Trying to communicate this very, very hypothetical idea to Nicole was a laborious process. Several times, I almost gave up, too easily second-guessing myself. Could I go through with it? Would Nicole help me? Would it be better than being a furry dinosaur?

  But one thing never changed: I wanted to speak again.

  “You want me to help you kidnap that man, so you can take over his body?” Nicole finally guessed correctly.

  I gave her a thumbs up.

  Nicole stood, rolling out her neck as she seemed to consider my words. The medical tent felt suddenly so exposed now that she had spoken the words aloud. She had tried to go inform Tobias about the saboteur, but I had practically dragged her back here.

  I already felt guilty just suggesting the idea.

  “If it would make you happy, I’ll do it,” Nicole finally replied.

  That made me feel worse.

  “But it will be logistically much more difficult,” she went on. “People know him. Even if we can abduct him successfully, and you can implant yourself… You will need to maintain a ruse. On top of that, we wouldn’t be able to be seen together, and if he ever is found out to be a traitor, then that would put you on the chopping block,” she sighed.

  My ambition shrivelled up at that. I knew it was impractical, I knew it was a dumb idea, but I so wanted to be back to normal. I wanted to stomp my feet and yell. I wanted to chat with Stephan, I wanted Tobias to pretend to care about me, and I wanted to tell Nicole so many things she made me feel.

  I didn’t really want to puppet that man’s body. I just wanted Elizabeth to still be alive and kicking. Everything had been… ruined, the game of life flipped over. Nicole had been moving forward and trying to teach me to do the same. And I had been along on this adventure, waiting for everything to go back to how it had been.

  But it wouldn’t, would it? That… that life was over.

  “I am not saying it’s impossible,” Nicole went on. “Just that it is by no means a simple solution to any of this. Or else I would have suggested it myself.”

  I nodded weakly. I took a deep breath and pointed to the radio. I needed to be strong. I needed to get my shit together. An impossible task, but one that everyone just tried their best at.

  I had been so passive all my life.

  Now that had to change. Because I had to change, not just in mind but in body. My survival wasn’t tied up in Tobias anymore; it was tied up with N7, with Nicole.

  We needed to carve out our own path. Or I did and had to pray she wouldn’t be far behind.

  Nicole couldn’t always be strong for me.

  I had to be strong for her, too.

  Just… maybe I could let her handle blood and stuff.

  “You would rather continue with the radio communication plan?” Nicole asked.

  I nodded more intently.

  It was an investment. If we could figure it out, then, regardless of body or place, she would hear me.

  We got to work. Only pausing briefly for Nicole to grab a big bowl of stew for me to gobble down. Apparently, I was starting to look a little thin. But figuring out a non-mollusk diet could wait; they were really good. Whatever weird slime they produced seemed to cook into a buttery substance. It practically melted in my mouth, but like literally, not the foodie way they said it in movies. It was still delicious, though.

  After that, we spent the afternoon on the floor of the tent. Nicole adjusted the radio receiver as I did my best to express emotions through energy waves that I still didn’t really understand how in the world worked.

  I had no ability to control the signals I produced; they seemed to come and go with strong emotional responses. Nicole petting me resulted in a steady soft whirr that crackled from the radio. That was rather embarrassing. I had been using my inability to blush to my advantage, yet now there was a clear signal exposing just how much I liked it.

  As my frustration began to grow with continued failure, the buzzing just got louder. The stronger signals didn’t travel far; the strength dropped dramatically even on the other side of the tent. Nicole had to be close for higher frequencies, but she said that made sense.

  “Maybe we are going about this wrong,” Nicole theorized. “When you are ‘plugged in,’ you exist as the host, but it’s your true body that sends out the signal. Perhaps focusing on yourself rather than your host might prove more successful?”

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  That was a scary premise. Mostly because I didn’t know how I controlled this body in the first place. What if I broke something and I had to wriggle free of another dead body? What if I lost control and the furry dinosaur was still in here? It could take off into the jungle with me stuck along for the ride.

  It was a good idea though. Or at least logically it made sense.

  I settled on hopping back into the cage trap, where at least my host couldn’t make a run for it. Then I tried to… disconnect. Consciously, it was a bizarre task, like trying to move a phantom limb. When existing as my host, I was entirely “plugged in,” at least it felt like I was the host. I wasn’t a tiny body controlling the host; I just was the host.

  Yet I had also existed as myself. I knew how to wiggle my arms; I had gotten decent at manipulating stuff with them, too. I had learned to use my actual body; I just needed to somehow get into a state where I could do both.

