“Owen, how long until the funnel corridor is clear?” Tyler grunted.
“Ninety seconds for the last two to reach the bay. Maybe less if they pick up speed on the gradient.”
Through the radio, Tyler’s breathing grew harder as the metal screamed louder. And underneath that — just audible, just barely, the thing Tyler could probably hear in his own corridor — the metal fingertips on the bulkhead. The apertures.Tck tck tck.
No.
“Tyler, let go and run. Eight in the bay is enough—” Levi shouted.
“Twenty more seconds. I can give you twenty more seconds—”
The door gave.
Levi heard it through the handset — the mechanism shrieking, the magnetic lock finally surrendering, the frame buckling inward. And then Tyler’s sound…a short cut off thud, the specific noise of a body being hit hard and fast by something much bigger.
Then a heavier sound against metal.
Then silence.
“Tyler?” Levi called, holding the walkie to his ear, hoping there was something, anything, that indicated he was alive.This was your plan. Make a funnel. Use the same bullshit techniques Ethan used to complain about on the monsters. You could have made it to the end with everyone if you were just a little bit smarter.
Through the radio, the apertures cycled over the quiet—tck tck tck—fading as it moved away.
“Tyler...” Levi felt a sob bubble up his throat. He knew it was irrational, he had seen Tyler die in so many different ways, hearing it was probably the least gruesome, but he was still gone, and it was Levi’s fault. “Tyler, respond.”
Nothing.
“Tyler.”
“He’s not moving.” Owen’s voice came over the walkie, thin and shaky. “Sensor shows a body mass near the far wall of his junction, but it is cooling.”
Levi closed his eyes and took in a deep breath.Beat the game. End this. Be sad later.He opened his eyes, exhaled, and said into the walkie, “Nine is good enough. Elliot, purge Cargo Bay Two. Maximum intensity. Now.”
“Purging. Hold on to something, you’re going airborne.”
The lights went out.
The ventilation hum cut off mid-cycle, and the gravity released under Levi’s boots with a lurch that sent his stomach into his throat and his feet off the floor. The air pressure shifted as the ship’s atmosphere redistributed without systems to manage it, the temperature dropping into a cold that settled onto his skin like something wet.
Asher’s arm found him before his body finished leaving the floor, tight across his chest. They were floating. Anchored to the wall by Asher’s grip on a structural beam, Levi’s back to Asher’s chest, their legs drifting in the space that used to be a corridorwith a floor and a ceiling and was now just dark. The heat of Asher’s body through the jumpsuit was startling in the sudden cold — furnace-warm, running hot with adrenaline, and Levi could feel his heartbeat through the contact, hammering against Levi’s shoulder blades at a rate that didn’t match the steady man who’d been clearing corridors five minutes ago.
The ship made sounds when it was dead. The metal cooling, contracting, ticking in the dark like a clock winding down. The creaking of structures settling without gravity to hold them. It wasn’t quiet like Levi thought it would be. It was empty, like a space where sound used to live.
Levi’s eyes went to the window. The only light left. The black between the stars so absolute it looked solid, and LV-347 hanging in the middle distance, grey and cratered, rotating with the indifference of a thing that would outlast everything that was happening inside this ship. The void pressed against the glass like it wanted in.
Asher’s arm tightened until Levi’s ribs ached.
Listening for something,Levi thought.Bracing.It was the only thing that made sense — Asher was tracking a noise Levi couldn’t hear, expecting the next bad thing. Levi made his shoulders soft against Asher’s chest, the way he did when he wanted Asher to ease up.
The grip didn’t ease.
Asher’s face pressed into the back of Levi’s neck. His forehead ground against the knob of Levi’s spine, his breathing fast and shallow against the small hairs there, every muscle locked down the length of Levi’s back. His eyelashes fluttered against Levi’s nape, and that was the part Levi’s brain caught on — that small, involuntary movement, completely wrong for a man who once sawed someone’s throat open with a screwdriver.
“Asher, what’s wrong?”
For once, Asher had no response. His arm compressed Levi’s ribs further.
“I’m here. I’m right here, Asher,” Levi heard his own voice come out gentle and was distantly surprised by it.What is wrong with him?