The pod hissed open like a breath finally released.
Warm air surged out, laced with the scent of sterilized metal and old power. Thalyn Ka’el blinked against the low blue light, vision sharpening too quickly, too clean. No pain. No tremble. No lag in the nerves where cold metal once fought flesh.
Her legs responded before she asked them to.
“Welcome back mistress,” purred Arvie inside her head, smooth as synth silk and twice as smug. “New model’s a dream, isn’t it? Sleek, chic, and 93.2% less likely to malfunction when you sprint into idiocy.”
Thalyn sat upright. Her fingers dug instinctively into her thighs. Muscle. Warmth. Skin. Her breath caught in her throat. The ache she'd carried so long, static-laced, everpresent, was just… gone.
Her old clothes hung comfortably on her frame now perfectly whole. Too whole.
She swung her legs over the side, boots hitting the floor with too much grace, too little effort. Weight shifted like a dancer's, clean and easy.
Her gaze drifted to the pod beside hers.
There she was. Or had been.
Curled like an artifact, her old body lay in tranquil repose. Scars lined the familiar angles. Metal clung to thigh and calf, ugly and stubborn. That frame had survived fire and fall and failure. It had kept her alive when everything else wanted her dead.
This new body? It hadn’t earned a single scar yet.
Something twisted in her gut. Not grief. Not loss. Guilt, maybe.
She turned away.
The droid waited near the chamber’s threshold, light pulsing steady from its optics. It inclined its head with graceful calm. “Mistress.”
“What happens to the old body?”
“It will be preserved. If you wish, placed in stasis. No harm shall come to it.”
“Do it.” Something snagged in her mind, some wishful impulse born from grief and hope.
“Nira,” she said softly. “Could you… restore her for me?”
The droid considered. “We can reconstruct a body identical to her original structure. But we lack full cognitive records. Only echoes remain in your memories. The result would be… incomplete. A replica. Not her.”
A beat.
Then Arvie: “Yeah, let’s not resurrect ghosts just because the wardrobe’s open, boss. Half-made souls tend to make terrible roommates.”
Thalyn stood silent, pulse ticking behind her teeth.
"No," she said finally. "If it’s not her, it’s not her. We let her rest."
She drew breath, let it settle.
“I came here for the control devices,” she said to the droid. “My people. We need them gone.”
“Your new vessel is clean. The old one, cleaned upon transition. The others may enter the pods. The procedure will sever the control links.”
Her nod was slow, deliberate.
The main chamber loomed quiet, its consoles humming in old tones like voices dreaming. Jaxon straightened when he saw her. Elara blinked once, gaze flicking to her legs. Korr leaned half over a schematic, eyes narrowing with suspicion.
Jaxon’s growl broke the silence. “You’re walking quiet.”
Thalyn approached, boots gliding over ancient floor.
“No limp,” Elara murmured.
“Body’s new,” Thalyn said. “Perfect, apparently. Facility gave it to me. My old one's still intact, for what it’s worth.”
"Lovely," Jaxon muttered. "First they attack us. Now they hand out upgrades."15Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHO2qn7dOJm
Elara tilted her head, watching. “You feel like yourself?”
Thalyn shrugged. “More than I should.”
“What about the implants?” Jaxon cut in. “Control devices?”
“Gone. Droid confirmed it. And it can remove yours. You just have to lie down in a pod.”
Korr’s face twisted. “Madness. Sleeping in the arms of a ghost machine. Next you’ll ask us to marry the throne.”
Elara studied her a moment longer. “I trust your instincts. But...”
“Pods work,” she said. “I walked out of one with legs.”
Jaxon scratched at his jaw, lips tugging into a half-snarl. “We were leashed. Now maybe we’re not. Worth the risk.”
Back in the medical bay, the pods glowed faintly in the dimness. Her old body still slept behind clear glass. Korr visibly recoiled.
The droid stepped forward. “Please enter. There will be no harm.”
Jaxon went first. No words. Just a grunt and a step.
Elara followed after a glance at Thalyn. Korr lingered, trembling lips whispering some private litany, but in the end, he entered.
Thalyn stood beside the droid, arms folded.
The glyphs began to flow. Lights danced. Charts spun and slowed. A low hum rose to a keen pitch and then fell again. Silence returned like the tide.
Pods opened with gentle sighs.
Jaxon emerged blinking. “Felt… odd. But no pain. Nothing.”
“Any proof it worked?” Korr asked.
The droid turned toward Elara. “Doctor, if you wish, you may confirm with your device. The neurological matrix has been freed. No foreign commands remain.”
Elara narrowed her eyes but stepped forward. She pulled the slim scanner from her hip satchel, activated it with a tap, and waved it slowly over Jaxon’s spine. Light pulsed, once amber, then green.
“No remnants,” she muttered. “No traces of injected device, or signal nodes.”
Korr muttered something about sacred heresy but didn’t object when Elara scanned him next.
They walked back to command under a drifting silence.
“We could bolt now,” Jaxon said at last. “Slip into Revanthys. Sell what we’ve got. Trade fire for freedom.”
“Elara?” Thalyn asked.
“There’s a Kaelen village nearby. Cindraal. Safer path, if we trust your folk.”
Korr grumbled. “Better we stay. Mine more thalorite. Study the relics. We still have time.”
They turned to Thalyn.
She stood at the center, quiet and coiled.
“The throne’s done. The sequence finished. I’ve unlocked something, don’t know what yet. But this place listens to me now. I want to know why.”
Arvie slipped in like smoke through a crack in the wall.
“Well, that was heartfelt. Now how about a dead man’s fever dream to spice things up?”
Thalyn’s brow twitched.
“As for Echo,” she said. “He was smuggled into a medical bay as a corpse. Their only shot at fixing his NeuroLink.”
Jaxon gave a curt nod.
She fell quiet, then asked Arvie: “Why did I see another memory in the pod?”
“Oh that,” Arvie replied, casual as ever. “New body defaults to a cleaner diary config. It’s set to drip-feed memories whenever you conk out. I can change that. Or stream reruns whenever you’re bored.”
Thalyn rolled her shoulders. The strength in them startled her again.
“Don’t change anything yet. Let’s see what’s next.” She sat down beside a cracked stone column. “Fire it up.”
The world began to dim. Lines dissolved. Noise softened, as Vex’s face took shape, half in shadow, eyes sharp, watching her from across a gulf of time.
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