Chapter 19

The wave crashes down, and Finn's fist slams against the emergency release.

The blast door drops like a guillotine. Two tons of reinforced steel between Cass and whatever that thing is. The impact shakes the observation deck, sends coffee mugs tumbling from the console, and for a moment there's nothing but the ringing echo of metal on metal.

Then silence.

Finn's palm is still pressed against the glass where Cass's hand was a second ago. His breath fogs the surface.

"Did she—" Reeves starts.

"Shut up." Finn moves to the secondary monitor, fingers flying across the controls. The screen flickers, cycles through camera feeds. Static. More static. A brief flash of the corridor—empty, dark, the floor still bubbling where the thing touched it. No Cass. No creature.

"Thermal imaging," Malik says from behind him. She's already pulling up the overlay on her tablet. "If she's alive, we'll see her heat signature."

The screen blooms with color. Blues and purples for the cold metal walls. A spreading patch of orange-red where the creature was, residual heat from whatever chemical reaction it caused. And there—

"Northwest corner," Malik says. "Behind the support column."

A small cluster of yellow-orange. Human-sized. Not moving.

Finn's hand hovers over the door release. The one that would lift the blast door back up.

"Don't." Reeves moves between him and the console. "You saw what that thing did to the floor. To Chen. To—"

"She's alive."

"For now. You open that door, we're all dead."

Finn looks at him. Reeves is sweating, his uniform collar dark with it. His hand rests on the sidearm at his hip, and Finn wonders if he's even aware he's doing it.

"The protocol is clear," Reeves continues. "Containment breach in Sector Seven means full lockdown. No exceptions."

"The protocol was written for chemical spills and reactor leaks." Malik doesn't look up from her tablet. "Not for whatever the hell that is."

"Doesn't matter. We seal the sector, we vent the atmosphere, we—"

"There are seventeen people in Sector Seven." Finn's voice comes out flat. "You want to vent them all into space?"

Reeves's jaw works. "I want to keep the other two hundred and thirty-three people on this station alive."

The thermal image flickers. The yellow-orange cluster moves. Just slightly. An arm, maybe. Or a leg.

Finn pulls up the audio feed, cranks the gain. Static hisses through the speakers, then something else. A scraping sound. Metal on metal. And underneath it, barely audible—breathing. Ragged, wet, but breathing.

"Cass." He keys the intercom. "Cass, if you can hear me, tap twice on the wall."

Nothing.

"She could be unconscious," Malik says.

"Or the thing could be mimicking her heat signature." Reeves hasn't moved from in front of the console. "We've seen it adapt. Learn. What if it's—"

Two sharp taps echo through the speakers.

Finn's hand moves toward the door release again. Reeves's hand moves to his sidearm.

"Think about what you're doing," Reeves says.

"I am."

"No, you're reacting. You're letting emotion override—"

"She's twenty meters away."

"And that thing is probably right next to her."

The thermal image shifts. The orange-red patch—the creature—spreads across the floor like spilled paint, moving toward the support column. Toward Cass.

"We need to do something," Malik says. "Now."

Finn scans the corridor layout on the monitor. The blast door is the only exit, but there's a maintenance shaft three meters from Cass's position. Leads down to the lower levels, eventually connects to the emergency escape pods. If she could reach it—

"The shaft," he says. "Can we override the access panel from here?"

Malik's fingers dance across her tablet. "Maybe. The system's designed to be manual, but there's a backup electronic lock. If I can bypass the—" She stops. "Wait."

"What?"

"The creature. Look at the thermal."

The orange-red patch has stopped moving. It's pooling around the base of the support column, but not advancing. Just sitting there, pulsing slightly, like it's breathing.

"It's waiting," Reeves says.

"For what?"

"For us to open the door."

Finn watches the thermal image. The creature pulses again, and this time he sees something in the pattern. A rhythm. Deliberate. Like a heartbeat, but wrong. Too slow, then too fast, then slow again.

"It knows we're watching," Malik whispers.

The intercom crackles. A voice, distorted and wet, like someone speaking through a mouthful of water.

"Finn."

It's Cass's voice. But also not. The cadence is right, the inflection, but there's something underneath it. Something that makes Finn's skin crawl.

"Finn, please. It hurts."

Reeves's sidearm is out now, pointed at the floor but ready. "Don't respond."

"Open the door, Finn. I can't—I can't breathe. Please."

The thermal image shows Cass's heat signature still behind the column. Not moving. Not speaking.

"It's mimicking her," Malik says. "Using her voice."

"How?"

"I don't know. Maybe it absorbed some of her cells when it—" She stops, swallows. "When it touched her."

The voice comes again, clearer this time. "I know you're there. I know you can hear me. Please, Finn. Don't leave me here."

Finn keys the intercom, keeps his voice steady. "Cass, if that's really you, tell me something only you would know."

Silence. Then: "Your sister's name is Rebecca. She lives in Portland. You haven't spoken to her in four years because of what happened at the funeral."

Reeves looks at him. "Is that true?"

Finn doesn't answer. His hand is shaking now, hovering over the door release.

"You told me that three months ago," the voice continues. "After the incident in the reactor room. We were in the med bay, and you said you wished you could take it back. What you said to her."

