Eve, Helen, and Sophia

With the water off, Samus remains a moment in front of the mirror. The glass which takes on a chilled, icy translucence when the shower is running clears instantly and lets her stare at herself. It's an aimless look, her eyes trailing sluggishly and almost tiredly from her own body to the seams of the wall behind her to the room around her. It's a gesture of surrender to her aimless thoughts. Not even really her mind trailing, more her mind trying to find a road to trail down and finding nothing.

She's a little wire-thin right now energy-wise, not in any sort of mood to be exercising. Even if she powered through it, she would probably just be upset with subpar results. Wire-thin mentally at the same time. A lot of hours to go, sleep pretty far from her mind, and nothing really coming into focus to spend the next few hours on. Pulled in a dozen ways at once, none of them strong enough to actually push her anywhere. Eyes semi-glazed, itching like she's going to cry but with no emotion behind them. Body in a half-tensed and half-slouched state. It makes what trace bits of fat on her body bunch in a way that displeases her. But she doesn't want to work out, which makes the displeasure worse. No matter how hard and how much she works herself, they're the last bits of grime that she can't wipe off. All of her effort to still bunch and bulge on a lazy day and then to feel bad about it. All of the modifications in the world don't fix the base machine. Her view of it is a little more abstract.

"Would you perhaps like to try going back to sleep, Samus?"

Samus grunts, grabbing the towel she's been neglecting and pressing her face into it, finding her skin getting close to dry by itself. After a moment she wraps it around her body and vents the already cooled steam from the room. The itch in her eyes fades, the malaise doesn't. This is the perfect kind of day to try getting a lot of boring stuff done. Either you get it done, or you get bored enough that you manage to go back to sleep. Win-win.

"Coffee," She grunts, stepping out of the bathroom and plopping down into her chair and pressing her fingers over her eyes again.

Something in one of the walls gurgles as Adam bleeps a confirmation. She spins side to side listlessly in her chair for a moment, slouching down, glancing at the screen.

"Do I have any emails?"

"In the last twenty-four emails, you have received more than-"

"Emails that matter?"

"Zero, Samus."

Samus grunts, "Any local work?"

"There are three pending internal mechanical errors that require your assistance, all of them are low-priority, Samus."

"Better than nothing, open the panels." She steps from the chair and gets a new suit from the wall. She really needs to get any other kind of clothes, that particular shade of blue is starting to numb your brain.

A trio of panels open in response, one in the floor, one on the wall near the headboard of her bed, and one near her chair containing a small glass bulb of black fluid. She grabs the bulb, takes a quick pull of too-hot fluid, then sets it on her terminal desk. A moment later, she steps over to where her suit is stored and opens a small panel next to it, pulling out a small bundle of tools. She steps back over to her desk and unravels the bundle, then grabs the bulb again and takes an even bigger pull. The liquid has cooled fast, but the heat still shocks her system and seems to descend down her throat into her stomach, which gurgles grumpily back up.

"What's the problem with this one?" She grunts as she gestures to the open panel on the floor.

"Non-rupturing crack on pipe C4008, red metal."

Samus grabs a tool from the bundle and toys with it in her hand, "Torch, then."

"C4008 is a fuel pipe, Samus."

"Not torch, then."

"I would advise nanite paste to fill the crack, but the fact that this is the third fracture of C4008 in a year's time suggests that you may want to seek a replacement in the near future."

"How long will that take?" Samus nurses the bulb of coffee.

"It will require a full down-cycle of the engine and systems, which cannot be done in under eight hours, it would be a full day's work, Samus."

"And how much do we think that'll cost?"

"The standard rate for such work is 48,000 Federation Credits."

Samus picks up a syringe with a small silver-and-black leak coming from the end, "Looks like we're counting on paste for a while."

Samus hops down into the open floor panel and sets her hand against the red metal pipe, continuing to nurse her coffee and carry the paste tube as best she can in her one free hand. She traces her hand along the pipe's surface for long enough to feel the crack, enjoying the soft vibration of the rushing fuel inside of it. When her suit snags, she leans in and finds the crack, then seals it.

"That register?"

"C4008 is no longer reporting failure, Samus."

Samus hops off of the floor under the floor and back onto the normal one, "Close it up then, and more coffee."

