"I'd need more room, especially if you're making the jar ahead of time. Can't do brain surgery on myself around him."

"All right." There is a delay, and then Cam opens the door to reveal a capsule with a surgical gurney and everything. "Lemme know what tools you need. In general kind, like, 'scalpel', not 'my entire kit', please." A cylinder somewhat larger than a human head appears, more than twenty feet away from the gurney.

"I'll need, um," she steps away from Cam and outside the Hatchet Face's range. "Wire scalpel, sonic bone cutter, brain wave reader, enough cameras that I can see what I'm doing, and the disassembled pieces that make up that jar. Other things I'll think of as they come up, and I might ask you to connect the new body to my brain bit by bit instead of all in one go."

A tray of tools appears. The surgery is peppered with cameras.

Bonesaw steps back toward Cam and the jar containing the faceless Hatchet. There's a crunch, and she spits out a liquid that sizzles on contact with metal or plastic or Cam. And blades spear from her wrists in case the acid doesn't do the job.

She stops. "Why aren't you done, you should be dead! Hatchet Face is right there!"

"What were you going to do if you'd killed me? Float up here forever? You can't pilot the ship. Maybe you'd eventually figure out why you can't pilot the ship, but that wouldn't let you actually do it."

"Jump out and survive reentry with whatever I can make out of those tools, this ship, and your body. I'm not sure how, but I bet I can."

"Riley, you can't even open the door. Maybe you have enough of that acid to melt a little hole, but only a little one."

"I could make more. Or get out some other way. Can't is a bad word to use when you're a tinker. It's like Mannequin always, well, not said, but you know."

"I actually have no idea how he communicated, but I'm sure he had his ways. Anyway. Are we going to have further problems with you trying to murder me and possibly other, squishier people or can we move on with our lives?"

Cam makes her a blank. Blonde with the boosted eyes and the pain gadget and a few tracking devices hidden here and there and otherwise standard issue human. Alive and twitching a little bit with unfocused eyes and entirely autonomic breaths.

The original keeps working and occasionally asking Cam to add some nerve here or blood vessel there. The copy helps with the operation, though its movements are nowhere near as steady.

Cam places bits where asked.

Eventually Bonesaw explains. "Her reactions—or mine, now, my other set—they aren't under conscious control. Is that one of the things I can't fix?"

"The blank has a brain, just not a mind. I imagine you can route around this in some way so that you can voluntarily breathe and all that other good stuff."

"I've already got normal amounts of control," says the copy. "But I'm crying because I feel like it instead of because I want to, and I know how to make it stop."

"Actually, me having an accurate read on things like when and whether you feel like crying is probably useful for your long-term plans."

The Riley doesn't answer and goes back to work. The spare brain gets completely detached, and the tinker is a bit more careful moving the important one to the newly empty space.

Cam supervises in silence.

Eventually the connections get severed and the original goes limp. "Can you seal up my head or should I do it?" Riley asks.