“Yeah, yeah,” Kira muttered. Falconi could deal with the UMC once he was out of cryo. He was good at that sort of thing. Besides, she knew he would want to speak for the Wallfish.

Feeling uncomfortably stiff, she began to extract herself from the nest of blankets and webbing she’d constructed close to the airlock.

Her hand.

Her forearm and hand that she had cut off in the Jelly ship had … reappeared. Astonished, disbelieving, Kira held up the arm, turned it so she could see every part, worked her fingers open and closed.

She wasn’t imagining things. The arm was real. Hardly believing, she touched it with her other hand, feeling fingers sliding across fingers. Only five days had passed since she’d last woken, and in that time, the Soft Blade had constructed a perfect replica of the flesh she had lost.

Or had it?

A sudden shade of fear colored Kira’s thoughts. Drawing a breath, she focused on the back of her hand and, with an effort of will, forced the Soft Blade to retreat.

It did, and she uttered a soft cry as the shape of her hand caved inward, melting away like ice cream on a hot summer’s day. She recoiled, both mentally and physically, losing her focus in the process. The Soft Blade snapped back into shape, again assuming the form of her missing limb.

Tears filmed her eyes, and Kira blinked, feeling a sense of bitter loss. “Dammit,” she muttered, angry with herself. Why was she letting the missing hand affect her so much? Getting an arm or a leg replaced wasn’t that big of a deal.

But it was. She was her body, and her body was her. There was no separation between mind and matter. Her hand had been a part of her self-image for her entire life up until Bughunt, and without it, Kira felt incomplete. For a moment she’d had hope that she was whole again, but no, it wasn’t to be.

Still, she had a hand, and that was better than the alternative. And the fact that the Soft Blade had managed to replicate her missing limb was cause for optimism. Why had it done so now and not before? Because it knew they were nearing the end of their trip? As a demonstration of the sort of cooperation she’d been attempting to train all the way from Bughunt? Kira wondered. Regardless of the answer, she felt vindicated in the results. The Soft Blade had acted of its own volition (although perhaps guided by her own, unvoiced desires) and in a constructive manner at that.

Again, Kira examined her hand, and she marveled at the detail. It was, so far as she could tell, a near-perfect copy of the original. The only real difference she noticed was a slight disparity in density; the new arm felt perhaps a hair heavier. But it was a small change, hardly perceptible.

Still testing the mobility of her new fingers, Kira climbed out of the nest. She attempted to pull up the date on her overlays and only then realized that—as on the trip to Bughunt—the Soft Blade had absorbed her contacts.