The winch screamed.

  A high, mechanical shriek. It cut through the roar of the Atlantic wind. The steel cable vibrated tight, shedding saltwater and rust as it coiled back onto the drum.

  Steve Haul gripped the railing. Hard.

  Cold bit through neoprene. Numb fingers. Spray hit his face like gravel. Sharp. Relentless.

  “Steady!” Steve braced against the rail.

  The gale snatched his voice away.

  Petty Officer Willy Cox didn’t hear him. Willy leaned over the gunwale. He grinned. Wide and wild. Too much teeth for a sane man on a deck this slick. He wore a bright orange safety vest. A loud target against the gray, churning water.

  “It’s coming up, Chief!” Willy leaned over the railing. “Sonar says twenty feet!”

  Steve’s stomach flipped.

  He checked the tension gauge. The needle showed a dangerously high reading. The SS Borealis groaned. Listed to starboard.

  This wasn’t right.

  They dredged up satellites. They hauled up booster rockets. Classified debris. Metal. Dead things.

  This felt heavy. Dense.

  “Ten feet!” Willy gripped the railing.

  The water churned. Bubbles broke the surface. Huge, oily globs of foam.

  Then, the darkness broke.

  It swallowed the deck lights.

  A shape rose from the black swells.

  It swung on the cable. Dripping sludge. Ancient silt. Elliptical. Smooth. Silver, like a string of pearls. Dark, inscribed lines marked its surface. Coated in green moss.

  It hit the deck with a sound unlike a thud.

  It was a toll.

  A deep, continuous pulse traveled up through the soles of Steve’s boots. Rattled his teeth.

  The winch operator killed the motor.

  Silence rushed in. Just the wind. The slap of waves against the hull.

  Steve stepped forward.

  The object sat on the wet steel plates. Massive. At least twelve feet high.

  “Whoa.” Willy stepped closer.

  “Back.” Steve shot out an arm.

  Willy froze. “Chief?”

  “I said get back.”

  Steve approached the object. The floodlights warped around it. Unnatural cold.

  Impossible cold.

  The temperature plummeted with every step. His breath plumed white. Frost bloomed on the deck plates. Spider webbing out from the base of the object.

  Snap.

  Sharp sound. Like a gunshot.

  Steve looked down.

  The steel deck beneath the object cracked. The metal contracted. Shattered.

  “It’s… it’s geometry,” Willy said. Low voice. “Look at it. It hurts my eyes.”

  The curve of the object was wrong. It didn’t follow the lines of the ship. It absorbed the floodlights. Created a void in the center of the deck.

  Steve’s stomach churned.

  Cut the cable. Let the ocean swallow it.

  “It’s beautiful.”

  The voice came from behind him.

  Steve turned.

  Captain Daria Heather stood on the bridge wing stairs.

  She clashed with the grime. The Borealis was a rusted workhorse. Daria was pristine. White naval uniform crisp. A sheet of blonde hair cascaded down her back.

  She descended the stairs. Eyes locked on the black shape.

  Wide. Hazel. Hungry.

  “Captain,” Steve said. He moved to intercept her. “Stay back. The thermal readings are impossible. It’s cracking the deck.”

  Daria walked past him. Eyes locked forward.

  “Sector 4.” Daria reached the bottom step. “Just like the dossier said.”

  “Daria.” Steve stepped into her path. “This isn’t a satellite. This isn’t debris. We need to initiate containment protocol. Hazmat. Sealed cargo.”

  She stopped. She looked at him.

  For a second, he saw the woman he loved.

  Then, the career officer clicked back into place.

  “Don’t you see, Chief?” she asked. “This thing will make us millions.”

  “It’s dangerous,” Steve said. “Look at the frost.”

  “It’s a discovery,” she said. “The discovery of the century. Do you know what this means for the Department? For us?”

  “I know it’s freezing the ship,” Steve said. “We lock it down. Now. We don’t touch it until we get to Virginia.”

  Daria stepped around him.

  “I need to verify the hull integrity,” she said.

  “Don’t,” Steve said.

  She walked into the frost zone.

  The air misted around her. Her breath came in sharp hitches.

  She stood inches from the silver surface.

  It loomed over her. A monolith.

  “It’s beating,” Daria said.

  She reached out.

  “Captain!” Steve lunged forward. “Don’t touch it!”

