He–and the alien in front of me was a he–gave me the rundown on how the terminal in my cage worked. I was surprised when interacting with the thing, its menu appeared in an interface screen rather than on the terminal itself. It was on the side of the glass, and the entire design felt redundant. A perfectly inefficient waste of space, that could have just been a small line I pressed down to summon the screen.

Theoretically, there could have been some kind of mana circuitry inside that required the size, but the false screen was irritating. Why outline it? And it disrupted the flow of the rest of the cube, especially since it was on the side with the out door. Which was another irritating thing. Onyo couldn’t come in, and I couldn’t leave through either.

“Are you able to enter outside of integration, or is the space solely managed by the interface?” I asked, trying to see if there was some kind of use.

“I… actually don’t know? I think not, all of my teachings point towards the latter, but I’ve never actually got confirmation.” He scratched at his non-existent chin, a gesture that felt forced. My eyebrow twitched, and I had to force myself down from the burgeoning island of anger.

I hadn’t even been alone for more than two days. But dying left a mark in me. So much had been happening, blow after blow, half of my body was changed. I never thought I would have to consider The Ship of Theseus in relation to myself. Once, since I was inside the cube, I had brushed Entropy over my leg and chest. I panicked initially, which sent Onyo into a confused sputter until I eventually managed to make it stop. I pushed mana into my thigh, and then pulled it out of my hand.

Which step actually stopped it, I didn’t know. I kept my soul retracted from The Cure as best I could, managing to at least get it out of my finger tips. The haze was still around it, and it seemed to resist more pulling. Pushing, I found on a whim, resulted in the lines down Entropy glowing and almost blinding green, and the stench of death nearly suffocated me inside the cube.

Onyo was kind of just forced to watch the entire time. I did this, rather rudely, during conversation idly; I still didn’t want to tell him about my skill path. I didn’t really know why. At that point, it was just petulance. I acquiesced eventually.

“Okay, so!” I clapped, resulting in a strange metallic thud between Entropy and the H-TIG. I was tired, and forced enthusiasm into something I really didn’t want to do. “Skill path, right. So far, it's been pushing me towards cybernetics, if you couldn’t tell.”

He tilted his head, something that had to have been an everything gesture in his species. “What kinds of things did you get after it evolved? And, prior, obviously. What Neophyte’s did you get?” There was a weight in the pronunciation of the word. I didn’t think I could put that same gravitas on the word ‘Neophyte.’

My core throbbed a bit at his prodding, but I continued. “First one was ‘The Basics of Cybernetics,’ followed by… mana properties? I don’t remember exactly, but it told me how to change and affect mana with certain designs. The last one was about aesthetics, but I didn’t get to read it before then.”

“How significant are evolutions? How many am I expected to get over the course of my life?” Question for question.

“That depends. With the interface, whatever your species' expected life expectancy is will drastically increase. I, as I am, have gone through four, but if you focus on nothing but evolving your skill path you could have five, maybe six at this point. Oh- right, I’m {thirty-two years, seven months, and forty-two days} old!” That wasn’t as old as I expected. “Most people only ever get seven evolutions, however, and then develop in different ways. The interface doesn’t just provide skill path progression as rewards.”

I nod, before pointing at my eye. Taking a moment to explain each, Onyo becomes progressively more confused.

“Besides the eye, what did you do to where the interface gave you combat evolutions over combat? How does putting Pump of all things into someone increase their ability to craft? And this… arm.”

I shrugged at the man, nearly scratching the back of my head with the arm in question before slapping it down with the H-TIG. “I don’t know. I haven’t actually tested the adrenal glands yet. Though, could you explain what Pump is? The interface didn’t.”

“Ah, no. I’m afraid I won’t.” Not can’t. “Best not to ruin a gift.”

I decide to take the dogshit answer and throw it in the trash, activating the FIRRs as soon as the word ‘won’t’ reaches my head. With a push of mana down to the glands, the word slows, and a green haze takes over my vision before clearing slightly. I could barely see, and trying to move created an after-image like effect that made my head throb. My arms were boulders, and looking down at them only brought more confusion.

ODIIN was in overdrive; it was no longer just suggesting improvements but entire replacements. The note on The CURE was left the same, but it wasn’t just the H-TIG it was working on. My hips, my chest, my thighs, my nose. Every part of my body was getting a suggestion for a potential cybernetic upgrade. I shut off the thread, and forced ODIIN closed, raising my right hand over it. Another headache, and time returned to a steady pace.

“Jona Hall?” Onyo insisted on using my full name. “You’re bleeding.”

I looked down, raising my hand to my face and finding blood on the tips of steel fingers. I stared, for a moment, and then brought the blood over to The Cure and let it dry, and then shatter off my hand. It was the cleanest way to get rid of it, but there was a small weight and wetness on my upper lip that I couldn’t really do anything about.

I ripped off a piece of my shirt, wiped my face again, and let the blood reach its entropic end. Onyo just kind of looked at me, some emotion behind his eyes I couldn’t decipher. I was probably unnerving him, and I still felt disrespectful from having ignored the conversation with tests twice now. To be fair, he was holding things back from me, and I still had no reason to trust him.

“Shouldn’t be an issue. Just testing something.” I could be vague too. My voice felt like chalk on the back of my throat.

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I felt the weight on my head intensify for a moment, the connection feeling suddenly heavier, causing me to stumble slightly. Cascading with the feedback from the FIRR, and the goddamned Moon Walkers, I ended up falling and clutching at my head. There were two bugs attached to my head, and my vision split.