  “Any luck?” Nicole asked.

  “Maybe,” I signed in response.

  The host’s sensations became duller the more I tried to pull away and focus on myself. It was a disorienting feeling. A wet warmth trickling into the back of my head, I felt enveloped, yet I also felt the air in my fur. Twin ghostly sensations clattering for attention. I felt limbs I didn’t have woven between bone and muscle, hot and sticky. I shuddered. It wasn’t a bad feeling exactly, but it was far too visceral.

  Okay… I had done a thing. Now, how in the world did I intentionally do a thing I had never done before? At least host instincts sometimes bled through, but with myself, I had nothing.

  I started with the memory of screaming, the memory of my death. The emotion, the animalistic cries of pain, bitten, snapping words to communicate how I felt. Such a horrible, powerful memory hurt.

  The radio buzzed.

  I stopped and tried again. Searching for that emotional tug that led to whatever it was that made the rest slide into place.

  The radio buzzed again.

  Nicole watched with fascination as again and again I repeated it, stripping away a layer, trying and if it worked, doing it all over again. I didn’t know what I was doing; I was stumbling through it blindly. But I knew how meticulous Nicole was in her experiments, and I did everything I could to mimic that.

  It was a slow process, bumping through the halls of flesh to find the right triggers to fire. It wasn’t as simple as twitching a muscle. More like trying to control a bodily signal. The way free divers trained themselves was not to panic at the buildup of CO2 in their bodies. I adjusted myself around my biology.

  I really hated that documentary. Tobias loved it. The adventure of pulling oneself deeper into the dark unknown. Now, on a planet in the midst of a dark unknown, I realized why he had been so captivated. He was fucking insane.

  The radio buzzed.

  I stopped.

  I started, and the radio buzzed.

  I stopped.

  I started, and the radio buzzed.

  I wasn’t even split between two bodies anymore. At some point, I had forgotten about that whole thing. But by then, I had found the right tunnel to wiggle through. The right path to take.

  I made the radio buzz.

  Nicole smiled proudly at me as she undid the latch on the trap. “I knew you could do it.”

  I slipped out and nuzzled into her, making the radio buzz. I knew we were far from solving this, but this had been an incredible start. I wouldn’t have been able to do without her.

  “Now, unless we wish to communicate through something primitive like Morse code, which would require improving your literacy, I think our best hope is using different frequencies within a set range,” Nicole explained, rustling my fur. “Either we can string together different sounds to come up with an equivalent of the spoken language, or perhaps you could mimic the encoding of language itself.”

  “What?” I signed. Already confused with this next step.

  “Why don’t I send out something over a radio signal and see if you can pick it up? As you were mimicking patterns before, perhaps it would inspire you.”

  I nodded. We could certainly try. Though I had heard the radio plenty of times, I wasn’t sure how that would help. Nicole turned to the radio and started puttering with something. “This has music. I’ll try broadcasting. Let's see if you can tune into the radio waves.”

  I waited patiently.

  Nicole flicked a switch. “There.”

  I didn’t hear anything. But that was the exercise here, to tune into the waves. Radio waves weren't audible; they were signals that could be decoded into audio… however that worked.

  But if I could pick up on and emit radio waves, maybe there was a way to decode and encode them, too.

  Taking a moment to be aware of both of my bodies, I felt… something. Not the horrid whatever it was that had sent me into a panic before. Not a vibration in the traditional sense, nor could I taste static again. Words weren't enough for such a thing beyond humans. It was an alien experience, an alien sense; it probably warranted new words of its own.

  Still, it didn’t feel like words in any way, or remotely sound like music. I needed precision; I needed to learn how to listen better. Sending out a high-frequency signal was just like… screaming. For this, I needed control.

  And I was having far less success. I could feel the signal, but I had to learn its meaning.

  Eventually, it became clear this wasn’t working. I needed a new strategy. If I were trying to learn a language through another sense, I needed an understanding of the code, but also what it turned into. I had Nicole play the music audibly as well.

  The guitar jingled along, or however music worked. I focused on the host’s hearing, and whatever it was that picked up radio waves. Trying to align something that allowed both of them to make sense when combined.

  It was a slow, mentally fatiguing process. Little nudge here, little nudge there. Oops, too much nudge. Little nudge back.

  But eventually, after hours of all of this, I started to… understand it more. The little change in the wave when each word started, the repeating pattern of the chorus, and the overall design of the melody. I didn’t hear the music through the radio waves, nor did the sound translate into these signals. But I began to combine them in my mind. I began to understand them.

  And then I began to repeat them myself.