high desperate whine — a terrified child begging not to be left in the dark. "Please. I don't want to be just a monster in a cage…"

Kal'tsit stares at me. Her expression stays a mask of calculation, but the pressure of her shifts by some degree I can't measure. She's weighing the utility of a Djall against the risk of my existence, and she's doing it while I half-sob in front of her.

"Rhodes Island does not offer sanctuary without parameters, Lethe. If you wish to step outside this ward and integrate into this landship, you will do so on my terms."

She folds her hands behind her back. "Dr. Warfarin's suggestion will be implemented. Closure will fabricate an Arts monitor collar. You will wear it at all times. To sustain you, you will be issued a restricted Arts Unit — a staff locked to the minimum output required for you to graze on ambient emotion without triggering a cascade."

She leans forward slightly, and the malice of Mon3tr seems to pulse somewhere behind her. "You will be under constant supervision. You will feed only in designated areas, under the watch of authorized personnel. If you draw beyond your baseline, if you manipulate the emotions of my Operators, if you breach protocol by a single millimeter — the threat will be neutralized before you take another breath. Is that understood?"

I look at her, and then at the stainless steel of my medical prison. It isn't freedom. It's a leash. But a leash means I get to walk.

"I accept."

They leave. Kal'tsit's weight goes out into the corridor and Warfarin follows it, and I'm alone with Erika.

She pulls a metal stool up to the bed and hands me a fresh pouch of the apple paste with a silent nod, making sure I actually eat it.

I take a slow sip and it's hard to swallow. The air in the ward has spoiled — burnt ash and sour citrus, pity and sorrow undiluted. She isn't looking at a rescued child anymore. She's looking at a doomed one, and her mind is clearly still circling the fact that my brain is eating its own history.

"You speak so well, Lethe," she says softly, her eyes tracing the tear tracks on my cheeks. "You understand complex concepts… you even negotiated with Dr. Kal'tsit. You must have had a wonderful education… before the Oripathy took your memories."

The bitterness of her grief spikes and burns going down.

My stomach twists. I can't stand this flavor. I want sweetness. I want comfort.

So I lift my head. I widen my eyes, blink away what's left of the tears, and stretch my mouth into a brave, wobbly smile. "I… I think I must have liked reading!" I chirp, putting bright resilient hope into it. "Maybe… maybe when I get my collar, I can read some books here? With you?"

Erika's feathers come up, and her sorrow breaks into something tender.

"We can read as many books as you want, Lethe," she promises, warmth back in her voice. She reaches out and brushes a tangled lock of grey hair out of my face, then looks me over, and her professional demeanor returns as she takes in the state of me. "But first — I think we should get you cleaned up. Your face is all tear-stained, your gown is filthy, and your hair is practically a bird's nest."

She stands and offers me her hand. "Let's get you to the shower. The warm water will help you feel a little more human."

The washroom is a few doors down the corridor, as stark as my ward, all brushed steel and white composite, but it has a door.

Erika taps a waterproof glass panel in the shower cubicle. A chime echoes off the tile and water starts to fall from the ceiling fixture.

"The touch controls are simple," she says, her voice bouncing in the small space. She points at a row of blue and red indicators. "This slider is temperature, this one is pressure. There's mild soap in the dispenser, unscented. Take your time. I'll wait outside."

She steps out with an encouraging smile and the door slides shut, and then it's just me and the sound of the water.

I peel off the tear-stained gown and let it fall, step into the cubicle and close the frosted partition. I shut my eyes and wait for the ordinary human relief of a hot shower — for the water to take off the Catastrophe dust, the smell of the medical bay, the last of the terror.

Instead, the moment it hits the top of my head I gasp and nearly go over on the wet tile.

My horns are not decorative bone. As the hot water runs over the ridges and the glowing blue veins, a spike goes straight into my skull. The change in temperature, the pressure of the droplets on those long lopsided structures — it's like putting an exposed nerve into a cup of tea.

I scramble back against the cold wall to get out of the stream. As I flinch my tail thrashes behind me and the spade tip cracks against the frosted glass with a ringing thwack. The cubicle would be perfectly adequate for a human. For me it's a glass box with a pendulum swinging off my tailbone and two antennas bolted to my skull.

I drag the temperature down to lukewarm and the pressure down to a mist, then sink to the floor and let the water run over my shoulders. I watch it swirl down the drain.

You must have had a wonderful education… before the Oripathy took your memories.

Erika's words come back over the hiss of the spray. If only she knew. I didn't have a Terran education. I had high school, university lectures, and evenings spent doomscrolling on an iPad Pro in a different world.

