I fought against the creature with every ounce of my strength. Finally, I made it through, sliding into something wet and warm. The increasing anxiety that had been building within me finally eased as I reached out my arms, sliding them through the insides of the animal. Slippery blood, feeling organs and tissues, I could only imagine what any of this looked like. I found bone. I found a familiar-shaped thing, a spiral cord. Something I had held for so very long. I wrapped myself around it and held tight.

  Everything tasted of pain and fear, sensations buzzing through me. Light, sound, smell, everything I had learned I lacked cascaded into me painfully. I opened eyes that were not my own. The first thing I saw was metal. Gray and lifeless. Then I saw myself, no, what I was now in, what I now puppeted.

  Furry and small, strange crooked front paws that twitched uselessly as I tried to understand them. Legs unwilling to respond beneath me, I wasn’t shaped right… I wasn’t shaped like a human. I tried to stand, a new limb long and heavy behind me. I only succeeded in falling over. My mouth was full of sharp, unfamiliar teeth. Everything smelled so earthy and rich.

  Weeks ago, I would have surely gone crazy at the situation I found myself in. Yet I was so grateful to see again that I was almost willing to put anything behind me. I looked around, looked up, and I saw her.

  Nicole.

  A sound came out of me. Not a human sound. Not any kind of words which I might have tried to speak. Something utterly wrong.

  But Nicole was there. I had known she would be. She had always been there.

  From the moment I had finally stopped being me, and started being this other small, blind, deaf thing shrouded in darkness, too many arms with which to feel around itself. My… second brain. Not a brain but a thing, a transplanted other thing put into me that was now its own thing, separate.

  Dying had been shockingly peaceful. It had been sad. Suddenly trapped within nothingness had been scary, slowly beginning to understand what I felt around me, the vibrations, the new limbs. Learning how to move, to realize that I was a whole other body. Searching for a way out, pressing through rubbery, slick substances, and fleshy, wet things that I forced myself through, sliding and gliding up and out. Towards where I could almost taste air.

  When I popped out, the space felt suffocating. So much nothing, blindness to the only real sense I had, touch. Then something had grabbed me, terror had turned into utter hopelessness, even as I fought back with all my strength, it gripped me, and it did not let go.

  But I wasn’t dead, as much as it had initially hurt, I hadn’t died. And as I gripped the thing that held me, I felt fingers, a hand. In that very moment, I finally understood I was something else, something… small and helpless, something inhuman despite everything I knew.

  And then I felt something hopeful. Something that would have brought tears to my eyes had I had eyes in the first place. A palm, but not just any palm, one I had held countless times before. A familiar line through it where artificial skin had been sealed tight, a line I had traced with my thumb countless times to remind myself that Nicole was there.

  Nicole was the one who held me. The first thing I saw when I was born, the first thing I felt when I was reborn. She was always there.

  I tried to find ways to tell her, to communicate. I mimicked the tapping I had felt when she had sedated me, the vibrations I had not understood until then. Pat pat, pat pat, pat pat.

  But I could not tap, I could only squeeze. Squeeze again and again and pray Nicole understood. Pray that she would not be horrified by what I was, or worse, never know in the first place. I was not dead, and yet she might never know. She would grieve me while I was right there. Or she would crush me beneath her boot, my truth taken to the grave.

  Yet I had continued to live. Eventually, I found myself in a new place. The only sensation was the smooth walls all around me, a slight crevice that I would push with all my might to open and never succeed. But sometimes it opened, sometimes I would be released, and the hand of God would reach out to me. But it was never God; it was always Nicole. I checked every time. It was always Nicole.

  I grew hungry, my skin tasting everything I touched as if it were a mouth. As if my instinctual drives had been answered, my searching tentacles found something cool and rich. I knew not what it was even as I absorbed it. My body was acting on muscle memory I did not even know I had. Consuming, feeding. It did not taste like anything I understood except food. But I knew where I had come from. I could guess what food was.

  Nicole would feed me. Time was impossible to make any sense of. But then she would feed me. Her presence became the way I centered my understanding of the world. Eventually, she gave me other things, squishy and soft, tasting of food, but I had no mouth with which to eat.

  I had tried. But a mouth would have been used for so much more.

  I had no mouth with which to scream.

  So I settled on arranging the bits into shapes. Something that would surely be noticed. At least I hoped so. But I still didn’t understand how to move. It took so much practice, mental fatigue weighing me down. Eventually, I made a star; I was so proud. Did Nicole know? Was she proud of me? Did she understand?

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The questions remained unanswered, and the longer I remained this small blind thing, the more I feared it’s all I would ever be. Again and again, I would bask in her presence only to be once again put back in that smooth smooth prison. Eventually, it mattered not how much she fed me; I stopped feeling better.