  She didn’t look at him. Eyes locked on the metal. She raised her hand. Stripped off the glove. Pale skin. Reaching.

  Steve lunged.

  Too late.

  Daria’s fingertips brushed the gray metal.

  Hiss.

  The sound of moisture flash-freezing.

  Daria jerked. Snatched her hand back.

  She stumbled. Hit Steve’s chest.

  He caught her. Grabbed her wrist. Lifted it into the harsh glare of the floodlights.

  “Christ.”

  The fingertips were black.

  Not bruised. Dead. Hard, charcoal husks. A perfect line of necrosis cut across her first knuckles.

  “Medic!” Steve yelled. “Get a medic on deck!”

  Willy scrambled for the radio.

  Steve braced for the scream. The shock. He looked at Daria’s face.

  No tears.

  Her lips parted. The corners of her mouth twitched up. A smile. Slow. Dreamy.

  “It’s not cold,” she said.

  Steve shook her. “Daria. Look at your hand. It’s dead.”

  Her pupils dilated widely. Black pools under the deck lights.

  “No, Steve,” she said. Soft. Drifting. “It feels warm.”

  She looked at the metal hull.

  “It feels like home.”

  Cold spiked up Steve’s spine. Not the wind. Something else.

  “Get her to the infirmary,” Steve said to two crewmen. They rushed up. “Quarantine protocols. Now.”

  “No,” Daria said.

  She pulled her arm free. Stood up. Swayed. Locked her knees.

  “I am fine,” she said. Her voice hardened. The Captain was back.

  “You’re injured,” Steve said. “You’re compromised.”

  “I am in command.” Daria squared her shoulders.

  She tucked her blackened hand behind her back. Scanned the crew. Watching. Waiting.

  “Chief Haul,” Daria said. “Secure the asset.”

  Steve stared at her.

  “Secure it?” Steve asked. “Daria, we need to jettison it. Look at what it did to you in one second.”

  “It is a geological sample,” Daria said. “It is cold. We will handle it with care. Put it in the main cargo hold. Seal the bulkhead.”

  “It’s too risky,” Steve said. “If that cold spreads…”

  “That is an order, Chief.”

  She stared at him.

  Steve looked at the black shape. It sat there. Silent. Absorbing the light. A cancer on his deck.

  He looked at Daria.

  Pale. Shivering. But her eyes were fierce. Cold. Unnatural.

  He stepped in front of her. Blocked her path to the object. His hands shook. He wanted to drag her to the infirmary. Force her into quarantine.

  “Daria,” Steve said. “You’re hurt.”

  She didn’t blink. The terrifying coldness in her stare froze him in place. She wasn’t asking. She was commanding.

  Steve looked at Willy Cox. The kid waited for orders.

  Steve clenched his jaw.

  He stepped aside. Obedient.

  He made the choice.

  “Willy,” Steve said. Hollow voice. “Get the crane. Cargo netting. Heavy lift protocols.”

  “Aye, Chief!” Willy turned toward the controls. Shoulders dropping in relief.

  Steve turned back to Daria.

  “We put it in the hold,” Steve said. “And then you go to the infirmary. Deal?”

  Daria nodded.

  “Deal,” she said.

  She turned. Walked toward the bridge. Didn’t look back at him. She looked at her hand. Flexed the black fingers.

  Steve watched her go.

  He turned to the object.

  “Let’s move it!” Steve waved the crew forward. “Double time! I want this thing off my deck!”

  The crane swung over. The crew worked fast. The cold drove them.

  The steel crane cables groaned. Frost crept up the wires. Ice cracked. The cables strained, near snapping from the freeze.

  They lowered it into the main cargo hold.

  Down into the deep storage.

  The hatch slammed shut.

  CLANG.

  Steve let out a breath. He hadn’t realized he was holding it.

  Gone. Contained.

  He turned to head inside. Find warmth. Find Daria.

  Then it started in the soles of his boots.

  Thrum.

  A pulse.

  It wasn’t the engine. The engine was a rhythmic chug. This was smooth. Continuous. Low frequency.

  It traveled up his legs. Settled in his teeth.

  Thrum.

  Steve stopped.

  He looked down at the deck.

  The pulse wasn’t mechanical.

  It felt like a heartbeat.

  Deep in the ship, something was awake.

  *****

  The thrum changed. It was a drill now. Right between his eyes.