Then, as the water runs through my hair, something else arrives with the force of a blow.

The original owner of this body. The real Djall girl who lived and walked and maybe went to school in whatever settlement she came from. She didn't just die in the ruins. Her mind was systematically incinerated — her parents, her childhood, her education, her fears, her joys, all of it consumed. By the time my soul was pulled across the void, the vessel was already hollow.

I press my hands over my eyes and add to the water.

How long do I have? How long until I remember nothing except being Lethe, the amnesiac Djall that Rhodes Island rescued?

"Lethe?" Erika's voice comes muffled through the glass, and it brings me back. Her alarm slips through the cracks and settles into something heavy. "Are you alright in there? It's been almost half an hour."

I can't find my voice. I pull my knees tighter against my chest, and a moment later the partition slides open.

Erika doesn't hesitate and doesn't show a flicker of frustration at the shivering thing on the wet tiles. She reaches in and shuts off the water, and the silence is deafening. Then she unfolds a heated towel and wraps it around my shoulders.

"Oh, you're freezing," she says, her hands working with practiced efficiency.

She dries my hair carefully, navigating around the bases of the horns with a touch light enough not to set them off. Her relief at finding me safe fills the little room.

My stomach twists. The instinct in my chest surges forward, begging me to open my mouth and take a sip of it.

No. I clench my jaw until my teeth ache and picture an iron door slamming shut. I won't do it. I won't burn another piece of Iori to feed. I turn my face away and stare at the wall, cutting the tether, refusing to play the helpless victim to get more of her sympathy.

She dresses me in a dry gown, steady despite getting nothing back from me.

The walk from the washroom to my ward should be a short, mundane trip. On the way there I was too wrung out to notice anything. This time, when the doors hiss open into the main corridor, the whole volume of the landship hits me at once.

It isn't the noise of logistics Operators and boots on metal grates. Hundreds of overlapping emotions bleed through the reinforced walls — the acid bite of a passing Medic's stress, the grey weight of a Field Ops' exhaustion, the carbonated pop of friendly banter down the hall.

Every one of them claws at the back of my throat and demands I take a bite. Just a sip, to stop the ache tearing through my core.

I grip the fabric of Erika's coat and force myself to breathe through my mouth, eyes shut, dragging my bare feet over the steel. I won't eat. I won't burn. Holding the instinct down feels like holding my breath underwater while my lungs beg.

We cross into my windowless box and the door seals behind us with a clank that cuts off the hallway.

I sway on my feet. Starving myself has left me dizzy and sick.

Erika guides me to the mattress. Her eyes go over the bruised circles under my eyes, the pallor of my skin, and her feathers droop flat.

"You look exhausted, Lethe," she says, pulling the blanket back. "You need to rest. Real rest."

I manage a nod, let her ease my shoulders down onto the pillows, and go under.

When my eyes open there's no disorientation, only the immediate return to reality.

I try to push myself up the pillows and my arms shake. I'm ravaging this body. Between the dread and the terror of my own biology I barely ate yesterday, and my stomach knots in on itself in a cramp that radiates down to my hips.

The physical pain is nothing next to the other hunger.

Emotional starvation doesn't ache. It hollows. It's as though someone carved a freezing chasm into the center of my chest. Without the crew's ambient noise to distract me, or the accidental sips of Erika's warmth to keep me going, I'm empty — a shell haunting my own flesh, desperate for one drop of feeling just to prove I still exist.

The door opens with a light hiss.

Erika steps in balancing a slate and a fresh silver pouch, and freezes mid-step when she sees me awake and sitting up and staring at the far wall.

"Oh, Lethe… you're awake," she says, breathless with surprise and immediate concern.

The moment she speaks the stale air of the ward shifts and that honey-warm care of hers washes over me.

The chasm in my chest screams at me to open wide, to smile, to do anything that will pull it down my throat and fill the void. It would be so easy. One pathetic whimper and she'd radiate enough comfort to sustain me for hours.

No. I clench my hands into fists and dig my nails into my palms until the skin stings.

"I brought you breakfast." She holds out the silver pouch, the rook catching the light. "Apple again. You need to eat, Lethe. You barely had anything yesterday."

She radiates support. I keep my breathing shallow and even and build a wall between my starving biology and my fragile human mind.

I take the packet without looking at her. I can't. If I look at her, the dam breaks.

"Thank you," I say, flat, without any of the inflection the parasite in me is screaming to use.

She doesn't leave. She hovers at the foot of the bed while I stare at the foil in my hands and try to find the will to open it. Then the room shatters — her warmth crushed under the weight that floods the threshold.

Kal'tsit. Warfarin.