The wall gurgles again as Samus sets the empty bulb back where it came from, then sets the nanite tube back in the bundle.

A moment passes awkwardly before Adam chimes in, "Do you wish to continue repairs, Samus?"

"Coffee first."

The machine on the wall pumps more of the acidic fluid into her drinking bulb and she drinks that too. She works through each of the problems until Adam lets out a sound close to a contented sigh and plays a soft all-clear chime. She's going to sit back down when another chime plays and a new slot opens in one of the walls. She gets from her seat again happily and steps over to it, opening the package that has emerged from it as if delivered by some invisible intergalactic service and unpacking a clay pot with some preserved soil in it and unsticking the packet of seeds from the side of the vessel. After a moment of scrunching her face at it not being the whole, fully-grown plant, she decides that this way is more fun, anyway. She sits back down at the table and scoops a small hole into the dirt. When she opens the pack of seeds she finds more than one of them, so she makes a little hole in the dirt for each. When the hole is closed over each she pats the soil even and then drips some water from her pouch onto the small graves. A moment later, small buddings sprout from the dirt as seeds modified for expedience take hold in the soil in a stretch of time short enough to challenge the borders of biological possibility. She reaches out and brushes each little green leaf with a gloved hand that feels nothing but the presence of something else soft and living.

This is boring, almost maddeningly so.

This might be the first time that you've felt a real cabin fever sitting in her skull like this. Your previous progresses coming to naught can't be helping your sense that you're trapped in the belly of a machine slowly bleeding to death miles away from proper help. Water filling the lower cabins, liable to die before the ship even sinks. It's getting bad enough that the melodrama is starting to come forward again. You... seem to have adapted some of her coping mechanisms.

In a moment where she lacks focus you reach a hand between her legs, baiting the pain and getting it as you make a quick caress between her legs. It manifests a shiver up her spine before spiking a quick twinge of brain-cramping discomfort behind her eyes. She looks down at her hand, pulling it out from between her legs and flexing the digits in confusion. Looking at her hand like it's betraying her as the pain subsides. Eventually, she shrugs it off externally but not internally and pushes the coffee bulb back under the spout.

"More coffee."

You shudder slightly. The taste of that... fluid... is foul. And that's speaking as the same higher parasite that spent several generations as a hornoad. Of course, it isn't an even playing field, Samus has far more tastebuds and far more of a brain to process tastes and yet she still drinks things outwardly bitter and repellant. She's also drinking more of it today than she has in the past few days combined. Considering how badly it makes her stomach cramp up when she goes slightly above normal, she's going to be feeling this later.

And yet... energy is flowing, much more so than was before. You're waiting for the other shoe to drop, some Chozo-ingrained pain mechanism to arise in response to this reward cycle as well. But it never does. For the time being, at least, coffee provides an immediate and rewarding benefit. In some ways, better than sex. Which should really be more of an insult to sex, but is almost entirely a complement to coffee...

This too is inane. You shiver in her skull. You don't love how many of her meandering lines of mental filler you've started to emulate.

A gnawing weariness is starting to come over you on a grander level than even the great stretches of your previous lives could bear. Every higher function in the world has collided into a hodge-podge of new boredoms and nuisances. This species has conquered most of the known universe. Hundreds, if not thousands of planets. They have subjugated and purposefully bred other species for their own benefit.

But that is the collective, that is not the individual.

This individual life is a series of daily bars to be neglected or indulged. It is a series of things which need to be repaired, both internally and externally. Some part of the ship will always be breaking, malfunctioning, hitching somewhere in the process. There is no point of completion on the ship. You are well past the point of lamenting about your particular, neurotic specimen. Ocean under the moon, tide churning in isolation. Not something that should stop you. But at a certain point the answer becomes what the point of stopping you would be. What is this thing even good for, anyway? A species which so mastered their own external problems that they became a ganglion of every ecosystem they enter. Why preserve this meat? Outside of their ubiquity, all they pose to your kind is a series of mechanical systems complicated enough to be problematic on a micro level. Easier to just break and throw away. The joined mind of the X have some concept of diverging from their host. Not even just in the sense of free-floating, but to create an imitation of them. Usually it is done to flee a host in the presence of greater predators, but it could be done out of sheer boredom if things so demanded.

