INSOMATIC

Every time, it was over in a flash. One million pinpricks all over her flesh; the hairs on her arms on end; the base of her neck warbling, then humming, then buzzing. A splash of warmth that faded so quickly she was never sure if she had only imagined it—after that it was always so frigid.

She never could get used to the sensation.

She shivered in her seat. Was it over? She didn’t dare move until she received the OK. If she did, there would be hell to pay. Everyone hated doing recalibration. So she waited.

And waited.

And waited.

When was the last time she had felt anything really, truly physical? she wondered. How long had it been? A year? Two? It could interrupt her synchronization, they had told her. It would only complicate the process, they had told her. And you wouldn’t want that, would you? It was already so unpleasant.

She spent every day outside of the cockpit completely alone, preserved like a specimen in a jar. Some days, if she found the strength to move her arms, she dared to graze her own hand on her cheek. Once, she managed to fold her hands together. It hadn’t ruined anything, yet. But she was still terrified of the consequences. Every three days, they let her use the molecular cleanser. That was almost worse than the sync process. The air would fold around her—subsume her—for about six seconds, and it felt like her skin was melting away.

“Sync rate below threshold. Stand by, 0940.”

Her chest clenched. That was never a good sign. The last time they had said that, they spent four hours cycling her through startup to diagnose the problem. The process felt longer each time, the sensations more intense. She had made the mistake of closing her eyes, and was inundated with blasts of light that pierced through her corneas and sublimated a chunk of her prefrontal cortex. After thirty minutes, cold sweat had mixed with whatever chemical they pumped in there to assist her breathing. It smelled like gasoline.

“Re-cycling. Hold tight.”

The process repeated, reversed. Heat, buzzing, humming, warbling, hairs on end, a million pinpricks. Milliseconds of stillness, and then again. A million pinpricks, hairs on end, warbling, humming, buzzing, heat, cold.

She wondered if she would ever grow to welcome it. If the absence of physicality would ever stop casting a shadow over her. If her only remaining perception of touch would be this dissociative, disorienting, disembodied non-existence that enveloped her every time she was strapped in. After all, once it was over, she adored almost everything that came after. In here, she could feel and be felt. She had a real presence. She could walk unburdened, instead of on tiptoes and flanked by unnamed mechanics. She could run, and leap, practically dance, instead of remaining in stasis for days on end. She could fight, instead of taking every insult hurled at her in stride without being allowed so much as a flinch.

The cold seeped into her bones as she sat, turning them into icicles. In recent months, she had grown to begrudgingly appreciate the cold—it was a real sensation, not the muted synthetic inputs that swam in her skin cells through her neural port. That was the one thing she hated about being in here: that everything she felt emanated from that singular point, leaving her extremities in the dark.

Actually, that wasn’t true. She also hated its high-pitched squeal of pistons and its churning, gurgling engine. She hated the fluctuating temperature; frozen at the start and stifled with sweat by the end. She hated the craterous blanks in her memories—visions that turned to shadows when she grasped at the shape of them—and hated not knowing for certain what she and 0940 were capable of. She could always sense the aftermath lingering in her body, and she hated that most of all. Echoes of phantom touches reverberated violently in her arms, her legs, her neck, her abdomen. Even in the dark, they were all-consuming.

She had dreams, from time to time. She was never sure if they were memory or fiction. They faded quickly into imprints when she would wake, leaving her with no means of preserving them beyond her slipping mind. Deafening gunfire. Screeching steel. Ashen trees drowned in blood, scorched metal tearing up the roots. Sulfur mixed with diesel and smoke. A crack to her skull. Something or someone squished, like a bug. Each nightmare left some new horror imprinted on her eyelids.

Even rarer were her other dreams; the ones that found her when she was most alone, and left her hollowed out. They were always the same:

A hand, outstretched. The sun, rising over a valley in the desert. Warmth—real warmth, not suffocation and stale air—on her face. Someone grasping her hand tightly. Her fingers are so soft. She’s laughing. Fingers tangled in her hair now; scratching, brushing, teasing, braiding. Lips against lips. She tastes like cigarettes and smells like dust.

“Biolink recalibrated. Neural connectivity at seventy-four percent. Beginning final sync phase. Stand by, 0940.”

She inhaled deeply, shook off the daydream, and steeled herself. The engine hummed to life beneath her seat. Static charges flowed into her neck, magnetizing her spine. The cockpit warmed, easing her bloodflow. Her heart beat faster and louder. Her pupils dilated.

“Cleared for deployment.”

She smiled.

“Hunt.”