Kiru stepped into the lab with trepidation. By now it was very hard for her to distract herself. Her instincts were screaming at her, that she was walking right into the heart of a beast’s den. Kiru just didn’t see any way to avoid her fate. No way to escape whatever the AI wanted of her.

Glancing around she noticed tube after tube in which the form of a small infant could be seen floating in a swirling gold and blue mix of thick fluids. The fluid made it hard to make out details beyond the fact that they were infants. At least, she thought they were infants. The hologram noticed her looking and said, “Those are Biomechs, scout class to be specific. You will learn more about them later, these were started shortly before I collected you.”

“Biomech? What is that?”

“Biomechanical machines, roughly analogous to cyborgs. The main difference being they are machines with organic components, whereas cyborgs are people augmented with machines. Ours are self-replicating, but these pods can grow them faster. Reducing a process that would take about five years and three months for a mature specimen, to a mere thirty-two hours.”

That was frightening. It occurred to her that she was looking at the start of an army. This room was large, and there were hundreds of pods here. With a ship this large, there could be thousands of pods, each with a baby biomech in it. Although just having the manpower wasn’t all that was needed for an army. Troops needed supplies, like weapons, and armor. More importantly, they need food. An army can’t fight effectively on an empty stomach.

Kiru was led around the pods, and into the back of the room. Where she noticed a number of beds surrounded by strange equipment, and a couple of drones of a different design. Now the alarms were beyond shouting in her mind, and not even the biomechs could serve as a distraction. Every fiber of her being was telling her to run. She sensed the drones escorting her shift in their movements as if getting ready to catch her if she bolted. They were now entirely too close to her for comfort.

The hologram pointed at the fifth bed, and said, “lay down there, and we can get started.”

She froze and shook her head. The last thing Kiru wanted to do was lie down on one of those beds. The hologram gave her a look, one that reminded her of a mother looking at a petulant child. “You either lay down on your own, or I will pacify you and my drones will lay you there. You won’t like it if I have to pacify you, and if you cooperate I’ll give you limited freedom. Either way, you will be on that table in the next five minutes.”

That was a threat. She knew it was one, but her instincts told her it was no empty one. Kiru wasn’t sure she wanted to know what the hologram meant about pacifying her. For a moment, she just stood there, but then she took a hesitant step forward. Then another, and another. Slowly she approached the bed, her gaze darting around. Her mind frantically trying to find a way out, but not seeing one. The freedom was tempting but all she really wanted was a way out. Unfortunately, she could not see one. The drones were too close, the cover was limited. She had no idea if there weren’t hidden weapons emplacements in the room. Not that the cover even mattered, she highly doubted she could take more than three steps before they shot her.

She was feeling quite trapped when she reached the bed. She paused at the foot of the strange bed, finding it difficult to keep moving. A sudden pressure on her back nearly made her jump. It was one of the drones using its tendrils to give her a push. The force became a little more insistent, and with great reluctance, she climbed onto the bed. Kiru was exactly where that alien computer wanted her, but she didn’t see a way out of it. Fighting was pointless, there was nowhere to hide, nowhere to run, she didn’t know what to do. Not even her training gave her a way out. Then again her training assumed she would be fighting organic opponents, not super-advanced machines. If the guards were Erali and not drones she could have thought up a half dozen ways to escape, already. The same case, if they were fellow Neku. Floating glowing blue spheres with a skirt of glowing tendrils? That was a blank, she had no idea how to fight those. Last time she had faced just one, and it stunned her entire bridge crew. None of their weapons had been effective, and she just couldn’t see her bare hands being more effective than a plasma pistol.

Despite knowing those courses were futile, she was tempted to take them. However, she did not take those courses of action and instead climbed onto the bed. A decision she barely had time to regret before her choices no longer mattered. 

An arm suddenly shot from above and pressed something against her neck. The two drones to the side deployed their arms, catching her as she started to pitch forward. Her mind was in full panic, she barely felt the arms. Her body had stopped responding to her completely. She still felt the drones touching her naked flesh, but there was a distance to it. As if she was merely an observer, and her body was no longer hers, but someone else’s. It was strange and very distressing.

The drones positioned her carefully on the bed. Kiru desperately tried to command her body to move, but it would not. Megumi’s hologram vanished, and a piece of gentle calming music began to play. One she had never heard before and didn’t really pay attention to either.

Instead, she watched the med-drones that positioned her step back. From above several arms, descended. The first arm began by spraying her with something. What, she had no idea. That was followed by a ray of light sweeping over her body, at least it looked like light. As it passed over her the foamy liquid broke down and vanished. 

Those first arms retracted after that, and a new set descended to work over her body. She watched in horror as they started to skin her. It was beyond surreal, she felt pain but it was very distant. As if it was happening to someone else, and she was just feeling a sympathetic reaction. The arms were simply pulling her skin off her body, as if they were unwrapping a piece of candy. The complete lack of blood just made it far more disturbing. Part of her wanted to move just so she could get a better look at what they were doing to her, and another didn’t. Not that it mattered, she couldn’t move. Whatever they did to her had paralyzed her.

