It was wrong. All of it wrong. Alan’s death and those of her other teammates, the attack on the Extenuating Circumstances and the creation of the Maw, the thousands upon thousands of sentient beings—human, Jelly, and nightmare alike—who had died in the ten and a half months of fighting. All that pain and suffering, and for what? Wrong. Worst of all, the pattern of the Seed would end up so twisted and perverted that its legacy—and by extension hers—would be one of death, destruction, and suffering.

Anger turned to sorrow. There was little of her left now; Kira didn’t know how much longer she would retain consciousness. A few seconds. Maybe less.

Her mind flashed to Falconi and their night together. The salted taste of his skin. The feel of his body pressed against her own. His warmth inside her. Those moments had been the last normal, intimate experience she would share with another person.

She saw the muscles of his back flexing beneath her hands, and behind him, sitting on the console desk, the gnarled bonsai tree—the only bit of living green left on the Wallfish. It hadn’t been there, though, had it?…

Green. The sight reminded her of the gardens of Weyland, so full of life, fragrant, fragile, precious beyond description.

Then, at the very end, Kira surrendered. She accepted her defeat and abandoned her anger. There was no longer any point in fighting. Besides, she understood the Maw’s pain and the reasons for its rage. They were, at their heart, not so different from her own.

If she could have wept, she would have. And in her extremis, at the very limits of her existence, a flush of warmth suffused Kira, calming, cleansing—transformative in its redemptive purity.

I forgive you, she said. And instead of rejecting the Maw, she embraced it, opening herself and welcoming it into her.

A shift.…

Where the fibers of the Maw touched her—disassembling her flesh with ruthless intent—there was a pause in motion. A cessation of activity. And then Kira felt the strangest thing: instead of the Seed flowing into the Maw, now the Maw began to flow into the Seed, joining with it, becoming it.

Kira accepted the influx of material, drawing it to herself like a child to her bosom. Her pain subsided, along with that of the tissue she had gained hold over. As her reach spread, her sense of self expanded, and with it came a breadth of newfound awareness, like a vista opening up before her.

The Maw’s anger doubled and redoubled. The abomination was aware of the change, and its fury knew no bounds. It struck at her with all the might and power contained within its malformed body: smashing her, squeezing her, twisting her, cutting her. But as the Maw’s fractal fibers closed around her, they relaxed into the Seed and fell under Kira’s sway.