The facility itself's spectacular, nothing much more to say in this regard, but it will stay lodged in my memories.
I really liked Shy and perhaps hoped naively that we might get a genuine human and android relationship, that hope got erased, and I felt genuine sorrow at the way their story ultimately ended.
But that relentlessly cruelty makes the story unpredictable in the best ways, but it comes across as genuine, as real, much like a car crash being totally apathetic, and it's fitting our first casualties of the book amounts to that in essence.
In that regard with Kamran and Reza's last interactions with each other, I have no doubt that I rushed through it in places and missed layers, like if you read back the event that lead to Reza's death in light of the email you wonder if he ignored Kamran or not because he did not respect him enough in a life or death situation or simply did not hear him.
I think Nightmare Asylum's already summarized my thoughts in a number of places and, I'd just be repeating much of what he's said in regards to this examination of the way the military industrial complex inherently causes harm as an expansionist force, and ultimately as we see in the epilogue forces friend against friend, never mind people like Duncan who actively exploit the power they hold over others, or the idealists manipulated into dying for others.
Blue Marsalis:
Such a perfect turning of our expectations on our heads, it is set up so classically, an Alien in a vent in an abandoned lab again? But with each descriptor we grow to understand that not only did it not always do what the Alien does, it saved this man, although with brutal efficiency.
But not only does it recall to me the visage of H.R Giger's abandoned concept in it's entirety with, the lips, rippling ridges, barbed tongue, and enormous bladed tail. But also with the robotic voice reminded me of the scrapped concept for the end of the original 1979 film. But perhaps that's just a coincidence.
As might surprise you I actually am fine with this being what it is, as the product of years research, and the specific circumstances of Blue's existence never to be replicated again.
It also works superbly on a number of thematic and narrative levels, Blue already existed in a form of biomechanical existence before their transformation, already living inside a body Alien to them.
The first doctor to acquire the Plagiarus Preapotens, who arguably knows it better than anyone else can ever hope to outside of a certain artificial intelligence, and even then after more funding than allotted. Blue can only barely manipulate it, with it inexorably reverting to it's default composition, apart from this once. So if this comes up again, I'm calling it nonsense, if it's not this set of specific circumstances.
I also basically did this reading of the brief but impactful return of my beloved Pathogen and Neomorph:
And this when Blue and Marcus touched through the glass: