Content Warning: This story depicts graphic body horror including forced impregnation, visceral birth imagery, and extreme violence. It also explores themes of psychological deterioration and complicity. Reader discretion advised.
Vera Sloane is dying when Yuki Tanaka realizes what the creature actually wants.
Not food. Not territory. Something worse.
Vera is pinned against the cargo hold wall, the thing’s blade appendages driven through her shoulders like nails through a specimen board. She’s still breathing. Still conscious. Her eyes track Yuki’s movement, pleading silently for help that isn’t coming.
The creature isn’t killing her. It’s positioning her.
Its segmented body moves with surgical precision, chitinous plates shifting as appendages retract from Vera’s shoulders and begin something else. Probing. Searching. Finding the soft tissue between her ribs.
Vera’s scream is wet, desperate. She’s trying to say something but her lungs are filling with blood.
Yuki watches from behind a cargo container fifteen meters away, magnetic boots locked to the deck, unable to move, unable to look away. She’s been watching for three minutes. Three minutes that feel like hours.
The creature’s mandibles open, revealing an ovipositor that wasn’t visible before. A segmented tube that extends from somewhere deep inside its thorax, glistening with translucent mucus. The thing is as thick as Yuki’s thumb, ridged like an insect’s abdomen, pulsing with internal movement.
Yuki understands then. This is what happened to the Helike’s crew. Not predation. Reproduction.
The ovipositor presses against Vera’s abdomen, finding the space between ribs, and pushes through skin. Vera’s body jerks. The ovipositor keeps pushing, through muscle, through the peritoneum, searching for the cavity beyond. Blood wells around the insertion point, flowing in low-g globules that drift away from Vera’s body.
Vera’s back arches. The scream becomes something inhuman, a sound no throat should make. Her fingers claw at the metal wall, nails tearing, leaving bloody smears.
The creature deposits something inside her. Yuki sees the ovipositor pulse, contracting in rhythmic waves. Once. Twice. Three times. Each contraction forces something deeper into Vera’s body cavity. Yuki can see the shape moving through the translucent tube. Segmented. Alive.
When the ovipositor withdraws, Vera sags against the wall, held up only by the creature’s appendages still pinning her shoulders. Her abdomen is already swelling, skin stretching over something that moves beneath the surface. Fast. Too fast.
The creature releases her. Vera collapses to the deck, curling into fetal position, hands clutching her distended belly. She’s making a sound now, low and continuous, more like sobbing than screaming.
The creature ignores her. Its sensory clusters sweep the cargo hold, hunting for the next host.
Yuki forces herself to move. She disengages her magnetic boots and uses her suit’s maneuvering jets to drift silently toward the maintenance access fifty meters away. The creature’s sensory organs track movement and thermal signature. Her suit’s insulation is good, but the creature is learning patterns. If she moves too fast, it will notice.
She drifts. Ten meters. Twenty. The creature is still scanning, patient and methodical.
Thirty meters. The access panel is close now. Another ten meters and she can seal herself inside the maintenance shaft, find another route to the docking collar where the Persephone waits. Where Raj is. Where safety is.
Behind her, Vera’s sobbing stops.
Yuki risks a glance back. Vera is convulsing now, body jerking in spasms. Her abdomen is grotesquely swollen, skin stretched so tight it’s translucent. Something is moving inside, pressing against her flesh from within, creating visible shapes. Limbs. Multiple limbs.
Vera’s eyes meet Yuki’s across the distance. There’s recognition there. Understanding. And a silent plea.
Kill me.
Yuki looks away. She keeps drifting toward the access panel.
Behind her, Vera’s abdomen ruptures.
The sound is wet, organic. Flesh tearing. Vera’s final scream cuts off mid-breath.
Yuki doesn’t look back. She reaches the access panel, pulls it open, seals herself inside the maintenance shaft.
In the darkness, she allows herself to breathe.
She tells herself she couldn’t have saved Vera.
She’s been telling herself lies since this started.
Seventeen hours earlier.
The salvage beacon appears on their screens during shift change, a steady pulse broadcasting distress from coordinates 2.7 astronomical units past Mars.
Yuki Tanaka is in the Persephone’s galley, trying to fix the coffee maker for the third time this week, when Raj Patel’s voice comes through the intercom.
“Got a hot one. Six-day-old beacon still transmitting. Registry shows it’s the Helike, mining tug out of Vanguard Extraction. Looks clean.”
Yuki sets down her tools. Six days is unusual. Most salvage beacons either get answered in 48 hours or the power dies. Something kept this one alive.
“What’s the payout?” she asks.
“Registry value is 40 million. Even stripped, we’re looking at 8 million gross. Our cut is 22 percent after corporate.”
1.76 million credits split six ways. Just under 300,000 per person. Enough to retire from salvage work, buy a hab unit on Ceres, live comfortable for a decade.
Enough to stop. Finally stop.
“File the claim,” Yuki decides. “Plot intercept. I want us docked in four hours.”
She pulls herself through the corridor toward the crew quarters. The Persephone is a Horizon Salvage contractor vessel, 80 meters bow to stern, designed for crew of six. The interior is functional, all exposed conduit and carbon composite, everything designed for zero-g maneuvering.
