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“We rarely have a chamber dedicated to bonding, but it makes sense that’s what this is for.” He looked around. “Kelvane bonding rituals can be performed in groups, so this space would work.”

“Do neural signatures ever get stuck?” I asked.

“Not possible. When a crew leaves, the bond is terminated,” Rennick said.

“That sounds nasty,” Doc muttered over comms.

“Have you tried forcing a bond with her?” I asked.

Rennick looked away. “She won’t let me. And I’m not forcing a bond.”

“Good boy. No woman likes to be forced,” Doc said.

“Since the crew died so unexpectedly off the ship, would the recordings of their bond keep running?” I asked.

The hum from the floor changed pitch, sounding like a slow, heavy drum beat. The resin warmed, softening and shaping itself around my fingers before I could pull them free. The channels in the floor blazed white. Every alcove activated, filling the room with surgical brightness.

“Errr... what’s happening?” Doc asked. “Your heart rate is climbing. Oh, fuck! I don’t want to freak you out, but the ship’s neural matrix locked onto your signal. It looks like it’s... no, that can’t be right. Fuck! I think... I think it’s running a full bonding sequence on you.”

My hands wouldn’t come free. The resin held them, like fingers laced through mine. “It’s trying to bond with me? Make me a crew member?”

“Yeah. Get out of there! We don’t know if your biology can handle a full sequence. Cass, move your ass, now!” Doc yelled.

Cold slammed into me from every direction, driving the air out of my lungs. The platforms pulsed in sequence, and the hum became low and layered, like voices talking over each other.

A neural flash hit me like a bullet.

Fire. Fire everywhere, rolling through corridors, and Kelvane running for the room. The ship screaming and the doors sealing too late.

I gasped. My knees buckled just as the second flash hit.

A child’s voice, calling for someone. The ship searching, scanning, cycling through every room, looking for the signal that wasn’t there.

“Cass!” Doc’s voice was tight and distant, even though she was so close. “What’s going on?”

“I’m getting data.” My teeth chattered. “She’s showing me what happened.”

The third flash was different.

Two bodies in the dark. The alcove warm around them, resin glowing. His hands on her face, and the bond between them singing, a frequency that lived in the blood, in the space between heartbeats where want became need, became the only thing left in the room.

The sensation tore through my nervous system like a live current of electricity. A dead couple’s last memory of each other, and the ship played it through me at full volume.

His mouth against her throat, the sound she made, and how his body shook with the effort of being gentle when every nerve in him demanded more. The wanting was total. Consuming. A need that reorganized everything around the single fixed point of her underneath him, and it didn’t stop. It just kept building, wave after wave, too big to hold, too necessary to let go of.

My back arched. The sensation flooded every nerve ending, skin going hypersensitive, sweat breaking across my chest and down my spine. My hips rolled against nothing, and I bit down on the sound that tried to come out of my mouth.

More. Please. Right there. Don’t stop.

Not my thoughts. But my body responded like they were, heat coiling low and tight, thighs pressing together, my pulse hammering between my legs.

The memory fractured.

Smoke. The bond tearing. The second he lost her, and the ship recorded the frequency of a living Kelvane male’s nervous system breaking when the other half of him stopped existing.

I screamed. Grief hit so big it didn’t fit inside me. The ship, this beautiful, living thing, had held this pain for years, with no way to let it go.

The resin tore, strips of it clinging to my fingers as I stumbled back.