"Finn." Malik's voice is sharp. "Look at the thermal."

The creature has moved. Not toward Cass, but away. It's spreading across the corridor, thinning itself out, and as Finn watches, it starts to change color on the thermal image. The orange-red fades to yellow, then to the same blue-purple as the walls.

"It's masking its heat signature," Malik says. "Matching the ambient temperature."

"Which means we can't track it anymore." Reeves moves closer to the blast door, sidearm raised. "Which means it could be anywhere."

The voice comes again, but this time it's different. Layered. Cass's voice, but with others underneath it. Chen's voice. Voices Finn doesn't recognize. All speaking in unison.

"We just want to go home."

Finn's finger touches the door release. Doesn't press. Not yet.

"The maintenance shaft," he says to Malik. "Can you open it?"

"I'm trying. The system's not responding. It's like something's interfering with the—" Her tablet screen goes black. Then flickers back on, showing lines of code scrolling past too fast to read. "That's not me. Something's accessing the station's network."

"The creature?"

"I don't know. Maybe. Or maybe it's just a system glitch from the—"

The lights go out.

Emergency lighting kicks in after three seconds, bathing everything in red. The monitors flicker, reboot, and when they come back online, all the camera feeds are dead except one. The corridor outside the blast door.

The creature is pressed against the glass, spread flat like a shadow. And in its mass, those eyes. Dozens of them now. Hundreds. All staring directly at the camera. At Finn.

"Jesus Christ," Reeves breathes.

The creature peels away from the glass, reforms itself into something almost human-shaped. Arms, legs, a head. It walks toward the support column where Cass is hiding, and Finn can see now that it's not walking. It's gliding. Flowing. Like water pretending to be solid.

It reaches the column. Reaches around it.

"No." Finn's hand slams down on the door release.

"Don't—" Reeves starts, but it's too late.

The blast door rises with a hydraulic hiss. Half a meter. One meter. Enough to see underneath.

Cass is there, pressed against the column, her face pale in the emergency lighting. The creature is next to her, one appendage wrapped around her throat. Not squeezing. Just holding.

"Hello, Finn," it says with Cass's mouth.

Finn's hand freezes on the controls. Behind him, he hears Reeves chamber a round.

"Let her go."

"Why would I do that?" The creature tilts Cass's head, studying him. "She's the only reason you haven't vented this sector yet."

"We can negotiate."

"Can we?" The creature's grip tightens slightly on Cass's throat. She gasps, and Finn sees her eyes widen. Her real eyes, not the thing's. She's still in there. Still conscious. "What do you have that I want?"

"Safe passage. Off the station."

The creature laughs, and it's the worst sound Finn has ever heard. Like glass breaking underwater. "I don't need your permission to leave. I can take any form I want. Walk right past you. Become you, if I wanted."

"Then why haven't you?"

The creature pauses. The eyes in its mass blink in sequence, like a wave. "Because I'm curious. About you. About all of you. You're so fragile, so temporary, and yet you build these monuments to permanence. This station. These walls. As if metal and glass could keep out the dark."

Finn's hand moves slowly toward the emergency vent controls. If he can trigger them, flood the corridor with—

"I wouldn't do that," the creature says. "The moment you touch that button, I crush her windpipe. And then I come through that door, and I find out what you taste like."

Reeves's gun is up now, aimed at the creature. "Let her go, or I shoot."

"With what? Bullets?" The creature shifts, and suddenly it's not holding Cass anymore. It's inside her, visible beneath her skin like ink in water. "Go ahead. See what happens."

Cass's mouth opens. Her voice, but strained. "Finn. The shaft. I can reach it."

"No you can't," the creature says through her. "I won't let you."

"You're not in control." Cass's hand moves, slowly, toward her belt. Toward something clipped there. "Not completely."

"Cass—" Finn starts.

She pulls the thermal charge from her belt. The kind they use for emergency hull repairs. Hot enough to melt through steel. Her thumb hovers over the trigger.

"If I set this off," she says, and Finn can hear the strain in her voice, the effort it takes to speak, "it'll burn us both."

The creature goes still. The eyes in its mass all focus on the charge in her hand.

"You won't," it says.

"Try me."

For a long moment, nothing moves. Then the creature flows out of Cass like smoke, reforming itself into that almost-human shape beside her. She collapses against the column, gasping, the thermal charge still clutched in her hand.

"Interesting," the creature says. "You'd really rather die than let me have you."

"Every time."

The creature tilts its head. "Then we're at an impasse."

"No," Finn says. "We're not."

He hits the door release. The blast door drops, but not all the way. He stops it at half a meter, just enough for Cass to roll under if she's fast enough.

"Now," he says.

Cass moves. The creature moves faster. But she's already triggered the thermal charge, already thrown it at the thing's center mass, and when it detonates, the corridor fills with white light and heat that makes the monitors scream with overload warnings.

Finn can't see anything. Can't hear anything over the alarms. His hand finds the door release again, drops the blast door the rest of the way, and something hits the other side hard enough to dent the steel.

Then silence.

Malik's hands are shaking as she pulls up the thermal imaging. The corridor is a wash of orange and red, too hot to see anything clearly. But there, at the base of the door—

A hand. Human-sized. Reaching under the gap.