Perhaps it was a good thing that she couldn’t see everything they were doing, but her curious side was winning. Perhaps it had to do with how distant everything felt, but she wanted to know what they were doing. Somehow the machines must have picked up on that thought, as a holographic mirror suddenly projected itself above. Reflecting exactly what they were doing to her.

She had been briefly shifted onto her side, while she wasn’t paying attention. Now the arms were laying her back down. All her skin, hair, and fur was gone. It was disturbing, but also strangely intriguing. She could see every muscle, and every organ reflected in that mirror.

Tubes were being inserted into her body. At the same time, she watched as the arms began removing organs from her body. Seeing it happen was strange, and worse she couldn’t even feel it happening. She could see it, but Kiru thought she should feel something more if someone was actively removing her organs. She barely even noticed when they removed her rib cage and breasts.

In moments, the arms emptied her torso of organs. Everything had been removed. Nothing had been left in there. Her medic training told her that should be fatal, but she was still strangely alive and conscious. The tubes had to be keeping her alive. The complete lack of bleeding was shocking as well. She didn’t even know how they were doing that, but it just made this far more surreal. In fact, she was starting to think this wasn’t even real, but just a bizarre nightmare.

However, it seemed they hadn’t removed enough. The arms shifted their focus, and she watched incredulously as both her arms and legs were surgically removed. Both arms were separated from her body at the shoulder, and a similar thing happened with her legs.

A part of her expected them to amputate her tail next, but strangely the arms retracted up. Leaving her tail completely alone. One of the med drones moved back into view, and it began installing devices into her empty torso. The second drone approached her head, and she watched as it opened up her skull. Two arms used a pair of lasers to cut open the top of her skull. Then it gently lifted the entire top of her skull away. 

Smaller more delicate arms reached into her head and started to do things she couldn’t see. The machine was doing something to her brain, and she couldn’t even see what it was doing. She decided to watch the other one, as it set up an array of strange machinery in her torso. Identifying these implants was beyond her, but she noticed all of it looked somewhat organic. None of what she saw was familiar.

Before she knew it, the drone was done. It moved away, and then came back instantly with what were clearly her organs, floating in a tank. Just not all of them. Her liver and kidneys for example were strangely missing. In fact, most of her organs were missing. Although a part of her was relieved when she saw her uterus, and ovaries floating in the tank. It removed the worry that she might never have the chance to be a mother. The machines had not sterilized her. Not permanently anyway.

With a clearly delicate touch, she watched the drone restore her organs to her body. It started with her heart and lungs, although she noted both organs looked a little different. Something may have been done to them, but she didn’t know what. Little did she realize that these were actually newly grown with enhanced DNA and function. All of her organs were, including the reproductive organs she was glad to see again.

Once her organs were reseated, a number of alien devices were hooked up to them, and the life support tubes were removed, and then the drone stepped away. Quickly leaving her sight, before returning an instant later with a pair of tanks. This time, the tanks contained her arms and legs. Although she noticed her skin was back on them. It was clear they had restored the skin, while out of sight, but she had no idea why they had been removed in the first place. If she had made the small leap, she would have realized they amputated her limbs to replace them. These were not her original arms and legs. They were force-grown and enhanced replacements. Grown from the ground up with a number of implants, making them rather akin to biomech limbs.

It wasn’t the first time she had seen a limb be surgically reattached, and the process was surprisingly similar to what she had seen before. Followed by that, the drone turned and briefly left her sight. Coming back into sight with a tank containing her missing breasts and ribcage. Again she noticed that the skin had been restored on that missing part of her body. Kiru once again failed to realize what that meant though. The drone simply went about reattaching it with mechanical precision.

Then it stepped back, and a few moments after that, the other drone proceeded to reattach the top of her skull. She was quite relieved to see it no longer rooting around in her head. A part of her didn’t even want to think about what it was doing in there. At least the procedure seemed to be almost over.

As soon as the med drones were clear, the arms above descended. They again sprayed her body with some kind of foam. This one was different. It was a thick silvery blue and not the silver-grey color the first foam was. She was quickly coated with it from head to toe. Then a light ran over her body making it vanish in an instant. As it passed it revealed beautiful perfect skin where previously there was none. No hair came back though. 

A second treatment occurred using a greenish foam that was applied and where it was applied her hair grew back in an instant. Soon she had hair, and fur back again. Reflected in the holographic mirror, she looked normal again. Although she would not have called that a simple procedure. Yet, it didn’t seem to be done.

A forcefield suddenly sprang around her, and several restraints wrapped themselves around her. The whole bed began to reorient itself, and from below it began to fill with that same fluid she saw earlier. Her mind quickly realized that the bed was also one of the pods she had seen earlier. As the fluid climbed slowly, she started to feel very tired. At the same moment, she started to become more aware of her body. It was still distant, but not as distant as before. Aches she had not been aware of before, were becoming apparent.

That urge to sleep was so strong though, that she was having a hard time fighting it. She nodded off several times, and each time she stirred the fluid had risen noticeably. The first time, it had passed her knees, the second it had passed her hips, and the last time she briefly stirred the fluid had just passed her shoulders. When the darkness greeted her again, she didn’t wake again that day.