Maybe so, but Kira still felt terrible. Pain was pain, and it insisted on making itself known.

How long had she been unconscious? Minutes? Hours?… No, not hours. She was lying where she’d fallen, feeling neither hungry nor thirsty. Only drained from the torment of misery. Her whole body ached as if bruised.

Behind her shuttered lids, Kira noticed that none of her overlays were displaying. “Petra, on,” she said. Her system didn’t respond, not even with a flicker. “Petra, force restart.” The darkness remained unchanged.

Of course. The UMC would shut down her implants.

She growled into her arm. How could the military techs have overlooked the organism in her and Neghar? The xeno was large. Even a basic examination ought to have spotted it. If the UMC had done their job properly, no one would have died.

“Goddamn you,” she muttered. Her anger fought back the grief and panic enough for her to open her eyes.

Again she saw the bare metal. Lightstrips. Mirrored window. Why had they brought her onto the Extenuating Circumstances? Why risk the additional exposure? None of their choices made sense to her.

She’d avoided the inevitable long enough. Steeling herself, Kira looked down.

Her body was still covered in the layer of inky black. That and nothing more. The material resembled bands of overlapping muscles; she could see the individual strands stretch and flex as she moved. Her alarm strengthened, and a shimmer seemed to pass across the fibers. Was it sentient? No way to know for sure at the moment.

Tentative, Kira touched a spot on her arm.

She hissed, baring her teeth. She could feel her fingers on her arm, as if the intervening fibers didn’t exist. The parasite—machine or organism, she didn’t know which—had worked itself into her nervous system. The motions of the circulating air were noticeable against her skin, as was every square centimeter of decking that pressed into her flesh. She might as well have been totally naked.

And yet … she wasn’t cold. Not as she ought to be.

She examined the soles of her feet. Covered, same as her palms. Feeling upward, she discovered that—in the front—the suit stopped near the top of her neck. There was a small ridge: a drop-off between fibers and skin that curved around her ears. In the back, the fibers continued up and over the back of her head and—

Her hair was gone. Nothing but the smooth contours of her skull met her exploring fingers.

Kira set her teeth. What else had the xeno stolen from her?

As she concentrated on the different sensations of her body, Kira realized that the xeno wasn’t just bonded to her outside; it was inside her as well, filling her, penetrating her, if however unobtrusively.

Her gorge rose, and claustrophobia closed in around her, choking her. She was trapped, embedded in the alien substance with no way of escaping.…

She bent over and retched. Nothing came out, but bile coated her tongue and her stomach continued to heave.