Vashante blinked slowly.

  “I…I was—”

  Her gaze drifted, taking in the dome’s interior and the equipment, and then finally down over her own prone body. She tried to move and managed to prop herself on one elbow. Bee quickly slipped an arm behind Vashante’s shoulders to support her. Vashante’s every movement was shaky, uncertain.

  She was relearning how to control her body.

  “I remember… pain. The battle… The hound—”

  Her hand went to her abdomen, feeling the reconstituted, smooth surface where skin criss-crossed with seams now lay. No longer was she so completely mechatronic. There was a sense of being to her now. A creature that could live. Her fingers brushed one of the surgical lines curiously.

  “I… died.”

  The last word came out almost inaudible, trembling.

  Bee felt a lance of empathy and sorrow. How disorienting it must be to awaken like this. She gently eased Vashante into a half-sitting position, leaning against Bee’s smaller frame. Vashante was heavy in her arms—her new body, together with the mass of exoskeletal plates and augmentations that remained, left her at least twice Bee’s weight and size—but Bee held her firmly.

  “You were dead,” Bee said softly. “But I… I brought you back. With Slashex’s help. With an ancient program. I…”

  She trailed off, suddenly self-conscious. How could she possibly explain it in a way that made sense? This would be magic to Vashante, sciences of old invoked here beyond reason.

  Vashante’s gaze flicked over Bee’s shoulder to Slashex, who stood a distance away, his arms lowered. She tensed instinctively at the sight of the cyborg, old reflexes stirring, but then relaxed, remembering perhaps that Slashex was supposedly an ally now. Her eyes returned to Bee’s face.

  Bee realised with a start that she must look quite frightful—caked in grime and worse, eyes bloodshot, hair matted. But Vashante’s lips curved in the faintest hint of a smile.

  “Bee…” she murmured, and there was such tenderness and wonder in that single syllable that Bee’s heart nearly broke.

  “I focused on your comfort,” Bee blurted out as if apologising. Her hands fluttered over Vashante, checking a few connections on her neck. “I restored your skin. Hid or replaced the cybernetics I could. I didn’t want you to feel like I was taking advantage of you, too. Your muscles, I managed to retain their capabilities by using sort of these dielectric elastomers together with a genetically augmented muscle tissue that is designed to support them. I could access them in the design banks—... and your heart—... you have a heart now, a real one. I-I thought…”

  She realised she was babbling and bit her tongue.

  Vashante looked at her with something like awe.

  “You… gave me a heart?” she repeated, voice growing a bit stronger each moment. Her right hand drifted to her chest, feeling the subtle thump beneath the armour. Indeed, a gentle thud-thud, thud-thud was emanating from within.

  Bee flushed, suddenly self-conscious. “I did. Does it… hurt? Is it alright? I can adjust—”

  But Vashante shook her head slowly. “It feels… warm,” she whispered. I feel warm.” She turned her eyes to Bee again; the amber glow of her artificial irises focused intently. “You… saved me.”

  Bee couldn’t hold back any longer. She leaned forward and pressed her forehead to Vashante’s, careful of the metal ridges. Closing her eyes, she let out a gasping sob that was half laughter. “I couldn’t lose you,” she confessed in a tremulous rush. “I couldn’t. So whatever it took… I did it. I’m so sorry if you’re in pain or if—it was wrong—”

  Vashante’s strong arm, now regaining coordination, slowly lifted and encircled Bee’s back. The embrace was tentative but grew firmer as the sensation returned. Bee felt Vashante’s fingers curl gently against her shoulder.

  “No,” Vashante hushed her. “No, Bee. I’m… I’m alive. I’m myself.” Disbelief and joy warred in her tone. She tilted her head, and Bee briefly felt a cool metal cheek plate against her temple. A careful, affectionate gesture.

  “I can never repay this grace.”

  Bee pulled back enough to look at Vashante fully, still holding her. “Just stay with me,” she said, smiling through tears. “That’s all I ask.”

  Vashante’s smile brightened. She nodded, and in that nod was profound devotion.

  The tender moment shattered with a harsh burst of static from Bee’s mind.

  “Primary subject restoration complete. Cognitive function: stable. Preparing next sequence.” The clinical announcement from SepGNT scrawled across Bee’s inner vision, and she flinched?. The daemon wasn’t stopping to celebrate. It had a list of tasks and was moving on. Bee blinked the text away.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  “Bee… what now?” Vashante asked softly, noticing Bee’s distraction and the array of corpses around them. She began to push herself to sit up fully, wincing slightly as new nerves stretched. Bee aided her to sit against a support. Vashante’s gaze fell upon Toshtta’s body nearest them. Her expression grew sombre and horrified as the memory flooded back.

  “Toshtta… Cartaxa… Sar-ek… By the Gods.” A tremor went through Vashante; Bee could feel it in the arm around her. After fighting to protect them, seeing them laid out like this must have been a nightmare for Vashante, Bee realised.

  Bee wiped her face and sniffed, forcing composure. “I’m going to bring them back as well. The same way I did you.” She tried to inject confidence into her tone, for Vashante’s sake, more than her own. “I… I have to try.”

  Vashante looked at Bee with concern. Her dozen-faceted eyes flickered over the corpses and the equipment, then to Slashex and back to Bee. There was confusion and doubt on her face, as well as implicit trust.

