The last thing Lin Yue remembered was a text message.
Mom: Did you eat dinner? Don't just eat instant noodles again.
She had been typing a reply—Mom I'm 25 I can eat whatever I want—when her friend Wei Chen took a corner too fast and laughed like she didn't have a care in the world.
The last thing Lin Yue heard was Wei Chen's scream.
The last thing Lin Yue saw was headlights.
Then nothing.
---
She opened her eyes and screamed.
There was a floating blue screen right in front of her face.
[SYSTEM BOOT-UP COMPLETE. WELCOME, SURROGATE CANDIDATE #4721.]
"WHAT THE HELL—"
She scrambled backward, arms and legs flailing everywhere, and landed hard on her ass.
The ground was solid and unforgiving beneath her.
Whether it was stone or concrete, she couldn't tell.
She couldn't recognize anything.
The screen hovered there patiently, waiting for her to calm down.
[PLEASE REMAIN CALM.]
"I am calm!" Her voice came out way too high. She was not calm. "Who are you?! Where am I?! What happened to Wei Chen?! Where's the hospital?!"
[PROCESSING YOUR QUESTIONS...]
"Process faster!"
[I AM DESIGNATED AS THE MUMMY SYSTEM. YOU MAY CALL ME MUMMY SYSTEM.]
-_-
"That's a stupid name. But I'll call you MS for short."
[REGISTERED. MS IS ACCEPTABLE.]
[YOU ARE CURRENTLY LOCATED ON PRIMUS, THE CAPITAL PLANET OF THE KHYRNOS SYSTEM. YOUR FRIEND WEI CHEN IS ALIVE. YOU, UNFORTUNATELY, ARE NOT.]
Lin Yue's brain stopped working.
"I'm sorry. I'm what?"
[YOU DIED IN A CAR CRASH. AND BECAUSE I'M SO MERCIFUL, YOU'VE BEEN GIVEN A NEW LIFE. YOU'RE WELCOME, BY THE WAY.]
"No. No, that's not right." Her hands flew to her chest. Her heart was beating rapidly, pounding so fast in her chest she thought it was going to come out. "I have a heartbeat! Dead people don't have heartbeats!"
[YOUR BODY IS NEW. FRESHLY GROWN JUST FOR YOU. YOUR SOUL WAS HARVESTED AT THE MOMENT OF DEATH AND REASSIGNED TO THE INTERSTELLAR REPOPULATION PROGRAM. THE WHOLE PROCESS WAS VERY EFFICIENT.]
"My soul was harvested?!"
[IT SOUNDS WORSE THAN IT ACTUALLY IS. EVERYONE'S SO DRAMATIC ABOUT IT.]
Lin Yue stared at the screen.
Then she stared at her hands.
Then she looked up at the sky.
There were two moons hanging up there. In broad daylight.
"I'm dead," she whispered. "I'm dead and these are aliens."
[SEE? YOU'RE ADAPTING ALREADY. PROUD OF YOU.]
"That wasn't a compliment!"
---
She sat there on the cold ground for a long moment, letting everything sink in.
The car. The headlights. Wei Chen's scream.
Dead.
She was actually dead.
Her mom's text—don't just eat instant noodles again—was the last thing she was ever going to receive.
Her mom was going to get a phone call.
She was going to have to identify a body.
A body that wasn't even here anymore because apparently her soul had been stolen by some smug floating screen.
Tears burned at the corners of her eyes.
She blinked them back furiously.
No.
No crying.
Not yet.
She needed information first.
"Okay." Her voice came out shaky. She forced it steady. "Okay. Explain everything to me. From the beginning. What is this program, why am I here, and what happens now."
[THE KHYRNOS SYSTEM HAS BEEN EXPERIENCING A PRETTY SERIOUS BIRTH RATE DECLINE ACROSS MULTIPLE SPECIES. IT'S A WHOLE THING. THE REPOPULATION PROGRAM RECRUITS SURROGATES FROM PLANETS THAT ARE, WELL, DYING. YOU CARRY ENDANGERED BEASTFOLK CUBS. EVERYONE WINS.]