  Steve Haul wiped his nose. The back of his glove came away slick and dark.

  Another nosebleed.

  He swayed against the B-Deck bulkhead. The steel wall radiated a damp, wrong heat.

  Three days ago, the deck was freezing. Now, the Borealis felt like a boiler room. The engines were overcompensating. Or the thing in the hold had changed its mind.

  Three days.

  That’s all it had been since they dropped the silver shape into the hold. Three days of the thrum.

  It started low. A hum in the keel. Now it was a constant, bone-shaking frequency. It rattled the rivets. Dissolved thoughts. He couldn’t sleep. The quiet was gone.

  Steve pushed off the wall.

  Steve leaned against the wall. “Willy?”

  His voice sounded small in the humid air.

  No answer.

  The corridor was empty.

  On a twenty-man boat, someone was always breathing, coughing, or complaining nearby.

  Now, just the thrum.

  And the heat.

  It was February in the Atlantic. The deck outside was a sheet of ice. Inside, the heavy, wet air smelled of copper wiring burning in a swamp.

  Steve walked toward the bridge. His boots stuck to the floor with every step.

  He passed the comms room. Empty. The radio handset dangled by its cord. Swaying in time with the ship’s thrum.

  “Captain,” Steve said. He forced his legs to move faster.

  Daria hadn’t come out of her quarters in forty-eight hours.

  She hadn’t answered the radio. She hadn’t taken the meal trays left at her door.

  Captain’s stateroom. Heavy steel. Steve pounded his fist against it.

  “Daria! Open up!”

  Pain bit his knuckles. He jerked his hand back.

  The metal was freezing. White frost crept over the hinges.

  “Daria. I’m coming in.”

  He ripped the override key from his belt. Jammed it in. Turned.

  Click.

  Steve shoved the door open.

  The cold sucked the moisture from his eyes.

  He stepped inside.

  “Daria?”

  He stopped.

  The room was a tomb of paper.

  Someone taped hundreds of jagged charcoal sketches to the walls. The ceiling. The floor.

  Steve shined his flashlight—the overhead bulbs had blown.

  The beam cut through the freezing air.

  The drawings were all the same. A star. Exploding. Jagged shapes falling into a black ocean.

  Eyes. Dozens of sketches of eyes.

  “Daria,” Steve said.

  She sat on the floor. Wedged between the bunk and the wardrobe. She wore her dress uniform. She had unbuttoned her dress uniform at the collar. Her hair was loose. Wild. A halo of blonde tangles.

  She was scribbling on a chart.

  “Daria,” Steve said. He stepped closer.

  She didn’t look up.

  “It’s not a noise,” she said. Her voice a raw rasp. “It’s a lullaby. Can’t you hear it, Steve? It’s singing to us.”

  Steve knelt beside her.

  “Daria, look at me.”

  She turned her head.

  Steve recoiled.

  Her face was gaunt. The skin stretched tautly across her cheekbones. Pale as milk.

  Her eyes.

  Dilated so wide the hazel was gone. Just black pits reflecting his flashlight beam. Deep in the center, a flicker of blue.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  “We need to get you to the medic,” Steve said. He reached for her hand—the one she was writing with.

  She pulled it away.

  “No,” she said.

  “Let me see your hand, Daria.”

  “It’s fine,” she said. She hid it behind her back. “It’s evolving.”

  “Evolving?”

  “The frost,” she said. A too-wide smile split her face. “It showed me. The cold isn’t empty, Steve. It’s waiting.”

  She stood up.

  The movement was wrong.

  She unfolded. Fluid. Liquid. Like gravity didn’t apply to her bones.

  She towered over him.

  “We are off course,” Steve said. He stood up. He kept his hand near the flare gun on his belt. “We need to turn the ship around. We need help.”

  “We are exactly where we need to be,” Daria said.

  She walked to the wall. She traced a drawing of a dying star.

  “They are hungry,” she said. “They have slept for so long. Millions of years in their vessel. Waiting for a touch.”

  She turned to him.

  “I touched them.”

  She brought her hand out from behind her back.

  Steve gagged.

  It wasn’t a hand anymore.

  The black frostbite had spread past her wrist. It wasn’t dead tissue. It was chitin.

  Hard, white armor plating. The fingers… they had fused together. Elongated.

  “Daria,” Steve said.

