Imagine This

Imagine this:

A cloudless summer morning that held a certain crispness, vaguely reminiscent of the coming fall. It was unseasonably cold, but not an unwelcome change from the sweltering heat.

Launch day.

In a hall extending from the Mission Control building stood the nine cosmonauts and one of their physical therapists, Luvenia Valentine. All were anxiously awaiting the signal to head outside.

Luvenia, one hand on the door’s handle, the other absent-mindedly tapping her clipboard, scanned the heads of her colleagues and friends. For the last eight years, she’d helped prepare every one of them for hostile space environments that they might encounter, growing to care deeply for them all.

Lost in thought, she snapped back to reality as her walkie-talkie crackled to life, the staticy voice of Mission Control telling her to bring them outside. Taking a deep breath, she pushed the door open, engulfing them in bright sunlight.

Ayelen, situated towards the back of the line, squinted in awe as she stepped out of the doorway to stare into the heavens above. Towering above the group stood Artemis, glinting in the sunlight and dwarfing the nearby buildings. Despite having been in and around the ship for a good portion of her life, the thought of actually leaving the planet with it made her hands and feet numb with excitement; she shivered from the lack of blood flow.

Twelve years.

Everyone had already held their sob-fests of goodbye parties with their loved ones and friends, but it was still a massive struggle to come to terms with the fact that it would be twelve years before they could see them again. Dwelling on this, Ayelen noted Luvenia’s tense body and cracking voice as she triple-checked that everyone was ready to go; she was desperately failing at controlling her growing sorrow.

''Aw, babe, don’t cry. You’re gonna make me cry'', her throat catching and already fighting tears before the thought finished.

Everything was good to go.

Wiping a hand across her face, her smile warped by tears, Luvenia’s voice cracked as she spoke into her shaking walkie-talkie, letting Mission Control know they were all set; she was given the approval to open up Artemis.

Taking a steadying breath, she lead the group up an angled ramp to the base of the enormous ship, punching in her confidencial code before forcing the heavy door open with her shoulder. Inside, a metallic ladder was centered in the small room, leading all the way up into the control center of the ship. Before following her colleagues, Ayelen was suddenly yanked to the side before stepping into the ship and fully wrapped in Luvenia’s arms, her face pressed into her shoulder. A great sob from Luvenia shook them both as they gently rocked back and forth, living only in the moment.

“S-so,” Luvenia pulled her head away, holding Ayelen’s in her hands. Her broken smile absolutely tore her heart apart. “See you in… in twelve years.”

Without another word, she pulled Ayelen close, kissing her with a tearful, passionate fear that screamed, “don’t you fucking dare think about not coming back.” She tasted the salt on their lips as her heart became more and more hollow, never wanting to leave this moment. Never wanting to say goodbye.

With a last peck on the lips and tight squeeze, Ayelen tore herself away from Luvenia’s warm, exposing herself to the chilly air once and restricted blood flow once more. Luvenia smiled weakly as she jogged back towards Mission Control center, readying herself for launch. One hand on the door handle, the other on the ladder rung, Ayelen looked back towards the building and saw, through the glass of the hall they’d just come from, Luvenia frantically waving her arms in goodbye and mouthing the words “I love you”. She smiled meekly and waved back before latching the door behind her.

Looking up the ladder, her colleagues were far ahead of her, prompting her to scale the ladder as quickly as she could in her bulky space suit. Dubstep music suddenly filled the vertical tunnel, completely catching Ayelen by surprise as she slowly recalled that Cecelia, the group’s rocket scientist, had a Bluetooth speaker installed into her helmet for reasons unknown. The music, though very uplifting and energizing, did nothing to help Ayelen’s nerves - it really only made her more anxious as she climbed, her heart beating loudly against her ribs, and hands beginning to shake, making it very difficult to hold onto the rungs.

''Calm down. You’re fine.''

Though her body wouldn’t believe this. She could feel her hands and feet turning white from the lack of blood, despite her many layers of clothing, and her chest hollowing and aching from nerves; the closer she got to the control center of the ship, the worse she felt.

Having caught up to the rest of the group, she heard the door to the controls open, and people began climbing again. No one spoke as the air was thick with apprehension - they were all nervous. Once inside, nine padded seats were positioned vertically, facing the blue sky above. Ayelen felt as if she were going to throw up.

Successfully clambering into her designated seat towards the back (unlike poor Kwynn, who’d lost her grip and falled into the wall behind them), she stared off into space, desperately focusing on calming down as her brain blocked out all external stimuli.

