“Ship ventilation is standard,” Jasper said. “No powered seals, just grates and a couple of screws. To these things, a vent grate might just metal in the way.”
They reached a junction and the corridor ahead had gouges in the walls. Three sets — different depths, different angles, all running the same direction. Left to right, deeper into the ship. The metal curled back from each one in bright silver strips, the scratches fresh enough that breathing near them tasted sharper, like licking a coin.
“We should follow the tracks,” Tyler said, from the rear. “Hunt them down.”
“That would be profoundly stupid,” Asher said without looking back at Tyler. “Levi said stick together. We do what he says.”
The air changed in the next corridor, each breath requiring slightly more effort, and the temperature had dropped enough that his exhalations were just visible in the amber light.
A crew member was face down twenty feet ahead. The back of their uniform opened between the shoulder blades with the same careful precision Levi had seen with Reynolds, with Zoe — the layers separated, the skin peeled back from the muscle in clean lines, the spinal column accessed and extracted. The body lay in a posture that looked almost peaceful from the front, the face turned sideways against the floor, eyes open.
Maddie crouched beside the body and checked for a pulse everyone knew she wouldn’t find. Her fingers lingered on the wrist for a second longer than was necessary before she straightened. “Add the ensign to the list of dead, we need to keep track of who is left,” she said softly to Owen, “and so we know how many families we need to deliver bad news to when we get back.”
Levi’s sternum caught the vibration again, and he wasn’t going to ignore it. He grabbed Asher’s arm at the same time he grabbed his chest. “We need to hide. Now.”
Asher shoved open the nearest door, revealing another storage room, cramped, the walls lined with shelving that held cleaning supplies and spare parts and decades of forgotten inventory. “What is this place, just closets? Fuck,” he murmured.
“Jasper,” Levi began.
“I got you, man.” Jasper held up a fist to the group. “If everyone would like to keep their spines inside their bodies, in here, now.”
Ten people squeezed into a space meant for two. Elliot pulled the door shut behind the last crew member and pressed his back against it as they distributed themselves into whatever cover the shelving offered. Jasper and Owen crouched behind a rack of lubricant canisters. Maddie pressed herself into the gap between two metal cabinets with her hand on an injured crew member beside her. Tyler stood flat against the far wall with his sidearm up. Asher and Levi ended up in the corner where two shelving units met at a right angle — Levi’s back against the intersection, Asher’s chest against Levi’s, their hips aligned in the narrow space Asher claimed the moment the door shut.
The vibrations grew stronger, and Levi could hear it now, through the thin metal of the wall — the light, irregular scrape of metal fingertips trailing along the bulkhead. The creature was in the corridor.
The door had a narrow window at head height. Elliot pressed against the door frame, not in the window’s line of sight, his face turned toward Levi across the room. Tyler was angled to see through the glass from his position. Nobody moved.
Except for Asher. His palm slid up the inside of Levi’s thigh. “Asher,” Levi hissed. “Not now.”
From his position against the wall, Tyler snapped his fingers at them as he dropped into a squat. “It’s at the door.”
Every sound in the room died. Asher’s hand went still, and Levi turned his head carefully, slowly, until he could see the window over Asher’s shoulder.
The creature filled the corridor on the other side of the glass. It had stopped directly outside the storage room door, its dish rotating toward the window — the apertures cycling fast,tck tck tck tck, the pattern shifting as it oriented. The vibration in Levi’s sternum was so intense his ribs ached and his vision blurred at the edges.
It’s looking at us.
Then the metal fingertips came up and pressed flat against the door in a deliberate, exploratory push. The door didn’t move. The electromagnetic seal held. The creature’s fingertips stayed there for one long second, two, and Levi wondered how long someone’s ribcage could vibrate before it decided to flee their body altogether, because it felt like his was getting ready to do just that.
It’s trying to get in.
The fingertips withdrew. The dish rotated again, the apertures cycling differently now —tck... tck tck... tck— a slower pattern, as if something were recalibrating and searching for anotherway around. Then it turned and moved down the corridor in that backward-jointed gait, the scraping resuming, the vibration fading as it went.
The room stayed silent for a full thirty seconds after the scraping stopped. Nobody moved. Nobody breathed audibly. Elliot’s shoulders were rigid against the door.
“It tested the lock,” Levi said finally. “It knew something was in here, and it tested the lock.”
“How did it know?” Tyler asked. His voice was different, drained of confidence.
Levi didn’t have an answer.
Elliot cracked the door and peered out into the corridor. “Let’s move.”
Engineering was the first room since the mess hall that felt like it had a purpose.
The door opened, and the atmosphere felt warmer, denser, and smelled like grease, but it felt…kind? More than one piece of equipment had a face drawn on it in marker or etched into the dust and grease. Someone had attached mannequin arms to a dented trash can and taped a beanie to the lid, and there were strange warnings taped to various humming columns with things like “WILL EAT FINGERS - TURN OFF FIRST” and “DAEDALUS TIME MACHINE: MAKES DNA SINGLE STRAND”. Banks of consoles lined the far wall, and Jasper cracked his knuckles as he moved towards them like he was gearing up for a fight.
The screens came alive under his hands. One by one, filling with data — power distribution maps glowing green where sectors were powered and bleeding red where they’d gonedark. Sensor readouts tracking heat signatures and movement patterns. Atmospheric data, pressure readings, and temperature maps. And on the largest screen, the full ship schematic: every deck, every corridor, every sealed door and open pathway, the whole geometry of the Daedalus laid out like a game board.