  “It doesn’t hurt,” she said.

  She took a step toward him.

  “Listen to the song, Steve. Stop fighting it. Just let it in.”

  Steve backed up. He hit the doorframe.

  “You’re relieving command,” Steve said. His voice shook. “I’m taking over the ship.”

  Daria tilted her head with birdlike quickness.

  “You are small,” she said.

  “That’s an order, Captain.”

  Steve reached for her. He reached for her good arm to drag her from the room.

  He grabbed her shoulder.

  It felt like grabbing a marble statue. Cold. Hard. Immovable.

  Daria looked at his hand on her shoulder. Her expression remained utterly blank.

  “No,” she said.

  She moved her arm. A casual, backhanded flick.

  Steve didn’t see it coming.

  One second he was standing. The next, the air was driven from his lungs.

  He flew across the corridor.

  He smashed into the opposite bulkhead.

  White flashed across his eyes. His skull cracked against the steel.

  He slid to the floor. Gasping. Ribs screaming in agony.

  He looked up.

  Daria stood in the doorway of her quarters. She wasn’t winded. She hadn’t even shifted her stance.

  “Go away, Steve,” she said. Her voice layered into a dual, overlapping harmonic. “We are busy.”

  She hit the door panel.

  The heavy steel door slammed shut.

  The locks engaged. A pneumatic seal hissed from the inside.

  Steve tried to stand. His legs wobbled. He touched the back of his head. His hand came away wet with blood.

  “Daria!” Steve said.

  No answer.

  Just the thrum. Louder now.

  Steve pushed himself off the wall.

  He needed a weapon. He needed help.

  “Benny,” Steve said. “Engine room.”

  He stumbled down the corridor.

  The heat was worse here. The air was thick. Hazy.

  Steve wiped sweat from his eyes.

  He passed the crew quarters.

  “Anyone?” he asked.

  Silence.

  Doors swung open with the roll of the ship. Inside, bunks were messy. Unmade.

  Empty.

  No sleeping crew. No poker games.

  Just clothes.

  Steve stopped at Willy Cox’s bunk.

  Willy’s orange safety vest lay on the mattress. His boots were on the floor. Willy left his jeans in a crumpled pile.

  It looked like he had vaporized out of them.

  His chest tightened. The air thinned out.

  He ran.

  He scrambled down the ladder to the engineering deck.

  The noise here was deafening. The thrum mixed with the grinding turbines.

  “Benny!” Steve said.

  Benny Wall was at the main console. Benny looked hollow. Cheeks sunken. Eyes ringed in purple. Grease covered him. He held a pipe wrench like a club.

  He spun around when Steve hit the deck.

  “Stay back!” Benny said.

  “It’s me!” Steve raised his hands. “It’s Haul!”

  Benny lowered the wrench. He slumped against the console.

  “Jesus, Steve. You look like hell.”

  “Daria,” Steve said. “She’s… she’s changed. She threw me. She sealed the bridge.”

  Benny spat on the grating. “She ain’t the only thing changing.”

  He pointed to the far wall.

  The steel bulkhead wasn’t gray anymore.

  It was sweating.

  Slime coated the metal. Thick. Translucent. It beat with a faint blue light.

  “What is that?” Steve asked.

  “I don’t know,” Benny said. “It’s eating the ship.”

  He walked over to a pipe. He tapped it with his wrench.

  “The metal is soft,” Benny said. “It’s digesting the iron. Converting it.”

  “Into what?”

  “Into veins,” Benny said.

  He shined his light upward.

  Thick, dark cables ran along the overhead pipes. They weren’t rubber. They were organic.

  They beat.

  “They’re pumping something,” Steve said.

  “Yeah,” Benny said. He didn’t look up. “Upstairs. Toward the bridge.”

  Steve’s stomach turned.

  “The crew,” Steve said. “Benny, have you seen the crew?”

  “No one,” Benny said. “I’ve been calling down here for six hours. No answer. Just… noises.”

  “Noises?”

  “Clicking,” Benny said. “In the vents. Sounds like bugs. Big ones.”

  Steve gripped the railing.

  “We need to scuttle,” Steve said. “If this is a contagion… if Daria brings this to shore…”

  “Way ahead of you,” Benny said. “I tried to engage the thermal overload. System’s locked out.”

  “Manual override?”