She passes Carina Oakes coming the other way. The medic looks like she hasn’t slept in days. Eyes bloodshot. Hands shaking. Withdrawal, probably. Carina’s been using again, stealing from the medical supplies. Morphine, most likely. Yuki knows but hasn’t said anything. Everyone has their coping mechanisms in deep space.
“We got a job,” Yuki says. “Four-hour burn. Suit up and run pre-board checks.”
Carina nods, doesn’t meet her eyes. “Yeah. Okay.” Her voice is rough, scratchy. “I’ll get the med kit ready.”
“Carina.” Yuki stops her. “When was the last time you slept?”
Carina’s jaw tightens. “I’m fine.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I said I’m fine, Yuki. Drop it.”
Yuki watches her go. She should ground Carina. Policy says anyone showing impairment stays on the ship. But Carina is their only medic. If someone gets hurt on the boarding, they’ll need her.
Always a choice. Always a compromise.
The rest of the crew assembles in the equipment bay. James Ko, systems technician, is running diagnostics on the cutting tools. Dmitri Volkov is checking pressure suit seals, methodical and thorough. Vera Sloane is inventorying salvage equipment, her tablet displaying an itemized checklist she updates with obsessive precision.
Raj remains at the pilot station, pushing the engines to 130 percent rated capacity. The burn is hard, 1.4g sustained acceleration that presses them into their seats. Yuki’s body remembers the weight, inner ear adjusting to the sensation of down after weeks in zero-g.
They approach the Helike at 18:15 ship time. It hangs against the black, a Charon-class mining tug showing decades of micrometeorite scarring. But structurally sound. No visible breaches. Docking collar intact.
“Life support reading?” Yuki asks.
James is scanning from external sensors. “Minimal power draw. Emergency reserves only. No active atmosphere generation. If anyone’s alive in there, they’ve been breathing recycled air for weeks.”
“Thermal?”
“Cold. Hull temperature is ambient. Heating system is offline.”
Dead ship. The question is why it’s still broadcasting.
Raj brings them alongside, docking collar engaging with solid contact. The magnetic clamps lock. The ships are mated.
Yuki runs the boarding checklist. Pressure suits. Helmet seals checked twice. Oxygen reserves at full, eight hours per person. Cutting tools. Biological sample kits in case of contamination. Weapons, technically illegal for civilian salvage but everyone carries them anyway.
She’s about to finalize the boarding party when Vera speaks up.
“I should be on boarding party.” Vera’s voice is flat, controlled. “I’m cargo specialist. I need to assess salvage value firsthand.”
Yuki was planning to leave Vera on the Persephone. Something about Vera has been wrong for weeks. Too much time on encrypted comms. Avoiding eye contact. Corporate audit is coming up in two months. Yuki suspects Vera is filing reports, building a case against someone on the crew. Maybe against Yuki herself.
But Vera is right. Cargo assessment is her job. And leaving her behind means Raj is alone on the Persephone, which violates their own safety protocols.
“Fine,” Yuki decides. “Five-person boarding party. Vera, James, Dmitri, Carina, and me. Raj, you monitor from pilot station. Any problems, you undock immediately. Don’t wait for us.”
Raj doesn’t like it. She can see it in his face. But he nods. “Four-hour window. If I don’t hear from you by 22:15, I’m pulling back and calling for backup.”
They cycle through the airlock at 18:41. All five of them. The docking collar is pressurized, air stale but breathable. Elevated CO2, reduced oxygen. Yuki’s suit sensors flash yellow warnings.
The Helike’s airlock is sealed but powered. James overrides with salvage master codes. Corporate backdoor access that works on 90 percent of civilian vessels. The hatch opens with a hiss of equalizing pressure.
Beyond is darkness.
Yuki’s helmet lamp cuts through the black, illuminating a corridor barely three meters wide. Emergency lighting strips glow faint red along the baseboards. The ship is cold, near freezing.
“Point-three g,” Dmitri announces, checking the readout. “Ship’s spinning for centrifugal but it’s slow. Main drive is offline.”
They move into the ship, magnetic boots engaging with the deck plating. The corridor extends thirty meters ahead before branching. Yuki leads, Dmitri and James flanking, Vera and Carina taking rear positions.
The ship is empty. No bodies. No signs of struggle. Just closed doors and darkness.
“Where’s the crew?” Carina asks. Her voice is tight, nervous.
James is accessing ship’s database through his portable terminal. “Manifest shows nine people. Captain Elias Hammond. First Officer Keiko Sato. Seven crew. Last filed report was eight weeks ago.”
Vera is documenting everything with her helmet cam, narrating into her comm. “Corridor Alpha. No visible damage. Proceeding to bridge for ship’s log access.”
They reach the bridge at 19:02. The compartment is dark except for standby indicators blinking on inactive consoles. Captain’s chair is empty. No blood. No bodies. Just absence.
Yuki accesses the main computer. Ship’s log is mostly corrupted but she pulls fragments.
LOG FRAGMENT 187 DAYS AGO:
Captain Hammond. Completed preliminary bore samples from TG-447. Subsurface scans show promising organics. Requesting clearance to expand operations. Crew morale is good.