And it would be an easier thing to pilot than she is. Not so bound by the nagging back-mind of a suppressed personality or the uncontrollability of the current front-minded one. To have the benefits with none of the drawbacks. To walk and talk and fix problems on her ship and spread your influence as much as possible. That, in theory, is far closer to what you're looking for than what you've been given ever was. It would be easier to work with a version of Samus which was somewhere between the idea people have of her and a machine which you knew the controls to.

"Adam, can you run my weekly checkup ahead of schedule?"

The computer pauses, then chirps contentedly, "What seems to be the occasion, Samus?"

"No occasion."

"Are you feeling unwell, Samus?"

"Not bad, just different."

"Different enough to warrant running a checkup ahead of schedule, Sa-"

"Are you going to run it or not?" Samus scoffs. Even this, this little act of patter, feels like somebody is fighting her. The fact that even this can't be pushing a button and getting a result...

"Should I put something down as an official reason for the alteration, Samus?"

"Why would you need to? Who would be reading your logs to care?"

The computer paused for a minute, "I am not attempting to be combative, Samus, merely attempting posterity recordings of self-perceived wellbeing."

"I perceive my wellbeing to be good, but I want a checkup."

"Very well, please step over to the table and-"

"But same as usual, no needles, no probing, nothing like that." Samus blurts, suddenly apprehensive about the medical attention now that she has it. A panel on one of the walls has opened, revealing a sort of padded table about waist height. She sits on the end of it, then scoots along to set her head against the cushioned top. It's inclined steeply enough to not be great for resting, but that's not what it's for. A moment after she settles into place, it hums softly and a number of small mechanical arms and devices slide from beneath it. There's a momentary flash of panic that shoots through her. Lying on the belly of an insect, jointed cold limbs writhing in the air and trying to reach down at her. The hum of the machine motors like the throbbing of something in the throes of death. She knows better, closes her eyes, follows the memory to where it leads, imagines she's back. In a moment the fear becomes a numbness.

"Okay, Samus, I will continue to deliver the limited results that your approved list of tests can provide, as well as remind you to elect for the non-approved tests when you feel comfortable-"

"If I didn't approve them before, why would I ever change my mind?" She opens one eye again angrily, the sight of the machine arms shake her resolve.

"Some injuries sustained during the line of duty may have caused internal damages that cannot be tracked by the approved slot of tests, Samus. In regards to needles, a number of pre-landing vaccines could prepare for the eventuality of losing your armor while on mission. Your most recent and only blood draw was more than a year ago, a lot can change in that time and your blood is one of the first ways it would become medically apparent if something were wrong. Additionally, a new controlled blood draw could provide both a valuable baseline to measure against, if your situation changes from here-"

One of the arms presses a light against one ear, then the other. It presses firmly into the second ear, angling as if to try to look inside her head. For a moment, you feel a twinge of irrational panic, as if it's somehow going to see her brain and the non-tangible blob sitting inside of it. Before you can even remind yourself that isn't possible, Samus reaches up an arm to swat the light like a fly buzzing near her ear.

"Watch it," She grumbles. She closes both eyes again and tries to resettle. It isn't working. Now she's being touched directly and moved about. Things in her room at night, poking and prodding, waking up in cold sweats with new pinpricks.

"Apologies, I noticed a minor aberration on the tympanic membrane in one of your ears."

"Damage?"

"Not inasmuch as loss of hearing, more of a strain. Have you been popping your ears more than usual, Samus?"

"A little."

"It's not harmful in itself, but if done as a nervous tic, Samus, it can aggravate sensitive eardrums."

"Do I have that?"

"Your hearing tests above perfect for a human being, Samus, it has likely been augmented."

"So... yes?"

The computer paused for a moment, all the arms pausing with it, then it continued, "Yes, you have a more sensitive tympanic membrane, Samus. This enhances your ability to hear, but it also makes you more sensitive to both acute and chronic strain and rupturing if you don't take care of your ears."

"Have I not been doing that? Are my membranes strained and ruptured?"

The arms stopped again, "An acute strain, minor enough to sort itself out if not otherwise aggravated. Avoid loud noises such as the discharge of firearms in close proximity for at least twenty-four hours. I get the impression that you will be unsatisfied with a clean bill of health, Samus."

