A small chuckle escaped Kira. “Yes … and no. I’m something more than I was.”

The machine boss’s eyes bored into her, hot as thermal lances. “No. Are you, you, Kira? Here,” she tapped her sternum, “where it matters. Is your soul still the same?”

Kira thought. “My soul? I don’t know how to answer that question, Hwa-jung. But what I want now is the same thing I wanted before: that is, peace, and for life to flourish. Does that mean I’m the same person?… Maybe. Maybe not. Change is not always a bad thing.”

Still, Hwa-jung seemed troubled. “No, it is not. And what you say is good, Kira, but do not forget what it means to be human.”

“Forgetting is very much what I don’t want to do,” said Kira. At that, the machine boss seemed, if not happy, at least satisfied.

Then Kira shifted her gaze to Veera. The Entropist stood with her forearms clasped across her chest, hands tucked into the voluminous sleeves of her gradient robes. The woman had bruised circles under her eyes, and her cheeks were gaunt, as if from a great sickness.

“My condolences, Questant Veera, for the loss of your partner. We … understand.”

The Entropist pressed her lips together, nodded, and bowed low. “Thank you, Prisoner Kira. Your concern is comforting.”

Kira inclined her head in return. “Prisoner no more, Questant.”

Surprise widened the Entropist’s features. “What? That isn’t … How do you mean?”

But Kira did not answer. Instead, she looked again at Falconi. “Salvo.”

“Kira,” he replied, somber.

“You brought Trig.”

“Of course.”

“Do you trust us, Salvo?”

He hesitated and then nodded. “I wouldn’t have brought the kid if I didn’t.”

That warmed the center of Kira’s being. Again she smiled. It was fast becoming her favorite expression. “Then trust me once more.”

From the fractal floor, she sent a thicket of tendrils—green this time, not black—sprouting up around Trig’s cryo tube. Sparrow and Hwa-jung cursed and jumped away from the tube, while at the back of the chamber, the ranks of armored Marines stiffened and lifted their weapons.

“Put those down!” Klein barked. “At ease!”

Kira’s smile never wavered as the tendrils twined around Trig’s tube, encasing it in a twisting, squirming embrace—burying it beneath the mass of greenery.

“Kira,” said Nielsen, in a soft tone. Not warning, not angry, but concerned.

“Trust me,” she said. By means of the vines that were her limbs, she reached into the cryo tube and ran a thousand different threads into Trig’s damaged flesh, seeking the source of his injuries. There. A collection of burned cells, torn muscles, bruised and damaged tendons, ruptured blood vessels, and severed nerves—the insults to his body were as easy for her to feel as the internal structure of the station.

How could she have ever found this hard? The thought seemed inconceivable.

Then she poured the needed energy into Trig’s frozen form, guided the Seed as it worked to repair his wounds. When all seemed right, she removed the respirator from his mouth and disconnected the tubes from his arms, separating him from the machine that had kept him in suspended animation for over half a year.