LOG FRAGMENT 183 DAYS AGO:
First Officer Sato. Drill team penetrated 800 meters into asteroid core. We’ve hit something. Not rock. Something hollow. Captain ordered halt pending analysis.
LOG FRAGMENT 181 DAYS AGO:
Captain Hammond. Hollow space is extensive. Sonar mapping suggests network of caverns throughout asteroid core. Natural formation would have collapsed. Someone excavated these tunnels. We’re continuing analysis.
LOG FRAGMENT 178 DAYS AGO:
First Officer Sato. Something came out of the tunnels. Not human. Killed Davis and Kim before we could seal drill chamber. It’s inside the ship now. We can’t find it. But we hear it moving through the vents.
Dmitri is reading over her shoulder. “We need to leave. Right now.”
But Yuki is scanning for more recent entries.
LOG FRAGMENT 16 DAYS AGO:
First Officer Sato. I’m the last one alive. Captain Hammond died three months ago trying to seal himself in the bridge. The creature phased through the door and killed him. I’ve been hiding in crew quarters for 162 days. I found a compartment it can’t seem to phase into. Aluminum-titanium alloy walls. I have maybe two weeks of water left. I’m activating the beacon manually. If anyone receives this, do not board. Destroy this ship. Burn it. Don’t let it reach population centers.
Yuki’s stomach tightens. Sixteen days ago. That means Sato might still be alive. Barely.
“James, can you access ship’s sensors? Internal cameras?”
He works the console, pulling up residual data. Security footage from months ago.
The first feed shows the drill chamber. Timestamp 178 days ago. The crew is operating boring equipment when the drill breaches into empty space. Something comes through.
The footage is low resolution but Yuki sees shape. Horse-sized body, crustacean morphology. Chitinous armor plates. Six segmented limbs ending in blade appendages. Multiple sensory clusters where a head should be. No visible eyes.
It moves impossibly fast. One moment it’s climbing through the breach. Next it’s on Davis, appendages hooking into his pressure suit, tearing through reinforced fabric. Davis dies in seconds, throat opened, blood spraying in low-g arcs that float away from his body in perfect spheres.
Kim runs. The creature catches him in three strides, slamming him into the bulkhead hard enough to crack his helmet. Kim’s face is visible for one frame, mouth open in silent scream, then the creature’s mandibles close on his head like a vice. The helmet crunches. Kim’s skull collapses inward. Brain matter and blood spray across the bulkhead. The feed cuts out.
“Fuck,” Dmitri whispers.
Vera is recording everything, her voice steady despite what they’re seeing. “Two fatalities confirmed. Hostile organism. Extreme aggression. Recommending immediate evacuation.”
The next feed shows attempted containment. Six crew with cutting torches, trying to corner the creature in cargo hold. It backs against the wall. They advance.
Then it phases.
Yuki watches the creature’s body become translucent, wavering like heat distortion. It passes through the solid metal bulkhead, disappearing into the ship’s superstructure.
Three seconds later it reappears behind the crew, fully solid, and attacks. Two die in the first rush. One has his spine severed, body going limp instantly. The other has her throat torn out, blood pressure sending arterial spray across the compartment in low-g. The others scatter.
“That’s impossible,” James says. “Matter can’t phase through matter. Basic physics.”
“Physics didn’t stop it from killing six people,” Yuki replies.
She’s thinking tactically. Phasing through walls means no compartment is safe. But Sato survived 162 days. That means the ability has limits. The aluminum-titanium alloy compartment blocked it. Something about the material’s molecular structure prevents phasing.
“We need to find Sato,” Yuki decides. “She knows how to kill this thing. Or at least how to survive it.”
They leave the bridge, moving deeper into the Helike. The corridor branches into crew quarters, galley, engineering access.
“Split up,” Yuki says. “Vera and I take engineering. Rest of you, crew quarters. We meet back at bridge in thirty minutes.”
Vera’s voice comes through, sharp. “Negative. Standard protocol says we stay together in hostile environment.”
“Standard protocol also says we don’t board ships with confirmed hostile organisms,” Yuki replies. “But here we are. We split up or we don’t cover enough ground before Raj pulls back.”
Vera doesn’t respond. But she follows Yuki toward the engineering access.
They descend through a maintenance shaft. The shaft is narrow, barely wide enough for a person in a pressure suit. Yuki’s helmet lamp shows walls scored with deep gouges. Claw marks. Something large has been using this passage frequently.
They reach engineering at 19:28. The compartment is massive, designed around the ship’s fusion drive core. The reactor is offline but residual radiation is still present. Yuki’s suit sensors register elevated gamma levels. The radiation counter on her wrist display ticks upward. 180 millisieverts per hour. High. Dangerous over prolonged exposure. A few minutes won’t kill her, but an hour would cause radiation sickness.
The room is empty. No crew. No bodies. But something is wrong with the air. It smells organic even through her suit’s filters. Like meat left in warm space too long.
Vera notices it too. “What is that smell?”
Yuki sweeps her helmet lamp across the compartment. Standard engineering layout. Reactor core, power distribution, life support systems. Everything offline. Everything cold.
Then she sees the cocoons.