There's mechanical whirring behind them. A boxy Castle bot rolls in, treads clicking on the metal floor.

Two things are resting on its chassis. The first is a sleek black band with the white rook on the front. It doesn't look like a shackle at all; it's thin and light, closer to an athletic choker than a medical restraint. It's also noticeably bigger than my neck.

Next to it is a staff. Raythean, heavily modified, bristling with unfamiliar industrial attachments, a glowing biometric lock near the grip, and reinforced housing near the tip that screams internal tracking and forced output limiters. I know the lore. Looking at the actual object makes me feel illiterate. It's a weapon converted into a feeding tube.

Kal'tsit stops at the foot of the bed. Her eyes go over my hunched shivering form, the circles under my eyes, the unopened pouch in my hands.

"You are deteriorating. Self-imposed starvation is an illogical response to your prognosis, Lethe. Depriving your body of nutrients will not halt the Originium progression in your temporal lobe. It will hasten your organ failure."

I pull my knees up. "I… I don't want to lose…" My voice fails.

Warfarin steps past her and crosses her arms.

"Lose what, exactly?" She leans forward until her face is uncomfortably close. "You woke up in a ruined basement with a blank slate, Lethe. You have no past, no family, and no childhood left to burn. Your mind is an empty room." She taps her own temple. "In fact, given the density of the Originium in your memory centers, it's a glaring anomaly that you remember who we are this morning."

My breath catches.

Her logic is sound. Mourning Iori's past doesn't fit the mask I've built.

"If you keep starving yourself over the fear of forgetting an empty void," she says, "you won't be an anomaly. You'll be a corpse. And I prefer my specimens breathing."

"Sit up, Lethe." Kal'tsit ignores the bedside manner entirely and gestures at the Castle bot. "The fabrications are complete. It is time to determine whether you can be integrated into this landship, or whether you remain in this bed indefinitely."

They're right. If I keep acting like I'm mourning a lost past, I blow my cover. If I starve myself, I die.

I look at my hands. I want to live. I made that choice the moment I woke up in those bruised orange ruins.

So I look at the Castle bot, at the black band with the white rook staring back under the lights. It's a brand. A leash. Putting it on means I'm formally owned by a pharmaceutical military company. But it's Rhodes Island.

"I… I'm sorry." It comes out weak and defeated. I let the pouch rest in my lap and lower my arms, exposing my neck.

Erika steps forward, hesitant but professionally gentle, and lifts the band off the bot. I close my eyes while she wraps it around my throat. The material is smooth, almost imperceptible against the skin. The click of the lock engaging is heavy and final.

The universe dims.

I blink.

"The world…" My voice sounds very small in the suddenly quieter room. "Is it… this quiet…?"

My human memories insist that this isn't even baseline. Normal people don't taste emotions at all. But after three days of Djall biology being fully awake, the dampening feels like someone turned off the sun.

A dry, barking laugh breaks the quiet.

"Welcome back to the mundane spectrum, little anomaly," Warfarin says, watching me blink around the room. "Don't look so tragic. You traded a psychic hurricane for a muzzle. It's an upgrade for everyone involved."

She snatches the modified staff off the Castle bot, twirls it once with effortless grace, and offers it to me. I take it in both hands. The metal is heavy and cold.

"Now pay attention." She taps the reinforced housing near the grip. "This is your feeding tube. The monitor on your neck muffles your passive Arts — you can't live on what leaks through anymore. To feed, you hold this. The biometric scanner reads your palm and opens a restricted channel. You pull the ambient emotion through the staff, and its limiters regulate the flow so you don't gorge yourself into a coma."

She leans in, and her fangs flash. "And it goes without saying, little Djall. The limiters are hardcoded. If you try anything funny, if you try to force the output to manipulate someone, if you try to break the tracking channel… well. You'll see."

"I understand," I say, my fingers tightening on the cold metal. "I'll be good."

Kal'tsit does not offer a reassuring nod. She produces a metallic clipboard instead, a thick stack of printed documents pinned under the clip and stamped with the rook.

"Verbal compliance is insufficient." She holds it out. "By wearing that monitor and using Rhodes Island resources to sustain your biological functions, you are now under our jurisdiction. This contract establishes your status as a registered ward and probationary asset of this landship."

I look at the dense legal text. I can read every word of it, which is the problem. Somewhere underneath this body is a woman who signed things like this for a living, and not one of them ever contained the phrase probationary asset. I make my face empty anyway.

I blink, widen my eyes, and look up at her with total incomprehension. "A… contract?"

Erika steps in between us.