There was someone standing next to Onyo, but I couldn’t really make out their appearance between tears–why was I crying?–and the Pump still in my system. I heaved, once, twice, and then I got my abdomen under control. They were speaking to each other, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying; the glass of the cube was too thick. One of the connections snapped, and I was able to lift myself up, spinning.

“Sorry about that friend, didn’t realize {Shame} still had his connection going with you.” The interface wasn’t translating Onyo’s name again, likely because it was a manual setting the person speaking had to flip or something similar, and it was hurting my already pain-filled brain. The new voice was lower, raspy, and distinctly sleep-deprived, with a sedentary cadence and flow that was almost tragically musical.

They were standing a bit off from Onyo, chest facing out at an angle that kept the both of us addressed. Purple scales covered most of their body, with smooth spines coming out of each joint, reflecting the light cleanly. Their head was a strange mix between humanoid and sharkish, with a steadily rising overbite that led up to perfectly black eyes surrounded by yellow sclera. More than that, their already tall body was further silhouetted by two massive bat-like ears.

They stood up in the same way a dog would imitate their owner, resting on digitigrade legs that split into three talon-like masses with some kind of gland over the claw of each digit. Wrapped around their body were long arms that seemed better built for knuckle-walking than anything, but were far too lithe to be effective at it.

Over their shoulder was a body bag. It was so, so tiny, only slightly bigger than the new alien’s head, and they held it with no real care or grace beyond the fact it was an item they were tasked to transport. I could imagine my niece fighting inside of it. She wouldn’t have been given mercy, ‘death is a ladder’ afterall, and would be forced to die over and over again without an end in sight for another three days. How many times had she died by then?

Two more were on the steel floor, one roughly as big as Onyo and the other my size if a bit wider. Pseudo-corpses they may be, I grieved for them all the same. Not as one who lost a family member, but the expected emotion someone should feel when people suffer right in front of them.

I didn’t really process the fact I would be working on people for this. Half-dead people from another planet, granted, but people all the same. The fact they were in differently sized body bags made me sick.

The new person spoke, out loud, to Onyo–Shame, whatever the hell–again, side-eying me with bright yellow sclera. There was probably still a bit of blood on my face, and I felt distinctly self-conscious. I nearly rubbed off my upper lip with Entropy, before pulling out the H-TIG and Entropy blood removal combo instead.

They approached the door, shooing Onyo away, before pointing down at the terminal.

“If you need some more clothes, order them at the terminal. Along with any other supplies you need after this trial step.” Onyo paled, still somehow privy to the connection established between the stranger and I. Which… the new telepathic bug seemed to have a different flavor. It felt cold, numbing the attachment point. “What were you two talking about that caused you to bleed?”

They tilted their head, spines shaking with the movement, and I was genuinely boggled that it was such a consistent gesture between the two of them. Either they had known each other a long time, and shared body language. In no time at all, I would be doing the same.

“I… I tested something from a skill path evolution.”

Their mouth opened in an ‘o’ shape, after I had apparently given enough context. Was this common?

“Ah, {I see the cadence of your walk}.” The direct translations were not helping. I wanted to tear the interface out of my skull. There had to be a way to turn it down to where names are left alone, and proxy translations are used. “Did {Shame} tell you what your next trial step is?”

I nodded dully, sitting back down onto the cold metal ground of the cube and keeping the palm of Entropy on the fabricator. I was getting hit by emotion in waves, flip flopping from being fine, irritated, angry, and sad. If I stared hard and long enough that my remaining eye felt like it would pop out of my skull, the glass stopped being solid and turned into a simple color shift of the outside world.

“I… yes? I guess that’s yes.” They nodded, and I started questioning alien concepts of gender as they went to talk to Onyo.

He’s a he, right? But what connotations does that carry? An alien culture built off the backs of patriarchy with concepts of toxic masculinity in line with humanity’s understanding was practically impossible, but the interface didn’t have to make any wiggle room for the translation of the pronoun. It could have been arbitrary. ‘Male’ is a concept that exists because evolution decided that copulation was the optimal way for a species to thrive.

Or, old species did it enough that they outpaced the rest? I would have figured that asexual reproduction, like mitosis, would be quicker? Quality was the issue, if I remembered right. The issue of mutation and genetic variation was paramount for evolution and adaptability in a species. That was probably why the biggest of species used it. I couldn’t say for certain, I didn’t study this, but I met aliens and apparently they fucked.

Or, significantly less likely, they had concepts of gender that perfectly aligned with humanity’s. The latter made more sense, at least in the sense that sexual reproduction won out on another planet and permitted a species to gain similar concepts of gender.

Actually, I only had a sample size of one. For all I knew Onyo’s species and humanity were the only ones that boned. Not like the bastard would tell me the history of gender on his planet; he didn’t tell me what Pump was and the issues of gender were likely under that same umbrella.

Why didn’t he explain to me what Pump was? I sent a pip of mana up to the connection and asked the new person.

“What’s Pump?” The interface would provide the context for the rest of the question.

“What? Oh.” They glanced at me, remembering that I existed, likely. “It’s a drug. Something that gets smuggled all over the galaxy. Causes, if I remember right, some time dilation effect. I think it was made by a {time wizard}. Why do you ask-” Onyo pokes their side, getting their attention back, asking something. This continued for a moment, before the new alien turned back to me with an almost vulpine grin which stretched around their pointed skull oddly.

“{Blessed by those who…}, you sneaky {bastard}!” I mentally tuned out the long translation and listened to what they actually said. “That’s pretty funny. Don’t mind Onyo, he’s just a bit caught up in his vows. Enough talk though, I got to give you these bodies.”

They walked up to the glass door and took the body slung over their shoulder, before pressing it up against it and pushing it through. It flopped to the ground, skidding and landing right at my feet. I suddenly felt a lot more sick.