“... T-minus ten,

“Nine,

“Eight,

“Seven, “Six,

“Five,

“Four,

“Three,

“Two-”

Something’s wrong.

“One.”

A massive explosion suddenly forced time into overdrive, launching bodies and shrapnel towards her.

She was falling. Backwards. Blood, guts, and limbs fell wither her as the comfortable chair that she’d just been sitting in fell further and further away.

The ground was getting closer.

Forty feet…

Thirty feet…

Twenty…

Ten.

Nothing.

Ayelen snapped her eyes open, heart pounding.

She was still inside the pod.

...What?

Shaking from the adrenaline, she shouldered the door open; the dimly lit aisle of cryostatic pods surrounded her.

“Good morning, Ayelen,” suddenly cooed Artemis’ soft, mechanical voice from above. “You have been in cryosleep for three years, nine months, and eighteen days. How are you feeling?”

“Uh…”

Was that a dream?

"Fine, I guess. What happened? Why am I awake?” she responded distractedly, leaning against the pod across from her to steady her shaking body. Looking around, hauntingly still outlines of bodies were vaguely visible through frosted-over glass. What little light there was carved recognizable features from unwelcoming shadows.

“From your elevated heart rate and increasing restlessness, my sensors detected that you were having a nightmare; I decided to wake you. I’ve also discovered some abnormal plant growths in the greenhouses, but have no means of dealing with them myself - you’re best equipped to deal with them.”

"Okay, uh…”

Sliding a hand across her face to be rid of her weariness, Ayelen shuffled over to the entrance of the aisle and rounded a corner to the main area of the ship, mind completely elsewhere.

That felt so… real, though.

Artemis called after her: “Your friend, Cecelia, is also awake. I’ve waken her for my yearly inspection. Perhaps you should check up on her as well?”

“Uh, sure,” was the half-hearted response.

The fluorescents of the greenhouses were the only things lighting the rest of the ship, creating grotesque doublicates of the things that were once familiar and welcoming. Using the now-horizontal ladder centered in the room to guide herself to the planters, Ayelen squinted as the lights forced her eyes to adjust. A small scoff was the immediate reaction to the plants’ inspection.

"They’re just weeds, Artemis,” she sighed at the ceiling, crouching down and retrieving a pair of gardening gloves and sheers from a compartment built into the wall beneath.

Having removed the unwanted growth, Ayelen realized that she didn’t really have a place to put them. For the “time being”, she haphazardly shoved them in with the rest of her gardening tools, hoping that they would just shrivel up by the time they’d reached Callisto. The sound of a pounding fist, quickly followed by a frustrated sob, brought Ayelen’s attention to the slightly ajar door to the ship’s cockpit. Slightly worried, she jogged to the doorway to find Cecelia slumped over the main controls of the ship, arms wrapped around her head and crying.

“Hey, uh… you okay?”

Cecelia snapped her head around, red eyes widening in horror before quickly contorting back to their original frustration. Running a hand along her face, she shook her head.

“We’ve lost connection with E-Earth, a-and I don’t know why!” she cried, face a mask of absolute misery as the self-hate for not understanding began to overwhelm her. “I’ve been w-working on this for two h-hours, and nothing! I’ve tried e-everything!”

“Hey, it’s okay,” Ayelen said without much confidence, going up to try and comfort her colleague with an awkward pat on the back. “You’ll figure it out. You’re our computer person!”

Though well intended, Ayelen’s encouragement didn’t have the desired effect: “But what if I can’t!” the absolute fear in Cecelia’s voice as she began crying anew made Ayelen realize that this was maybe a bit more than she could handle.

A heavy silence settled in the air, save for the occasional muffled sob or sniff.

“Wait… why are you even awake?” Cecelia sniffed, red, puffy eyes inspecting Ayelen.

“‘Cause Artemis woke me up!”

“...Oh.”

A grimace sprawled across Ayelen’s face as she cringed at her very obvious answer.

Trying to think of something witty to make up for her incompetence, Ayelen said the first thing that popped into her head:

“FUCK!”

Cecelia, completely taken aback by the sudden outburst, just stared as tears rolled down her cheeks.

Knowing that she’d ruined all chances of redemption, Ayelen began backing up slowly towards the open door.

“I’m, uh, sure you’ll fix it!” was her last remark before quickly stepping out of the room, leaving Cecelia alone with her confusion and misery.

