Cheery. Thinking about it doesn’t really help, does it? The best we can do is, as you said, bend our heads and focus on our lives. – Kira

So don’t think. Be a sleeper devoid of dreams. – Gregorovich

Maybe I will. – Kira

That doesn’t change the fact, the question yet remains: What are you, O Queen of Tentacles? – Gregorovich

Call me that again and I’ll find a way to put hot sauce in your nutrient bath. – Kira

An empty promise from an empty voice. The fearful mind cannot accept its limits. It shrieks and flees before admitting ignorance, unable to face the threat to its identity. – Gregorovich

You don’t know what you’re talking about. – Kira

Deny, deny, deny. It matters not. The truth of what you are will out, regardless. When it does, the choice is yours: believe or don’t believe. I care not which. I, for one, shall be prepared, whatever the answer may be. Until that time, I’ll spend my hours in watching you, watching most intently, O Formless One. – Gregorovich

Watch all you like. You won’t find what you’re looking for. – Kira

She closed the display with a flick of her finger. To her relief, the green light stayed dull and dead. The ship mind’s banter had left her unsettled. Still, she was glad she’d held her ground. Despite his assertions, Gregorovich was wrong. She knew who she was. She just didn’t know what the damn suit was. Not really.

Enough. She’d had enough.

She removed the Entropists’ gemlike token from her pocket and slipped it into the desk drawer. It would be safer there than if she carried it around everywhere. Then, with a grateful sigh, she peeled off her torn clothes. A quick scrub with a wet towel, and she fell into the bunk and wrapped herself in a blanket.

For a time, Kira couldn’t stop her mind from cycling. Images of the Jellies and the dead nightmare kept intruding, and at times Kira imagined she could smell the acrid scent Falconi’s grenades produced when they exploded. Again and again she felt the Soft Blade sliding into the flesh of the Jelly, and then that became confused with her memory of stabbing the Numenist and of Alan dead in her arms.… So many mistakes. So very many mistakes.

It was a struggle, but in the end, she managed to fall asleep. And despite what she’d said to Gregorovich, Kira dreamed, and while she dreamed, there came to her another vision:

In the golden light of summer’s eve, the sounds of shrieking filled the hungry forest. She sat upon a prominence, watching the play of life among the purple trees while awaiting the expected return of her companions.

Below, a centipede-like creature scurried forth from the gloom-shrouded underbrush and darted into a burrow beneath a clump of roots. Chasing it was a long-armed, snake-necked, sloth-bodied predator with a head like a toothed worm and legs that jointed backward. The hunter snapped at the burrow, but too slow to catch its prey.