The corridor beyond the blast door was completely black. No lights. No movement. Just silence.

  Behind her, Click. Click-click.

  Rowan slid the grate aside and pulled herself out of the crawlspace. Her boots hit the corridor with a hollow clang that echoed far louder than she wanted. The hallway stretched in both directions beneath a high ceiling.

  The crawlspace opening she'd just crawled through bent as something pale slid into view.

  A limb unfolded from the vent.

  Click. A Joint.

  Pop. Another joint.

  The chalky appendage forced itself through the opening, bending in impossible directions. Rowan backed away slowly, clutching the wrench.

  Another limb popped out.

  The split claw opened. Closed. Then lunged.

  Rowan jumped back just as the claw snapped shut inches from her head.

  She turned and ran.

  The opposite hallway stretched ahead, another corridor branching away from Sector H. Hope flared for half a second as she sprinted toward it.

  Then she saw the blast door. Closed. Sealed tight. The locking bars were engaged and the control panel beside it was dead, the screen cracked and black.

  Rowan slammed the panel anyway. "Come on," she hissed, hitting it again.

  Nothing. Behind her, Metal shrieked.

  She turned just in time to see the creature's limb wrench the vent opening wider. Steel bent outward like foil as another jointed limb forced itself through.

  Rowan looked back at the sealed door.

  Then toward the other direction. Toward Sector H.

  The blast door there hung partially open, the interior swallowed by absolute darkness. No emergency lights. No glow. Just a black corridor that seemed to eat the light behind it.

  She turned and ran straight for it.

  The moment she crossed the threshold into Sector H, the flickering corridor lights vanished behind her. Darkness swallowed everything.

  Rowan stopped a few steps inside, breathing hard, the wrench clenched in her shaking hand.

  Behind her, in the brighter hallway, metal screamed as the creature forced its way free.

  And somewhere deeper in Sector H. Something else shifted in the dark.

  Rowan moved slowly through Sector H, one hand sliding along the wall, the other holding the wrench out in front of her. Behind her. Nothing.

  The clicking had stopped. That frightened her more than when she could hear it.

  Rowan took another cautious step. Then another. Her boot pressed down onto something that didn't sound like metal.

  It felt like a soft, tacky pull. Her stomach dropped. She crouched and touched the floor. It wasn't steel. It was thick. Slightly warm. Rubber-like.

  Her fingers sank slightly into the surface before she jerked them back. Resin.

  The same hardened secretion from the dig site tunnels and the ladder shaft.

  Rowan stood very still. The corridor around her suddenly felt smaller. Alive.

  Somewhere ahead of her.

  A faint shifting sound.

  Not clicking.

  Wet sliding.

  She turned and ran.

  Her boots tore free from the sticky floor with snapping sounds as she sprinted blindly through the darkness, wrench hand in front to keep her from smashing into something unseen.

  Her thigh struck a metal frame. A doorway.

  Rowan stumbled inside and slammed straight into a row of lockers. "You're kidding me" she thought for a split second.

  Her hands fumbled across the handles until one popped open. She threw herself inside and yanked the door shut.

  Her breath came in silent, frantic gasps.

  Inside the locker, her elbow bumped into something loose. A small maintenance pouch. Her fingers tore it open to find maintenance markers.

  Rowan cracked one and then another. A soft green light bloomed inside the locker.

  She opened the locker door just enough to toss two glow sticks out into the room.

  They clattered across the floor and rolled apart. The green light spread slowly across the chamber. And Rowan wished she hadn't looked.

  The entire room was coated in resin. The walls. The ceiling. The floor.

  Thick yellow-white sheets of hardened secretion covered everything like melted wax. Bulging pockets clung to the surfaces. Some looked empty. Something slid inside a few others.

  Two smaller creatures crawled out into the glow.

  They were the size of large dogs, pale and slick with resin, their bodies segmented like grotesque insects. Multiple smaller limbs unfolded beneath them as they moved with slow popping motions across the sticky floor.

  Rowan clamped a hand over her mouth.

  The young creatures sniffed the air with twitching mandibles, moving cautiously through the chamber.

  Then the glow cast a new shadow across the resin. Rowan slowly leaned toward the grated slits in the locker door.

  A shape unfolded from the corridor entrance. The adult creature stepped into the light. Rowan finally saw it clearly.

  It was enormous.

  Its body was long and segmented like a grotesque fusion of insect and crustacean, the chalky plates of its exoskeleton threaded with dark mineral veins. Six massive limbs carried it low to the ground, each joint bending and twisting too many times before touching the resin-coated floor.