"It just means we promise to take care of you, Lethe," she explains, in the gentle cadence she uses to soothe me. She points at the dotted line. "And in return, you promise to follow Dr. Kal'tsit's rules, stay in your designated areas, and let us help you get better. You just have to put your name right here."

Kal'tsit takes a black pen from her breast pocket and offers it.

I trade the staff to my right hand so I can take the pen in my left, my dominant hand, back when I was Iori. It takes me nearly a full minute to carve out five letters.

L E T H E

I pull the pen away and my cheeks go hot with real embarrassment. It doesn't look like an adult's signature. It looks exactly like a child's blocky scribble, the E's lopsided, the T slanted.

Warfarin leans over Kal'tsit's shoulder, highly amused.

Erika beams. "See?" she says, turning to Kal'tsit and gesturing at the shaky signature. "She knows her letters. She definitely had an education before the ruins. Her mind is trying to remember." She looks Kal'tsit in the eye. "Dr. Kal'tsit, if she's going to be confined to the ward, can I bring her books? Or at least paper and pencils to doodle with? If we stimulate her cognitive functions it might help stabilize the deterioration."

Kal'tsit takes the clipboard back and slides the pen into her pocket, weighing it.

"Her movement restrictions remain absolute. She is confined to this ward, the connecting corridors, the restroom, and the Convalescent Garden. However…" Her focus comes down to me, cold and assessing. "As her designated caretaker, you are authorized to requisition non-classified literature and basic writing materials from the Archive. Monitor her cognitive engagement and log any behavioral shifts."

It isn't a concession. It's an authorization for a new clinical trial.

"Thank you, Dr. Kal'tsit," Erika says, her feathers fluffing in delight, and turns back to me with a radiant smile. "Did you hear that, Lethe? We'll find some good stories for you."

I look down at the modified staff in my hand. I'm a devil on a leash, slowly losing my human soul. And imagining the ordinary act of holding a book again puts a small flicker of relief into the dark.

"Thank you."

Warfarin and Kal'tsit go, satisfied with the progress, and Erika stands at the foot of the bed with a digital chart.

While she sets it down and moves to check my IV line, I take a moment to actually look at her. She's young. Underneath the calm professional manner she can't be much past her early twenties, which makes her — compared to this small frame I'm trapped in — practically a decade my senior. Her eyes are a gentle light purple. The downy plumage that frames her face is pale, almost white, and her hair is cut into a neat practical bob of the same pale shade. She's lean, with the wiry strength of a field Medic, not skinny. She wears the standard kit: white coat, dark undershirt, utility pouches at the waist, the rook on her shoulder.

She pauses, glances at the empty nutrient pouch from earlier, and looks back up with a spark.

"After lunch, do you want to go to the garden, Lethe?"

I nod like an excited kid, and the prospect of leaving this box for air that doesn't smell of bleach and ozone puts a genuine flutter in my chest.

Her smile widens and the feathers at her temples lift.

"Seeing some greenery should do you good," she says, then taps the empty pouch on my nightstand. "But you have to finish your lunch first. Your digestive system is still a mess." She studies my face. "Do you actually like the apple-flavored ones we bring? There are other options."

I look from her to the pouch. The apple mush was bland and purely utilitarian. Survival paste.

"I don't know…" I murmur, dropping my attention to my hands.

The room sours instantly with guilt, and she shrinks back half a step, looking pained.

"Sorry, I forgot you don't remember anything," she says quickly, thick with self-reproach. Her pity washes over me, heavy and suffocating. "I can bring you a berry one for lunch, see if you like it. Okay?"

The taste of it is repulsive. I don't like it.

"Okay!" I chirp, throwing my head up. I try to look expectant, partly because I want to cheer her up. I widen my eyes, let a bright innocent smile stretch across my face, and swing my legs over the edge of the bed.

I tell myself I do it because I want her to stop feeling bad. Underneath that rationalization the truth is darker: her sweet emotions simply taste better. Even through the monitor. The bitterness still repulses me.

It works. The moment I flash that eager childlike grin the tang in the air evaporates and a wave of adoration comes rushing in, rich and filling, smoothing the frayed edges of my nerves and settling the aches in my joints.

"That's settled, then. I'll be back in a bit, Lethe," she says, thoroughly charmed, and gives me a fond wave on her way out.

The sweetness gets sucked out through the ventilation with her, and I'm alone in the cold clinical silence of the medical bay.

The smile slides off my face. I pull my knees up and wrap my arms around my legs while it settles in. I triggered a specific psychological response in a kind woman on purpose. It was effortless. It was instinct.

The hiss of the door cuts my spiral. The ozone-tinged air is overwhelmed by that warmth again; Erika is back with a new pouch.

