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.

Slowly, carefully, she warmed his body, treating it as gently as a mother hen would a newly laid egg. She felt the heat of his metabolism increase like a kindling fire rising to full flame until, at last, he took his first, unsupported breath.

She released him then. The vines retracted into the floor to reveal Trig’s pale form curled in a fetal shape, bare except for a pair of grey thermal shorts of the sort worn under skinsuits. He gasped, like a drowning man coming to the surface, and hacked up a gob of spit. It melted away, as if it had never existed.

“Trig!” exclaimed Nielsen, and she and Vishal bent over the kid. Sparrow, Hwa-jung, and Falconi crowded in close, watching.

“Wh—Where am I?” Trig said. His voice was weak, hoarse.

“That is somewhat hard to explain,” said Vishal.

Falconi shrugged off his vest and draped it over the kid’s shoulders. “Here, this’ll help keep you warm.”

“Huh? Why are you all wearing skinsuits? Where am I?” Then Sparrow moved out of the way, and Trig saw Kira, suspended as she was in the wall. His mouth dropped open. “That … you, Kira?”

“Welcome back,” she said, and her voice blossomed with warmth. “We weren’t sure you were going to make it.”

Trig looked around the pillared chamber. His eyes showed white. “Is all this yours?”

“It is.”