And she says okay, okay, just fucking do it.
And the worms burrow into her chest, devour her soft parts and replace them with hard-edged geometries of plastic and metal that cut her insides.
And then dark cold, life without breath, four thousand meters of black water pressing down like a massive sheltering womb...
“Judy, will you just for God’s sake talk to me? Is your vocoder broken? Can’t you answer?”
Her whole body is shaking. She can’t do anything except watch her hand rise, an autonomous savior, to take the black skin floating around her face. The reptile presses edges together, here, and here.
Hydrophobic side chains embrace; a slippery black caul stitches itself back together over rotten flesh. Muffled voices rage faintly inside.
“Judy, please just wave or something! Judy, what are you — where are you going?”
It doesn’t know. All it’s ever done is travel to this place. It’s forgotten why.
“Judy, you can’t wander too far away... don’t you remember, our instruments can’t see very well this close to an active rift—”
All it wants is to get away from the noise and the light. All it wants is to be alone again.
“Judy, wait — we just want to help—”
The harsh artificial glare fades behind it. Ahead there is only the sparse twinkle of living flashlights.
A faint realization teeters on the edge of awareness and washes away forever:
She knew this was home years before she ever saw an ocean.