  Smaller manipulator limbs twitched near its head. The head itself was narrow and armored, mandibles folding and unfolding with slow, deliberate motions. Black compound eyes reflected the green glow in dozens of tiny pinpoints.

  The creature moved through the chamber, joints uncoiling and cracking, its claws gently tapping the resin floor.

  Searching.

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Rowan didn't move. Didn't breathe. And realized she wasn't hiding in a random room. She was hiding inside their hive.

  ?Pop. Crack. Click.

  ?The adult creature began to move toward the lockers, each joint snap echoing against the resin-coated walls. It didn't hesitate. It didn't sniff the air. It knew.

  ?It stopped directly in front of Rowan's door, its shadow blotting out the green glow of the markers. For a heartbeat, there was nothing but the sound of the station's failing ventilation. Then, the creature's mandibles began to grind, a wet, vibrating chitter that escalated into a sharp, piercing hiss.

  ?Across the room, the two smaller creatures froze, their pale heads snapping toward the lockers, mandibles coated and dripping with a thick saliva.

  ?The adult didn't use a single limb to probe. It slammed its entire mass against the locker.

  ?The reinforced steel imploded. The door didn't just open; it was driven inward, the metal shrieking as it crumpled toward Rowan's face. She threw her arms up, the wrench clutched in her hands.

  ?A massive, chalky limb, ending in that horrific split claw, punched through the ruined door and Rowan shrieked in pain. The claw clamped deep into her shoulder, the serrated edges biting through her coveralls and into her skin with ease.

  ?Rowan screamed again as the creature began to haul her out of the wreckage like a termite from a stump, she swung.

  ?The maintenance wrench connected with the creature's "wrist" joint. The impact sent a shockwave up Rowan's arm, but the sound was what mattered: a loud, hollow crack. A spray of thick fluid hissed out, smelling of spoiled milk.

  ?Rowan didn't climb out; she fell, tumbling onto the tacky, resin-slicked floor.

  ?The babies were already moving. They skittered on the floor, their multiple legs making a frantic, dry popping sound.

  One leaped, its weight hitting Rowan's chest and pinning her down. She could see its translucent throat pulsing as it prepared to bite and slammed the wrench upward, catching the small creature on the weak point.

  She shoved with every ounce of terror-fueled strength, throwing the squirming weight off her just as the adult recovered, its massive body uncoiling and clicking from the ruined lockers.

  Rowan scrambled to her feet, her boots nearly sliding out from under her. She lunged for one of the discarded green glow markers, her fingers closing around the plastic tube just as a pale, jointed limb slammed into the spot she had occupied a second before.

  ?The light was a sickly, vibrating emerald in her shaking hand. She didn't look back. She couldn't.

  ?Behind her, the sound was a biological clockwork. Click. Pop. Crack. The adult was moving with a frantic, rhythmic speed. Accompanying it was the lighter, more rapid pops of the smaller creature, their multiple legs tapping against the steel walls like a thousand falling needles.

  ?Rowan barreled through pitch-black corridors, the green glow of her marker cutting a narrow, swinging path through the dark.

  ?"Map... map, please, God, a map," she hissed, her breath coming in jagged, sobbing hitches.

  ?Her free hand slapped against the wall as she ran, feeling for the familiar rectangular frame of a station schematic. The wall here wasn't cold steel anymore; it was textured with thick, translucent resin. It felt like running through the throat of a living thing.

  ?She rounded a corner, her injured shoulder slamming into a junction box. The green light swept across a vertical panel bolted to the wall.

  ??Rowan skidded to a halt, the wrench dangling from her belt, her fingers frantically wiping at a layer of yellowish grime coating the plexiglass. Underneath the filth, a schematic of the entire station emerged in faded lines.

  ?Click-click-click-click.

  The sound was closer.

  ?Rowan's eyes darted across the map, searching for the red 'You Are Here' icon. She found it. Her finger traced a line toward the reactor core in Sector N, but the path was a labyrinth of transitions and twisting corridors she did not have time to remember.

  Behind her, the corridor she had just fled erupted with the sound of a forest of dry timber snapping all at once. The adult wasn't just walking; it was sprinting, its massive weight punching through the resin-slicked floor with every violent stride. Pop-crack. Pop-crack.

  ?She abandoned the map, her breath a raw, jagged sob as she bolted into the deepening gloom of Sector H. She expected the pursuit to end in a claw through her spine, but as she rounded a corner into a massive, vaulted transition zone, the sounds abruptly vanished.

  ?The silence was heavy, the air was humid and carried a scent so nauseating it made her gag. A mixture of wet earth, ammonia, and something sickly sweet, like rotting fruit.