''Yep. That just happened… I’m a fucking dumbass.''

Not being able to force herself to go back to that mess of a conversation, Ayelen briskly walked back to her pod to sleep off her embarrassment and hoped that neither of them would remember it, despite her mind continuously playing the events on a loop and already having internalized what’d happened to use against her in the future.

-

“Hey! Ayelen!”

She jerked her eyes upward. Kwynn, Ayelen’s fellow botanist, was twisted around as much as she could in her seat to face her, the bulky space suit making it difficult to do so. Her brow was furrowed and her eyes shone with genuine concern.

"You okay there, famsquad?”

"Uh, yeah. Why?” she asked distractedly, looking around. They were all seated in the control center of the ship, geared up in their suits and facing upward to face the endless void.

Are we landing already?

“You’ve been, like, catatonic all morning. No one could really get a reaction out of you, and you just kinda went through the motions of everything without saying anything. We were worried that you’d, like, died in your sleep, but that your ghost was too stubborn to stay dead,” she joked, trying to lighten the mood despite the worried edge to her voice.

“...Huh.”

Kwynn gave her another worried look up and down before ultimately just turning around and dropping the matter. The group’s attempts hadn’t worked earlier and didn’t seem to be working now.

Completely lost in thought, Ayelen stared above as her stomach dropped and chest caved in with the sudden pressure of Artemis’ rockets lowering them to the ground. The speckled void of space began shifting as colors bled around the edges of the glass above before quickly snuffing out any previous hint of darkness; the atmosphere was a pulsating mirage of colors that ebbed and flowed with the fluidity of a calm ocean, gently and efficiently shifting from one color to the next. Delicate white orbs floated around intermittently, their edges blending in seamlessly with the surrounding light as they bobbed up and down with the pulses; they looked more like blobs of white light than separate entities.

"Bacteria colonies… They’re communicating,” Makenzie, the team’s designated leader, whispered to herself in awe, though her comment was drowned out by the roar of Artemis.

With a massive shift in weight and a concerningly loud groan, carelessly tossing her occupants to the side in their seats, Artemis bore her anchors into the earth below to secure herself.

They’d made it. The third group ever to arrive on Callisto.

Immediately, Daniel, the geologist, ripped himself out of his seat and dropped to the door below before yanking it open and literally throwing himself face-first down the ladder in sheer, unadulterated excitement.

Whipping her head around in shock and morbid curiosity, Ayelen could see the realization of his mistake vividly flash across his face as he desperately flailed to grab a rung. With a painful whack and an exasperated, “shit!”, his body slammed against the metal as he successfully grabbed, and held onto a rung.

“I-I’m okay!” He grunted, voice shaking from the adrenaline. “I don’t think it’s broken. Just hurts… a lot.” He indicated towards the shoulder he caught himself with.

Gwen, the medic, peered down, mouth agape in disbelief.

“Daniel Hill!” she scolded. “There’s no dying at game night! No one dies at game night!” She stressed that last bit to the rest of the group. It was something she’d deeply ingrained into everyone’s minds when they met up after training to play board games - “game night.”

He dismissively waved a hand, trying to catch his breath as his asthma kicked in.

After convincing Danny to wait at the bottom of the ladder for everyone else, the rest of the group successfully clambered their way down without falling or jumping. Kenzie placed a gloved hand on the door’s handle, shaking with excitement and anticipation.

“Okay,” she breathed, steadying herself. “Ready?”

Everyone nodded.

With a final breath, she shouldered the door open.

Ashy stalks of  grass-like plants flowed peacefully in a nonexistent breeze, engulfing the base that lay in front of them. It was disappointingly Earth-like; they were situated in a circle. In any given direction, fifty feet away from the base, the air pulsated and shimmered with an intimidating force - you couldn’t focus on it. It appeared as if there lay nothing beyond their circle of safety other than a grey, shifting void. This was the greatest danger on the planet: the constantly-shifting gravity. One second, your entire body could be in Earth-like gravity, and the next your head could be in that of Jupiter, and your feet in Pluto. Though some relatively stable pockets of gravity had been discovered, such as the one their base was in, gravity storms posed a very real danger as they were unpredictable and instantaneous - the team, and their pocket of safety could be lost forever to one. Overhead, the sky rose and fell like waves in its display of organic rainbows.

In this pocket, gravity would shift between that of the moon and Earth, though very gradually, and required the group to be equipped with pressure-plated boots that would stick to the magnetic surface of the planet.