"Here you go." She hands it over. The front says Mixed Berry Flavor under the rook.

I tear the top open, hungry, and take a hesitant sip.

She watches me closely, radiating anticipation.

"How is it, Lethe?" she asks, tilting her head so her pale hair brushes her cheek.

"I think… I like it better than the apple…"

"That's great to hear."

She tidies away my lunch, then pulls a thin rectangular device out of a utility pouch. Her fingers move across the glass as she logs a final report, and the blip of the submission is quiet in the room.

I tilt my head and widen my eyes into ignorant wonder.

"What is that… glowing brick you're holding? Is it magical?"

My voice comes out perfectly naive. I may as well take the opportunity to gather intel. If I'm supposed to be a feral survivor out of the Kazdel wastes, a standard Rhodes Island terminal should look like an alien artifact.

Erika smiles, and her amusement is warm enough to taste.

"In a way, yes. It's very magical, Lethe." She turns the slate around so I can see the scrolling text and the rook, keeping it safely out of my reach. "It lets us do quite a lot. Rhodes Island gives everyone one to manage our daily duties."

I let my mouth fall open in mock awe.

I'm opening it again to fire off another question when she reaches out and taps the tip of my nose.

"Now, now, little Lethe," she says, eyes crinkling. "Let's go to the garden before you turn the day into an interrogation."

I slide off the mattress and stand. My bare feet hit the metal and I flinch at the cold shooting up my legs, a reminder that I'm standing inside a machine and not an apartment. My toes curl.

Erika notices. Her eyes go to my feet, and she steps over to a medical storage unit and pulls out a pair of small reusable slippers — simple, soft, grey, a Rhodes Island logo stitched on the side.

She kneels and puts them on the floor in front of my freezing toes. "Here."

I slide my feet in. They fit perfectly. "Thank you."

Walking shouldn't be hard, I tell myself. I managed it in the ruins, even if it was a staggering mess. With the slippers between me and the steel I take a hesitant step, then another.

The garden stops me on the threshold. The air is different here — humid, thick, full of damp earth and blooming things and clean water. The space is vast and mercifully empty after the corridors.

I stare at it. It's an ultra-modern greenhouse built into the heart of a war machine: white pillars and crisscrossing beams holding up a high ceiling of frosted glass, daylight coming through diffused and soft. A canopy of vines and broad-leafed ferns and trailing ivy hangs overhead. The seating is scattered and strange, curved benches of polished golden-brown that look like crescent moons. Above them a translucent yellow light fixture shaped like a butterfly glows warm.

Then I see the two of them by the potted broad-leafs, and my breath stops.

Perfumer is inspecting a vine, unhurried, exactly the way I've watched her do it on a screen. Beside her, holding a small potted sapling with both hands and enormous care, is Suzuran — nine tails swaying, far smaller in person than I ever pictured her, her face round with a childlike innocence no illustration ever carried.

And I can't say either name. Whatever Erika calls them in the next thirty seconds is what I'm allowed to know.

Then the taste of them reaches me. Perfumer's presence is a mature, settled calm, warm lavender and steeped chamomile. Suzuran's hits like a wall of crystallized sugar — so concentrated, so pure, that my head spins and my knees go loose.

Terrified of my own hunger, I hide behind Erika. I grip the white fabric of her coat and duck my head, letting the weight of my horns press into her back.

Erika laughs softly and reaches back to put a hand on my shoulder.

"Good afternoon, Lena and Lisa. This is Lethe," she says, her voice carrying across the quiet greenhouse. She pries my fingers off her coat, gently, and pushes me forward into the open.

Lena and Lisa. I file the names away like I'm hearing them for the first time, which is what I have to be doing.

They both turn. Lena offers a welcoming smile, and Lisa tilts her head, her ears twitching with curiosity.

"Hi… hi…" I stammer, and it barely carries over the rustle of the leaves.

"Oh! A new sis?" Lisa asks, bright as a chime under the glass.

Erika's hand tightens on my shoulder. "She's not an Operator, Lisa. We're taking care of her for now."

"Oh dear, is she from the recent Catastrophe?"

Lena steps away from the vines, her clothing rustling in among the ambient sounds of the greenhouse. "You poor little thing. You're safe here with us, Lethe."

"Can she eat solid food?" she asks Erika, dropping her voice a fraction into a professional murmur between caregivers — though my pointed ears catch every syllable of it.

Erika's hand stays where it is. "Maybe a little. Her digestive system is still a mess. She probably hadn't seen solid food for days before we found her."

