“What. The. Fuck,” Sharon hissed. They crowded around footage from the night before.

Lou couldn’t believe it. The thing, whatever it was-- a black mass of spider-webbing tentacles and slime-- limped down the hallway. Its breathing, if that was breathing, was raggedy. Its chests rose and fell as severe muscle spasms. It was holding a disembodied leg.

His eyes went to Jacob, who looked like he was about to throw up at the scene, and then to Sharon.

“Look,” she said, and pointed at the monitor.

The monster made it to the other end of the hallway where they kept their color-coded space suits. Once, half a year before, they put those suits on for the first time and smiled wide for the cameras.

Lou in green, Bella in orange. Captain in yellow. Sharon in pink. Parker was black, Jacob was cyan, and Karl was in red.

The monster considered the spacesuits carefully, and its breathing evened out while it thought. Then it spilled into the red suit.

Karl was nowhere to be seen on the live cams.

“S-so what does that mean?” Lou asked. “Karl’s gone? He’s dead too?”

“Unless-- “ Sharon began, but Jacob cut her off.

“Unless it is Karl,” Jacob said. He seemed to be terrified of his own words. His eyes were wide and moved sporadically over the scene, examining every detail for the chance of denial.

“What do we do?” Lou had his teeth grit tight, watching Sharon steadily.

“Let’s talk to the others. We’ll stick together, come up with a plan,” she said.

Vents

When Captain opened the vent, the smell grew even stronger, like rust and blood. Lou clenched his stomach, to try and hold in the boiling acidic disgust as the thick scent overcame him.

The spaceship was a castle of clanking pipes and beeping engines, but everyone could hear the slow, rhythmic thunk, drag, thunk, drag from inside the vents. So they all shushed each other, gesturing their arguments with wild hand waving and silent yelling, before skittering through the ship towards their plan. They moved like a family of mice over polished white floors.

Captain clapped Jacob on the back before moving ahead to the next vent. Sharon, who was wearing her pink suit to block out the scent, went after him to keep watch. Lou and Parker stayed behind with Jacob.

He’d volunteered to go into the vents first, when Parker tossed him a shovel to defend himself with, he looked like he would crumble under its weight. He nearly did actually, and Lou reached out to try and catch him, but then Jacob gave him a look and he backed off.

“Good luck kid,” Parker said, pressing his sleeve over his nose to block out the putrid stench. “We’ve got your back.” Why did the spaceship have a shovel? No one knew, but they weren’t expecting anything less from mission control at that point. Further instruction had not arrived yet.

Jacob looked like he was about to run a marathon in a desert, but he sucked in a breath, his eyes flashing over to Lou, before diving in.

A minute later, Parker snapped at him to stop pacing. They heard the echoes of clanging, like metal against vent walls, and then long, drawn out moans of pain, with wet thwacks of tough meat. Lou’s heart spiked. He pressed his back against the wall and told himself to breath. They would be okay. They would be okay.

Finally, Jacob’s head drew into view.

Both of them rushed to help him, Parker recoiling from the smell. Jacob was dripping with blood and trembles ran over him like waves after every heartbeat. Lou squeezed his shoulders.

“Karl’s dead!” He shrieked, his eyes wide. “Karl’s-- I don’t know! I don’t know what happened in there!”

“Where’s Captain?”

He shook his head, “I didn’t see him!”

Parker was watching Jacob, his eyes narrowed, his jaw tight. Lou knew that was his way of hyperventilating.

Parker took a deep breath, glancing down at the blood smeared in a trail out of the vent, “Shit, where’s the shovel?”

Jacob nearly flew out of his skin, like he hadn’t realized Parker was there. Breathless, he said, “That’s the thing! It-- Karl? It took it! Grabbed it. I couldn’t breath in there, fuck-- fuck.” He hugged himself tight and sat down. Lou didn’t know what to do with his hands.

“Strong, get the captain, and Sharon. We need to stay together,” Parker said. Lou looked wildly at Jacob, before nodding and sprinting off.

Sleeping Quarters

They began sleeping in the same rooms, to make sure whatever it was didn’t come after them at night. They’d stopped doing their experiments-- Lou stopped gardening-- in favor of monitoring security cams and making new plans to find it, wherever it was. So far, they only knew it wasn’t in the vents, because the smell dissipated after a few days.

He’d wiped up the blood on the entrances of the vents. And even though the smell wasn’t as strong anymore, it would never leave his head. It still clung to the air as it recycled itself, filling their lungs with death before they forced it out again, exhaling deeper and deeper until the pain was a stabbing pain in their lungs. At least, that was the case for Armstrong.

