“I really want this exercise to work somehow, like Tristan said, but for different reasons. The way you were brought in, you might have come in looking for the bad, and it’s… it’s not all bad. Really. I always wanted a team and the idea of finding one and fitting myself to that team with all of my problems, it seemed impossible or far away.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You talked about it in the hospital. That you’d talked to Mrs. Yamada and other people about how, putting aside all your issues, you wanted to be a hero.”

“And I wanted a boyfriend, and I wanted to be functional again, and I wanted friends,” she said, staring off at the other three. “And I have almost all of it, but I feel like it could slip out of my grasp if things go wrong. If this goes wrong. I don’t know what I can do if that happens. I’m worried this is going to be a disaster, and that’s making me so anxious.”

“What can I do?” I asked. “I don’t want you to be unhappy.”

“Like I said before, I really want you to believe in us here. I want you to give us a chance. Even if this is bad to start.”

“Okay,” I said.

“And—I’m sorry if this is pushing a line or if you have reasons, but don’t be so stiff?”

She sounded so uncertain as she said it. I drew in a deep breath and smiled at her.

“I’m the one with a prosthetic body. We’re friends, right?” She smiled, uncertain, and I smiled at her. “So I don’t want you tense around me.”

“I’m nervous in my own way, and I think that’s how it shows,” I said. “It’s not you. Can I give you a bit of a hug, here, emotional support?”

“Please.”

I put one arm around her shoulders and squeezed. Sveta moved her head in my direction, I moved mine in her direction, knocking heads with her a bit.

Off in the distance, even though she was more than a hundred feet away, I could hear Kenzie cooing and ‘aww’ing over the hug, as she looked at us.

“What did I miss?” Tristan asked.

“I’m anxious,” Sveta said.

“Me too,” Tristan said. “Your control gets bad when you’re nervous, right? You have more reflexive movements?”

“It gets so fucking shitty,” Sveta said. “I’m sorry. I’m worried I’ll be terrible because I’m all over the place inside here. I don’t know if you can hear it, but I keep fumbling because I’ll reflexively reach out to grab something off in the distance and hit the wall of the suit instead, and then I have to reach for the right control ring again.”

“Do the best you can,” Tristan said.