Taking a moment to absorb their new surroundings, the group slowly and clunkily made their way to the base door, having to press and release a button build into their gloves for every step in order to release the magnetic boots. Despite their training, this did not go smoothly as many would forget to release the button and end up with one foot in the air and one stuck to the ground.

Once everyone finally arrived at the door, Kenzie entered the group’s code to unlock the doors. Worn down from the lack of maintenance, the metal doors screeched open and everyone clambered inside, Ayelen passing a remark to Dori, their mechanic: “So, you gonna fix those, or….?”

Dori either didn’t hear this, or chose to ignore her.

The airlock pressurized and the group began peeling off the many layers of their suits and storing them in lockers claimed by “Dibs!”, all the while making small talk and horsing around. This first day was simply to adjust to the new planet and make themselves at home in the base.

Just as everyone had gotten undressed, Kenzie called for order and shared the realization that no one had grabbed any of their stuff on the way in, asking for volunteers to go and get it. After an awkward silence, Ayelen and Kali, the chemist, grudgingly mumbled that they would do it and grabbed their suits once more as the others made their way into the main living rooms of the base.

Once outside again, Ayelen stopped mid-click after realizing something.

"Aw, shit,” she groaned. “I have to swap out the batteries.”

“What’d ya mean?”

“For the base. Everyone’s gonna be pissed if they all settle down only to realize they barely have any power. Do you wanna start unloading things while I work on that? I can help carry everything back.”

Kali paused before stomping around to face her, clearly disgruntled.

“Boy. I can’t just carry everything out of there by myself!”

“It’ll just take a sec,” she pleaded. “I promise.”

Kali huffed before clunking back around.

“Fine.”

They both headed towards their separate destinations, Kali back to the ship and Ayelen around the side of the base. Once there, she found the two enormous batteries for the base’s generators laying in their panels, fully charged over the years by the nearby sun. Bracing herself, she heaved the first one out and lumbered unsteadily towards the base wall, finding it extremely difficult to release her boots and carry it simultaneously - despite the weaker gravity it was still extremely heavy.

Letting it land with a solid thunk! at her feet, heavy breaths fogged up her helmet as she punched in the code to open the side panel in the wall, revealing two more very sad-looking batteries barely clinging to life. Bracing herself again, she forced one out after the other, planning to bring them back to the charger once the two new ones were in. She crouched down to put the new one in.

Artemis’ calm voice suddenly came through the speakers in her helmet as a number displayed across her helmet:

“Warning! Large movement detected at 40 meters.”

What?

Ayelen’s breath caught in her throat as her heart began hammering away at her ribs. She dropped the new battery - she didn’t even know Artemis could do this. The number in front of her was quickly decreasing.

But we were told there was nothing on this planet!

“Warning! Large movement detected at 30 meters.”

Her mind was racing as she frantically whipped her head back and forth, trying to see into the void. She didn’t know what to do.

“Warning! Large movement detected at 20 meters.”

There.

Her stomach lurched as, directly in front of her, a vague, darker mass stood beyond the grey veil, its thin, stringy form distorting with the pulsing gravity.

“Warning! Large movement detected at 20 meters.”

It wasn’t moving.

She quickly stole a glance at the ship: Kali was calmly taking gear out of the cargo bay, completely unaware of the situation.

“Warning! Large movement detected at 15 meters.”

She jerked back to face it, desperately trying to control her breathing, if anything to avoid throwing up.

It moves when I don’t look at it.

Through the haze, she barely made out a spindly, vine-like form that towered above her, even at a distance. There was no head to speak of, though she could feel its nonexistent eyes boring into her.

"Warning! Large movement detected at 15 meters.”

Deciding to absolutely fuck this, Ayelen abandoned the batteries and clumsily sprint-clunked to the base door, frantically fumbling to radio Kali and release her boots evenly.

“Warning! Large movement at 15 meters.”

“Kali! Kali! Get inside right now!”

"What? Why?” Her voice was on edge.

“There’s fucking something outside of the circle! Just get in!”

“Warning! Large movement at 15 meters.”

Her radio whined. No response.

Having reached the door, Ayelen punched in the code with trembling fingers and threw the door open, desperately searching for Kali before slamming it shut and deciding she could get it open herself. She tripped over herself as she hurriedly threw off her suit, heart pounding and body shaking.

Kenzie and Kwynn came rushing down the hall, having heard the commotion.

“...Something outside… There’s something… outside,” she wheezed before they could ask, hands on her knees to catch her breath.