He was so useless.

He could barely climb out of bed anymore.

He shared a room with Sharon, and she couldn’t look at him.

A few days prior, after he’d slept in a few extra hours, she approached him, helped him climb out of bed, led him to the bathroom, before locking the door to their room. He lay slumped out in the hallway, unable to move to try and get inside, away from the slasher threat, and unable to give Sharon any space. She needed it. She was definitely still thinking about Bella

It took an hour for him to stand, move past the blinking security lights, to resolve to see his flowers again. Maybe, if they were salvageable, he was too.

He walked through the hallways, past all the main systems, feeling an invisible force shorten his steps and weigh down every breath. It was a small process getting into weightlessness. His feet left the ground, his breathing grew larger. He was off balance. He tilted sideways, and let himself turn over in the air a few times, before his head bumped against a wall and he began a slow crawl towards his greenhouse.

The trees had grown, even without his watering. In fact, all the plants seemed fine, actually, which really surprised him. He pushed off from the doorway, actually surprised that everything was doing okay without him. They’d survived! It was amazing. Holy shit!

Then he pushed aside one of the plants.

Embedded in the dirt was a caved in skull, decayed eyes bulging out, organs winding together with the roots of the trees and the stupid fucking carrots. The only thing that made it Karl was the beard hair pasted together with blood.

Lou didn’t know how he managed to get back to his room.

The room was dark and cool now, like a reprieve from a hot sunny day in the summer. He missed the sun so much. He missed ground. He missed listening to music, cooking with his mom, eating pizza that wasn’t glorified plastic. Everyone did.

The door opened, and Lou couldn’t muster surprise or panic. Maybe this would be it for him, and maybe at his funeral, Sharon would say “I knew I should’ve kept locking the doors.”

Jacob panted like he’d just run there.

His eyes were wide, glorious. They shone even in a blackened room. This was the first time Lou’d seen him in several days, but Jacob seemed to have grown in that time. His hair was longer. He was taller. He had his chest puffed out.

“Um,” he began, brushing his hair out of his face, his expression dropping to something neutral.

I should tell him. I need to tell him. Why can’t I--

“I’m sorry I haven’t come by. I know you’re-- uh-- sick, and I don’t know how to make that better. We’ve been trying to track down . . . but you probably don’t want to hear that?”

He came closer.

Please, I can’t do this, please. Leave me alone. Lou felt so scared.

“When Bella died . . . I didn’t know what to do with myself. I couldn’t really think about anything, and moving was really hard. If that’s what it’s like for you now, do you think talking would help? I’m here to listen.” His gloved hands wove together as he spoke. He was wearing his blue suit.

Lou sat up. He surprised himself with that. He probably smelled like a pig, but Jacob didn’t flinch away from him like Sharon did.

“I-- ,” he didn’t have anything to say. Tell him, dammit.

He couldn’t. Instead, he forced himself to sit up, leaning against the wall next to his cot. Jacob sat down near his feet.

“You know, what you did got me through all this. I was in the vents, crawling as fast as I could-- “ He cut himself off there, looking listlessly at the ground. Shakily, he raised his entangled fingers, like he was using them to breath in, before letting them collapse again onto his lap. “Y-y’know, my wits are leaving me. Everything’s such a blur I can’t even think anymore. I can’t even recognize myself in the mirror-- cause-- I don’t want to die. I don’t want any of this. But, um, talking to you helped? It really did.”

Lou nodded. Hopefully that was it. Jacob would leave him alone and he would continue being useless alone without meaningless compliments.

Jacob didn’t go, though. He stared ahead into the dark room, bisected by the doorway’s seering white light. Unlike Sharon, he hadn’t turned on the lights as soon as he walked in.

Lou actually sat up now. Despite everything, he really didn’t want Jacob to feel like this.

“I- I found Karl,” Lou said. “I-in the garden.” As soon as the words left, his whole body felt lighter. He pursed his lips, waiting for Jacob’s response.

Jacob barely nodded, his gaze glued to the floor. His eyes flitted back to Lou for a moment, before he murmured, “Yeah, I know.”

“Did-- did you guys find him?” Lou asked, inching closer to the edge of the bed. “Are they with him now?”

He shook his head. “No, um, they’re not. I don’t know, actually. I haven’t checked.”

“Oh . . . Who else found him?”

Jacob deflated.

“What?”

“No one else found him.”

“What?” His heart spiked in his chest.

Jacob’s mouth twisted. Tears flooded his eyes.