They’re attached to the far wall, organic structures that look like massive wasp nests. Each one is roughly human-sized, constructed from some kind of resinous material that gleams wetly in her lamp. There are five of them clustered together.
“What the fuck,” Vera whispers. Her voice has lost its professional flatness. There’s genuine fear now.
Yuki approaches the nearest cocoon. Through the translucent membrane she can see shape. Arms. Legs. A face pressed against the inside surface.
Human. Someone is inside.
She moves her lamp to illuminate the face. It’s a woman, maybe forty, eyes open and staring. Her mouth is moving silently, forming words. Help me. Please.
“She’s alive,” Vera says. “Yuki, she’s still alive.”
Yuki pulls her cutting torch, about to slice through the membrane, when she notices the woman’s abdomen. It’s distended, swollen to grotesque proportions. The skin is stretched so thin she can see movement inside. Something dark. Multiple limbs pressing against the inside surface from within.
“Wait,” Yuki says.
But Vera is already reaching for the cocoon, trying to tear it open with her gloved hands. The membrane is tougher than it looks, stretching but not breaking.
“Vera, stop,” Yuki says.
Vera ignores her. She pulls harder. The membrane ruptures.
The woman inside convulses, back arching, mouth opening in silent scream. Her abdomen tears open from the inside. Blood sprays in low-g, forming floating spheres that drift across the compartment. Something emerges from the wound, forcing its way through torn flesh and separated ribs.
It’s small, maybe twenty kilograms, but the morphology is unmistakable. Segmented body. Chitinous plates still wet with amniotic fluid. Blade appendages folded against its thorax. A juvenile version of the creature they saw in the footage.
It drops from the cocoon, landing on the deck with a wet sound. The sensory clusters orient toward them. Learning. Processing.
Then it lunges at Vera.
Vera falls backward, magnetic boots losing contact with the deck. She floats, arms flailing. The creature is faster. It lands on her chest, appendages digging through her suit fabric, searching for flesh underneath. The inner pressure layer holds but the creature’s weight drives Vera into the bulkhead. She screams, trying to push it off.
Yuki fires her cutting torch. Battery indicator shows 180 seconds of charge. The laser beam catches the juvenile’s thorax, burning through wet chitin. The creature shrieks, a sound like metal scraping metal, and releases Vera. It drops to the deck, scrabbling away, trailing ichor.
Yuki fires again, tracking its movement. The beam hits center mass, cutting deep. The creature convulses once and goes still. Smoke rises from the wound.
Battery indicator: 150 seconds.
Vera is on the floor, breathing in ragged gasps. Her suit is torn across the chest, fabric shredded in parallel lines, but the inner pressure layer held. No breach. She’s bleeding from a cut on her collarbone where the creature’s appendage found skin, but not dying.
“Are you bit?” Yuki asks, pulling Vera up. “Did it inject anything?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Check. Please check.”
Yuki examines the wound through the torn suit. Clean cut from the blade appendage. Bleeding but superficial. No injection site. No sign of ovipositor penetration. Just a laceration.
“You’re clean.”
Behind them, the other cocoons are moving. The occupants are convulsing, abdomens swelling, membranes straining. More juveniles are about to emerge.
“We’re leaving,” Yuki says. “Now.”
They move toward the maintenance shaft. Behind them, she hears membrane tearing, wet sounds, shrieks from newborn creatures testing their voices.
They climb fast, not worrying about stealth. Yuki’s radiation counter is still elevated from the engineering bay exposure. Total accumulated dose: 8 millisieverts. Not lethal, but enough. Her cells are damaged now. Subtle damage the creature will detect.
They reach the main corridor at 19:36. James’s voice comes through suit comms, tense but controlled.
“Yuki, we found something in crew quarters. You need to see this.”
“Negative. Get back to bridge. We’re evacuating.”
“Yuki, one of the crew is alive. First Officer Sato. She’s sealed in compartment C-7. She activated the beacon. She says she knows how to kill it.”
Yuki stops. Information is survival. If Sato knows weaknesses, that changes everything.
“Hold position. We’re coming to you.”
She and Vera navigate to crew quarters. The corridor branches, compartments lining both sides. James, Dmitri, and Carina are outside C-7, standing back from the door.
“It’s sealed from inside,” James says. “Manual override. She won’t open it until she’s sure we’re human.”
Yuki activates her suit’s external speaker. “First Officer Sato, I’m Yuki Tanaka, Horizon Salvage. We’re here to extract you.”
Silence. Then a voice, barely a whisper through the door. Hoarse, damaged from dehydration.
“How many of you?”
“Six. Five aboard your ship, one on ours.”
“Prove you’re human. Tell me something about Earth. Something specific. The creature can’t know Earth details.”
Yuki thinks. “Mount Everest is 8,849 meters tall. The Pacific Ocean covers 165 million square kilometers. Earth’s rotation period is 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4 seconds.”
Long silence. Then the door unseals.
The woman inside is First Officer Keiko Sato. Yuki recognizes her from the ID photo in the logs, but barely. Sato has lost maybe thirty kilograms. Her eyes are sunken deep in her skull. Skin gray and papery. She’s wearing a pressure suit with the helmet off, breathing recycled air that smells like death and dehydration.