"Dying worlds?" Lin Yue's voice shot up. "Earth is a dying world?!"
[EARTH IS CLASSIFIED AS BIOLOGICALLY COMPATIBLE AND CULTURALLY EXPENDABLE. IT'S NOT PERSONAL. IT'S JUST LOGISTICS.]
"Culturally expendable." A bitter laugh escaped her. "Wow. That's so rude."
[ACCURATE, THOUGH. YOU HAVE TO ADMIT.]
"And I'm supposed to do what, exactly? Carry some alien baby?"
[YES. GESTATION PERIOD IS THREE DAYS. WE'LL GIVE YOU A HEAT INDUCER SOON. YOU FIND A SUITABLE MALE, YOU COMPLETE FERTILIZATION, YOU GIVE BIRTH, YOU RAISE THE CUB. OH, AND YOU GET BONUS POINTS FOR ACHIEVEMENTS ALONG THE WAY. FUN, RIGHT?]
"Three days?!" She was on her feet now, hands shaking. "Three days to get pregnant and give birth?! That's not how biology works! That's not how any of this works!"
[PRIMUS BIOLOGY IS DIFFERENT FROM EARTH BIOLOGY. WE'LL BE GENETICALLY MODIFYING YOU TO MATCH LOCAL REPRODUCTION RATES. ACTUALLY, THE PROCESS HAS ALREADY STARTED. HOW ARE YOU FEELING? WARM? FLUSHED?]
Lin Yue looked down at herself. She did feel warm. Hot, actually. Her face was heating up like she had a fever.
"Is that why I'm burning up right now?"
[THE HEAT INDUCER IS ACTIVATING. YOU'LL START EXPERIENCING SYMPTOMS VERY SOON. MY RECOMMENDATION? FIND A SUITABLE MALE WITHIN THE NEXT HOUR. TRUST ME ON THIS.]
"Symptoms? What kind of symptoms—"
The wave hit her before she could finish the sentence.
Heat crashed through her body like a tidal wave.
Not metaphorical heat.
Actual, physical heat, like someone had reached inside her and turned every nerve ending up to maximum.
Her face flushed so hot she could feel it burning. Her heart started hammering so hard she could hear it in her ears. Her knees went weak, threatening to buckle right there on the spot.
"Oh," she breathed. "Oh no."
[YEP. THAT'S A SYMPTOM.]
"I can feel that! I can really feel that!"
[THERE WILL BE MORE. LOT'S MORE. SO HERE'S THAT RECOMMENDATION AGAIN. MOVE SOMEWHERE LESS CROWDED. LIKE, NOW.]
Only then did Lin Yue actually look around.
---
The marketplace stretched out before her in every direction.
Stalls lined both sides of a wide street, packed tight together, selling things she couldn't even begin to identify. There were fruits that actually glowed from the inside. Fabrics that shifted colors as people walked past them. Meat cooking on sticks, sending up smoke that smelled amazing and terrifying all at once.
Above her head, flying cars zipped between towers that pierced the clouds. The buildings were sleek and metallic, nothing like anything on Earth. They stretched up so high they seemed to disappear into the sky.
And the people.
A woman walked past her with feline ears twitching on top of her head. A tail swayed behind her, long and elegant, like it was the most normal thing in the world.
A man at a nearby stall had horns curling up from his temples, dark and twisted.
Another man, huge and built like a brick wall, had a snout instead of a nose and fur peeking out from the collar of his shirt.
A child ran by laughing, tiny wings folded against her back.
Beastfolk?
Actual beastfolk?
Not the ones found in novels?
Boy if those light novel authors could see this!
Lin Yue's legs went soft.
She grabbed her canvas bag when had she gotten a canvas bag? And held it up like a weapon.
"Don't come near me!" The words burst out of her, aimed at no one in particular. "My flesh is poisonous.."