Anwei had long ago classified Howard in her mind as 'not to be eaten,' which probably went a ways to why she was willing to accept the slap-salute from him.

Anwei gritted her teeth, more carefully than she used to; her teeth were not what they used to be. She didn't care what Neuropathy said; there had to be some block of neural tissue somewhere on Stacy that connected to the main whole with a tentacle at irregular intervals and dropped in fresh batches of corrupt commands. Why else would they be unable to comb her straight after all these years?

"Have we found any matches between the people she's trying to inject? Maybe she'd misreading them as having a calcium deficiency, and we need to purge and restart the medbay sensors again." That was always a nightmare; tentacles flailing everywhere while the doctors stood outside and hoped that Stacy didn't dismember all their equipment.