“You shouldn’t have come,” Sato says. Her voice is rough, damaged. “It’s been waiting. It knew the beacon would bring more.”
“More what?” Yuki asks.
“More hosts.” Sato stumbles forward. Dmitri catches her before she falls. “It doesn’t eat us. It breeds in us. Human body temperature is perfect for gestation. Human chemistry supports the embryos. We’re incubators.”
She looks at each of them with hollow eyes. “I’m useless to it now. Dehydrated. Organs failing. But you’re all healthy. Fresh. That’s what it wants.”
“We’ve seen the cocoons,” Vera says. “In engineering. Five of them.”
“Six,” Sato corrects. “There’s one in the cargo hold. Captain Hammond. The first one. It’s been gestating for 162 days. Longer than any of the others.”
Carina steps forward. “Can you walk? We need to get you to our ship.”
Sato laughs. The sound is broken, bitter. “Walk? I can barely stand. And it doesn’t matter. You’ll never reach your ship. It’s hunting you right now. Learning your patterns. When it’s ready, it’ll take you one by one.”
Behind them, something scrapes in the corridor. Metal on metal.
Dmitri turns, nail gun raised. “What was that?”
Yuki’s helmet lamp sweeps the darkness. Nothing visible. But her suit’s thermal sensors are registering a heat signature. Large. Close. Moving.
“Back to the airlock,” she says. “Now. Dmitri, you carry Sato. Everyone else, defensive formation.”
They run. Sato is deadweight in Dmitri’s arms, too weak to support herself. They move as fast as magnetic boots allow.
The scraping sound follows them. Getting closer. Persistent. Patient.
They reach the junction where corridors branch. The airlock is fifty meters ahead. Yuki can see the docking collar through the window, the Persephone beyond, safety.
The creature drops from a ventilation shaft, landing between them and the exit.
Yuki sees it clearly for the first time in person, not on a screen. It’s massive, easily 300 kilograms of armored predator. The body is segmented, plates overlapping like scales, each one scarred from decades of survival. Six limbs, each ending in blade appendages that look surgical in their precision. The head is a cluster of black sensory organs, constantly moving, tracking them individually.
It makes a sound. Clicking, rapid-fire pattern that echoes off the walls.
James fires his mining pick. The pneumatic bolt hits the creature’s thorax, punching through chitin. The creature barely reacts. It advances, slow and patient. Testing them.
Dmitri sets Sato down and fires the nail gun. Rapid shots, each one finding armor. Some penetrate shallow. Most bounce off. The creature’s armor is too thick.
Then the creature phases.
Yuki watches it happen in real-time. The body becomes translucent, shimmering like heat distortion. Dmitri’s nails pass through it harmlessly, hitting the bulkhead behind with metallic pings.
The creature moves forward while phased, passing through the space where they’re standing. Its form is ghostly, edges wavering. Then it emerges behind them, fully solid, cutting off retreat.
They’re trapped. Creature between them and the airlock. Nowhere to run except deeper into the ship.
The creature focuses on Dmitri. Its sensory clusters lock onto him specifically. It lunges.
Dmitri tries to dodge but his magnetic boots slow him. The creature’s appendage catches his shoulder, blade edge cutting through pressure suit, through fabric, through flesh, finding bone. The sound is wet, organic. Bone cracking.
Dmitri screams. The sound is raw, animal. He drops the nail gun, clutching his shoulder. Blood is already leaking into his suit, dark red spreading across white fabric in blossoming patterns.
The creature pulls him close, other appendages wrapping around his torso. Not killing. Positioning. Examining.
Yuki sees what’s about to happen. She fires her cutting torch, beam catching the creature’s thorax where James’s bolt penetrated. The laser burns deeper, widening the wound. The creature shrieks, releases Dmitri, turns toward her.
Battery indicator: 120 seconds.
“Run!” Yuki shouts. “Find another way to the airlock!”
James grabs Dmitri. Carina grabs Sato. Vera leads them toward a side corridor, looking for an alternate route.
The creature follows Yuki. She backs away, keeping the cutting torch pointed at it. The beam is effective but the battery is draining fast. Maybe two minutes of continuous use left.
The creature doesn’t rush. It advances slowly, testing her. Learning her patterns. Its sensory organs track the torch, understanding the threat.
Yuki backs into a maintenance shaft. Narrow. Maybe four feet across. The creature stops at the entrance, too large to fit easily.
She descends, moving fast, magnetic boots clanging on metal rungs.
The creature follows. Its body compresses, plates sliding over each other with wet sounds, allowing it to fit through spaces that should be impossible. It’s like watching a liquid pour through a funnel. The creature’s biology is adapted for confined spaces. Asteroid tunnels. Mine shafts. Ships.
Yuki reaches the lower deck, emerges into a service corridor. She’s near the cargo hold now. Massive space designed for ore containers.
The creature drops from the shaft behind her, landing twenty meters away. They face each other.
Yuki checks her cutting torch battery. Ninety seconds left.
The creature clicks. Then it charges.
Yuki fires, sweeping the beam across its path. The creature dodges left, impossibly fast, appendages striking the deck for propulsion. It moves in unpredictable vectors, using three-dimensional space. It zigzags, making itself a difficult target.
It’s on her in seconds.
