"I'd have to touch you again." It was a rule that wasn't a rule, since it'd been tossed out the window for logistical reasons, but one that feels like its closer to respect these days. "When I concentrate on someone I touch, I learn how to be like them. And then I can turn into them."

Simplified and distilled down from a lesson in genetics Collette barely understood, it made more sense this way. No way was she going to spend time debating if it was magic or if it wasn't. Technology that behaved like magic might as well be magic.