  “Down below,” Benny pointed to the ladder leading to the cargo deck. “The hatch is stuck.”

  “We’ll unstick it,” Steve said.

  He grabbed a fire axe from the emergency station.

  “Come on.”

  They moved to the ladder.

  The heat coming up from the cargo deck was suffocating. It smelled of ozone and rotting flowers.

  Steve went first.

  He slid down the rails.

  He hit the lower deck.

  His boots squelched.

  Gray sludge covered the floor. Inch thick.

  “Watch your step,” Steve said.

  They moved toward the mess hall. A shortcut to the manual valve access.

  The mess hall doors were open.

  “Maybe they’re in here,” Steve said. “Maybe they’re hiding.”

  He stepped through the doorway.

  He shone his light around the room.

  Overturned tables littered the deck. Chairs melted into the sludge.

  In the center of the room…

  A pile.

  It was four feet high.

  Steve walked closer.

  It wasn’t bodies.

  It was uniforms.

  Blue jumpsuits. Boots. Belts. Watches.

  Dozens of them.

  They were empty.

  There was no blood. No signs of a struggle. Just the clothes. Left behind like shed skin.

  Steve reached out. He picked up a shirt. The name tag read THORNE.

  Steve touched the fabric. Wet. Warm. Body heat. He dropped it. His stomach bottomed out. They hadn’t undressed. Something took them out of their clothes.

  “They didn’t leave,” Steve said.

  “Something shucked them.”

  Benny made a choking sound.

  “Steve,” Benny said. “Look at the wall.”

  Steve turned.

  The slime on the wall was thick. Embedded in it…

  A face.

  Stretched. Distorted. Made of the same gray resin as the ship.

  The eyes were open.

  They were shining blue.

  “Help,” the wall said.

  Steve raised the axe.

  The thrum spiked.

  A rhythmic clicking came from the corridor behind them.

  Steve spun around.

  The darkness of the hallway stared back.

  Something in the dark smiled.

  *****

  The thing in the dark smiled.

  Steve didn’t wait. He grabbed Benny’s collar.

  “Run,” Steve said.

  They bolted. Down the corridor. Away from the clicking.

  They hit the cargo hold access. The heat was the first warning.

  Not engine heat. Swamp heat. Wet and heavy. It coated his lungs.

  Steve Haul wiped the sweat from his eyes. His fire axe felt heavy, the handle slick in his grip. Beside him, Benny Wall wheezed, clutching his pipe wrench like a talisman.

  “Down,” Steve said.

  They moved past the mess hall, toward the cargo hold access. The thrum was deafening here. It shook the fillings in Steve’s teeth. It made his vision blur at the edges.

  They reached the catwalk railing.

  He expected to see the steel deck plates. He expected to see the containment straps.

  He saw a swamp.

  Thick, gray sludge covered the floor of the cargo hold—three stories down. It bubbled sluggishly. From the muck, translucent sacs grew like oversized fungi, beating with a faint, bioluminescent blue light.

  And in the center, the Pod.

  The silver oval they had dredged up three days ago was no longer a solid shape.

  It had bloomed.

  The sides had peeled back like the petals of a nightmare flower. The interior was lined with silver circuitry—geometric patterns that hurt the eye to look at.

  But the center was empty.

  There was no core. No engine. No pilot.

  Just a pool of viscous white fluid at the bottom of the casing.

  “It’s empty,” Benny said. “Steve. It’s empty.”

  Steve’s chest went hollow. The air left his lungs.

  “It wasn’t a container,” Steve said. “It was an egg.”

  “An egg?” Benny asked. “What hatched? Where is it?”

  Steve gripped the rail. He scanned the shadows of the lower deck.

  “It’s not just one thing,” Steve said. He pointed to the walls.

  The steel bulkheads were sweating. The blue veins pumped faster, rhythmic and strong.

  “The ship,” Steve said. “It’s terraforming the ship. It’s turning the iron into…”

  “Food,” Benny said.

  A sound cut through the thrum.

  A sharp click and a wet hiss cut through the thrum.

  It came from the shadows beneath the catwalk.

  Steve raised his flashlight. The beam cut through the steam and ozone.

  “Who’s there?” Steve asked.

  Movement. Jerky. Spastic.

  A figure stepped out from behind a stack of cargo containers.

  It wore an orange safety vest. Dirty. Torn.