  ?Rowan slowed, her chest heaving, the green glow of her marker shaking in her hand. She was standing at the threshold of a massive storage bay.

  A low, wet slop-thump resonated from the darkness inside. It was the sound of a straining muscle working in the dark.

  No more popping and clicking came from the corridor behind her.

  ?Her hands trembling, Rowan dropped the glowing marker and it rolled deep into the bay.

  ?The green light spread across the floor, and for a heartbeat, Rowan forgot how to breathe.

  ?The "fossil" they had excavated-the massive, ridged stone they had called the "find of the century", sat in the center of the bay. But it wasn't stone. It was a calcified husk that had been torn open from the inside.

  ??A gargantuan was in front of her, a bloated mountain of pale, translucent flesh, anchored to the deck by thick, pulsing ropes of resin that looked like industrial cables.

  Her body was a segmented, tubular engine of reproduction.

  ?Rowan watched, paralyzed, as the Queen used two long, multi-jointed needle-arms to delicately pluck a writhing, pale larva from a vent in her side. The larva was the size of a human forearm, translucent and wet.

  ?The Queen turned her massive, eyeless crown of ivory toward the hangar wall.

  The wall was no longer metal; it had been transformed into a vertical honeycomb of deep, resin-filled holes.

  The Queen slid the larva into a vacant, dripping cavity. She then vomited a thick, amber-colored seal over the hole, trapping the creature inside the wall where it would pupate.

  ?A hundred of these holes lined the walls, some dark and empty, others moving faintly as the things inside shifted behind their resin veils.

  ?The Queen's head tilted, sensing the green light. She didn't click. She let out a low, subsonic vibration that rumbled through the deck.

  ?Rowan looked to the shadows, expecting the adult that had been chasing her to lunge. ?It was there, standing at the edge of the light. But it wasn't attacking. It stood perfectly still, its many-jointed limbs folded inward in a grotesque display of submission.

  Its black, compound eyes reflected the green glow, fixed not on Rowan, but on the heaving mountain of human flesh in the center of the room. Most of the bodies still wearing their crew uniforms.

  ?The creature hadn't been hunting her. It had been herding her toward the nursery.

  Rowan remained frozen, the air in her lungs feeling like set concrete. The green glow of the marker on the floor cast long shadows of the Queen's needle-arms against the honeycomb walls.

  She stared at the mountain of flesh beneath the Queen's heaving bulk; she could see the corner of a patch, a familiar name, a boot she recognized, mostly organs.

  ?The weight of it was absolute. She wasn't an archaeologist anymore; she was a component. A piece of raw material waiting to be processed into one of those amber-sealed holes.

  ?Elian. Mara.

  ?The names flickered in her mind like a dying pilot light. She pictured Mara's face on the stage at her recital, the way her daughter always bit her lip when she was nervous. If Rowan stayed here, that girl would grow up without her.

  ?She didn't want to be a ghost. She didn't want to become a fossil.

  ?Rowan's fingers tightened around the maintenance wrench until the metal bit into her palm. She didn't have a plan, only a sudden, violent rejection of the end.

  ?She bolted.

  ?She didn't go back toward the adult. She lunged to the left, toward a small gap behind the Queen's pulsing flank.

  ?The Queen's ivory crown snapped toward the movement. She didn't hiss; she let out a shriek that wasn't a sound, but a wall of kinetic force. The vibration hit Rowan like a physical blow, and the resin-filled holes in the walls began to quiver like jelly, the larvae inside thrashing in response to their mother's rage.

  ?Behind her, the adult hissed, its many-jointed limbs unfolding with a series of frantic, wet pops. It hesitated for a moment, caught between the command of its Queen and the sudden, unpredictable movement of its prey.

  ?Rowan dove into the dark passageway, leaving the green glow of the marker behind.

  ?The darkness was total. It smothered her, thick with the smell of the hive. She ran by touch, her left hand skimming the wall, feeling the transition from organic resin back to cold, hard steel. She stumbled over bundles of cables, her breath coming in shallow, terrified gasps.

  She could hear the clicking starting again behind her, closer, faster, the sound of a monster that had been scolded into action.

  ?Ahead, a faint sliver of light caught her eye.

  ?It was a blast door, jammed nearly shut, its heavy teeth locked only inches apart.

  ?Rowan didn't slow down. She threw her shoulder into the gap, the metal scraping against her injured arm. She exhaled every bit of air in her lungs, making herself as thin as possible as she squeezed through the narrow, jagged opening.

  The wrench caught on the frame for a heart-stopping second before she yanked it free and tumbled onto the deck on the other side.