Yuki throws herself sideways, magnetic boots disengaging. She floats, using her suit’s maneuvering jets to adjust trajectory. The creature’s appendage passes through the space where she was, missing by centimeters.
She fires the torch while airborne. The beam catches the creature’s head, burning through one of the sensory clusters. The creature shrieks, a sound of genuine pain, and phases.
Yuki can’t track it when it’s phased. Her thermal sensors lose the signature. It’s invisible, intangible, somewhere in the ship’s superstructure.
Battery indicator: 60 seconds.
She waits, floating in the corridor, torch aimed at empty air. Listening to her own breathing. Trying to predict where it will emerge.
The creature reappears behind her.
Appendages grab her legs, pulling her toward the deck. Magnetic boots engage automatically when they contact metal, locking her in place. She can’t move.
The creature positions her, appendages wrapping around her torso, pulling her backward, bending her spine at an unnatural angle. She feels something press against her abdomen through the suit. Searching. Probing. The pressure is precise, methodical.
Then it stops.
The creature releases her. Steps back. Makes a clicking sound, different pattern than before. Not anger. Something else. Confusion, maybe. Or rejection.
Yuki lies on the deck, breathing hard. Why did it release her?
Then she realizes. The radiation. Her cells are damaged. The creature scanned her, found the damage, rejected her as unsuitable.
She’s not viable. Not a good host. Not now.
The creature turns away, moving toward the corridor where the others fled. It’s looking for better candidates. Healthier bodies.
Yuki forces herself up. Battery indicator: 45 seconds.
She follows the creature.
The Hunt: Hours 20:00 to 23:15
What follows is three hours of calculated terror.
Yuki tracks the creature through the Helike’s corridors, staying back, conserving her cutting torch battery. The creature is hunting the others systematically, using tactics she recognizes from persistence predators.
It doesn’t rush. It herds them. Cuts off exits. Exhausts them. Learns them.
At 20:17, she finds James and Vera trapped in a dead-end service corridor near the galley. The creature is methodically testing their defenses, lunging and retreating. James has maybe six pneumatic bolts left. Vera has nothing.
“Yuki!” James shouts when he sees her. “It’s been hunting us for thirty minutes. Every time we try to reach the airlock, it appears. Every time we hide, it finds us.”
“Where are the others?”
“Split up. Dmitri’s wounded bad. Carina’s with him, but she’s crashing. Withdrawal. She can barely function.”
The creature notices Yuki. It turns, sensory clusters focusing on her. For a moment she thinks it will attack.
Then it phases through the bulkhead and disappears.
“What the fuck,” Vera says. “Why did it leave?”
“It’s herding us,” Yuki says. “Driving us toward something.”
She’s right. Over the next two hours, the pattern becomes clear. The creature is driving them toward the cargo hold, using their own fear against them. Every attempt to reach the airlock is blocked. Every hiding place is found.
At 21:47, they find Dmitri in a maintenance closet. He’s sitting against the wall, clutching his shoulder. Blood has soaked through his suit, pooling on the deck. The wound is bad. The creature’s blade went deep. He’s losing blood faster than his suit’s emergency coagulants can handle.
Carina is with him, trying to apply pressure, but her hands are shaking too badly. Withdrawal is hitting hard now. She’s useless.
“We need to get him to the Persephone,” Carina says through chattering teeth. “He needs surgery. Real surgery.”
“We need to get past that thing first,” Yuki replies.
Dmitri’s voice is weak, slurred. “Just leave me. I’m dead weight.”
“No one gets left behind,” James says.
But they all know it’s a lie. Dmitri can’t walk. Someone will have to carry him. Someone loses mobility. Loses the ability to fight or run.
Yuki kneels beside Dmitri, checks his vitals through his suit sensors. Blood pressure dropping. Heart rate elevated. He’s going into shock.
“Dmitri, listen to me,” she says. “We’re not leaving you. But I need you to stay conscious. Can you do that?”
Dmitri’s eyes focus on her with difficulty. “Yeah. I can do that.”
He’s lying. She can see it. But she nods anyway.
At 22:15, Raj’s voice comes through comms. The signal is weak, distorted by the ship’s hull.
“Yuki, it’s been four hours. What’s your status?”
“Five alive, one wounded critically. Hostile organism hunting us. We’re trapped in the interior. Every route to the airlock is blocked.”
Static. Then Raj’s voice, breaking up. “Copy that. I’m repositioning to cargo hold exterior airlock. If you can get there, I can extract you via EVA. Twenty meters across the hull. Can you make it?”
“We’ll make it,” Yuki says.
She doesn’t believe it.
They move through the ship, trying to reach the cargo hold. The creature shadows them, visible in peripheral vision, always just out of reach. Watching. Learning.
At 22:48, something changes.
They’re moving through a corridor when the creature drops from a ceiling vent directly in front of them. Not behind. Not herding. Attacking.
It grabs Carina before anyone can react.
Carina screams. The creature lifts her off the deck, appendages wrapping around her torso, holding her suspended in the air. She’s kicking, trying to break free, but the creature’s grip is unbreakable.
Then it does something none of them expected.
It starts vocalizing. Not clicking. Not the hunting sounds. Something else. A series of complex whistles and chirps, almost like speech.