I look down at my hands, the skin pulled tight over the knuckles. My body is a mess? It lands cold. Iori's mind feels so newly transplanted. I've been in this world barely three days, but for this starving Djall girl, suffering was the entire span of her existence.

"I'll prepare her some tea and get her an herbal cookie, then," Lena says.

"Thank you, Lena." Erika smiles, and her relief mingles with the botanical calm.

I peek out from behind her coat and make myself meet Lena's eyes. "Thank… thank you."

"You're a polite one, aren't you?" Lena's eyes crinkle. "Take a seat, Lethe. I'll bring the tea over."

She turns and walks to a small prep counter set among the vines.

Erika takes me to a table at the far back. We go slowly, my slippers shuffling on the smooth floor, the path winding through hanging ivy and potted ferns that dampen the chatter from the rest of the room.

The spot she picks is a secluded nook off the main walkway — a polished slab of the same golden-brown material and a crescent bench. It feels like a harbor. I slide onto the bench and the knot in my chest starts, finally, to loosen.

Beside me Erika goes back to her slate, and the rhythm of her fingers on the glass is a comfortable background noise.

Then small footsteps, and Lisa bounds over to join us, tails bouncing behind her like a cascade of auburn silk.

She pulls out the chair directly opposite me, sits, and kicks her legs.

"Lethe, how old are you?" she asks, ears twitching.

I freeze. My hands tighten on the edge of the table.

Erika puts the slate down and her hand finds my shoulder.

"She doesn't remember, Lisa…" she says gently. "But Dr. Warfarin said you're probably eleven to thirteen, Lethe. Your growth is stunted, but you wouldn't be much older than that."

Eleven to thirteen. I swallow. Stunted growth from malnutrition, from hiding in the ruins, from whatever came through here before Rhodes Island did.

Lisa's eyes widen in sympathy and then she bounces straight back. "How about twelve, then! It's right in the middle. Same age as me!"

"I… I don't mind…" I smile at her, weakly, and I mean it.

Lena sets down a teapot, four cups and a plate of rustic cookies. The porcelain clinks on the polished wood — a domestic sound that pulls me out of the spiral.

Erika looks up from her typing. "Podenco isn't here today?"

"She's with a few other Operators gathering seeds and floral samples. She won't be back for a few weeks."

Lena pours the steaming amber liquid into each cup, sliding one to Erika, then Lisa, then a smaller one to me. The cookies look homemade, dotted with dried fruit and baked oats.

I wrap my hands around the warm porcelain and let the heat go into my fingers.

I reach for a cookie and marvel at the rough texture of it. I haven't had anything solid since I woke up in this brutal, beautiful world, and the weight of it in my hand is a luxury after the synthesized sludge in the pouches.

Erika's hand twitches. "Only one piece, Lethe. If your digestive system crashes, Dr. Warfarin will have my head. Or every drop of blood I have." She chuckles, and there's real anxiety under it.

I nod and take a very small, very careful nibble of the edge. The image of red eyes grinning at me out of the shadows goes through my mind. I really am Warfarin's favorite new toy — a living anomaly pulled out of the Kazdel ruins, ready for endless blood tests.

"How is the cookie, Lethe?" Lena asks, her cup halfway to her lips.

"It is good," I say, and it's better than that. The crunch of the baked grain and the tartness of the dried berries put me back in the physical world in a way the nutrient paste never could.

"Since you're staying with us now, we should put some flowers in your ward! It's no fun just staring at four walls all day. Are there any flowers you like?" Lisa asks.

The question goes straight through the middle of my fabricated existence. I hold onto the half-eaten cookie and drop my eyes to the table. "I… don't remember…" I let the weight of my horns pull my head down until my hair covers my face.

The bubbly atmosphere dims into a sympathetic hush, and Erika's hand comes to my back.

"She doesn't have any memories as far as we can tell. They may be buried deep, or just gone," she says, in the quiet tone she uses when discussing my charts, and she looks at the others in a way that asks them not to push.

"Aww… it's okay! We'll find your favorites again!" Lisa recovers. Her tails give a synchronized wag and the gloom goes with it. Her optimism is potent enough to make the air shimmer, and she leans forward with her eyes shining.

She really is the light of Rhodes Island. I'd always assumed that was a joke. Sitting across from her, it's a physical fact.

Lena nods and takes a graceful sip of her tea. "We'll pick something and send it to your ward tomorrow."

They're so nice. The sincerity in it, the floral comfort they're wrapping around me without being asked.

I put the rest of the cookie down. My appetite has gone. I pull my knees closer together under the table.

"Thank you, everyone…" I say softly, making sure my voice wavers just enough to sound overwhelmed by their kindness. It's a terrible, necessary lie.

