And so begins the mid-arc 3-parter! A fair few chapters in arcs 2 and 3 are relatively self-contained, due to the road-trippy nature of the plot. Metabolism shakes things up, by pulling the rug out from underneath our heroes.

Thus far they’ve been doing rather well. Even in Limbic System, when they’re in serious trouble, it’s mostly about Furey kicking ass. In Metabolism we see that they’re just as vulnerable as they’ve ever been.

Structuring the chapter around Kay trying to avoid facing her current situation was a fun little twist, keeping the reader guessing until midway through. It’s a chance to do some nice character exploration in a deceptively relaxed environment, all the while with that opening paragraph looming ominously over the proceedings.

I mention the communicator in this chapter. That was something I introduced at the end of Arc 3, with the notion that they’d be in regular contact with the rebels back on Earth. Except I subsequently decided that it was a stretch of the technology and didn’t really make sense, and also made things a bit too easy. It got dropped from the plot but was never explained away, until now. I could have gone back and edited it out of the earlier chapters, but that felt like a retcon too far. Gotta live with my mistakes, when serialising, I think.

Ezekiel is a name I’ve always rather liked and which always has an air of mystery about it. It’s also a ref back to Straczynski’s run on Amazing Spider-Man (and a character in Jeremiah, oddly), which is appropriate as the inspiration for this 3-parter storyline is very much the Intersections in Real Time episode of Babylon 5.

Next ep is the one that really tries to go for the full-on Intersections effect.


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