  No pain, mercifully, it did not hurt. Just exhaustion. My skin was too dry. My body ached for something. I slept, and when I woke, it was not so different from sleeping, but in dreams, I could see. The waking world was a void, and sleep was an escape.

  And then now happened. Once again, a hand came down to soothe me. This time, bringing me somewhere to something. A living thing. It tasted of things that sent a certain thrill through me, made whatever organ functioned as a heart inside me beat faster. A host, that's what I realized I was sensing. A suitable host. I fought my way into it, following alien instincts that told me what to do and how.

  And now I was a different thing. Staring at such a familiar face. Nicole’s hair was different, and her clothes were all black. Everything about her was dark and angry. Sad. She looked sad.

  I was in a cage of some kind. Inside a… tent? Nicole was big, not big enough to pick me up with one hand, but she towered over me regardless. I was in a bigger thing, a bigger body. I was furry, I had a tail. I shook out my neck, something coarse shifting from the movement along the back of my head.

  Nicole said nothing. I longed to hear her voice.

  Yet something haunting settled in, a realization. She did not recognize me. She looked at me now the way she looked at everyone else. Though with more curiosity, definitely more frowning. No comprehension or kindness.

  That was the worst part of all of this. Not losing my humanity, but being set aside – being forgotten. I did not know how long, but time had passed. The last thing I had seen was the shuttle, and yet this was N7. I could… smell the planet. The salvage mission must have been a success.

  That was… good.

  Everyone must have thought I was dead. Most importantly, Nicole must think I was dead. And Tobias, Stephan, all sorts of other people. But I thought about none of them as much as I worried about Nicole.

  Nicole did not recognize me. How could I fix that? I needed to fix that. Desperately so.

  I could see now. I was a… well, I didn’t know what I was, but I was more than I had been for a long time. I could see, I could make sounds, I could do so many more things. Somehow, I had to make her understand.

  If only I knew how to read and write. This should have been such a simple thing to solve. I had claw paw things, and I could draw a few lines. But I didn’t know how to infuse them with meaning. How did people make scribbles… work?

  Obviously, I had seen words before. I had seen people write and read. But I was just another thing that I didn’t understand. Yet another thing no one would teach me.

  I should have asked Nicole to teach me.

  But… back on the Euphorion, I had been given an identification card. It had my picture, my name and all sorts of other stuff on it. I didn’t know how to write it, but I remembered what it had looked like. Surely that would be proof enough.

  I couldn’t scratch anything into the metal floor I lay on. And I couldn't even balance long enough to walk to the edge. Nicole began to move, picking up a stick with something pointy at the end as she undid the latch to open the cage.

  Oh no. I didn’t have time. Panicking, I scrambled to think of anything. A gesture, a sound, a pattern, something that Nicole would understand. I looked at my paw hand things… they… I had kinda thumbs. Not proper ones, but five digits with one weirdly sideways.

  I had pinkies… ish. My palms faced outward, but I found I could rotate my wrists to clasp my hands. I fumbled, trying and trying until finally I managed to hook my pinky fingers together and help them up towards Nicole proudly.

  She continued to frown, but did not bring the pointy needle stick any closer.

  My crossed pinkies fell apart, and I scrambled to rehook them. Then I made a fist, keeping one finger extended to point at her, then after a moment pointed at myself. Then I crossed my pinkies again.

  Nicole began to shake her head. So I nodded. Nicole stopped shaking her head. So I stopped nodding. I was clutching at straws, trying to mimic human things as best I could. I had claws, so I made my paws point again and tapped the metal floor in the pattern I had done before.

  Tap tap.

  Pause.

  Tap tap.

  Pause.

  Tap tap.

  Nicole flicked the latch and swung open the cage lid. The clang made me shrink a little. I was momentarily distracted by how low my neck could go before I saw Nicole slowly reaching into the cage.

  I nodded encouragingly. Once again attempting to get my feet under me to stand. I managed to get my body up, my tail swivelling to try and balance before I fell back over. I let out a strange grunt of pain, my arms utterly useless at supporting myself.

  Nicole stopped reaching down, hand pulling back hesitantly, uncertainly.

  I started up my tapping again.

  Tap tap.

  Pause.

  Tap tap.

  Pause.

  Tap tap.

  Determinedly, I continued.

  Point, point, pinky cross.

  Nicole sucked in a breath. “You… no…” she cut herself off, pulling her hand away as she almost stumbled backwards. She just stared at me.

  My heart felt like it was breaking all over. I let out a weird stuttering hollow whine, opening and closing my paws in a grabby motion as I held them out.

  Nicole ground her teeth, looking… scared. I didn’t understand why. Why was she scared?

  Before I could figure that out, she turned and fled the tent, leaving me alone. My hope deflated.

  My chest really hurt. Oh… right. The whole… crawling into me thing. Ouch. I reached up to itch my snout. My body was so strange. There was one saving grace in this. The cage lid was still open.