“Come on in.” The voice sounded strange, like Drake and Janice were speaking simultaneously. An arm emerged from the left side of the ovoid chair and beckoned, and Elena barely managed to suppress a gasp.

The arm was Y-shaped: it had a single upper arm and bicep, but then it divided at the (obviously heavily modified) elbow, and two forearms jutted out from the joint: one pale and freckled, and one a very dark brown. The forearms ended in matching hands, one of which had too many fingers, and one of which didn’t have enough. “Back on Earth in the old days, you would’ve had to pay five lix at a freakshow to see something like this.” It was Janice’s voice, cynical and grimly amused.

Elena glanced at Callie, who just raised her eyebrows and nodded. Elena drifted further forward, grabbed onto the arm of a chair to the right of the egg-shaped chair, and turned to face the pod.

Drake and Janice sat in the hollow of the chair, tubes and wires snaking into their bodies and out again, disappearing under the seat. At first, Elena couldn’t make sense of what she was seeing, but then she understood. “Oh,” she said. “You’ve been… put together.”

“Butchers,” Janice said, from one side of the head. “The Liars are butchers.”

“They meant well,” Drake said, from the other side. “They were trying to save our lives. But they’d never seen a human before, and they made some bad assumptions. They didn’t have much to work with. It’s amazing they managed as well as they did.”

“I begged for death, once I was able to speak,” Janice said. “They didn’t seem to understand. They didn’t seem to think wanting to die made any sense at all.” She paused. “But it’s not so terrible now. I’m used to it. Drake isn’t bad company.”

Elena settled into the chair and fiddled with the controls until it twisted around to face them.