"I..." Samus starts to deny it, but something inside of her gives in, "I feel like something is wrong with me, but I'm not sure what." The bug beneath her twitches, sympathetic or fading, same difference.

Adam beeps concernedly, "Could you describe the feeling if asked, Samus?"

"It's a lot of things at once, and nothing at the same time. I'm not sure what to ask for."

The computer clicks to itself a few times, "Thank you for your honesty, Samus. Perhaps I can do the bare minimum of what would be needed to disprove anything serious, and work from there."

"That being?" Samus asks sheepishly.

"Please, allow me to collect a single blood sample. It will take only a second and illuminate more potential issues than any other pair of tests combined."

Not fading, thrashing again even if softly, fleshy belly rippling under her. Can't see the long, distended, fruit peel of a mouth. Likely on back of her neck. Sense of small things crawling down spine. Samus tries to push down the queasy feeling in her stomach, she manages to do it long enough to nod.

"Fine, make it quick."

One of the little arms rolls down her suit from her left shoulder very slightly, she starts to tense, then a visor descends and nearly covers her eyes almost entirely. A mass of little white letters and colorful pictures fill the screen, she blinks and tries to take them in as best as possible, but the information is scrolling fast.

"Please closely review the attached documentation before I continue with the procedure, Samus, when you are done, please give a verbal confirmation that you consent to what is in the documents."

"Wait! Dammit!" Samus yelps. A pause button pops up on her right side very quickly and she reaches her right arm up to press it, not even noticing the pinch of the needle as it pokes her left arm, draws a little blood, and then darts back out.

"Thank you for your cooperation, Samus" Adam pulls the visor away from her face. Her eyes quickly dart to the needle and she flinches, then she sees some of her blood already in the container.

She grumbles, glad to be past it, but some part of her subconscious still screams about how her arm has a hole in it. Previous crawling new dose of adrenaline. Strength returning, along with queasiness. Sense of injury, small fear of infection, both secondary. Bug enters final spasms.

"Your courage is commendable in any direct-combat situation, this is merely a unique case, Samus." Adam bleeps as he reads new data quietly.

Climbing down from defeated foe, finding first spot where she can take off her helmet. Vomiting. Eyes burning, swimming, head pounding. Less than commendable.

"Are you sure there isn't anything wrong with me?" Samus asks almost glumly.

The computer considers for a moment before responding dismissively "As certain as I can be with the limited slate of tests."

"And what do you think the chances are that the expanded tests would find something?"

"Fifteen percent."

"And how confident are you in the thing you think is probably wrong with me"

"Forty percent."

"I like those odds," Samus leans back into the medical seat again, "Measure me non-invasively for whatever that is."

The computer pauses for a long moment, none of the medical arms make a noise or shift. When something finally happens, it's the hum of the speech synthesis fading out, replaced by the computer playing soft, airy music over the intercom. Despite being human music, it's as alien to her as it is to you. Apparently classic human music isn't one of the avenues of study she's gotten around to.

"Adam."

He doesn't stop the music, "Yes, Samus?"

"What is this?"

"This is music, Samus."

"How is this treating me?"

"My leading diagnosis that wasn't a clean bill of health was psychosomatic symptoms as a result of anxiety and hypochondria, music has been shown to alleviate anxiety, Samus."

"So you're saying it's all in my head?" Her voice is rising again, taking on those notes of incredulity. A couple of familiar hormones begin to flow, as aggravated by her own tone of voice as they are the motivating issue. It's not just that she's getting angry, she's making herself angrier. This isn't fully unconscious either. Several of Adam's previous remarks in this conversation alone have caused singularly the raise in her voice or the spike in cortisol, but with those, she stepped back from elevating it. She's not just making herself angry on purpose, she's doing so with purpose. This is her way of picking a fight.

