She could have stopped it, but she liked the feeling.

Sleep. She urged the Soft Blade to rest and wait as it had once before, to enter dormancy and no longer strive. The xeno was slow to understand, but in time the pangs of hunger eased and a familiar chill crept through her limbs. Then the strains of Bach faded from awareness, and the universe constricted to the confines of her mind.…

When she dreamed, her dreams were troubled, full of anger and dread and malignant forms lurking in the shadows.

An enormous room of grey and gold with ranks of windows revealing the dark of space beyond. Stars glimmered in the depths, and by their dim light there gleamed the polished floor and pillars of fluted metal.

Flesh-that-she-was could see nothing among the hidden corners of the chamber that seemed to have no end, but she felt the eyes of unknown, unfriendly intelligences watching … watching with unsated hunger. Shards of fear affixed her, and no relief had she of action, for the covetous observers remained hidden, though she could feel them creeping closer.

And the shadows twisted and churned with incomprehensible shapes.

… Flashes of images: an invisible box filled with a broken promise that thrashed with mindless rage. A planet blanketed in black and pregnant with malevolent intelligence. Streamers of fire descending through an evening sky: beautiful and terrifying and heartbreakingly sad to see. Towers toppled. Blood boiling in a vacuum. The crust of earth shuddering, splitting, spilling lava across a fertile plain …

And worse still. Things unseen. Fears that had no name, ancient and alien. Nightmares that revealed themselves only in a sense of wrongness and a twisting of fixed angles.…

4.

b-b-b-beep … b-b-b-beep … b-b-b-beep …

The ratcheting alarm hauled Kira back to wakefulness. She blinked, confused and bleary, for a long moment not understanding. Then a sense of self and place returned to her and she groaned.

“Computer, stop alarm,” she whispered. Her voice sounded clearly even through the material that covered her face.

The jarring bleat fell silent.

For a handful of minutes she lay in the dark and the silence, unable to bring herself to move. One week. It felt longer, as if she’d been anchored to the bed for an eternity. And yet, at the same time, as if she’d just closed her eyes.

The cabin was stifling, oppressive, like a chamber deep underground.…

Her heart quickened.

“Alright. Come on, you,” she said to the Soft Blade.

Kira willed the mask off her face and freed her limbs from the web of fibers that bound them to her torso. Then she worked hard with the xeno, straining with and against it.

When she finally stopped, her stomach was grinding and she was fully awake, even though she’d left the lights off.

She drank a few sips of water and again attempted to sleep. It took longer than she wanted—half a day at least—but in time, her mind and body relaxed, and she sank back into welcome latency.