“The neuro-regeneration unit is prepared for you,” Vo says, handing me a sanitized cloth for my blood. “The ship's medical AI recommends immediate treatment for the crystal fragments.”
I shake my head. “Not yet. The pain helps.”
“Helps what? The guilt?”
“Not just the guilt.” I touch one of my wounds, feeling a sharp sting as a crystal shard penetrates deeper. “It helps me believe there's something more than this. More than life and death. If I can feel this—” Ipress harder into one of my wounds, welcoming the hot searing pain, “—then maybe there's meaning beyond the void.”
Vo looks troubled. “But humans don’t have souls.”
I shoot Vo a look to let him know he’s gone too far, but I don’t tell him about Autumn and how I found out she has a soul. He would think I’ve lost my mind.
“Respectfully, Sovereign,” he bows deeply and then leaves.
As I clean my self-inflicted wounds with blessed water from the shrine's dispenser, I find my thoughts wandering to the new human at the Celestial Spire. Eve Eden. Even her name sounds like a cruel cosmic joke, a garden of innocence in a galaxy of predators.
While I still feel the pain of what I have done, I want to lessen hers. I open my terminal and route directly into the Celestial Spire’s provisioning lattice.
EVE EDEN. HUMAN RECEPTIONIST.
I split the screen and pull my father’s household logs from an old archive. The older systems take longer to surface, written in an era when humans were kept deliberately small and deliberately dependent.
I find what I’m looking for.
NIGHT RATION — HUMAN-GRADE.
Reima Two vault batch.
One portion.
Night cycle only.
I scroll for the notes beneath the entry.
Human response improves when nourishment is warm.
Liquid calories reduce panic.
Calming.
I return to Eve Eden’s provisioning file and authorize a single amendment.
The system pauses.
THIS RATION IS FORBIDDEN
(CLASS 4 DRUG)
