On the icy, desolate planet of Niflheim, Billie was a scientist tasked with managing the colony’s printing technology — a revolutionary system that allowed humans to be reconstructed, memories intact, whenever they met an untimely end. The printer had once been reserved for expendables like Mickey, but now everyone in the colony had become "printable." Death had lost its permanence, yet Billie knew this new reality brought risks. Memories degraded over multiple prints, and some colonists returned slightly... different. Billie spent her days analyzing print data, searching for patterns, for signs that something was going wrong — and nothing was wrong...something just felt...off

Billie exhaled, tension coiling in her chest. Printing a new body wasn’t difficult — the machine handled that. The real challenge was ensuring the memories transferred intact. Too many recent prints had woken up with gaps, or worse, inconsistencies that made them feel... off.

"Come on," Billie muttered under her breath. She tapped another command, and the bio-scanner flickered to life, tracing the neural pathways forming inside the girl’s skull. The data stream appeared clean — no breaks, no distortions.

The figure in the chamber took on clearer form — a young girl, maybe 15 maybe 16 years old. Her eyes remained closed, her chest rising and falling with the rhythm of her newly established heartbeat. Billie knew this one’s name. Rowen. The colony’s records said she'd drowned last week, fallen through the ice while playing too far from the settlement. Now she was here, on the cusp of a second chance.

Billie rubbed her eyes and leaned closer to the glass.

"Don’t let me down,"

she whispered. The girl’s eyelids fluttered. Any second now...