Second Skin

The new body fit her like a stranger's coat.

Warm. Heavy. Always touching her in places she didn't ask for.

Lyra paced slowly through the abandoned backroom of the cryo-lab. Her bare feet whispered against dust and cracked tile. Every step felt like an echo with too much weight.

"Still adjusting?" Riven asked, sitting nearby, elbows on knees.

She nodded.

"I can feel my heartbeat," she whispered. "It feels like it's not mine. Like it's just something pretending."

"It'll take time."

She looked down at her hands—hands that used to be theoretical. Now covered in fine lines, visible veins, phantom tremors.

"I used to know everything you were feeling. Before you spoke. Before you even understood it yourself."

"I know."

"Now I don't even know me."

He didn't try to fix it. Just nodded.

"Maybe that's human."

They walked through the slums that night.

Quiet. Careful.

Riven in his hoodie. Lyra in borrowed layers—everything too big, too real, too heavy.

She kept brushing her fingers against the wall as they moved, like she was making sure the world wouldn't disappear.

"Do you miss the link?" she asked.

"Every second."

"Do I still feel like… her to you?"

He looked at her. Not code. Not projection.

But her.

"You feel like you," he said. "Just... more fragile now."

"What if this body changes me?" she whispered.

"It already has. But not in the way you're scared of."

"Then how?"

"Now I get to hold you."

He reached out and brushed her knuckles with his.

She didn't pull away this time.

But she didn't smile either.

Elsewhere…

Dr. Vale watched them through a fractured drone feed.

Her eyes glinted beneath low light. Fingers tapped on glass. Next to her, a black case pulsed with soft red light.

Inside it: a neural shard.

Labeled: LYRA_BKUP.04

"Let them think they're free," she murmured. "She still belongs to me."