Sveta made a sound, emotions pouring over, before hiccuping with a sob.

I stroked the back of her head, trusting that someone would tell me not to if it was dangerous.

Then again, I didn’t have my forcefield up.

I could have mentioned it. I didn’t.

“You have a body,” I whispered. I could feel it. It was hard, unyielding. She creaked in places, and the way she’d moved—the colors and textures I’d seen—

None of that mattered. She had a body.

“It took some doing,” Weld said. “It took a lot of doing. It’s been a whole adventure to get even this far. It’s not even tinkertech. Regular prosthetics and some inventiveness from some really stellar people. Arms, legs, body, some stuff to keep it upright, some machine learning systems that adapt to meet her partway, and a lot of practice on her part, to operate everything internal.”

Sveta pulled away. She looked me in the eye, reaching up to wipe at her tears. The hands didn’t seem cooperative enough, almost like someone holding a baseball bat by one end was trying to wipe away tears with the other.

I hesitated, before indicating her face. “Do you want a hand?”

She nodded, and I wiped the tears away with my fingers. She smiled, even as more welled up.

“You’re such a sneak, Jessica,” Weld said. “Not telling us?”

“I did tell you Victoria was recovered.”

“I thought you meant she was mobile enough to get to the meeting place on her own. I didn’t think you meant a complete and total recovery,” Weld said.

I wanted to turn to see Mrs. Yamada’s expression, but it was hard to move with Sveta hugging me. She was silent, though.

Behind Weld, someone else was ducking into the room. He looked like he was of a height with Kenzie, but given how boys developed slower, he might’ve been a touch older. He had a mess of tousled brown hair that would have been over his eyes if he wasn’t wearing large headphones as a kind of hairband. He had a very flat expression as he walked around the perimeter of the room. His t-shirt was black with a logo I didn’t recognize, his cargo shorts had stuff packed into the pockets, but he mostly looked like a very average kid. Only his old fashioned braces really stood out to me—the kind that made it hard for him to put his lips together.

Sveta twisted around, one hand reaching out to me to steady herself. She looked over at Kenzie, then at the magenta-haired fellow, and then at the new kid. She failed on her first attempt at speaking, then managed. “She was my first friend ever, that I can remember.”

“I didn’t know that,” I murmured.