"Stay behind me," Asuka said, keeping her voice low as she and Tank and Hitomi crept along the corridor toward the morgue. "Until Omega joins us, I'm the only one who has a weapon."

"Well, I have this." Tank patted the enormous wrench hanging from her belt. "And I've got some sharp, pointy tools in these pouches."

"Unless you've got a heavily reinforced, military-grade prosthetic body like mine, if you're too close to shoot 'em, you're too close, period." Asuka stopped at the corner and peeked around. The door leading to the morgue was at the far end of the intersecting corridor, and so far, there appeared to be nothing moving around. "Especially if they're already dead."

"Ugh. I've never watched zombie movies. Just didn't like 'em. If only I'd known I was gonna end up fighting 'em someday, I would've watched a few so I'd have some idea of what to do."

"If that's even what's going on." Asuka stepped into the corridor and held her pistol at half-mast, ready to snap it up and pop off a shot in an instant. "And if it is, we don't know if these zombies even work like the ones in movies."

"Oh, not this again," Hitomi muttered.

"What?" Asuka stopped and glanced over her shoulder.

"Someone's trying to hack me." Hitomi frowned and cocked her head. "It's happened several times recently, before all of us ended up here, but I've never seen an attempt like this one. My software considers it a virus, but it's not even remotely familiar aside from its behavior. Not compatible with my operating system."

Before Asuka could say anything, her own antivirus suite shot a flurry of alerts at her and automatically launched countermeasures. From its preliminary analysis, the intruder was quite alien.

"Hitomi, shut off your wireless module. Tank, if you've got a comm implant or any cybernetic augmentations at all …"

"Yeah, I've already cut off all outside access. But if it's alien software, would it even be able to compromise us?"

"If it's smart enough, it'll only be a matter of time before it figures out how to communicate with our software, and then it'll start chipping away at our firewalls. Best to simply lock yourself out from all outside transmissions." Asuka glanced at Tank. "I hope you've got a handheld comlink."

"Yep." She unzipped one of her belt pouches, produced a comm, and handed it over.

"Been a while since I've needed to use one of these." Asuka connected it to the communications console in the control room. "Seth? Marissa? Can you hear me?"

"Yeah," Marissa answered. "We're keeping an eye on the motion sensors. So far, the only movement is still confined to the morgue, except for you three."

"Well, there's that, at least. Have you been able to bring any of the cameras back online?"

"Not the ones in the morgue. All the other cams are working just fine. It's only those right there that aren't responding."

"Whoever tried to hack us is probably jamming the morgue cameras," Hitomi said.

"Probably. Shit." Asuka shook her head. "So the only way to see what's going on in there is to open the door. And if we open the door, we don't know what we might unleash."

"Hey -- what the hell?" Seth's voice in the background.

"What's going on?"

"The controls have stopped responding. I don't get it -- it was easy enough to gain access in the first place, but now we're locked out. We can't track anything anymore, either."

"Somebody's jerkin' us around," Tank grumbled, plucking the huge wrench from her belt and clamping both hands around its handle.

The morgue's door slid open and she jumped back.

A burst of electronic gibberish erupted from the comlink.

"Seth? Marissa?" Asuka waited for an answer, but there was only silence. She handed the comm back to Tank. "Someone's jamming us."

The sound of footsteps came from the morgue -- shuffling, uneven, as if the thing producing the sounds didn't know how to walk -- or was too damaged to do it normally.

Tank covered her nose. "Oh, shit, there's that stink again."

Asuka aimed her gun at the doorway.

The thing that appeared might've been human once, but much of its skin had rotted away -- no, not rotted, Asuka realized after zooming in for a closer look. The corpse's flesh had been torn off in spots, and something that appeared to be glowing yellow optic wires and circuitry was visible through the cracks and tears.

"Whatever happened to them, it was cybernetic. Or maybe nanotech."

It turned toward her and shambled forward. She punched a round through its left eye. Its head snapped back and flopped to the side, but the body continued its advance.

"This isn't happening," Tank moaned.

The body burst into a stumbling sprint.

Asuka kept her gun on it and pointed a thumb over her shoulder. "Back to the bridge! Now!"