Adam, as he has done systematically so far in these cases, backs down. The music fades out before he responds, eternally calmly, "On the contrary, anxiety and stress-based conditions are just as serious as many forms of active malady. While you may not see value in actions taken to reduce stress, partaking in them can clear the mind and avoid flare-ups of anxiety. It can also aid the symptoms of hypochondria and anxiety, conditions that you may not be physically symptomatic for-"

She takes a breath, the cold scientific stuff winds her down better than any amount of soft words because it bores her. It smears her source of anger too wide and keeps her from holding it on the source. It's how the Chozo were. Probably the only reason she hasn't made good on her threat of unplugging Adam yet. But more than the soft scientific stuff, it's apologetic without stepping out of the role of cold, adult, and reasonable. Sometimes, she wants the computer to bow and apologize, sometimes she wants an explanation, sometimes she wants to be told why she's wrong. Just depends on what button gets pushed. Lots of buttons, but the computer hasn't missed so far. You would be curious to get a feel for whatever mind it has, likely both fantastically simplistic by comparison but complicated enough to deal with these creatures. Admirable traits, envious ones.

"So say it is anxiety, say it is stress causing it. Why now? Why are my usual relaxation techniques not working like they should? Like they have been?"

Adam pauses, taking a conversational tone, "From a biological standpoint, your blood is testing higher for multiple hormones than the previous test."

"And that's not cause for concern? That wasn't worth bringing up as soon as you found it after jabbing a needle into me?"

"On the contrary," Adam chirps, seeming to understand that her anger has passed, pushing back as the cold adult again, "If endocrinology were as simple as having an actual desirable baseline, your previous standards were well below it, Samus."

"Yes, we talked about this, I was given genetic modification."

"It was on record. The most notable thing from your new tests is that your new baseline is actually in the low normal for your age."

Samus pauses, chewing his words. It doesn't make a lot of sense.

"So... what? The modification wore off? Stopped working?"

"Unclear. A previous genetic alteration in your pituitary gland appears to have been... disabled."

"Disabled?" Samus almost chokes, "As in turned off? Didn't fail?"

"The protein strands in question haven't been altered in makeup, they've simply been overridden. The Chozo's unique genetic editing procedures could, in theory, make them work as before again with no issue."

"Is this the same alteration I had you record when you were first installed?"

"Affirmative."

"The one that you told me that you could disable, but I asked to remain in place?"

The computer pauses for a long time, Samus implies a good deal of accusation without saying anything direct. She also knows that Adam knows what she was implying.

For once, apologetic, pleading, "Affirmative. However, no alteration was made."

"So did it just... fail on its own?"

"Fail is perhaps an imprecise term for it, but effectively, yes."

"And have any of the other Chozo modifications failed?"

Adam pauses, back to conversational, "That is not a simple question to answer."

"Simplify the answer you want to give."

"The short answer is yes, but that does not imply what it may seem."

Samus narrowed her eyes, "How is yes not a yes?"

"The question you asked was slightly more complex than a basic yes or no. Many of the Chozo modifications in your body were already in a failed state when you were first measured or have failed by natural causes with a definitive explanation."

"What do you mean?"

"While some of your modifications are intended to be lifelong and would be unchallenged by natural processes, alteration of telomere decay cycles to give extended youth, bone plate fusion inhibitors lending to increased height and flexibility-"

"I know about that stuff, believe me. If the Federation had their way, I would be spending the rest of my life on a table in a lab."

"-some modifications were timed to fail naturally, allowing for more healthy function. Immuno-boosters that only protected against the environments present on Zebes failed around the time you set out on your own. Meanwhile, some pain inhibitors, while not explicitly designed to fail, were worn down by years of damage received in your line of work."

"That's... ominous."

"It is something to be monitored, usually the process happens in reverse, with humans becoming less sensitive as they age. For you, you will begin to experience physical sensation more as time goes on until you begin the same decay processes."

"So this other blocker, can't you assume it failed like that?"

"Comparing the function and application of the two would be erroneous. While the pain inhibitors were meant to reduce without removing, the hormonal blocker was intended to block all but the absolute biological baseline. Pain serves an immediate combat function, hormonal balance does not."

"Doesn't mean it couldn't fail naturally."

"My models put it at happening at a rate of a hundred years as opposed to two dozen. Barring pregnancy-"

"Now hold on!" Samus jolted out of her seat.

"The user is not pregnant, meaning such an occurrence remains only in the realm of the hypothetical."

Samus paused for a long moment, chewing the inside of one of her cheeks lightly.

"So it just... failed. Prompted by nothing, without anything else failing alongside it?"

"It needs to be considered as a possibility. It happening apropos of nothing seems to be the most likely situation."

"And the other possibilities?"

