Ryen Tauk’s eyes fluttered open as he floated in midair, affixed to a thin scaffolding of plastic struts and pipes by a rat’s nest of IV tubes and chirping sensors. His eyes flickered around, taking in the countless others suspended and shrink-wrapped around him in a similar state. His teeth clacked together and he shivered violently as his breath made a mist in the air. One member of Cohort Alpha Takora-pack floated orthogonally to him, methodically ripping out the tubes one by one. He hissed in pain as she removed a large one, sending an icy sensation shooting through his bloodstream.

  “Name?” said one of Takora-pack dispassionately, her own teeth chattering even though she was already in uniform.

  Tauk frantically curled his tail to cover himself. The realization that something important was missing rushed through every subtree in his brain. “Where’s Ryen-pack?” he rasped, his throat utterly devoid of moisture. He desperately glanced at the faces of those adjacent to him, but none were important. Other uniformed figures hovered next to shrink-wrapped bodies here and there.

  The member of Takora-pack turned, peering through the dimly lit chamber. “Apologetically, they were frozen in the wrong subtree. They’ll be revived in the best time. Name…now?”

  “Ryen Tauk,” Tauk croaked, following the Cohort Alpha’s gaze, straining to see if he could get a glimpse of them in the gloom.

  “Do you know where you are?” she continued. Tauk nodded curtly. “Request, try moving your fingers, toes, tail-tip.”

  Tauk obeyed, shifting his tail to cover himself further. Each movement sent an icy bolt of pain through his extremities. “It hurts,” he muttered softly, more to himself than anything.

  “Request, look at my moving hand and don’t move your head,” said the member of Takora-pack. She moved her palm from left to right, then up to down as Tauk’s eyes followed, then turned her wrist so Tauk was gazing into her watch’s screen. “Can you trace the shortest path between the colored nodes?”

  A small undirected graph appeared on the screen. Tauk traced the path instantly with a claw on the screen, barely even glancing at it, but taking care not to touch its owner’s wrist. A second, larger one appeared; this one had a dozen nodes and actually took a second. The member of Takora-pack yanked her arm back as soon as he was done and tapped some notes into her watch. She pulled out the final tube from Tauk’s arm, leaving him floating motionless next to the scaffolding.

  “Where’s Ryen-pack?” he repeated, his ears flattening against his head. The member of Takora-pack pushed off the scaffolding without glancing back, silently drifting between the rows of bodies. Tauk decided he would follow, trying to force back the anxiety and nausea; Takora-pack seemed to know where Ryen-pack was stored. He pushed off in close pursuit, ice shooting through his extremities with each movement. To his dismay, he had to adjust his tail, exposing himself once again.

  Tauk surveyed the stacked bodies as he drifted past. The pipes running alongside the scaffolding, thinning and branching out into narrower tubes and connecting to shrink-wrapped bodies formed a tight m-ary tree, twisting around and around, leaving paths through the vast, dim chamber. It was pretty, even if the leaves were a bit macabre.

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  “Tauk!” shouted a familiar voice ten or fifteen meters above his head. He grabbed the scaffolding to cancel his momentum and craned his neck to look. The lanky form of Ryen Roztek was hurtling towards him with outstretched arms. Tauk’s arms instinctively shot out, grabbing the scaffolding with a vice-like to stop Roztek’s momentum from setting them adrift as he wrapped his arms around Tauk, licking his cheek and snout with a tongue that was all too dry. Tauk gently bit one of Roztek’s long ears, holding it in his mouth just to savor the closeness. He took one hand off the scaffolding to run it over Roztek’s chest, feeling the rough slate-gray scales.

  “Do you know where Ryen-pack is?” said Tauk at last.

  “Yes!” said Roztek, pointing the way he came. The two of them pushed on the scaffolding, more gently this time, and drifted over. Another member of Cohort Alpha Takora-pack was removing the final tubes from Ryen Ractun, who pushed herself over to join them. Tauk and Roztek instantly pounced on her, licking her passionately.

  Ractun patted Tauk and Roztek’s chests, nuzzling each of them in turn with a dry snout. “Forget this,” she rasped, “We are never doing cold sleep again.”

  “Because I think we’re here, we don’t have to,” said Roztek softly, laying a hand flat against Ractun’s chest.

  Not far from them, as member of Takora-pack was removing the tubes from another shivering body, he was saying, “Request, look at my–”

  The figure glanced at the three of them, her eyes widening. Tauk stared back, gasping, his heart skipping a beat as he registered her: beady golden eyes, a short, broad snout, face tesselated with symmetric steel-blue scales, a compact toned frame the perfect balance between raw power and resource-efficiency. It was Ryen Kyada. Ryen-pack’s structure was complete again.

  Kyada ripped out the last of the tubes and sensors herself, flinging them aside to drift aimlessly and pushed herself into position between Takora-pack and the rest of Ryen-pack, holding out her arms to shield them. “Where did you forget our clothes?” she hissed at Takora-pack, staring into the nearest member’s eyes and baring a mouthful of pointed, glassy teeth.

  One of Takora-pack silently pointed at the exit hatch, nearly fifty meters away. She pointed at each member of Ryen-pack in turn, counting under her breath, “One, two, three, four,” then made a note on her watch and drifted off in the opposite direction.

  Kyada turned to Ryen-pack, raking them with her eyes. “So system-beautiful,” she whispered hoarsely.

  Tauk glanced warily at the receding components of Takora-pack and cautiously uncurled his tail from in front of him. Kyada looked down, then reached down and gave him a gentle squeeze, letting out a high-pitched trill. “Where were you, Tauk? Are you okay?” she said, licking his snout.

  Another wave of nausea rolled over Tauk. “I was just frozen in the wrong subtree for five epochs,” he said, managing a weak trill.

  In a flash, Kyada reached out, digging her claws into Ractun’s and Roztek’s arms, clinging to part of the structure of the most beautiful subgraph in the universe as it was complete once again. “I’m never letting us be more than one connected component again,” she whispered before breaking into a violent bout of shivering and wincing at some shooting pain.

  “Can we stop floating here because we’re freezing!” protested Ractun. Tauk nodded and Ryen-pack pushed off towards the hatch–and the bag with their uniforms in it, just visible in the gloom amidst a row of identical bags clipped to the wall.