A screen appeared before him, followed by a cartoonish avatar—a chibi silver dragon that waved one tiny claw in cheerful greeting. "Hi there! I'm Deltey, and I'll be your upgrade helper today! Are you ready to get started?"
“This is deeply unsettling,” Rowan said. Disconcertingly, his mouth didn’t move, but the avatar seemed to hear him anyway.
"Don't worry about the whole 'frozen in time' thing! It's perfectly normal. Your consciousness is operating at an accelerated rate. Pablo calls it Menu Time. To everyone else, this will seem like it takes only a few seconds. For you, it might feel like several minutes." Deltey's cartoon face took on a sympathetic expression.
The glowing screen blinked before him, filled with nested categories: Core Ability Enhancements, Physical Alterations, Skills and Features, Equipment Upgrades, Flora Affinity Powers, Unaspected Powers, and Other Options.
"Now then," Deltey said, "let's talk about how affinities work! You have access to the Flora element, which means you can theoretically accomplish anything related to plants and plant-life through effort, concentration, and expenditure of energy. However, formalizing specific expressions of your affinity as distinct powers makes them much more efficient and automatic. Think of it like building a macro—instead of manually executing each step, you just push a button!"
“That makes sense,” Rowan said, and wanted to nod along, but his body remained motionless.
"Of course it does! I'm very good at explanations." Deltey preened. "Now, you have seven points to spend. I'd recommend starting with an upgrade to your base Control Flora ability, as that's the limiting factor on several alternative power effects that you could attach to it. Alternative power effects are related sub-powers—you can only use one at a time, but they cost less than purchasing each ability separately."
Rowan began scrolling through the options, navigating the menus with intuitive ease. The Flora Affinity section alone contained dozens of possibilities: abilities to animate plants, accelerate growth, communicate with vegetation, create clouds of pollen or spores, reshape wood...
But as he explored, one category kept catching his attention. Physical Alterations. He navigated to it almost reluctantly. There, near the top of the list, sat an option he'd seen once before—in those first desperate moments of integration within the dungeon, when he'd been bound and terrified:
PHYSICAL MODIFICATION AVAILABLE GENDER EXPRESSION: MALE (ENHANCED) Cost: 1 Nexus Power Point Effect: Permanent physiological restructuring to match desired gender expression. Includes comprehensive hormonal, skeletal, and tissue modification.
Rowan stared at it for a long moment.
“Hey, uhh Deltey?”
"Yes?"
“This option. The Gender Expression modification. Can you...tell me more about it?”
"Of course!" Deltey's tone remained chipper, but there was something almost gentle underneath. "The Nexus recognizes that biological form doesn't always align with identity. This modification would restructure your physiology to match your internal sense of self—comprehensive changes to skeletal structure, muscle distribution, fat deposits, hormone production, and reproductive organs."
“And all of that is only one point?”
"The Primes that constructed the Nexus considered identity alignment a fundamental right, not a luxury. The cost is deliberately minimal."
Rowan felt something twist in his chest. He'd spent years working toward this—puberty blockers, then testosterone shots, binding, carefully chosen clothes, the constant low-grade vigilance of navigating a world that didn't quite see him as he was. He’d still had a long road ahead of him, and here, in an alien upgrade menu, was everything he'd ever wanted. For the cost of a single nebulous power point.
“I turned it down before,” he said. “In the dungeon. I wasn't ready. Or at least, I had too many questions and other priorities.”
"That's understandable," Deltey said. "Major decisions shouldn't be made under duress. Would you like to accept the modification now?"
Years of therapy caused Rowan to hesitate. The fact that the Nexus seemed capable of transforming him in a moment compared to what human medicine took years to even come close to was more than a little staggering to Rowan. Then he thought about the small voice that had whispered, what if, back in the dungeon. The theoretical possibility of someday carrying a child—a door he'd never planned to open but hadn't quite locked either.
The testosterone is already changing me, he reasoned. This would just...complete the process. Faster, more thoroughly, and comparatively painlessly.
There was so much more to it than just the physical changes to consider.
His family had been supportive from the start—his parents, his sister, even his crotchety granddad who'd surprised everyone by simply shrugging and saying, "You're still my grandkid, ain't you?" They helped him pay for his hormone treatments and had contributed to the fund he was building toward top surgery. How would he explain that he didn't need their help anymore? That some alien technology had done in seconds what years of medical care had only barely begun? He couldn't tell them the truth. But the thought of lying to them—of letting them continue to contribute to a fund he no longer needed, or worse, of fabricating some story about a miraculous new treatment—sat heavy in his gut.
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Then there was his dating life. The awkward vetting process he'd developed over the years. The careful dance of disclosure—too early and you risked scaring someone off before they had a chance to know you; too late and they felt deceived, betrayed, like you'd been hiding something shameful. The way some people's eyes changed when they found out, even the ones who said all the right things. The ones who were fine with it, who were totally cool, who didn't see him any differently—right up until they ghosted him or made some excuse about not being ready for a relationship.
