Silence.
He had the words but not the science behind them, the shape of expertise without the architecture, and Reynolds was looking at him like she was going to slap him, because she asked a simple question, expected a simple answer, and was now noting the length of the pause.
“I’d want to see—”
The alarm hit the room like a physical thing, blaring a full emergency klaxon loud enough to wake the dead. The screens on both walls switched simultaneously from schematics toalert displays, red washing across everything, a single location pulsing on the ship layout.
Cargo hold. Bay Seven.
Inciting event. There it is. The scenario just started.
And underneath the alarm, from somewhere deep in the structure, came a sound that was not mechanical. It was the blare of something that had a throat.
Reynolds was already moving. “All hands—”
“Levi.” Asher’s grip closed around his arm just above the elbow, firm.
Reynolds went through the door with Elliot, Owen followed behind her, Zoe and Maddie grabbed kits from the wall mount, and rushed from the room with Tyler and Jasper. The team moved toward the source the way a team was supposed to move.
But Asher wasn’t looking at the door.
He was looking at the porthole, out at the black of space and the stars and the slow rotation of the asteroid, and for one second his expression was something Levi had never seen on him before, but it passed so quickly he couldn’t find a name for it.
“Asher, we need to go with them,” Levi said, standing.
Asher’s eyes snapped back to him. “No.”
5
Inadequate Strength Modifier
Levitookonesteptoward the door and Asher’s grip tightened on his arm.
“The quarters,” Asher said. “We lock the door.”
“We don’t have weapons.”
”Welock the door.”
Levi pulled his arm free and walked into the corridor the team had taken. Asher was behind him in two steps, a hand on his shoulder, and Levi kept walking and talked over his shoulder because if he stopped walking, he’d lose the momentum.
“Whatever got out of Bay Seven is somewhere on this ship, and we’re unarmed. That’s the whole problem. We fix that first.”
“Levi—”
“Armory. Weapons. Then we figure out the rest.” He turned the corner into the corridor, and the alarm was louder out here, bouncing off the metal walls, and underneath it the ship was making sounds he didn’t have context for — deep thuds somewhere below, something mechanical cycling in a rhythm hecouldn’t match to anything he understood. “You know where the weapons are. Peterson told you.”
Asher gave Levi a look that wasn’t about the creatures or the ship — it was about whether Levi was using this as an excuse to follow the team.
“Lower deck,” Asher said. “Security corridor. Stay with me.” Less than fifteen minutes ago, he’d saidI love youlike he was teaching Levi a new language.Stay with mesounded like the same lesson, just taught with a ruler instead of a gold star.
Levi stayed with him.
They took the stairs because the elevator panel was dead — dark screen, no response to Asher’s thumb or the three times he hit it with the flat of his hand. The stairwell was narrow, its metal treads with anti-slip strips half peeled off, and the lighting switched from white to amber as they descended. The air changed too: heavier and warmer, with a humidity that didn’t belong on a ship with functioning climate control.
Their arms brushed on the landing, and Levi didn’t flinch, which would have bothered him more if he’d had the bandwidth to care.
It became obvious at the bottom of the stairs that Asher was lost— he went left, stopped, looked at the junction markings, and went right. Levi watched the back of his head and thought about what Asher knew: the quarters, the route from the pod bay to the mess, and that was probably it. Highly detailed directions for a spaceship was probably not on the list of things Peterson told him before Peterson stopped being able to tell anyone anything.