  ?She scrambled to her feet, shielding her eyes. ?The darkness was gone. A blue light rolled down from overhead panels in slow, rhythmic waves, the illumination that kept pulsing like a fading heartbeat.

  Across the hall, a stenciled sign hung crookedly from a single rivet: DE-88: DISPOSAL ANNEX.

  Rowan stood in the center of the Annex, her breath coming in ragged bursts. The room was sterile, a clinical contrast to the organic filth of the hive. Row after row of slim, brushed-aluminum boxes sat on automated rails-caskets designed for the final, cold exit.

  ?DE-88. This wasn't just a storage wing; it was a morgue. A place built to purge the station of bodies with disease, radiation, or contamination.

  ?CRUNCH.

  ?The blast door she had just squeezed through shuddered. A pale claw punched through the gap, followed by the screech of metal being peeled back. The adult wasn't hesitating anymore. It was coming for the biological matter its Queen demanded.

  ?"No," Rowan whimpered, her eyes darting across the room. "Not like the others."

  She scrambled toward the viewing area, a small cluster of bolted-down seats where crew members would sit to say their final goodbyes. It was a place of heavy grief, and the station's safety protocols knew it; the storage pockets here usually had oxygen for mourners whose lungs might seize or hyperventilate under the weight of loss.

  ?She found only one and pulled it out: a portable oxygen canister. She checked the gauge. The needle hovered at the halfway mark and she had no idea how long that would last her.

  The blast door groaned again, the gap widening as the creature's head, a mass of black eyes forced its way into the blue light, mandibles snapping.

  ?Rowan lunged for the nearest metal casket. She slammed her palm against the console, her fingers dancing over the cracked screen.

  ?[LAUNCH SEQUENCE: ENGAGED]

  [LOCKED TARGET: DEEP SPACE TRAJECTORY]

  [WARNING: OVERRIDE DISABLED]

  ?The rails began to hum. The outer vacuum seal of the launch tube hissed.

  ?Rowan scrambled into the thin metal box, closing the lid on top of her. It was cold, dark and cramped, smelling of recycled air.

  The oxygen mask was clamped over her face, the canister tucked tight against her stomach.

  ?The creature burst through the blast door, its joints popping in frantic motion. It popped and cracked across the deck, its claws sparking against the steel as it realized where she was.

  ?For a heartbeat, she was trapped in absolute silence, hearing only the hiss of the mask.

  ?Then, the kick.

  ?A violent jolt threw her against the side of the casket as the magnetic rails fired. The sensation of weightlessness took her instantly, followed by the muffled thump of the outer hatch clearing.

  ?She was gone.

  The metal walls of the casket were so narrow they pressed against Rowan's shoulders, a cold, unyielding embrace. There was no viewport. No sliver of starlight to mark her movement. She was encased in absolute, pressurized blackness, suspended in a void where "up" and "down" had ceased to exist.

  ?Rowan lay perfectly still. Each movement felt like a theft of the future. She could hear the air regulator's rhythmic hiss, counting down the seconds of her life.

  ?She reached for the comms unit, her fingers fumbling in the dark until they found the toggle. She knew the cost of speaking, every word was a lungful of oxygen she might need later, but the warning was more important than the breath.

  ?"This is Rowan Saze," she whispered, her voice a ghost of a sound, barely a vibration against the microphone. "ID five-six-five."

  ?She paused, forcing herself to take a shallow, disciplined breath.

  ?"I am adrift. I've launched in a DE-88 burial unit to escape the infestation on The Bishop. The crew is gone. The specimens on the ridge, they aren't dead. They're a dormant hive. And there are thousands more still on that rock."

  ?She felt a bead of sweat roll down her temple. The air in the casket was already growing heavy.

  ?"If you hear this... do not approach the Bishop. Do not go to the surface. Whatever the Company thinks that planet is worth, it isn't worth the cost of bringing those things back. Burn the sector."

  ?She shifted slightly, the oxygen canister clicking against the metal floor.

  ?"I have a portable tank. It's... not full. I don't know how long it will last. I'm going to stop talking now. To save what's left. Please find me, I want to live."

  ?She closed her eyes, the darkness of the casket merging with the darkness behind her lids.

  ?"Elian. Mara. If you're hearing this, it means I'm... I'm trying. I love you. I'm going to keep my eyes shut and think of the sun. I'll see you in the light."

  ?Rowan clicked the comms off. The silence that followed was total, broken only by the thin, whistling straw of her own breath. She curled her fingers around the maintenance wrench one last time and waited in the cramped dark.

  If you happened to find this story and gave it a try, I truly appreciate it. It felt good to actually finish a story after so long. Though I'm no professional, this short story was a huge mental health win for me. Thank you for your time.