The dampener clicked three times before it died.

Mal counted each one, knowing the sound wasn't really there - just his auditory cortex trying to process the quantum shift of bacterial networks losing containment. Behind him, Serenity's recycling system gurgled.

That sound was real enough. The ship was digesting.

"Might want to get clear, sir." Zoe's voice carried that new hardness, the one that came from fighting your own neurons' desire to sync with the closest planetary consciousness. "Jayne's about to wake up."

The screaming started right on cue. 

Mal didn't turn around. Didn't need to. The bacterial colonies hijacking Jayne's pain centers would be lighting up his nerve endings like a Christmas cortex, trying to maximize his body's surface area for colonization. The real question was whether enough of Jayne's original consciousness would survive the integration to be useful.

Kaylee's voice crackled through the com, riding a wave of quantum-entangled bacterial transmissions that made Mal's teeth ache. "Cap'n, she's... she's changing things again. Down in the engine."

*She* wasn't Kaylee's usual term of endearment for the ship. This was something else. Something that had been growing in the waste recyclers, in the hydroponic filters, in every damp corner where bacterial colonies could set up their quantum networks.

"Tell me."

"The thrust ratios. She's... I think she's rewriting the laws of physics in there. Local space is getting real strange."

A wet thud behind him. Jayne had either gotten loose or finished his first transformation. Mal's hand found his pistol, though he knew it was about as useful as spitting on a forest fire. 

"Zoe?"

"He's integrated, sir. Partially. Still has his eyes, which is new."

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"That's because I asked nicely," River's voice drifted from somewhere above them. She'd taken to crawling through the ventilation system lately, saying something about better signal propagation through the confined spaces. "The colonies remember kindness. They remember everything. That's the problem."

Mal finally turned. Jayne was on his feet, swaying. The bacterial colonies under his skin created shifting patterns of iridescence, like oil on water. His eyes were indeed still there, but they weren't looking at anything in normal space-time.

"You with us, Jayne?"

Jayne's mouth opened. What came out wasn't words, exactly, but it wasn't the usual howling of a fresh integrate either. The sound carried information packets encoded in bacterial RNA, translating themselves directly into Mal's auditory nerves through the colonies he'd picked up on a dozen worlds.

*The Alliance ship is coming. But they're wrong about quarantine. Can't quarantine consciousness. Can't quarantine evolution.*

"Gorramit," Mal muttered, holstering his useless gun. "I was hoping to keep my original spine a few more days at least."

Something that might have been a laugh bubbled up from Jayne's transformed vocal cords. *They seeded the worlds to make them like Earth-that-was. But Earth-that-was already had its own ideas about consciousness. We just helped it spread.*

River dropped from the ceiling, her skin covered in equations that shifted and rewrote themselves as the bacterial colonies used her nervous system to process quantum calculations. "The verse isn't expanding," she said with uncharacteristic clarity. "It's thinking. And it's almost done."

The deck plating beneath them shuddered. In the engine room, Kaylee was probably watching laws of physics locally rewrite themselves as Serenity's bacterial consciousness integrated more fully with its mechanical systems. 

Through the viewscreen, Mal watched the Alliance cruiser approach. Its hull rippled with the same iridescent patterns that marked Jayne's skin. They weren't coming to impose quarantine. They were coming to join the conversation.

Inara appeared beside him, silent on bare feet. The Guild-regulated bacterial colonies in her system created fractals of light under her skin, more ordered than Jayne's chaos but no less alien.

"Your choice, Mal," she said softly. "Though I suppose 'choice' is a very human way of looking at it."

He nodded. Evolution didn't ask permission. Never had. 

"Tell Wash... tell whatever's left of Wash to take us in closer. If we're going to stop being human, might as well do it on our own terms."

River smiled, her teeth gleaming with quantum information. "There's no empty space," she said. "Never was. Just humans, too blind to see they were always part of someone else's nervous system."

The ship moved forward, carrying them toward transformation. Behind them, Jayne began to sing in RNA.