We can work with hope

Adam's pod listed dangerously as Susan magnetized to its hull. Through the cracked viewport, she watched him cradle Eris's remains—what should have been featureless metal now twisted into something painfully organic. Tendrils of liquid alloy curled around his wrists like fading fingers.

"Neural core's intact." Adam's voice was raw. "Barely." He pressed his forehead to the metal. "Stubborn bitch."

Susan's hands shook as she pried open the emergency hatch. The pod's interior stank of burnt wiring and Adam's blood. Eris's form lay across the controls, her once-fluid surface dull and pitted. Only one ocular display flickered—a single pulsing glyph repeating in Voraxian combat code: HOLD.

Adam's fingers traced the symbol. "She's not gone. Just... fractured." His thumb brushed a twisted section where metal had fused into something resembling knuckles. "We rebuild her."

The Stormcrow's airlock hissed shut behind them with the finality of a tomb sealing. Adam staggered under Eris's weight—what remained of her, anyway—her liquid-metal form slumped across his shoulders like molten slag. Susan's boots left smears of coolant-blood across the deck plating as she limped toward the neural interface array, her spinal port still leaking from where Eris had forcibly detached.

"Secondary power—now!" Susan barked, slamming her palm against the ship's manual override panel. The Stormcrow groaned awake around them, emergency lighting painting the corridors arterial red. Adam dumped Eris's remains onto the interface dais with a metallic clang, the AI's form sloshing across the surface like mercury poisoned by rust.