And Carina stops screaming.
She goes limp in the creature’s grip, eyes wide, staring at nothing.
“Carina!” James shouts.
The creature ignores him. It’s doing something to Carina. Its sensory clusters are pressed against her helmet, scanning her. Reading her.
Then it releases her.
Carina drops to the deck in slow motion, magnetic boots engaging. She stands there, swaying slightly, eyes unfocused.
“Carina, are you okay?” Yuki asks, approaching slowly.
Carina’s head turns toward her. The movement is wrong. Too smooth. Too controlled.
“She can’t help you,” Carina says.
But it’s not Carina’s voice. It’s Carina’s vocal cords, but the cadence is wrong. The tone is wrong.
“Carina?” Vera whispers.
Carina’s mouth smiles. The expression doesn’t reach her eyes.
“Carina is still here. But I’m here too now. I needed to understand you. Your language. Your thoughts. She’s teaching me.”
Yuki’s blood runs cold. The creature didn’t just hunt Carina. It hijacked her. Some kind of neural control. Parasite behavior.
“Let her go,” Yuki says.
Carina’s head tilts. “Why would I do that? She’s useful. She knows things. Medical things. Biological things. She knows how to keep you alive longer.”
The implication hits like a hammer. The creature wants them alive. Not dead. Alive and pregnant with its offspring.
“You can’t phase through aluminum-titanium alloy,” Yuki says, changing tactics. “That’s why Sato survived. Her compartment walls blocked you.”
Carina’s smile widens. “True. Some materials resist phasing. But there aren’t many. And I don’t need to phase when I can walk through doors.”
Carina’s body turns, walking away from them toward the cargo hold. Moving with purpose. The creature is using her as a scout. A tool.
“Fuck,” James whispers.
They follow at a distance, weaponless except for Yuki’s dying cutting torch and James’s mining pick with four bolts left.
They reach the cargo hold at 23:15.
The compartment is massive, designed for hauling ore containers. Empty except for one thing.
Captain Hammond’s cocoon.
It’s attached to the far wall near the exterior airlock, larger than the others. The membrane is opaque, pulsing. Something is moving inside. Something big.
“Don’t get near it,” Sato’s voice says.
They turn. Sato is standing at the cargo hold entrance. She’s holding a plasma cutter from the engineering bay, the battery indicator showing 40 percent charge.
“While it was hunting you, I was preparing,” Sato says. “I found this. I found other things too. Weaknesses.”
“What weaknesses?” Yuki asks.
“The cocoons are part of its reproductive cycle. The juveniles gestate inside human hosts, but they need the cocoon membrane to complete metamorphosis. Burn the cocoons, you kill the cycle.”
“So we burn them,” James says.
“More than that.” Sato points at Hammond’s cocoon. “That one is different. It’s been gestating for 162 days. The longest. I think it’s not producing a juvenile. I think it’s producing another adult. A mate.”
As if responding to her words, the cocoon membrane tears open.
What emerges is not a juvenile.
It’s adult-sized. But wrong. Deformed. The chitinous plates are asymmetrical, mismatched. The appendages are too long, joints bending at impossible angles. The sensory clusters are oversized, bulging grotesquely.
A failed mutation. Nature’s mistake.
It drops from the cocoon onto the deck with a heavy thud. For a moment it just stands there, swaying. Then it sees Vera.
And it moves.
Fast. Too fast for something so malformed.
It hits Vera before anyone can react, appendages wrapping around her torso, pulling her toward the wall. Not killing. Positioning.
Yuki sees the ovipositor extend. She fires her cutting torch. Battery indicator: 15 seconds.
The beam catches the malformed creature’s thorax. It releases Vera, turning toward Yuki. It charges.
Yuki fires continuously. The beam cuts deep. The creature collapses three meters from her.
Battery indicator: 0 seconds. Dead.
Yuki is out of weapons.
Behind her, the original adult creature enters the cargo hold.
It sees the dead malformed offspring. Its sensory clusters focus on the corpse. Processing.
Then it looks at the humans.
The clicking sound it makes is different. Not hunting behavior. Something else.
Rage.
It charges all of them at once.
Cargo Hold: 23:15 to 02:17
What follows is chaos.
James fires his mining pick. The bolt hits but the creature doesn’t slow. It phases mid-charge, passing through James’s position, emerging behind him. An appendage catches James across the back, cutting deep. James falls.
Dmitri tries to stand, to fight, but he’s too weak. The creature ignores him. Unsuitable.
The creature goes for Sato.
Sato is ready. She swings the plasma cutter like a sword, the industrial cutting beam slicing through the creature’s appendage. The creature shrieks, backs away.
But Sato is weak from 16 days without water. She stumbles. The creature lunges again, knocking the plasma cutter from her hands. It wraps around her, positioning her.
“No!” Yuki screams, running at the creature.
She has no weapons. Just her body. She tackles the creature from the side, using surprise and momentum. The creature loses its grip on Sato.
But now it has Yuki.
Appendages wrap around her torso, pulling her against the bulkhead. She feels the ovipositor press against her abdomen through her suit. Searching. Finding the space between ribs.
The creature pauses.
