“That’s the best one so far,” Ray said. “When you say how much it can modify you is your choice, how much of a choice do you have?”

“Well,” I deliberated how much I wanted to tell him, but decided to be honest. “I’ve got one. When I got hurt one time, it offered me options, and I went with my choice. It didn’t try to force me to turn myself into a cyborg.”

Ray nodded. “That’s good so far. Where does it force you to do things? You probably can’t turn against the Xiniti, right?”

I asked my implant about the characteristics of Xiniti foreign auxiliary implants and received a flood of information. “It’s more subtle than that. You’ve got total control of your actions, but if you attack a superior officer or your teammates, the Xiniti may opt to use your implant against you, but they’ll most likely just kill you. They won’t need an implant to do it. You’ll be free to the end, but that will be quick.”

Ray laughed. “That seems about right. Are you okay with that? You said you had one.”

“Well,” I said, debating on how much I should say, “the rules are a little different for me. Technically, I’m a citizen of the Xiniti nation, which means fewer controls, but probably worse punishments if I betray them.”

Ray looked me up and down. “How’d you manage that?”

“It’s complicated—one of those cultural things. Basically, I did a service for them that was a big enough deal that they felt they had to reciprocate with citizenship.”

Raising an eyebrow, he said, “And now you’re a recruiter?”

I shook my head. “Not really, but I have the authority as a member of the Xiniti nation to bring people in that the Xiniti need, and you have skills they’d want.”

Giving a slow nod, he said, “Let’s do it then. Where do we start?”

I blinked. “I’m a little surprised you’re going for it. It seems just as invasive as telepaths.”

Ray brushed away my objection with a wave of his hand. “It’s not the same. The Xiniti are aliens. They’re not putting me in prison or executing me the first chance they get. They’re taking me away from the planet, right? Besides, the implant is a machine. You can take machines out or disable them. I don’t necessarily have to have it forever.”

I thought about the Xiniti and Abominators I’d seen and how cybernetics filled their bodies. Then I checked with my implant, learning that removing them was possible even in cases of extreme augmentation. It might take months of regrowing organs, muscles, and anything else that had been replaced.

“That’s actually true,” I said.

“News to you, eh?” Ray looked out into the fight frozen around us. “So, you got one on you?”

“You could say that,” I said, having asked my implant if I’d have to get one from the implant creator back at home. I didn’t have to. The implant could create an implant for auxiliaries right now.

Where did the materials come from? Me.

The implant used food I ingested to create a store of materials within my body that could be used to repair me or replace parts of me. It would use material from there. The thought of a bit of me existing within Ray felt a little weird, but not as much as helping him survive what I’d always thought was his death.

Besides, it wasn’t my DNA or something. It was materials my implant scavenged from the food I ate or transformed into materials it needed.

I told my implant to create one and passed on to it how Ray died. Its first task would be to modify him enough to survive. Its second task would be to signal the Xiniti base on Mars to pick him up and keep him off Earth for at least ten years or forever, if they could.

I spent a little while trying to figure out how to make sure the Xiniti would listen to me, even though I wasn’t yet a citizen when Ray died. It turned out to be easier than I thought. Over thousands of years of fighting the Abominators, I wasn’t the first Xiniti to need to send a message back in time. They had a set of protocols for it.

I let the little “metal” ball form on my right palm, and opened up a small hole in my gauntlet. The suit filled in material underneath the ball, pushing it upward until it sat in the palm of my gauntlet.

I held out my hand so Ray could take it.

He looked down at it. “What am I supposed to do with that? Swallow it?”

I shrugged. “You can, but it’ll take less time to integrate if you hold it next to the skin on the inside of your jaw. Next to your neck would also work.”

He hesitated, but then picked it up and held it at eye level. “Integrate? What do you mean by that?”

“It connects with your brain and acts as a library of alien cultures and technology when you need it—though you won’t get that until after the Xiniti pick you up.”

He took a deep breath. “You know what? In the end, I’ve got no choice but to trust you. Don’t screw me over.”

He held the ball under his jaw, and it sank into his flesh. He snapped his fingers, and everyone began to move again. At almost the same time, he sank into himself, as if he were almost falling.

With Artificer senses, I could feel power leave him in a rush, not in any focused way. It dissipated into nothing.

Against a background of thundering blasts, the howl of a tornado, and the crackle of energy weapons, Ray pulled himself upright and eyed me. “I could have hung on to Magnus’ power for a while longer, but now that we’ve sorted everything out, I’m done. Have a rock.”

He held out the flat, gray stone. Even without making a special effort, I could see its connection to the device around us.

I took it.