Zoe and Chloe stop by

You're in the middle of your meal, which both you and Ela were simultaneously enjoying, when you heard the beep of the keypad on the outside of the lab, and both Dr. Hildebrand and Dr. Walker enter.

"Oh, trying the full bodysuit technique today?" Zoe said, beaming. You didn't know how she knew, but there must have been some sign a bodysuit could recognize when another is being worn.

"I am!" said the disembodied voice of Ela. Even Zoe didn't seem to expect that, since you were still fully in the middle of a mouthful of toast by the time she spoke. "I tried to cook, but this way, Emily was able to help me."

Zoe came over to take a look at you carefully, poking around. "Interesting. How are you vocalizing right now? Usually I can only talk to my wearer."

"It's like... thousands of tiny mouths moving at once on a large surface meant to be too small to even really notice, does that make sense? Instead of one big one. So I don't disturb Emily, I'm using the clothing fabric to do that." Ela pauses. "I can make one big one if it would be easier while Emily continues to eat?"

"Interesting, but no need. ...I'm not even here to be observing you two over breakfast, I'm sorry."

You shrugged, and set your fork down, looking at the doctors. "I'm not going to complain about your observations off-hours, I doubt Ela would either, so it's not a big deal. Was there something you needed from us?"

Chloe stepped over, taking a seat across from you. "We had two things we wanted to discuss. One is something that should be taken care of this week, the other is optional, but we think it will be helpful. First... we need to get Ela in the system so she can work on official lab projects, and so we can get you both situated in Lab 5 as your primary workstation. It's actually really convenient that you're trying the bodysuit thing, since you can help us show Ela around and help her fit in. You know all the protocols and such that we haven't taught her yet."

You nodded, finishing up another bite of breakfast. "Yeah, I can easily show her things. I'm guessing also get a badge photo, and everything?" Chloe nodded, and you quickly took a sip of orange juice. "How sneaky should we be with this? Like, should we go down disguised as me, and then Ela comes through the front door?"

"That's probably a good idea," Zoe said. "We do have a private path for going in and out, but getting on the security cameras helps those who know what we're doing have some plausible deniability to those who might think we're spies, or discover secrets and contact the news organizations, all that. Making everything seem mundane and routine is how we avoid those problems, so having you two just show up like this downstairs might turn some heads."

"Anyway, give her the tour, get everything settled, and it'll not be long before we're starting the next phase of this project." Chloe fished around in a pocket of her lab coat. "But we also wanted to talk to you two about nanites. Specifically, Zoe and I pieced together something that might change how you want to approach the nanite situation. It's a nano-limiter, essentially a dial that you can use to suppress nanite activity."

Chloe set a device down on the table, which looked like an ordinary smartwatch, likely to hide its true nature. You picked it up to examine.

"Why would we want to limit nanites? There's already not very many nanites in the connection, so what is this?" Ela was panicking a little bit, she didn't quite understand, and to be quite honest, it wasn't readily apparent to you either.

"Well, we were thinking that perhaps, since we do have the other syringes of nanites, that we could inject the remainder into Emily while the connections are still fresh. They should be able to register easily with the other nanites, and there hasn't been enough settling time to make further connections difficult."

You frowned. "It's only been a day or so, I'm just barely getting used to this."

Chloe nodded. "That's the point. You'd be injected, but have the limiter on, so once you get used to it, if you decide to try a stronger setting, you'd adjust the nanite activity on the limiter, and then there's no extra training time to get the other nanites and your brain ready. You can't shut off the nanite connection completely with it, but you can limit them down to the lowest setting, which means if you wanted to not be able to influence Ela with your thoughts so she only has the baseline connection, that's an option again."

"I really like this idea!" Ela chimed in. But your expression seemed a little more thoughtful, brow furrowed as you looked between Zoe and Chloe. It was probably strange for them to see the being they thought about as their daughter behave so differently when under your control, even if there wasn't a good sample size of her own activity to go by.

Zoe put a hand on your back. "If you choose the nanites, you can take the day to get acclimated of course, since it will take a little longer than before with substantially more nanites in your system. Chloe and I can use that time to demonstrate our own abilities to you if you wish, so you can start seeing how everything fits together. But if you would still not like to do the nanite injection, could you at least take care of the campus tour today?"

"Emily, please, the nanites would be so helpful for us..!" Ela was begging you to go for the nanite option. It benefit everyone quite a bit, but you still had your concerns about that level of machinery floating around in you... showing Ela around would also be nice so you could fast-track getting upstairs officially, but it wasn't exactly an exciting activity, just a necessary one. Maybe you and Ela could find ways to make it fun though...