Their faces paled.

“Artemis!” Kenzie yelled at the ceiling. “Activate the security system! Lock all the doors!”

"Where’s Kali?” Kwynn demanded, staring Ayelen down.

“I-I don’t know! She wouldn’t respond to my radio.”

A collective, solemn clang reverberated throughout the base as all points of entry were barricaded from the outside.

Kwynn silently shoved past Kenzie and Ayelen, yanking her locker open and forcing her suit out before quickly gearing up.

“What are you doing?” Kenzie demanded, grabbing her arm. Kwynn forced it off of her.

“I’m going to find her,” she growled, her underlying anger screaming that she wouldn’t let her friend die. Not this early.

Kenzie made a desperate lung for her, but was too slow - she’d already forced her way into the airlock and out the door, furiously stomping.

"God damn it!” she yelled, pounding a fist on the airlock door. She turned around to face Ayelen, frustration glinting in her eyes.

“Get everyone in the living room. I’ll be right back.” She shoved past her and jogged back down the hall.

Ayelen, shaking, made her way down the dark hall and into the open living room. On the left was their small kitchen and dining area, and on her right sat everyone on the two couches in the modest living room. Some stood upon seeing her, most sat in nervous silence. Her heart twanged with empathy as poor Cecelia was crying and looked as if she were going to throw up - she’d never handled stress very well.

Jayce, the team’s other mechanic, nervously looked around.

"Hey. So, uh, what’s going on? Everyone’s really freaking out here…” He trailed off.

“There was… something outside. I don’t know what it was, but, uh… yeah. Kali was out there with me, a-and her radio must’ve died, or something, ‘cause she didn’t respond… And now Kwynn’s out there trying to find her. So, it’s a mess.”

She paused, looking around and fidgeting with her hands.

“Kenzie said to wait here. I-I think she went to grab something?”

Just then, Kenzie came back into the dimly-lit room, holding a palm-sized box that Ayelen had never seen before. She slid it into her pocket, voice tense:

“Okay, so, I’m not going out there to look for them, and I sure as hell don’t want any of you going out there. We’ll just have to wait for them, and hope that they show up. It’s a pretty small area, so they can’t have wandered far.”

A thick silence coated the air as everyone shifted uneasily.

BANG, BANG, BANG.

The sounds echoed across the base from the main door, causing everyone to jump out of their skin in shock. Cecelia screamed a bit, tears streaming down her face.

Kenzie shot towards the airlock, rummaging around her pockets, as the rest of the group quickly followed.

“Stay here!” she commanded, voice venomous as she pulled her suit on. After shoving the airlock door shut, they crowded around the tiny glass window to watch.

BANG, BANG, BANG.

Kenzie held the tiny box defensively, thumb twitching above it. With her free hand, she quickly yanked the door open and held it in front of her.

A very shocked Kwynn and Kali stood before her, Kwynn’s fist raised to knock again.

Kenzie visibly relaxed, placing a hand on her chest before ushering them inside and smacking them upside the head.

“Jesus, Kenzie!” Kali complained, removing her helmet and rubbing her head.

Kwynn sighed and did the same, her voice gruff.

"There wasn’t anything out there, calm down…”

Kenzie was irate at this point.

“Calm down? How am I supposed to calm down when you two just fuck around outside when we don’t know what’s out there? I’m supposed to be in charge of you!”

She sighed heavily and began taking off her own suit, mumbling to herself:

“Besides, what would I do if you were killed…”

Kenzie pushed the airlock door open, forcing everyone to shuffle back to the living room. She stopped Ayelen.

“Swap out those batteries when you can. Don’t know how much longer we have left.” Her eyes were tired as she called out to Artemis:

“Artemis, it’s okay. You can pull the extra security up, but keep the doors locked.”

Another clang reverberated throughout the base.

Weighing her options, Ayelen stood by the airlock as everyone else wandered away to distract themselves. Having waited a few minutes to be sure whatever had been out there was indeed gone, she pulled her suit on, just wanting to get this over with.

She stepped outside, and sure enough. No warning from Artemis, no shape in the distance.

Nothing.

She made her way over to the abandoned batteries and successfully swapped them out, placed the old ones in the chargers, and headed back to the base without further incident where she crawled into the bed built into a cubby in her bedroom wall to sleep off the day’s events.

-

A screeching alarm ripped through Ayelen’s ears, jerking her awake and slamming her head against the roof of her bed cubby. Red light bled through the cracks her bedroom door as her heart raced.

