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The atmosphere of the lab in the Hail Mary was a carefully balanced hum of machinery, the quiet squeaking of a marker against a whiteboard, and the rhythmic clicking of Rocky working in their tunnel. It was the kind of perfectly functional peace Ryland Grace had fought hard to establish with Rocky over the last few weeks.
He was leaning over his workbench, a pair of dark, heavily tinted sunglasses perched on the bridge of his nose. They were non-negotiable, however much Grace missed his actual prescription glasses. His eyesight was sharper, but horribly sensitive to the lab's fluorescent lights. Without them, they felt like needles poking directly into his retinas.
Yeah, Grace really wasn't impressed with his new eyes either.
But that was besides the point. Right now, he was focused on his whiteboard. Or trying to, at least.
His right wing—a massive, heavy appendage covered in dense, downy feathers the color of rusted iron and soil—gave an involuntary twitch. It unfurled, the primary feathers brushing against the edge of his stool with a soft ruffle.
He hissed under his breath, a sharp whistling sound escaping him as he forced the wing back against his spine. It was an annoying, constant struggle to keep them in place. Because of his new baseline temperature of 40°C, his body constantly wanted to spread his wings to cool off, but his stubborn prey instincts screamed the exact opposite: tuck them in and cover his flanks.
"Sssstupid bih-rd brai-n (Stupid bird brain)," Grace muttered to himself, an irritated tsst leaving him at the same time. He reached into a small, vacuum-sealed pouch on his desk, grabbed a handful of raw macadamia nuts and dried elderberries, and tossed them into his mouth.
The moment the dense fat of the nuts and the concentrated sugar of the berries hit his tongue, his brain sparked with an immediate wave of gratification, a happy little trill involuntarily leaving him. He didn't want to think about the psychological implications of why his body treated a simple handful of trail mix like it was a gourmet meal—all he knew was that his new, absurdly high metabolism required him to snack on them every two hours or his temperature would start to dip, leaving him dizzy and cranky.
On the other side of the xenonite tunnel, Rocky's clicking stopped.
"Grace," Rocky sang over the robotic translation, tapping their leg twice in question. "You make food sound again. You eat six times since sleep cycle. Why food intake so high? You will explode, question?"
Grace swallowed, taking a moment to clear his throat. Speaking English was… weird now. His larynx was gone, replaced by a split-piped syrinx in his chest. He could make two sounds at once now, making the few attempts of actually speaking Eridian feasible, but flat, single-toned English? That needed conscious, clumsy effort now. Often, he sounded more like a woodwind instrument trying to imitate a person.
"Not e-explode (Not explode)," Grace managed, voice splitting into a flute-like trill on the x. He huffed, a short, irritated chirp leaving him. "Fa-ster. My body buh-rns fuel like a f-furnace now. (Faster. My body burns fuel like a furnace now.) If I stoh-p eating, I r-run out of eh-nergy. I get c-cold. (If I stop eating, I run out of energy. I get cold.)"
"Bad design," Rocky's carapace vibrated in a low, grumbling rhythm that perfectly conveyed their disapproval. "Humans leaky and fragile. Now Grace leaky, fragile, and need eat lot. Disgust."
"H-Hey, I can he-ar you (Hey, I can hear you)," Grace pouted, a sharp clicking sound leaving him as his wings flared out in playful annoyance.
"Grace is strange," Rocky continued, tapping against the xenonite of the tunnel. "Have big arm-flap. Have soft armor. Have sharp fingers. But not use to hunt. Sit and look at numbers. Why have tools if not use?"
"Wh-ings, not fla-ps, Rocky (Wings, not flaps, Rocky)," Grace explained. "Ohn Ea-rth, a-animals with thhhese use 'em to lift th-emself into t-the atmos-phere. F-Fly. (On Earth, animals with these use them to lift themself into the atmosphere. Fly.)"
"Fly," Rocky repeated, an unhappy click leaving them. "Move through gas with no touching ground. Dangerous. If pressure drop, fall and break. Humans dumb."
"W-Well, hu-mans don't typicah-lly ffly. (Well, humans don't typically fly.)"
Another reminder of how 'other' he was now.
Grace stood up to stretch, massive wings instinctively mirroring the movement. They unfurled outwards, a display of browns and whites, but the sudden expanse of the open space triggered a sharp spike of instinctual anxiety.
Too open, his bird brain hissed. Too exposed.
Before Grace knew it, he had hopped backwards—a pure reflex—until his back hit the wall, wings curling around his torso in a protective cocoon.
He let out an annoyed click, reaching up with a claw to fix his lopsided sunglasses. "I-I'm heading to b-ed, Rock. Finish the cah-lculations? (I'm heading to bed, Rock. Finish the calculations?)"
"No," The Eridian stopped his work immediately. "Rocky watch."
Grace let out a sigh, sounding more like a flute.
"Fffine."
The dormitory was one of the few places where Grace’s new instinctual agoraphobia truly quieted down.
After realizing sleeping on the flat bed wasn't an option with his modified spine and wings, he had raided the ship’s supply closets. Every spare blanket, microfiber cloth, and even all the extra clothes were piled onto his bed, arranged in a perfect, hollowed-out circle on the floor.
Safe, something inside him cooed. Warm.
"Grace sleep on sleep in hollow middle," Rocky tapped from his own bed behind the xenonite. "Many soft textures. Is nest, question?"
"It'sss n-not a nes-st! (It's not a nest!)" Grace sputtered almost angrily, wings clamping tightly around himself. "I am a scien-tist! I don't m-make nests! (I am a scientist! I don't make nests!)"
Rocky's carapace tilted in question. "Why deny? Shape is good to trap heat and comfortable for wings."
Grace looked down at his lap, claws digging into a shirt.
It belonged to Yao.
The sudden, reflexive defensiveness he felt drained from him all at once, leaving only a bone-deep fatigue Grace had been ignoring since he had woken up alone without any idea of what had happened to him.
"Grace?"
"…B-Because nesssts are foh-r animalsss. (…Because nests are for animals.)" He muttered, the words coming out in two different pitches. His wings curled, wrapping around him in an imitation of comfort. "Humans do-n't make t-them… (Humans don't make them…) but I'm no-ht human anymhoore, a-am I? (but I'm not human anymore, am I?)"
Every time his body forced him to do something inhuman—every niggling instinct, every sudden reflex, every odd sound—it was a constant reminder of what had been done to him without his permission. He felt like an abandoned science experiment in a cage.
"…Grace is Grace," Rocky sang, slow and deliberate. "Grace is only human Rocky know. Meaning Grace is most human human Rocky know."
Rocky reached out, pressing a claw flat against the transparent xenonite.
"Grace not animal."
Silence fell over the room, but not the uncomfortable kind. It was a kind one. A comforting one. One that Grace needed to compose himself.
"…Yeah," He rubbed at his wet eyes with his wrist, the soft feathers absorbing his tears. "Ye-ah. O-Okay."
"Amaze!" Rocky cheered, doing their little dance. "Sleep time now, Grace. Finish science tomorrow."
Grace shuffled into the—the nest, lowering the lightning to the lowest possible setting. He put his sunglasses on a nearby table, pressing his feathered side as closely as he could against the barrier between his and Rocky's bed.
"Go-odnight, Rocky."
"Goodnight, Grace."