Lisa beams, and her ears twitch as a new idea arrives.

"We can go to the dormitories together later! There are lots of games we can play there."

I can picture the Rhodes Island dorms exactly: the plush furniture, the stacked board games, the Operators sprawled out after a long mission. For one second I want to go so badly it hurts. I want to be a normal kid playing games in a safe room.

Then reality lands. I'm not allowed in the dormitories. The moment I cross into an unapproved zone the alarms trigger, and Mon3tr will be waiting.

Before the panic can get hold of my chest, Erika's hand slides onto my shoulder.

"Sorry, little Lisa, Lethe can't go there yet. She needs… a bit more time to recover."

It's a perfect piece of medical authority with an apologetic edge, and it isn't the whole truth. To Lena and Lisa I'm a fragile survivor with a compromised immune system. Nobody else has to know I'm half patient and half prisoner.

Lisa's tails droop for a fraction of a second before her spirit bounces back. She smiles, and the warmth of it lands somewhere I can't defend.

"When you get better then, Lethe!"

She says it with complete certainty. To her it's a matter of when, not if.

I make myself nod.

We stay a while longer. Lisa points out the names of the plants Lena has taught her, half of which I've never heard of.

Out of the corner of my eye I can see Erika and Lena standing near the prep counter. They aren't looking at the plants. Lena's face is lined with a quiet sorrow and Erika has her arms crossed tightly. They're having a hushed, intense conversation, and I don't need my empathy to know what it's about.

The walk back to the ward is slow and steady, and when we cross the threshold the emptiness of the room hits harder than it did before.

Erika lingers by the door, her eyes going over the barren space. "I know it's a bit empty here, Lethe. I'll talk to Dr. Warfarin and Dr. Kal'tsit and see if you're allowed something to do." Her feathers droop.

"Thank you, Erika," I say, keeping my voice small and grateful.

She points at the medical terminal mounted by the head of the bed. "See you later, Lethe. If you need anything, just press the button on the glowing brick near the bed, okay?" — using the terminology I essentially forced on her an hour ago.

"I will. See you, Erika."

One last comforting smile, and she steps back into the corridor. The door hisses and the lock engages with an echoing clank.

Which leaves me alone with my thoughts again.

I climb onto the mattress and pull my knees up. The silence is total except for the subsonic hum of the engines coming through the floor. Without the crew's ambient noise to distract me my mind starts tearing the afternoon apart.

I look around the metallic room. It's a sensory deprivation chamber for a creature that feeds on emotion.

I'm an adult human mind in a Djall body, and the body is already betraying me. I'm already craving the taste of Erika's concern and Lisa's joy. I bury my face in my arms and my breath comes shallow.

I try to distract myself, and without an iPad I have no idea how. In my old life a screen was the ultimate buffer against existential dread. Here there's sterile metal wall, and my mind just loops. The longer I let it run, the more I feel like something being trained.

By the time the landship goes to its evening cycle, Erika is back with a metal tray, and for the first time since Kazdel it isn't a foil pouch of sludge.

There's a warm ceramic bowl with a smooth golden steamed egg in it, a glass of water, and a small plastic cup holding several brightly colored capsules.

I stare at the bowl. The custardy surface of that egg is a sudden anchor in a metal prison — it's exactly the comforting Japanese dish I used to go looking for in my old life, a phantom echo of an ordinary dinner, and my chest goes tight. It takes everything I have not to cry at the sight of real food.

I point at the small plastic cup instead, tilting my head and widening my eyes, resuming the facade.

"Erika… are those… candies?" I ask, pitching my voice high.

Her expression melts into a fond smile, though the shadow from her conversation with Lena is still in her eyes. She sits on the edge of the mattress and hands me a small plastic spoon.

"No, Lethe, they aren't candies," she says. "They're vitamins and minerals. The steamed egg is very good and it'll be gentle on your stomach so you don't get sick, but it doesn't have everything your body needs to get strong again. You have to take the pills with your water after you finish eating, okay?"

I nod obediently and wrap my hands around the warm bowl. The first spoonful blooms savory and soft on my tongue — a stolen luxury from my past life, fueling a body built for a nightmare.

That night, I actually sleep.

It's dreamless, and when I open my eyes to the morning cycle a fraction of my physical strength has come back.

Erika comes through the sliding doors.

"Good morning, Lethe." She sets the tray down on my bedside table.

Breakfast is a warm bowl of oats and milk, simple and bland and easily digestible and real. I wrap my hands around it for the warmth.

The food isn't the only thing she brought. Tucked under her arm is a bound, slightly worn hardcover book, a stack of blank paper, and a standard Rhodes Island ballpoint.

