But now, seeing herself reflected nearly in whole, it struck her just how much the alien organism had changed and … infested her, occupying what no one else had any right to occupy, not even a child, if ever she had a child. Her face and body were thinner than she remembered, too thin—a consequence of so many weeks spent at half rations—but that itself didn’t bother her.

All she could look at was the suit. The shiny, black, fibrous suit that clung to her like a layer of shrink-wrapped polymer. It looked as if her skin and fascia had been stripped away to expose a gruesome anatomy chart of muscles.

Kira ran a hand over the strange shape of her bare scalp. Her breath caught and a tight knot formed in her gut. She felt as if she were going to be sick. She stared, and she hated what she saw, but she couldn’t bring herself to look away. The surface of the Soft Blade grew rough as it echoed her emotions.

Who could find her attractive now … the way Alan had? Tears filled her eyes and spilled down her cheeks.

She felt ugly.

Disfigured.

Outcast.

And there was no one to comfort her.

Kira took a shuddering breath, reining in her emotions. She’d grieved and would continue to grieve, but there was no changing the past, and dissolving into a sobbing mess wasn’t going to do her any good.

All was not lost. There was a way forward now: a hope, if however slight.

Forcing her gaze away from the mirror, she used the cloth by the sink to wash herself and then retreated to the bed and crawled under the blanket. There, in the filtered gloom, she again worked on forcing the Soft Blade to retreat from a patch of skin (this time the fingers of her left hand).

Compared with before, it felt as if the Soft Blade better understood what she was trying to accomplish. The effort required was more manageable, and there were moments when the sense of struggle vanished and she and xeno were working in harmony. Those moments encouraged her, and Kira pushed even harder as a result.

The Soft Blade retreated from her nails with a sticky, peeling sound. It halted at the first joint of each finger, and try as she might, Kira couldn’t coax it past.

She reset.

Three more times Kira willed the suit to expose her fingers, and three more times it responded to her satisfaction. With each success, she felt the neural links between her and the suit deepening, becoming increasingly efficient.

She tried elsewhere on her body, and there too the Soft Blade obeyed her commands, though some areas were more challenging than others. To free herself entirely of the xeno would require more strength than she could muster, but Kira wasn’t disappointed. She was still learning to communicate with the xeno, and the fact that freedom might just be possible—if even only as a distant prospect—kindled such a sense of lightness within her, she grinned with an idiot’s delight into the blanket.