It scans her again. Finds the radiation damage. The cellular degradation. She’s unsuitable.
But this time, it doesn’t release her.
This time, it makes a choice.
The ovipositor pushes through her suit fabric, through skin, through muscle. Yuki screams. The pain is blinding, white-hot. She feels the ovipositor penetrate her peritoneum, entering her abdominal cavity.
The creature deposits its payload anyway. One pulse. Two. Three. She feels each one, feels the eggs forcing deeper into her body.
When the ovipositor withdraws, Yuki collapses. Her abdomen is already swelling. Fast. Too fast. The radiation damage doesn’t matter. The creature is using her anyway. Damaged host is better than no host.
Through her pain, she sees Sato grab the plasma cutter. Sees her aim for the creature’s head. The beam cuts through sensory clusters.
The creature thrashes, releases Yuki, turns on Sato.
It’s faster. It grabs Sato, ovipositor extending.
“The airlock!” Sato screams, even as the ovipositor plunges into her. “Get everyone to the airlock now!”
James is on the deck, wounded but conscious. He pulls his portable terminal, interfaces with the airlock controls.
Vera is already there, trying to override.
“It’s sealed!” Vera shouts. “Emergency protocol! I need the captain’s code!”
“Then blow it,” James says through gritted teeth. “Overload the magnetic seals. Explosive decompression. We all have suits.”
He starts the sequence. “Thirty seconds.”
The creature finishes with Sato. It releases her. She collapses, clutching her belly.
The creature turns toward Vera.
Vera sees it coming. She runs. But there’s nowhere to go.
The creature corners her against the wall. Appendages pin her shoulders. The ovipositor extends.
This is the moment from the opening. This is where the story began.
Vera’s scream fills the cargo hold as the ovipositor plunges through her skin, depositing eggs deep inside her body cavity.
James’s terminal beeps. “Ten seconds. Brace for decompression.”
The creature finishes with Vera. Turns toward Carina, still standing motionless, hijacked by the creature’s neural control.
Then toward James.
“Five seconds,” James says.
The creature lunges.
“Now!” James shouts.
The airlock door explodes outward. Atmosphere vents in a violent rush. Everything not secured is pulled toward the opening.
Yuki’s magnetic boots keep her locked to the deck. James locks his boots. Vera and Sato are on the floor, boots engaged. Dmitri is unconscious but his boots hold.
Carina, standing in the center of the cargo hold, is pulled toward the airlock. She doesn’t scream. Just stares ahead as she’s sucked toward space.
The creature tries to grip the deck but the decompression is too violent. It phases, trying to pass through the superstructure to escape the pull.
But it’s mid-phase when something happens.
The explosive decompression disrupts its molecular cohesion. The phasing ability requires stable environmental pressure. In violent decompression, the creature can’t maintain phase state.
It solidifies mid-wall, trapped in the metal.
For three seconds, the creature is half in the wall, half out, unable to move.
Then the remaining air pressure drops to zero. The creature’s body ruptures from the inside. Flash freezing and pressure differential tear it apart.
It dies stuck in the wall like an insect in amber.
Silence.
Yuki, James, Vera, Sato, and Dmitri are still in the cargo hold. Alive. Barely.
But Yuki feels something moving inside her. The eggs are alive. Growing. Fast.
“EVA to the Persephone,” she says through her pain. “Now.”
She and James pull Dmitri up. They move to the blown airlock, step out onto the ship’s hull. The Persephone is twenty meters away. Raj has the airlock open.
They traverse the hull, magnetic boots engaging with each step. Vera and Sato follow, moving slow, weakened by implantation.
They reach the Persephone at 02:17. Seven hours after boarding the Helike.
Raj seals the airlock. “What happened?”
“Get us clear,” Yuki says. “Maximum burn. Away from the belt.”
Raj obeys.
Yuki gets everyone to medical bay. Dmitri is critical. James’s back wound needs surgery.
Vera, Sato, and Yuki are implanted.
Yuki operates on Vera first. Opens her abdomen. Removes four embryos. Vents them to space.
Does the same for Sato. Six embryos.
Then she looks at her own abdomen. Swollen. Moving.
She could operate on herself. Save herself.
She doesn’t.
She sits in medical bay, feeling what’s inside her grow.
She files her report at 08:00. Hostile organism. Breeding behavior. Quarantine recommended.
Corporate response 11 hours later: Claim denied. Evidence insufficient.
Three days later, docked at Phobos Station, Yuki feels the embryos ready to emerge.
She sits in a station bar, one hand on her abdomen.
She thinks about survival.
She thinks about extinction.
She thinks about choice.
She could tell station medical. Get them removed.
Or she could let them emerge. Here. In a station of three thousand people. Perfect breeding ground.
She orders another beer.
The creatures inside her kick.
She smiles.
Because she’s learned something the creature taught her.
Survival isn’t personal. It’s species-level.
And humanity lost.
Wow, the part about the ovipositor appearing and Yuki realizing it was reproduction not predation realy hit different, like seriously, that's such a chilling twist. It makes me wonder what if this creature's "reproduction" is actually some super complex bio-engineering process, kinda like it's deploying a very organic, invasive software update into its hosts, not just laying eggs.