  “Willy?” Steve asked.

  Willy Cox stepped into the light.

  Steve’s breath hitched.

  Willy wasn’t dead. But he wasn’t Willy anymore.

  His posture was wrong. His spine was twisted, his limbs hanging at odd angles, like a marionette with tangled strings. His skin was gray, translucent, revealing the dark veins beating underneath.

  Steve froze. His stomach bottomed out.

  Willy’s jaw hung loose. Unhinged. It dangled inches below where it should be, the mouth a gaping black maw.

  And his eyes.

  Solid. Electric. Blue.

  “Willy,” Steve said. “Chief is here. Can you hear me?”

  Willy tilted his head. A bird-like twitch.

  He moaned, like the sputter and wheeze of an old, failing car engine.

  “Help him,” Benny said. “Steve, we gotta help him.”

  “Stay back,” Steve said. He raised the axe.

  Willy’s jaw dropped so wide it threatened to rip his cheeks. The scream that followed sounded like two stones grinding together deep underwater.

  He lunged.

  He didn’t run. He blurred.

  One second he was twenty feet away; the next, he was on the catwalk.

  He hit the ladder. Scrambled up. Spider-fast.

  Steve shoved Benny. “Move.”

  Willy crested the rail. A wet hiss.

  Steve swung the axe. Hard.

  Willy caught it.

  Mid-swing. Bare hand. He didn’t blink. His grip was iron.

  Steve pulled. Nothing. Like pulling against a hydraulic press.

  Willy’s blue eyes flared.

  He hissed.

  He backhanded Steve.

  Steve flew backward. He hit the wall. The wind driven from his lungs. The axe clattered to the grate.

  Willy turned to Benny.

  “Benny. Run,” Steve said.

  Benny swung his pipe wrench. “Get back, you freak.”

  The wrench hit Willy’s shoulder. It dented the flesh.

  Willy didn’t even blink.

  He grabbed Benny by the throat. He lifted the heavy engineer off the ground with one hand.

  Benny kicked. Gagged. His boots scraped the metal.

  Willy opened his mouth.

  A white worm poked its head out from Willy’s throat. Segmented. Thrashing. It chattered its mandibles.

  “No,” Steve said.

  He scrambled up. He didn’t go for the axe. He went for the flare gun on his belt.

  He drew. Aimed.

  The red flare hit Willy in the chest.

  Willy screamed. A scream of static interference tore from his throat. The magnesium burn disrupted the blue light in his eyes. He convulsed.

  He dropped Benny.

  “Go,” Steve said. “Engine room. Now.”

  Benny scrambled up. Coughing.

  They ran.

  They didn’t look back.

  Behind them, Willy screamed again—a high, piercing signal that carried through the ship’s vents.

  The ship answered.

  From the walls. From the ceiling. The sound multiplied. A chorus of insects waking up.

  Steve and Benny sprinted down the corridor. The floor was slick with slime. They slid. Scrambled. Kept moving.

  “The valves,” Benny said. “We have to hit the valves.”

  “Scuttle it,” Steve said. “Burn it all.”

  They reached the engine room hatch.

  Steve slammed into the wheel. He spun it.

  The door groaned open.

  The noise inside was deafening. The turbines were screaming. Pushed to the red line by the infection.

  The engine room was a cathedral of grease and steam. But now, it was a belly.

  The catwalks were coated in thick, gray resin. The pipes overhead beat with the blue veins.

  “The overrides.” Benny pointed to the far wall.

  “Cover me,” Benny said.

  He ran for the valves.

  Steve stood at the hatch. He reloaded the flare gun. His hands shook.

  The thrum was a physical weight now. It pressed against his chest.

  Shadows moved in the upper gantries.

  “Hurry, Benny.”

  Benny reached the wall. He grabbed the largest wheel.

  “It’s slippery,” Benny said. “I can’t get a grip.”

  “Use the wrench,” Steve said.

  Benny jammed the pipe wrench into the spokes of the valve. He threw his weight against it.

  The valve turned.

  “It’s moving,” Benny said. “Come on, you rust bucket.”

  Steam vented from a pipe. A warning siren began to wail. A dull, dying sound.

  “Keep going,” Steve said. He scanned the ceiling. Blue eyes watched from the dark.

  Benny pushed harder.

  “Almost… got it…”

  The wall moved.