She sets the book on the edge of the mattress. The cover has an ornate gilded illustration of a castle and a Feline wearing a crown. "I went to the Archive like Dr. Kal'tsit permitted," she says, her eyes shining. "It's a collection of Victorian fairytales. I thought it might be a good place to start. And some paper so you can doodle or practice your letters."

I look at the brightly colored cover and a flare of adult annoyance goes through my chest. I'm supposed to be twelve, not six. I open my mouth on a polite refusal and swallow it again.

To Erika I'm a traumatized amnesiac whose brain is being scorched bare by Originium. She's trying to cram new, safe memories into my head before the crystals burn whatever's left.

"Thank… thank you, Erika," I murmur, timid and grateful. "The cover is very pretty."

Her feathers puff up. She watches me take a few spoonfuls of the oats before retreating to the door to let me eat, promising to come back later and look at my doodles.

Once the door seals I push the empty bowl aside, pull the blank stack onto my lap, and click the pen.

The urge hits like something physical. I want to write it all down — the layout of my apartment in the Lower North Shore, the exact shade of the blue hydrangeas, the chaos of a rainy Saturday on Earth. I want to anchor my human soul to this paper.

I press the tip against the top sheet. A drop of black ink bleeds into the white fibers.

Then I lift the pen again. I can't.

Warfarin has already worked out that the Originium in my temporal lobe is hyperactive. If I start documenting vivid delusions of another universe, she'll diagnose advanced Oripathy-induced psychosis. If I hand them written proof of my madness I'll never get off this leash, and Kal'tsit will lock me in here forever as an unstable biological hazard.

I swallow the lump in my throat and put the pen back down. I don't write about Sydney. Erika is coming back this afternoon to look at my doodles.

So I practice my letters instead, and I tell myself it isn't cowardice. It's preparation.

A… B… C…

My fingers grip the plastic barrel awkwardly, and with no muscle memory every stroke comes out rigid and shaky. I fill the page with wobbly letters.

A few hours, I think. The ceramic bowl sits empty on the bedside table and the oats are a comforting weight in my stomach.

Erika sits on the edge of the mattress going through the stack of paper I spent the morning filling with shaky alphabets, and her feathers twitch with real pride.

"Look at this, Lethe! You're already getting much better." She points at a line of M's and N's slightly less crooked than the ones at the top of the page. "Your hand is remembering how to hold the pen. You're doing so well."

I give her a small shy smile. The praise is meant for a recovering amnesiac child, and underneath the facade there's a bittersweet thrum of victory in it anyway. With every shaky letter I'm quietly reclaiming a fragment of my lost life.

Before she can say anything else, the door opens.

I tense, expecting Kal'tsit or Warfarin. Instead something bright practically bounces into the sterile ward.

Lisa, with a small terracotta pot cradled in her hands, holding a cluster of delicate pale blue flowers.

"Hi, Lethe! Hi, Miss Erika!" Her voice is a bright note in the quiet. "Miss Lena asked me to deliver these! We picked them out from the greenhouse this morning."

Erika stands, her professional manner softening at the sight of her. "That's very sweet of you, Lisa. Let's put them right here on the nightstand so Lethe can see them."

Lisa sets the pot down, and I stare at the blooms. They aren't the blue hydrangeas that used to grow outside my window in Sydney, but the color is close enough to hurt. A splash of domestic life against the white plastic and brushed steel of my medical prison.

"Thank you, Lisa," I say softly.

She turns, catches sight of the bound book on my lap, and her ears go straight up.

"Oh! Are you reading?" She hops to the side of the bed and leans over the mattress to look at the gilded cover. "Victorian fairytales! I love these! Miss Lena used to read them to me when I first came to Rhodes Island too!"

Erika chuckles and steps back to give us room. "Would you like to go over it with her, Lisa? Lethe is just starting to look at the pictures."

"Yes, please!" Lisa kicks off her shoes and, with Erika's steadying hand, clambers onto the edge of the mattress and crosses her legs so she's sitting right beside me.

She points at the crowned Feline on the first page. "This one is about a brave knight who has to find a glass sword," she explains, dropping into a dramatic hush as though she's sharing a secret. She turns the page carefully and picks out the faded illustrations, absorbed in it.

I watch her small finger trace the printed words. I listen to the rustle of her tails against the medical blankets, and I lean closer to her.

A small traitorous thought comes up from the back of my mind, slipping past the grief and the fear.

Maybe this isn't too bad. To just be a child again. Protected. Cared for. Allowed to sit and listen to a story.

It's a terrifyingly comforting thought.