What?

She shot out of bed, rubbing her head as she threw open her door, looking out into the hallway. Doors were flung open in every direction, some occupied by anxious teammates - she could barely hear herself, let alone any of them over the screeching.

“What’s happening?” She yelled to Gwen, their rooms directly across from each other. She could see Jayce, Kwynn, Dori and Cecelia in their doorways, bodies tense and staring daggers into their rooms.

“''I… I don’t know! Kenzie, Kali, and Danny all ran off towards the airlock, but she told us to wait here in case something tries coming through a window!''”

Oh, what the fuck.

"I-I’m gonna go up there with them,” she yelled back, cautiously guiding herself  down the hall and through the living room with her hands on the walls. She was shaking so bad that her knees felt as if they were going to give out, her breath ragged with adrenaline. Her hands and feet were going numb again.

The screech of the alarm suddenly cut off, the red light quickly being replaced by the normal fluorescents. Ayelen groaned as she instinctively shut her eyes against the sudden change. She could hear the pained complaints of her colleagues behind her.

Before her, the missing three were all crowded around the airlock door, taking turns to peer through the glass.

“Hey, so, uh, what’s going on?” she asked, throat scratching slightly from yelling. Her ears rung slightly, though she could hear a muffled scratching coming through the door.

“There’s something in the airlock,” Kenzie stated, voice shaking with anger. “Take a look.”

Through the glass, a spindly creature was frantically springing about the room, desperately trying to find an escape. Elongated, vine-like limbs bent to create a strange, ‘n’ shaped creature; it had no head, and was covered top to bottom in fine hairs that resembled moss. Sharp teeth ran along the inside of each limb, and it desperately tried clinging to the walls of the airlock with them, though they didn’t hold, leaving it to slip and slide around in a panic.

It was scared of them.

Kenzie took the strange, small box out of her pocket from before and held it to the glass.

“Cover your ears,” she said flatly before pressing a button.

“No, wait. Kenzie don’t-!” Kali pleaded, but she was quickly cut off by a deafening screech and painfully bright flashing light from the box.

The creature in the airlock repeatedly flung itself against the door to the outside, absolutely distraught by the box.

It tore Ayelen’s heart apart to see something so scared.

Kenzie lifted her thumb from the button, ending the horrible screech and light. The poor creature seemed to have given up on escape and pathetically curled itself into a ball on the floor, disguising itself as a rock.

Kali was livid.

“Why do you keep doing that? He’s terrified of us, and you’re clearly hurting him!”

Kenzie stared her dead in the eyes, a death grip on the box, her voice deadly quiet and dripping with anger.

“We were told there was nothing on this planet, and that we would be safe without weapons. I was given this box just before we’d left and was told that it would ‘scare off anything that got too close.’ They lied to us. We still have no connection with Earth, there’s clearly dangerous things on this planet… who’s to say that they didn’t just send us out here to die?”

“But why would they do that,” Danny interjected. “Let’s be real: to spend billions of dollars to train us up, build a rocket, and get us here and back is just way too much effort to put into killing off a group of people. Besides, why would they even want us dead? What have we done?”

Kenzie pursed her lips, saying nothing as she stared off into space, debating something.

“Artemis,” she suddenly called. “Cut off the air flow in the airlock, but gradually. I want to see what happens.”

“Boy, what are you doing?” Ayelen asked, growing anxious by her continuous lack of empathy for the poor creature.

“If Kali’s not going to let me kill it, I at least want to drug it enough to study its behavior. We don’t know what it is or what it’s capable of.”

The thing in the airlock didn’t move. If anything, it seemed to just curl in on itself further. As she observed its suffering, the three behind her arguing, she realized that the sounds around her were slowly drowning out, becoming more distant. A grey filter blurred her vision. The world itself seemed to slow down as her body began heavy and sluggish. She was vaguely aware of Kali yelling and yanking the door open in slow-motion before running back out into the base with a rock in her arms, streaks of dull color trailing behind her. Everything was fading.

She swayed momentarily, eyes closing before collapsing to the ground.

“AYELEN!”

A screeching alarm ripped through Ayelen’s ears, jerking her awake and slamming her head against the roof of her bed cubby. Red light bled through the cracks her bedroom door as her heart raced.

What?

She shot out of bed, rubbing her head as she threw open her door, looking out into the hallway. Doors were flung open in every direction, some occupied by anxious teammates - she could barely hear herself, let alone any of them over the screeching.