  Steve blinked.

  The steel bulkhead behind Benny didn’t just shake. It rippled.

  Like skin.

  “Benny. Look out.”

  Too late.

  The wall surged forward. It wasn’t metal anymore. It was gray resin. It formed a shape. A massive, shapeless hand.

  It grabbed Benny.

  It enveloped him from behind.

  “What—” Benny said.

  The resin wrapped around his chest. It glued his arms to his sides.

  “Steve,” Benny said.

  He tried to pull away. But the wall was part of him now.

  The resin hardened instantly.

  Steve couldn’t breathe. The wall swallowed Benny’s legs. His coveralls turned gray. His boots melted into the floor.

  “No.” Steve raised the flare gun.

  But Benny was already encased. A shot would only hit him.

  “Help me,” Benny said.

  The wall beat. A blue vein snaked out of the metal and burrowed into Benny’s neck.

  Benny’s scream cut off.

  His eyes went wide.

  Then. They went blank.

  The blue light flooded in.

  Benny stopped fighting. His body relaxed. He became a relief carving in the bulkhead. Part of the architecture.

  His gaze locked onto Steve.

  His jaw unhinged.

  An ear-piercing scream rasped from Benny.

  Steve backed away. He hit the doorframe.

  He was alone.

  The engine room hummed. The walls breathed. The crew was gone. Benny was gone.

  The ship wasn’t a vessel. It was a digestive system made of iron.

  And Steve was the last piece of meat.

  He looked at the flare gun. One shot left.

  Daria’s face flashed in his mind.

  The rage flared hot. Burning through the fear.

  She did this. She opened the door.

  Steve turned. He ran.

  Not to the life boats. Not to the radio.

  To the bridge.

  *****

  The flare gun felt heavy.

  Steve Haul stared at the orange plastic grip. His hand trembled. Sweat stung his eyes. The ladder rose into the fog.

  One shot.

  That was the math. One flare left in the chamber. One chance to burn the infection out.

  He gripped the cold steel rung. Pulled himself up.

  The thrum beat against his skull. Pressure built behind his eyes. A rhythmic pressure that made his nose bleed.

  It wasn’t just a sound. It was a command.

  Submit.

  Steve wiped the blood from his upper lip. He spat on the deck.

  “No,” he said.

  He climbed.

  The ship dissolved around him. The steel walls of the superstructure were soft. Sweating that gray, bioluminescent slime. It beat under his hands. Warm. Wet. The SS Borealis wasn’t a ship anymore. It was a husk. A shell being rewritten by the thing in the cargo hold.

  He reached the bridge deck.

  The fog was thick here. Opaque. It smelled of ozone and the deep, rotting sweetness of the trench.

  Steve stopped. Sagged against the railing. His breath tore at his throat. His ribs screamed where Daria had thrown him. His head throbbed.

  He closed his eyes.

  Her face appeared. Not the monster in the cabin. The woman. The one who laughed over coffee in the mess hall. The one who planned to buy a house with a porch in Key West.

  Retirement, she had said. Just one more job.

  His stomach twisted. Acid climbed his throat.

  His fault.

  He stood on the deck three days ago. He saw the frost. He felt the sickness in his gut.

  Protocol demanded a lockdown. Cut the cable.

  But he looked at her. He wanted her to win. He chose the woman over the mission.

  Because of that choice, Benny was a statue in the engine room. Willy was a puppet in the cargo hold. And Daria…

  Daria was gone.

  “I can’t save you,” Steve said to the fog.

  He raised the flare gun. Clicked the hammer back.

  “But I can stop you.”

  He walked toward the bridge.

  Heavy steel door. Fused shut. Gray resin coated the frame.

  He moved to the front window. Cracked glass. Spiderwebbed from the inside.

  He drove his boot into it. It shattered. Rained onto the deck. Tinkling ice.

  Steve stepped through the jagged frame.

  Not a command center anymore. A throne room.

  Smashed monitors. Navigation consoles ripped open. Wires hung like gutted entrails.

  Gray sludge covered the floor. A foot deep.

  In the center. The Captain’s chair.

  It had grown. Resin built up around it. A high, jagged back. Termite mound. Bone.

  Daria sat there.

  Motionless. White uniform spotless. A terrifying contrast to the filth. Her hands rested on the armrests. Marble-white. Still.