He thought about Eden. They'd known each other in high school, well enough to recognize each other in the halls. He'd been in the middle of his social transition then, still figuring out who he was, and she'd been part of a different circle. When she'd started working at the clinic a few months ago, he'd been surprised by how easily they'd fallen into friendship. The way she laughed at his jokes. The warmth in those deep blue eyes when she looked at him. The way she seemed to see him—not as a curiosity, not as a project, not as a political statement, but just as Rowan.
Underneath all of that was a tension he couldn't quite name. He was absolutely certain he'd been getting signals from her. The way she found excuses to touch his arm. The slight flush that crept up her neck when he caught her looking. The nervous energy that crackled between them whenever they were alone in the break room. But she always pulled back at the last moment. Changed the subject. Made some excuse to leave.
He'd assumed it was because he was trans. That she was attracted to him but couldn't quite reconcile that attraction with whatever internal framework she'd built around her own sexuality. It was a story he'd lived through before—people who wanted to want him but couldn't get past the perceived complication of his body.
That was all—of course—before he knew about her secret life. The armor, the powers, the alien mentor, the weight of responsibility she carried. Maybe her hesitation had nothing to do with him at all. Maybe she was holding back because she was a superhero, and getting close to anyone felt like painting a target on their back. Or maybe it was both—his identity and hers, two complications tangled together in a knot neither of them knew how to untie.
They hadn't talked about it. Rowan worried that naming the tension between them would somehow squash whatever was growing—like a soap bubble that existed only as long as you didn't try to touch it.
Standing here, frozen in time with an alien upgrade menu floating before him, Rowan realized something with sudden clarity: this decision can’t be about Eden.
It couldn't be about making himself more palatable, more normal, more easy to love. It couldn't be about smoothing away the rough edges that might give someone pause. If he accepted this modification, it had to be for himself—because it was what he wanted, what he needed, what would make him feel whole. Not because it might make things simpler with a woman who may or may not want him.
He'd spent too many years learning to exist as himself, fighting for the right to take up space in a world that often wished he wouldn't. He wasn't about to make the most significant decision of his life based on someone else's potential comfort. And not when so much chaos and uncertainty were swirling around him. Coming out of this, it seemed like he’d have a job to do. The Paladins needed his help. Sam needed his help. It felt selfish of him to spend one-seventh of his potential power enhancements this way.
“Not yet,” he decided. “But...maybe…probably someday.”
"The option will remain available whenever you're ready," Deltey said. "No pressure. Now, would you prefer we focus on your other aetheric capabilities?"
“Yeah. Let's do that.”
With Deltey guiding him, Rowan began making his selections methodically. First, after Deltey went through the math with him, he did indeed upgrade Control Plants by two ranks. Then came a suite of alternative effects: Plant Growth for accelerating vegetation from seed to maturity in seconds, Pollen Cloud for creating obscuring or irritating particulate matter, Tanglevines to bind targets, and Warp Wood for reshaping wooden objects like clay.
He added a Combat Knowledge download—basic martial arts training that would be implanted directly into his muscle memory. Finally, he selected Green Camouflage, an ability that would let him blend seamlessly into surrounding vegetation.
"Excellent choices!" Deltey declared. "You’ll be significantly more capable after this. Ready to begin integration?"
“Do I have a choice?”
"Technically, yes. But declining at this point would waste the work you’ve done so far."
“Then let's get it over with.”
"Integration commencing in three... two... one..."
The pain started in his spine—a white-hot lance of agony that radiated outward through every nerve ending. His brain felt like it had been connected to a live current. His muscles spasmed, his bones ached, his skin crawled with the sensation of being remade at the cellular level.
Rowan couldn't scream—his body was still frozen—but the pain filled every corner of his consciousness, drowning out thought, drowning out everything except the overwhelming wrongness of being rebuilt from the inside out.
And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped.
Time resumed. His hand pulled back from the sphere of its own accord, and Rowan staggered, catching himself on the pedestal's edge. His whole body trembled, and sweat had broken out across his forehead despite the cave's cool air.
"Rowan?" Eden was at his side, one hand on his arm. "Are you okay?"
"That," Rowan managed, "was deeply unpleasant."
"Yeah." Warren's voice carried the weight of shared experience. "It doesn’t get easier."
"An immediate integration is always the most intense," Delta added, and Rowan could have sworn there was something almost apologetic in the AI's tone. "In the future, you can opt for a gradual integration over several days."
Rowan straightened slowly, flexing his fingers experimentally. He didn't feel different, exactly, but when he reflexively reached out with his awareness, he could feel the thrumming presence of the grape vines beyond this hidden cave. Like the difference between shouting across a canyon and whispering directly into someone's ear.
"How do you feel?" Eden asked. Her hand was still on his arm, he noticed. Warm through the fabric of his sleeve.
"Stronger." He met her eyes, saw the worry there, and felt something shift in his chest that had nothing to do with Nexus integration. "Ready to do whatever I can to help."
Eden smiled—a real smile, dimples appearing in her cheeks—and Rowan found himself thinking that maybe, when all of this was over, the complications wouldn't matter as much as he'd feared. Right now, there was a monster to contain and a team to support.
"Alright," he said, turning back to face Sam's cell. "Tell me what you need me to do."