Tck... tck... tck.
The dish swept left, then right —tck tck tck.Different speeds for different directions. It chose left. The legs carried it down the corridor, metal fingertips resuming their scrape along the wall, and the vibration in Levi’s sternum faded steadily, the pressure in his ribs easing degree by degree the further away it went.
Levi exhaled, though it was closer to a sob than a breath. His hands shook and Asher didn’t let go of the one he was holding.It looked right at us…why didn’t it attack?
Why?
Asher leaned in and kissed the corner of his mouth. “Levi, hey, let’s move…we’re alive—”
Levi placed his hands on Asher’s chest. “Next time we hide, don’t try to reveal our location like that. Do you understand me? It will lead to a bad time for both of us.”
“Baby, we’re alive and I got you half-hard with that thing out there. I’m having a great time,” Asher said as he pulled the dooropen wider to peek outside. “Clear. Come on. Monsters to kill. Dates to earn.”
They emerged into the corridor and Levi’s legs wobbled beneath him, his pulse still running high, and the jumpsuit still warm where Asher’s palm pressed against him. He could think more clearly than in any other loop before, and he had a sinking feeling he would never not be afraid, but at least it felt more manageable.
For now.
They kept moving.
Crew members crowded the mess— maybe fifteen, some in uniform, some in sleepwear, most with weapons drawn and none of them looking like they knew what to do with them. The red alarm light pulsed across every surface, voices overlapping, and the room was at the density where fear started feeding on itself.
Levi still held Asher’s hand. He was aware of it — of the visibility of it, the fact that every person in this room was about to see the rocks guy and the security chief linked together like kids afraid of losing each other in an amusement park. The crew would draw conclusions. Elliot would draw worse ones, once he saw.It’s too late to worry about it. Just keep Asher focused.
Jasper was the first to reach them in disheveled engineering coveralls, a datapad already in hand, the screen casting blue light on his face. The grin was there, same as always, and his eyes dropped to their linked hands and the grin didn’t change. He nodded once. “Hey man. Hell of a wake-up call.”
“How bad is it?” Asher asked.
The ease dropped a full degree. “You know those seventeen samples in the cargo hold?”
Levi’s chest tightened. “Yeah.”
“They’re not in the cargo hold anymore, dude.”
Owen arrived behind Jasper already talking, data pads clutched like life preservers. “Seventeen containment pods breached from the inside — simultaneously, Levi, all at once — the structural integrity was rated for—” He caught himself and looked at Levi, at their hands, then back to his data pads. “Hi. This is very bad.”
“I gathered.” Levi nodded.
Tyler paced near the porthole. “We should be out there hunting them down, not sitting here—”
Elliot came through the far door and a hush fell over the room, everyone turning to him even as his eyes only found Levi, then seemed to snap to the sea of worried faces trained on him. He positioned himself near the front of the room, hands clasped behind his back as he scanned the room. “Has anyone seen Chief Officer Zoe Ardell?” he called out.
A murmur ran through the room as Levi glanced around.Of course she isn’t here. She always seems to die early in these games.
Reynolds came through the main door like a storm and the room reorganized around her. “Listen up!” Her voice was crisp and carried without effort. “We have confirmed sightings on Decks Two, Three, Four, and Six. Direct physical contact with these things is fatal — they access the spinal column and central nervous system and the process is not survivable. Our weapons are having minimal effect, and they only really seem to be affected by high heat, so seal and purge protocols are authorized.”
Maddie’s head snapped up from a crew member. “What if crew is in the vicinity?”
“We do not know the long term effects of what contact with them means. Follow the purge protocol,” Reynolds said to the room, almost as if she was deliberately not looking at Maddie. “We need to split into groups of two or three, cover maximum area, report sightings to central—”
That’s fucking stupid. No.
“Splitting up is how people die!” Levi snapped, stepping forward. His chest felt strange again, the echoes of the vibrations humming in his chest.
Reynolds looked at him like something stuck to her shoe. “Dr. Mercer, I’ve run containment operations before. We need coverage across—”
“You’ve never run containment against seventeen hostiles that move through ventilation shafts and can’t be stopped by the weapons we have.” His voice was steady. He didn’t know where the steadiness was coming from, but he knew games, and he knew whatthisgame would do if they separated. “If we split into pairs, they pick us off in corridors. We lose communication, we lose numbers, and people die alone.”
“Excuse me? Dr. Mercer, you’re not even wearing your comms badge, and you want to talk about communication?” Reynolds shifted her torso in his direction. She had a withering stare, the kind that made Levi immediately feel small. “You do not give orders. I do. This crew knows this ship and we need to—”
