Connect to the pod

The escape pod rattled violently, drifting into the cold embrace of space. Dim emergency lighting flickered overhead, casting long, feverish shadows across the cramped interior.

The woman slumped in the acceleration couch, her chest heaving, the torn remains of her jumpsuit barely covering her battered, leaking body.

The cramps in her abdomen had worsened—relentless, as if something inside her gnawed and clawed at her insides, demanding birth.

Not yet, she thought grimly, teeth grinding against the pain. I need control. I need to survive.

A small console blinked to life above her, the pod’s primitive onboard AI awaiting input. A status readout flickered into view: no navigation data, no destination, just a growing proximity alert from the dying ship she had fled.

Her trembling hand hovered over the manual controls—obsolete, sluggish.

There wasn’t time for this.

Her gaze shifted to the neural port: a thin, coiled cable ending in a bio-connector, designed for direct mind-to-machine interface. Risky. Outdated. But far faster than manual input.

Her stomach twisted again—this time so violently she gasped aloud. Warm fluid trickled between her thighs, soaking into the seat. Her swollen belly spasmed visibly beneath the shredded fabric.

****.

She snatched the neural cable and, with a grimace, jabbed it into the shallow port at the base of her skull—an implant she barely remembered consenting to, so long ago.

The connection hit her like a lightning strike.

For an instant, pain exploded behind her eyes—but then, like a receding tide, it bled away, pulling the agony of her body with it.

The pod’s systems unfolded in her mind like a vast, cold landscape—mechanical, orderly, sterile.

She floated there, her physical self rapidly becoming external, a dull, distant shell barely tethered to her consciousness.

She could still feel the aches, the pressure, the wrongness swelling inside her—but it was muted now, blurred behind a gauzy wall of detachment.

And for the first time since she woke up, she breathed without sobbing.

Without drowning in pain.

I could stay here, a small, traitorous thought whispered through the connection. I could leave my body behind. Let it rot. Let it hatch. I could live in the circuits instead.

The ship’s diagnostics fed her cool, clinical data: her heart rate spiking erratically, blood oxygen dipping. Internal anomalies. Cellular degradation.

But she barely cared.

The pod was her world now—this cold, unfeeling void that asked nothing of her aching flesh.

Her body spasmed again, more violently. Through the neural connection, she felt it only as a flicker, a meaningless disturbance.

Outside, alarms began to blare—the escape pod was losing power, corrupted by something spreading along its systems.

The infection wasn’t just inside her anymore.

It was in the ship.

In her mind.

But still she clung to the connection, teeth gritted, letting the tides of data wash over her, whispering to herself:

"I’m not in my body anymore. I’m not there. I’m free."