“What’s happening?” She yelled to Gwen, their rooms directly across from each other. She could see Jayce, Kwynn, Dori and Cecelia in their doorways, bodies tense and staring daggers into their rooms.

“''I… I don’t know! Kenzie, Kali, and Danny all ran off towards the airlock, but she told us to wait here in case something tries coming through a window!''”

Oh, what the fuck.

“I-I’m gonna go up there with them,” she yelled back, stepping out of her room. Just as she did, the alarm suddenly cut off, the red light quickly died and was replaced by dim emergency lights. Ayelen froze as everyone in the hall collectively held their breath.

“Oh, god. What the fuck is that?” Jayce whispered frantically, pointing behind her and Gwen.

Ayelen felt her stomach drop as her feet went numb, hands threatening to do the same. Slowly, heart beating a hole in her chest, she turned around.

In the dark, someone stood at the end of the hallway.

Through the shadows, Ayelen’s terrified brain merged featured together, telling her that this person had no definitive features on their face - it was all smeared away, as if crudely done by an old, dried up eraser, leaving streaks of discoloration sprawled about; she couldn’t focus on it, almost as if her eyes refused to do so. A white lab coat was draped lazily on their body.

She knew this person.

Gwen, never one to let fear get the better of her, slowly began inching herself towards the person, reaching a hand out.

What is she doing?

She fought the urge to reach out for her, choosing to stay perfectly still in her doorway instead.

What if it’s movement based?

Gwen now stood in front of the person, who hadn’t moved at all, and it quickly became apparent just how tall this stranger was: towering a solid two or three feet above her. She reached a shaking hand out, refusing to make a sound, and all the while not taking her eyes off of its face.

“I can’t feel it,” she hissed to Ayelen. “Like, my hand is touching it, but it doesn’t feel like anything’s there.”

Everyone in the hall stared at the person for a second longer, slowly releasing the breath they’d been holding as Gwen’s message was passed down the hall, their tense bodies relaxing just a little.

CRACK.

The tall person suddenly jerked their neck down at an impossible angle, nonexistent eyes boring into Gwen’s. A scream so guttural that it chilled Ayelen’s soul tore through the mosaic of skin across their face as the body gave way, liquidizing from the legs up and drenching Gwen in an abhorrent mixture of human fluids and organs as it dissolved into the floor.

Without a second’s hesitation, the group sprinted towards the airlock and away from whoever that was, Gwen needing to be carried as she was frozen in shock.

At the airlock, Kenzie, Kali and Danny all spun around in surprise as the group clambered to a halt to catch their breath. Kali was cradling a large rock in her arms.

“...There was a person… ! There was… a person… in the hallway…” Jayce huffed, shakily setting Gwen down. She promptly sat and held her position, stiff as a board.

“What do you mean?” Kenzie demanded.

“There was a fucking huge person at the end of the bedroom hallway, a-and Gwen went to go touch it, but it didn’t have a face. And then it screamed at her and... it dissolved into a pile of organs and blood, a-and now she’s, like, completely catatonic,” he stressed, pointing to her motionless form.

The group that had arrived from the bedrooms were beginning to panic and swell with chatter.

“EVERYONE SHUT UP!” Kenzie yelled, successfully locking all eyes - except for Gwen’s - on her.

She took a breath steadying breath before speaking in a softer tone:

“Look. There’s no one else here. It’s just us. H-How could there be anyone else?” Her stern disposition was beginning to fade away as a nervous edge crept into her voice. She shook herself.

“I-I’ll prove it. Watch.” She began pointing to everyone, one by one.

“One, “Two,

“Three,

“Four,

“Five,

“Six,

“Seven,

“Eight,

“Nine.

"...

“...Ten.”

Her heart lurched and her body numbed. Ayelen could see the blood drain from Kenzie’s face as she stared behind the group, finger frozen in mid air. They all turned.

There, in the darkness of the living room, stood another person. Another faceless, inhumanly tall person wearing a lab coat who felt all too familiar.

No one dared move as a painful silence filled the air, the person as stock-still as Gwen.

“OH MY FUCKING GOD. AYELEN!”

The scream was so violently raw that it hurt Ayelen’s own throat just to hear it. As if serrated by an invisible knife, a massive gash opened up in the void of the person’s face, pouring out the contents. It wasn’t just as simple as their face began bleeding, no. It was as if the face had previously been a clogged drain, and the gash was the thing to open it back up, inviting the skin, muscles and bones to pour forward into the open air with the same liquidity of water; the face was melting onto the floor.

