“Hello Major.” Jiri smiled from behind his noteputer, absently checking optical leads and readouts as Tessa drifted out of the fog of sleep, smiled her own soft smile. “How are you feeling the morning?”

“Still a little tender.” She stretched, winced. “Yeah, still a little tender.” She blinked, glanced around the little post-op recovery room where they’d placed her, hesitated on a breath. “How long?”

“Little more than a day. Almost two.” He gestured with his stylus, indicated the nano-factory patch clinging to the exposed flesh of her arm. Palm-sized and beige, it looked like an adhesive bandage, but in actuality housed a system capable of monitoring her body functions and administering carefully constructed chemicals as necessary, logging everything with a control program that Jiri kept on his noteputer. “There were some minor incompatibility problems that required sedation, but no more time in tank, fortunately.”

“Fortunately.” Tessa echoed, smiling. Glancing at her hands, she flexed her fingers one by one, made fists, opened them again. It felt different, but the change felt subtle, barely tangible, like the phantom memory of a passing electrical storm. “So when do I get to try it out?”

“Today, hopefully.” The doctor smiled back, gestured loosely. “We will start with little things, baby steps.” He glanced back at the ‘puter, made a quick notation before looking up to meet her eyes again. “The implant, eh, your body,” He tapped the surface of the ‘puter with the butt of the stylus, grimaced. “They are still getting used to one another. You must use them, flex your muscles as it were, but. . . er, too much strain on either of them could end badly this soon after integration.”

“So no moving walls or anything.” Tessa grinned back. “Not today at least.”

“Our understanding of the way Coralate manipulates metals is limited at best.” He shrugged. “We know that primary driver is TK.” He tapped his forehead with the stylus. “Part of it is modification of atomic bonds, changes in particle cohesiveness– amplification and focus changes to natural abilities, very complex.” He shook his head, sighed. “Ah, who am I kidding? If it works at all, it will be miracle.”

“I’ve heard that before.” She grinned again. “And hey, besides, aren’t you supposed to be the one doing the reassuring here? It’s your implant, after all.”

“Yes, probably.” Jiri looked away, smiled, looked back as he folded up the ‘puter and clipped it to his belt. “Are you hungry? Café is still serving breakfast if you want something solid to eat.”

“Maybe later.” She grinned. “But I could use a cup of coffee to pick me up before we test this new piece of hardware out.” She bit her lip. “You sure your café only has decaf?”

“Positive.” He grinned back, then added, almost as an afterthought, “but we can get you cup of good stuff from staff room on main level.”

“Now, see, that’s just wrong.” She joked. “Smart, but wrong.”

Jiri grinned again. “Helps keep research cost down.”

“Vibrant morning Major” Myyaelae stepped through the door, crossed to the edge of the bed and made an odd, Gnarian flourish with his fingers, narrow face hardly touched with expression. “I noted that your integration is going well.”

“As well as can be expected.” Tessa sat up, forced a smile, then cracked her neck, turned back. “Still a little sore.” She grimaced as Myyaelae looked on, watching her with the wandering, intrusive eye of an inventor studying someone else’s work, tracing the lines of her every curve, every movement. She shivered– the way he looked at her. . . it was creepy, invasive. Eyes narrowing, she managed an only marginally hostile sounding: “What?”

Myyaelae blinked, some inner part of his eye withdrawing as he looked at her as a whole being again, no longer focusing on any one curve, any one joint or flex.

“I had assumed that taking a piece of those who killed your lover into your body and integrating it into your very being would prove to be more difficult emotionally for you,” he stated bluntly, expression never changing, still clean and clear even as she looked up in shock, hesitated, suddenly unable to speak. “One forgets how little humans invest in relationships before engaging in mating behavior, especially in the prodigious quantities that your species seems to.”

“Myyaelae, I. . .” Jiri paused, hesitated, glancing sideways at Tessa, trying to read her, half frightened of what she might say, what she might do. He licked his lips, turned back to the Gnarian, gestured quickly. “Dr. Foster, he. . . he will want to monitor test as well.” He nodded quickly for emphasis as Myyaelae’s vibrant, compound eyes shifted to focus on him. “The Major, she will need privacy for dressing, and then coffee, so. . .” He made a weak gesture. “Would you mind?”

Myyaelae blinked, then let his eyes shift back to Tessa, lingering in her gaze. “Not at all, doctor.”

“Good.” Jiri breathed a quiet sigh “good.” He swallowed, watched as Myyaelae turned, waited until the door had closed behind the Gnarian before he spoke. “I apologize, Major, he. . .”

“No, Jiri, it’s okay.” Tessa swallowed, shook her head. She didn’t like thinking about it, didn’t like thinking about the fact that her body was now laced with the very technology that had been used to kill the one person who had meant more than life to her, the same technology that had been used to kill Izzy, to butcher her from the inside out. The Major closed her eyes, breathed a hurt sigh through her nose. Don’t think about it.

“Let’s just get some coffee and get this over with.”