‘The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and the other begins?’

From The Premature Burial, by Edgar Allen Poe (1844)

Death was a curious thing. Disconnected from her body and her mind, soul floating free in the darkness, Lyyr’s consciousness coalesced in bleary shock when a bright light formed in the distance, nebulous at first, then resolving to become more distinct, a stabbing beam of radiance in her shadowy existence that tugged at her ephemeral consciousness.

What was it they said, “Don’t go into the light”?

Or was it “Do go into the light”? She couldn’t quite remember... She couldn’t quite remember anything at all... Not that she had a choice in where to go, there was no moving one way or another, just floating in the darkness. The light was just... there, a new fact of her existence to be wondered on and ruminated over for the eons she had in the world beyond death.

Then, a voice from on high spoke to her.

‘Initiating primary neuro-pathway mapping, first test commence immediately.’

It was a man’s voice, or at least deep enough to be considered male. God said some strange things... Not at all what she expected.

‘Acknowledged,’ another voice replied, this one probably female. Then, more clearly said as if directly to her, ‘Name, rank, and service code.’

‘Lyyr Zainab, Captain, 2977-2610-1040,’ a third voice spoke up, sounding weak and distant. Oh, she realised, it was hers. Spooky. Why did it sound like her?

‘Pathways look good, no permanent damage detected,’ the male voice commented. ‘Put her back under.’

Before Lyyr could think more on what was going on, the light began to fade and she eventually couldn’t think at all.

She woke to the sound of machines. It was a comforting, familiar thing, the clicking, the whirring, the hissing, and the beeping, systems proceeding on as they should in their own mechanical rhythms. She also woke to itching, itching and pain, both of them muted under a dull fuzz, and a roil of nausea in the pit of her belly that spoke of powerful medication.

Heavily, languidly, she opened her eyes.

The room was small, stark white, clinical, possessing of an aseptic stink, and filled with monitoring equipment that scrolled with data or presented her vital statistics to whoever would care to know. Tubes and cables strung to and from them, some of them ending in the wall, some ending in her flesh. She took a lungful of air and was relieved to feel she was breathing by herself, even if an oxygen tube was stuck in her nostrils.

‘The fuck...?’ she croaked.

She closed her eyes again, listening further, pushing out her senses. There was a dull thrum, barely at the edge of her perception but under everything, a bass line to the mechanised choir that filled the room. A starship then. She was in a medical bay on starship. How did she get here? The last thing she remembered was...

Her mech shattering, a flash of light, the blare of alarms, the crack and shatter of armour plates, and such a pain that she could have ever imagined...

Tears pricking the corners of her eyes, panic welling in her chest, Lyyr sat up suddenly and threw off her covers, frantically patting herself down, pulling up and behind the flimsy hospital gown to look at her pale flesh. Huge sections of it were white and unblemished, mottling against the ruddier texture of her skin, where there should have been-

-her flesh crisping and flensing away as the fury of a star unleashed tore her mech and her body apart-

-indicating that she’d been the recipient of vat-grown replacements, stitched seamlessly together by nanites and pumped full of anti-rejection meds. That explained the itching, as the tiny robots ran rampant through her body, fixing what damage they could before their life-spans ran out and they were purged from her system.

With trembling hands, she reached up to feel her face and-

-eyeballs bursting, blood boiling, her features seared away-

-felt the familiar bumps of her lips, the contours of her cheeks and eyes, the point of her nose, and the gooseberry fuzz of hair on her scalp, two-weeks' worth of growth by the feel of it.

Lyyr took a deep, shuddering, breath. All there, or so it seemed. When she looked in the mirror, would it be her face staring back with its tired blue eyes and straw-blonde thatch, or would she be inhabiting the body of a stranger? She tucked up her legs to her chest and waited, eyes fixed on the door across the room. Someone would be along to talk to her, sooner rather than later, they wouldn’t have put her in this place without surveillance.

In the end, she didn’t have to wait long before a woman in a black business suit and thick-rimmed glasses walked in. She was tall and severe, with dark hair and eyes, her skin white as a sheet of paper like she hadn’t seen a day of sun in her life. Which, if she was void-born, might well be the case, raised on ships and stations across the UTC without having touched ground any longer than necessary.

Roving a quick glance across the woman’s form, Lyyr couldn’t discern the tell-tale bulges or distensions that betrayed a hidden weapon, and her long-fingered hands were suspiciously empty as they pulled a chair away from one wall and placed it carefully next to the bed, sitting on it as though she had a rod right up her spine, all the way from her arse to her throat.