“I can’t remember anymore!” He cried. “I don’t know! I went into those vents-- I think I did it-- I must’ve. I didn’t see you for days-- I don’t know! Did I want you to find it? Is this my way of telling myself-- Am I telling myself to tell you about me? Am I being told to kill you?”

He ran a hand through his shaggy hair as he gesticulated to no one.

Lou was frozen. No, no, he was with Jacob in security! That made no sense!

Jacob’s eyes were wide. His smile was wide and toothy, but his eyes were wide with terror as he stared, frozen, into the dark.

Lou inched to the edge of the bed. He moved slowly, without making a sound. His breath was stuck in the back of his throat.

Smiling down at no one, Jacob said, “Look, I know this sounds bad-- but I’m not a killer! I hope he doesn’t think that. I just wanted him to get up-- I wanted him to garden again-- that made him so happy before!”

Shit. Lou slipped on his work uniform, a muddy green stain on the ground, and crashed back against the cabinet. The sharp metal corner stabbed into his arm. He pressed the hand over his mouth to muffle his whining pain.

“I miss him too. And Bella. And Parker. Parker looked so shocked when he died-- it must have scared me so bad. No one needed to die. I’m going to find who did it. I’ll tell ‘em-- I’ll kill him!”

A panicked scowl slashed across Jacob’s face. He rose from the bed, to twice his size. Black, mottled skin grew out of the wrinkles on his furrowed brow. His mouth opened wide, and wider, and wider.

What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck.

Lou got the fuck out of there, grabbing the doorway to turn sharply into the hallway.

Behind him, frantic scrambling, like a thousand rats clawing at the ground, grinning wide with hundreds of human teeth. Each step pounded against the ground as he sailed down the hallway, his eyes wide. He left all his air behind him, to the sorrowful, wailing monster chasing him.

It pleaded, “Things grow different in space! You said it yourself! Shouldn't we forgive it? Just because it came from here, and not down there. None of this was supposed to happen.”

He looked. He had too. For a second, it sounded so human.

It had a circular saw of teeth, bellowing out human words. Eyes like slits along its fleshy neck. What must have been fifty limbs, grabbing onto every conceivable surface to propel it forward to its target.

He wasn’t looking when he made the turn.

The hallway behind him darkened. The lights crackled off overhead. An alarm blared over the speakers.

“Please! Wait up!”

He turned back, just in time to face his dead end before ramming full-force into the wall.

“FUCK!” He cried, stumbling backwards. He was surrounded on all sides by white walls. Metal, plastic, glass, empty space.

The thing that was not Jacob growled, “Look, I know how to make you feel better, okay? What if I just-- !“

BOOM.

Lou was on the ground, crushed under the weight of a thousand hands, bearing teeth, a hundred eyes.

Maybe Sharon would save him? Burst out of nowhere and smack that thing down with a shovel.

It coiled a knife-sharp tongue over his head, wrapped it around him like a safety harness, lifted him up, up, into its unhinged mouth.

Comms

Sharon reached up, up, but the gash in her side ripped open with the effort. She winced, cried out in pain, muffled it as much as she could. Her blood oozed over the metal surface. There was no way she was reaching that monitor. The banging on the door behind her subsided for a second, and then it beeped, and it opened. A deep dread landed in her gut.

Trembling, she looked over her shoulder. Standing in the doorway was a yellow suit, helmet on, shovel at the ready.

It moved forward. She cried out, tried reaching the monitor as if that would save her anymore. He moved straight towards her, showing no hesitation as he grabbed her hair and wrenched her away from the screen.

Captain raised the shovel-- Sharon kicked him square in the gut, but that couldn’t stop him. A rush of adrenaline blazed in his gut as he slammed the shovel down on her head. Again and again and again, until he knew she wouldn’t move ever again. So much for secrets kept.

Sighing, he set down his weapon, pushed her leg aside so he could move Parker’s rolling chair.

He fell into the seat, took off his helmet. His face was something amorphous. It felt small in some places, like it was being pinched tight, and overinflated in others. It’d been three weeks since he dared look in the mirror, afraid it would look nothing like it should. Or worse, exactly the same.

Seen security cams. Imposter victory. Self Destruct in 5 min.

He sat back in the chair, folded his hands behind his head. Behind him, Sharon let out her last splutter of blood.

Five minutes left, huh . . . He scanned the map taped to the wall over Parker’s old desk, showing heat signals on one side and radio signals on the other. It was such a useless job, recording those things. Now he knew why.

What did that other kid say? Made of stars, left to the stars. Nothing mattered anyway.