  “If anyone can, it’s you,” she said softly. But her fingers tightened on Bee’s arm, betraying her worry. Bee realised Vashante recognised how forbidden this act was. Even the Eidolon was shaken by it.

  Bee gently disengaged from Vashante, laying her back against a crate. “Rest. Please. Let your systems… your body calibrate. I’ll handle the rest.”

  Slashex wordlessly handed Vashante a drip line connected to a pouch of diluted nutrient gel. Vashante accepted it, pressing the feeder tube to a port below her collarbone. Her throat closed as she swallowed the enriching fluid it delivered directly into her rebuilt stomach.

  Bee stood and squared herself to the grim work yet to do. Reviving Vashante had taken hours and an enormous toll on her stamina. The worms burrowed painfully along her spine, sensing her fatigue. Just a little longer, she urged her failing flesh. Hold on until they’re back. She moved to Toshtta’s side first. Her leg suddenly trembled and locked up, making Bee stumble.

  Slashex’s attention snapped to her, but Bee tried to hide her near collapse and focused on her work. If any of the remaining knights could be saved the way Vashante was, perhaps Toshtta would be the one—her body was relatively intact aside from the catastrophic wound that carved her in two.

  SepGNT fed Bee an analysis: severe neural degradation, no usable brain tissue, partial spine intact, extensive organ damage in her abdomen. It recommended a similar approach: rebuild the body, then reconstruct the mind from fragmentary data in implants. But Bee encountered a dire limitation almost immediately.

  Toshtta had not been as augmented as Vashante. She was more flesh than machine. Crucially, her brain had only minimal cybernetic interface—meaning no full neural map was stored when she died. SepGNT had scraps: motor patterns from her muscle memory implants, vague echo of her last conscious directives. But not the rich tapestry needed to recreate her.

  The program clinically displayed error messages as Bee painstakingly examined a facsimile of Toshtta’s neural pathways, splayed out before her mind’s eye as an endless cascade of networked lines.

  Bee refused to give up. She repaired Toshtta’s sundered lungs and pierced guts. With effort, she even reactivated the dormant blossom of symbiotic plant matter entwined in Toshtta’s limbs—that strange hallmark of the Rose of Thorns’s children. Vines that had grown through Toshtta’s muscles now twitched with renewed life as Bee pumped a mixture of blood and nutrient solution through them. Wounds closed. Pale skin knit over broken flesh.

  Soon, Toshtta Yew looked at peace, almost merely sleeping—her stern face unmarred except for a scar that Bee could not erase over one eye. Bee had reconstructed that eye for her, grown anew in a biogel, and placed it into the empty socket. Stitching its connective tissue and nervous wiring was the difficult part.

  Finally came the moment of attempted awakening. Bee repeated the delicate steps: she forged the neural connections, integrated the stored data SepGNT had gleaned, and then initiated the reboot. She cradled Toshtta’s head on her lap and waited.

  At first, hope was a reflexive breath, the appearance of life as Toshtta’s body accepted the new organs. Bee waited, breathless, for consciousness. But Toshtta lay still, eyes closed. Bee stimulated her neural implant, sending gentle pulses. The knight’s back arched suddenly. Bee started, thinking Toshtta was waking, but it was only a brainstem reflex. Toshtta’s lips parted, a whistling exhale escaping.

  Bee leaned close, calling her name again and again.

  No response.

  Bee followed instructions passed on by the daemon. She roughly ground her knuckle against Toshtta’s bare sternum. Pinched the trapezius muscle with her metal hand. Crushed her fingertip. There was no reaction from her prone form.

  Slashex checked the readings and shook his head subtly.

  “No higher function,” he muttered.

  Bee’s throat tightened. She clung to Toshtta’s hand, feeling for any responsive squeeze. The fingers remained limp. Warm. Alive in a technical sense, but empty.

  She had built a beautifully crafted doll that breathed and nothing more.

  “N-no… maybe it’s just taking longer,” Bee insisted, voice cracking.

  She refused to let tears come. Not yet. She prepared a stimulant injection and pressed it into Toshtta’s arm. The body jolted faintly, eyes flickering beneath lids. Bee held her breath.

  Toshtta’s mouth fell open, and she released a faint sigh. Her consciousness was simply gone. SepGNT registered it as the irreversible cessation of mindstate. The daemon had tried to fill in gaps, but without a full scan, it could not truly bring Toshtta back. Only her body.

  Bee hung her head. The worms squirmed in her skull, amplifying her despair with a buzz of self-loathing.

  Failure.

  She had let her die.

  She had failed to save Toshtta in every way that mattered, again and again. Just like she had failed her Mother.

  Vashante had quietly moved beside Bee at some point despite Bee telling her to rest. Now, the Eidolon laid a reassuring hand on Bee’s shoulder. Bee looked up to see pity and shared sorrow in Vashante’s eyes.

  “She was a good woman,” Vashante said softly.

  Was.

  The word hit Bee like a hammer. At that moment, Bee knew the truth: Toshtta was never coming back.

  Bee inhaled a shaking breath and gently laid Toshtta’s hand across her breastplate in a semblance of repose. The knight’s face looked serene. Bee brushed a lock of stem-strewn hair from Toshtta’s forehead and whispered, “I’m sorry.”

  She hoped that, on some level, Toshtta might yet find peace.