"Unlikely, and undesirable."

"Don't be vague with me."

"Any number of early-stage hormonal disorders or cancers could be executing unforeseen effects on the body with none of the standard warning signs. It's astronomically unlikely, but somebody in your line of work would be the most likely patient zero of previously unrecorded symptom groupings."

"So either some of the Chozo genes in my body or some of the human genes in my body just stopped working suddenly," Samus sighed heavily.

"At naught point two percent and naught point two to the fifteenth power percent, those remain the two likeliest options."

Samus crossed her arms, "We know that it's off, why are the chances of the two likeliest options that low?"

"Correction, they're extremely high considering the number of possibilities."

"So we have no idea."

"We have more than thirteen trillion ideas of equal statistical irrelevance."

"Got any gut feelings?"

"Based on the layout of this ship, the closest approximation to where my stomach would be is the waste disposal system."

Samus cleared her throat embarrassedly, "Well, is there anything... wrong with that?"

"I conduct routine scans of-"

Samus suddenly jumped up off of the cot, her mind immediately conjuring an image of some mechanical eye aimed directly at her while she's on the toilet "Oh, you had better not!"

Adam paused, then finished "Waste material once it has left the body."

Samus's ears suddenly went red, "Can't you just jettison that... stuff... into space like a normal ship?"

"Routine waste inspections are one of the best non-invasive ways to check for many life-threatening illnesses."

Samus grumbled under her breath and grabbed a pouch of water, as if it could wash down the dirty feeling in her... everything.

"Well, if you're just going to rip the bandage off like that, have you found anything in... that?"

"Negative, due to the serious nature of such conditions, you would be informed the moment the scan turned up something. Your most recent scans tested negative for micro-bloods, compaction, and parasites."

Samus popped the straw of the water pouch out of her mouth thoughtfully, "I'm going to ignore those other two, what if it's a parasite?"

"There are currently no known parasites that can evade direct scans, blood tests, and waste monitoring."

"What about unknown parasites?"

You groan internally, if Adam could sigh, he probably would. You aren't certain the quiet background hum of speech synthesis isn't him just constantly sighing.

"Then it would be unknown, Samus."

"What are the most common symptoms of having a parasite?"

"Stomach cramps and pain, weight loss, nausea and vomiting, dehydration, swollen lymph nodes-"

"I have some of those."

"Correct, but do you have a substantial number?"

"What about parts of you moving seemingly on their own? Weird dreams? Hearing things?"

"Negative, those symptoms line up more with a haunting than any form of parasitism."

"So what if we're haunted?"

Adam paused again, the hum of static seeming to give the longest and heaviest sigh in recorded history.

"Am I required to give an answer to that question?"

"I've seen ghosts before! That should be in your records as well!"

"It is."

"Then how do you know it isn't that?"

Another pause, "It cannot be ruled out, however, I find the concept of a ghost inhabiting a vehicle perplexing, Samus."

"But we can't know?"

Adam sighs defeatedly, "No, we can't."

Samus sips her water contentedly. For whatever reason, gently and continually antagonizing Adam can brighten her mood sometimes. Adam, seeing her mood improved and denoting his job as both doctor and psychiatrist done, clicks off. She spends the rest of the day half-contented with her own answers but still quietly burned by the notion of something being wrong and out of her control.

You remember the puppet. There are limitations to it compared to making her work for you, but there are limitations to her as well. The downsides of the puppet outnumber the downsides of controlling her, even if doing so takes several years of both of your lives. But there is the problem. The puppet has a shelf life. Waiting too long to make it could mean being stuck with a bad or a worse choice of staying in an ailing body or jumping to an imperfect clone. But just making it now before you've really exerted yourself for control... both options done with less than full commitment are bad choices. What you wouldn't give to be in the head of a human that you could just make do what you need...

The clone must be a last resort. Leaving aside that half of a Samus is still more powerful than most creatures in the galaxy, the clone at a certain point is little more than a human bomb. If the goal is just to spread up and out of her, there's no reason you can't get that modicum of victory. Until you have failed in every meaningful sense of the word with the genuine article, the clone must be seen as the admission of defeat.

And still, you quietly make the checklist of what you would need to do it as she drifts to sleep, grinding her teeth as she thinks about what would happen to her if she didn't wake up.