Kira frowned. On the Extenuating Circumstances, the xeno must have absorbed the decking because it needed part or all of what it contained. Metals, plastics, trace elements, something. Which meant it had—in a sense—been hungry. But now? No depression, but still the dust. Why?

Ah. That was it. She’d eaten. The dust appeared each time she or the xeno ate. Which meant, the creature was … excreting?

If so, the unpleasant conclusion was that the parasite had assumed control over her digestive functions and was processing and recycling her waste, disposing of whatever elements it didn’t need. The dust was the alien equivalent of DERPs, the polymer-coated refuse pellets that skinsuits formed out of a user’s feces.

Kira made a face. She might be wrong—she hoped she was—but she didn’t think so.

That raised the question of how the suit, how an alien device, could understand her biology well enough to mesh with it. Interfacing with a nervous system was one thing. Interfacing with digestion and other basic biological processes was several orders of magnitude more difficult.

Certain elements formed the building blocks of most life in the galaxy, but even so, every alien biome had evolved its own language of acids, proteins, and other chemicals. The suit shouldn’t be able to bond with her. That it could indicated the xeno’s makers/originators had a much higher level of tech than she’d initially thought, and if they were the graspers.…

Of course, it was also possible the suit was just mindlessly carrying out its imperatives, and that it was going to end up poisoning and possibly killing her through some hideous mismatch of chemistry.

Nothing she could do about it either way.

Kira still didn’t feel hungry, not yet. And she didn’t have to relieve herself. So she closed her eyes again and allowed her mind to wander back through the dream, picking out details that seemed important, searching for any hints that might help answer her questions.

“Ando, start audio recording,” she said.

“Recording.”

Speaking slowly, carefully, Kira made a full record of the dream, trying to include every piece of information.

The cradle … The Plaintive Verge … The memories resounded in her like the tone of a far-off gong. But Kira felt the Soft Blade still had more to share with her—that there was a point it was trying to make, a point that had yet to become clear. Maybe if she fell asleep again, it would send her another vision.…

3.

After that, time grew indistinct. It seemed to move both faster and slower. Faster because great swathes of it passed without Kira noticing while she was asleep or in the hazy twilight between slumber and wakefulness. Slower because the hours she was awake were all the same. She listened to the endless cycle of Bach, she contemplated the data she’d gathered on Adra—trying to determine if or how it related to the xeno—and she dwelled in the happier recesses of her memories. And nothing changed, nothing but her breathing and the flow of blood in her veins and the dulled movement of her mind.