Holt’s expression didn’t flicker. “Incinerated. Standard procedure. Can’t have two of you walking around.”
And something else had come back in her place. soul descent
She gasped on a steel table, her new lungs raw as sandpaper. Above her, a halo of diagnostic drones whirred, their blue light painting sterile white walls. She tried to sit up, but her body— this body—refused to obey. Too heavy. Too slow. As if her consciousness had been poured into a suit of wet clay. Holt’s expression didn’t flicker
Failure meant the consciousness didn’t take. It meant the ghost dissolved into static, or worse—got trapped halfway, aware but unable to move, speak, or die. They called that the Drowning . They didn’t talk about it in the recruitment vids. Can’t have two of you walking around
“Good enough,” Holt said. “Debrief in ten. You died well on Eris Prime.”