Santa Astarta. A name meant to evoke saints and purity. The reality was a seething, iridescent green hell.

My heart. Beating in a box, singing the same Milet chorus.

Doc Ba’s medical tricorder, the one device that still works, reads them all as having zero neural activity. Flatlines. But their bodies are breathing, metabolizing, repairing minor wounds with impossible speed. They are not dead. They are installed .