Jonah's body floated in the Genesis Forge, but his mind was somewhere else entirely. He could feel the whole station around him like a second skin.
And it was crushing him.
"Jonah, can you hear me?" Vanessa said , her voice sounding distant. "Your vitals are spiking. Your heart rate is at 180. Brain activity is off the charts. You need to pull back!"
But he couldn't pull back. The bonding had already started. If he let go now, if he broke the connection before it finished, he would snap back into his body so hard it would probably kill him.
So he held on. And endured.
The memories hit him next.
Not his memories. The station's memories. Thousands of years of existence, preserved in data. He saw the Artificers who had built this place. He felt their hope as they built a sanctuary for their dying civilization. He watched through archived sensors as they loaded the last ships and departed, leaving their greatest creation behind.