‘I assume you are wondering why you are here,’ the woman said, her voice entirely devoid of recognisable accent or emotion, the tones clipped and formal.

Lyyr grunted.

‘You, Lyyr Zainab are dead, and this is Purgatory, although it may not seem it,’ the woman explained dispassionately. ‘Your body was pulled from the wreckage of your Ajax, barely clinging to life, and brought here, where we healed you – at no small expense, I might add.’

A small, slow nod from Lyyr then, ‘Why?’

‘For the past two years a project has been in development, one to merge mechanised fighting suit technology with the neural interface of the Mk III powered armour,’ the peculiar woman answered. ‘In the months since this war started, the timeline has accelerated, funding has increased, and we need experienced test pilots. Operational secrecy must be maintained, so we have been pulling those that will not be missed; you are the latest and probably will not be the last.’

‘So... you want me to be a Guinea Pig for these new mechs?’

‘Test pilot,’ the woman corrected. ‘For the mechs and the interface.’

Lyyr nodded again, eyes wide.

‘And if I refuse?’ she asked. ‘What if I want to go back to my unit?’

‘Lyyr Zainab died in service on New Atlantis,’ the woman replied, with the same flat, expressionless tone. Lyyr shivered in a way that had nothing to do with how she was dressed.

‘I see,’ she replied, looking away for a moment. ‘I guess I have no fucking choice but to say yes, eh?’

‘You can say no, but-’

‘Yeah, you’ll put me back under and chuck me out a fucking airlock, noted,’ Lyyr sniped back. She took a breath. ‘Sorry for the attitude, this is all a bit much.’

‘Understandable. We need an answer now, however.’

Lyyr grit her teeth and flopped back on the bed. She was exhausted and overwhelmed.

‘Fine, I’ll do it,’ she said wearily. ‘I have some questions, though.’

‘Depends on what they are.’

‘Ugh, naturally. Firstly, what happened to the rest of my unit, and secondly, what do you mean by “we”?’

The woman rose, smoothing out her suit with robotic precision and moving the chair back into the exact same spot she took it from. Exactly. To the millimetre.

‘Your unit was destroyed in its entirety, UTC forces suffered fifty percent attrition in that theatre during the first day, New Atlantis was abandoned within hours,’ the woman replied with all the care and emotion as if reading out her grocery list. ‘We, here, officially do not exist. Unofficially we are under the auspice of the Commonwealth Intelligence Collective.’

Without another word the woman left the room and left Lyyr with her thoughts, swirling and storming in a bewildering maelstrom of emotion. She had died, but she was now alive, her unit was destroyed, but here she was, in the loving arms of the UTC’s premier spymasters and secret police.

Closing her eyes, she put her face in her hands.

‘Fuck...’ she whispered. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck...’

They came for her the next day, doctors and nurses in faceless masks, their eyes the only window into their humanity. At least they spoke with some emotion, in low, soothing tones like she was some kind of wounded animal. Which, on reflection, Lyyr felt was accurate. The first night had been filled with dreams of death, fire, sweat, and screaming, and she welcomed the sweet oblivion of anaesthetic so that, for a time at least, she would not have to think.

She’d heard of the procedure from Juggernauts she’d met. A fifty percent chance it would paralyse you from the outset and another fifty percent chance your body would reject the implant, probably paralysing you in the process anyway. There was a lot to gamble on two flips of the coin, but, well, she was already dead anyway.

Now, another week from surgery, she was twisting round to look at her implant in the bathroom mirror, arm over her shoulder to try and poke the metal interface port at the base of her neck, the skin around it red and tender as it healed.

No paralysis, which was good, and that one doctor with the sympathetic eyes told her things were looking good in terms of rejection; the other one had said it was too early to tell and left it at that. She had recognised his voice as that of “God” from her hazy dream in death.

For each tube the nurses pulled from her body, Lyyr had celebrated one more step towards bodily freedom, especially that damnable catheter. Her first trip to the bathroom had been a nervous one, dreading what would meet her in the mirror. Smooth and pale, her face was years younger than she had last seen it, but it was still her face and she had nearly wept from the relief of it, trying not to think on just how much of her skin was replaced and repaired.

The first proper meal had been another joyous occasion, even if it was only nutrient-packed sludge, flavourless and lumpy, and it filled her belly like the heartiest of meals. Now she was gathering her strength – the first few days had been spent in and out of fatigue-induced naps – she was starting to get restless.

She was beginning to wonder what the rest of the ship looked like beyond her cell – for a cell it surely was, despite its medical trappings – and whether there were any other “recruits” and what they might be like.

Most importantly, she was wondering just what form this second chance was going to take.