  Thick cables of biomass ran from the ceiling. Blue veins wrapped in gray gristle. They buried into the base of her skull. Her neck.

  Steve aimed at her chest.

  “Daria,” he said.

  She opened her eyes.

  Solid blue. No white. No iris. Electric.

  Her gaze was flat.

  “Chief of operations,” she said.

  Her voice was a wet, clicking harmony. Insects using Daria’s pitch.

  “You come.”

  “Get out of the chair,” Steve said. His voice shook. “Disconnect. Now.”

  Daria smiled.

  Small. Pitying.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Because you’re killing the ship,” Steve said. “You killed the crew. You killed Benny.”

  “Benny is structural,” Daria said. “He is holding the engine room together. He has never been more useful.”

  She tilted her head. The cables in her neck beat.

  “And the others. They are incubating. The first generation. Do you not see it, Steve?”

  She gestured to the room. The slime. The rot.

  “We are fixing the design.”

  “You’re a parasite,” Steve said.

  “We are architects,” Daria said. “Your world is broken. Short. You live. You struggle. You die. Your memories vanish.”

  She leaned forward. The chair groaned.

  “Join us,” she said.

  Pain spiked behind Steve’s eye.

  “We offer optimization,” Daria said. “No fear. No loneliness. No death. You become part of the Colony. You become forever.”

  Steve stared at the thing wearing his lover’s skin. A monster viewing humanity as wet clay.

  His chest went hollow. The hope died.

  “I don’t want to be forever,” Steve said.

  He tightened his finger on the trigger.

  “I just want to be human.”

  Daria’s smile vanished.

  “Then you are waste,” she said.

  Steve fired.

  The flare streaked across the room. Magnesium fire.

  It hit Daria in the shoulder.

  Red phosphorous burned. Melted the white fabric. Seared the marble skin beneath. Smoke rose. Burnt hair and ozone.

  Daria looked at the fire. Annoyed.

  The blue light in the room flared.

  The wound bubbled. Gray resin surged from her pores. It smothered the flare. It knit the skin back together.

  Three seconds. The burn was gone.

  She stood up.

  The cables detached from her neck. A wet squelch. She stepped onto the sludge.

  Steve grabbed a shell from his belt. Reloaded.

  She moved. Fast.

  Across the bridge in one step.

  She grabbed him by the throat.

  Ice. Iron.

  She lifted him.

  Steve gagged. Kicked his feet. He dropped the flare gun. It clattered on the deck.

  She brought him close. Inches away. Her skin lacked pores. White worms swam in the blue depths of her eyes.

  “You had a choice, Steve,” she said. The Hive voice grated. “On the deck. You could have stopped me.”

  Steve clawed at her wrist. Stone.

  “But you wanted the dream,” she said. “The house. The girl.”

  She squeezed.

  Black crept into the edges of Steve’s vision.

  “Now,” she said. “You get neither.”

  She turned.

  Walked to the broken window. Held him over the edge.

  Wind roared. Thirty feet to the steel deck below.

  “Biomass,” Daria said. “Recycle.”

  She opened her hand.

  Steve fell.

  Air rushed past. The fog swallowed him.

  Impact.

  His femur snapped. Louder than the wind.

  He slammed into the steel plating. His hip cracked. His skull bounced off a winch.

  He rolled into the gutter. Stopped.

  Pain blinded him.

  He tried to scream. A bloody bubble escaped his lips. His lungs wouldn’t work.

  He couldn’t move. He couldn’t feel his legs.

  He lay there. Staring up at the bridge.

  Through the fog. Daria stood at the broken window. Bathed in blue light. Looking down at him.

  Blank.

  She turned away.

  Steve wheezed. His cheek scraped the cold, wet metal.

  The gray slime on the deck moved.

  It crawled toward him. Little fingers of resin. Sensing the heat of his blood. The raw material.

  Recycle.

  He tried to crawl. Fingers scratched at the steel. His body was broken.

  He looked toward the bow.

  The massive iron prow cut through the water.

  Turning.

  The SS Borealis wasn’t drifting. It had a heading.

  Steve watched the horizon.

  Through the mist. Lights. Yellow. Warm. Unsuspecting.

  A coastline.

  A town.

  Norchester Bay.

  The engines engaged. A deep, mechanical groan. Daria was at the helm.

  The black crept in. It swallowed him.