In that same second, the person’s body violently jerked to the side, distorting the familiar human shape as bones cracked out of place and tendons snapped from the sheer force. The broken frame of a person then sprinted at them with a speed no one would have thought possible with its broken limbs, its body liquidating just as the face had as it ran, forcibly collapsing it into the floor where it fully dissolved into a horrendous trail of organs and fluids.

No one moved, their brains still trying to comprehend what they’d seen.

Gwen’s suddenly spoke up, her eerily innocent and monotonous voice tearing everyone from their horrified trances:

"There’s a spike in the ceiling.”

Looking up, there was indeed a small, metal spike protruding out of the ceiling, slowly dripping blood onto the floor below.

“Bitch… what the fuck,” was Kali’s immediate response, still cradling the rock.

Another heavy silence panned out before Kwynn spoke up.

“I’ll… I’ll go see where it’s coming from.” Her voice was distant and her eyes were glossing over as she headed to her locker for her suit.

No one opposed this.

Jayce then spoke:

“Uh, here, Dori. Climb up on my shoulders and take some of the paneling off and see if… if there’s anything up there.”

As Dori uneasily made her way up onto Jayce’s shoulders, Ayelen saw Kwynn standing in the airlock, bracing herself to open the door to the outside. She took a deep breath and pulled the door open, froze for a second, and then quickly slammed it back shut with an echoing bang. She shuffled back to the group, eyes more distant than ever.

“There’s nothing out there,” she whispered.

“What do you mean?” Danny asked, looking around as everyone slowly regain a bit of themselves.

“...It’s just a void… Just endless black…” Her face was as desolate as someone who’d recently been told they’d lost a loved one. Without further explanation, she made her way over to Gwen and sat down with her, pulling her knees up to her face and burying her head in her arms.

Dori, having successfully placed herself on Jayce’s shoulders, realized that she had no screwdriver on her and had someone fetch one from her room. With that, she unscrewed one of the panels around the small spike, handed it to Jayce, and stuck her head into the ceiling.

She tensed.

“There’s nothing up here?” she asked, extremely confused by what she was seeing. The spike wasn’t protruding from a hole in the ceiling, let alone the roof. It simply appeared as if someone had taken it and glued it to one side of the panel, leaving the other side completely flawless.

"What’d you mean?”

“There’s literally nothing. No hole in the ceiling, no continuation of the spike. Nothing. It just ends on that side.”

“What happens if you touch it?”

She stared at him in disbelief, sass creeping into her voice.

“You saw what happened when Gwen touched that person, and I am not having that happen to me!”

Mumbling an apology, Jayce handed her the panel to screw back into place. As she tightened the last screw, the center of the panel suddenly shot out and back in with an impossible smoothness; a the shape of a hand was viciously failing against the metal, trying to force itself out as if fighting against putty.

Reacting faster than Dori, Jayce stepped away from the panel and helped her off of his shoulders as a broken, charred arm slid out from the ceiling and grabbed onto the spike for leverage.

It was pulling itself out.

With an impressive heave and a chilling, dry crunch, a body fell from the ceiling and collapsed into a heap on the ground. The acrid smell of burnt hair forced its way down every throat in the room.

It was burnt almost beyond recognition. Every inch of its exposed skin was charred to a blackened crisp, and bludging, pus-filled welt that were all-too ready to explode lay scattered about; the entirety of its left half had caved in on itself, leaving bones and remnants of muscles sticking out at unnatural angles, and its left arm and leg had been violently torn from the body. Pus and blood pooled around it, and it shook painfully with each raspy, congested breath.

It was Gwen.

But Gwen was sitting right there. Behind Ayelen.

Her remaining brown eye stared pleadingly up at her, before she took another rattling breath and spoke:

“Please… please kill me.” Her voice was so pitiful.

Ayelen whipped around to look at the others, panicking as her overwhelmed brain tried to figure out what to do.

No one moved.

They’d all frozen in their place, glassy eyes staring directly at her.

Silence fell over them as Gwen’s rasping breaths fell quieter.

An explosive CRACK suddenly filled the room as each of her friends’ jaws unhinged, their necks violently snapping forward and back into place. They shifted to face her, clipping through whatever may have been in the way. A collective scream tore through their open throats before simultaneously imploding, drenching Ayelen and every nearby surface in the base with gore. Bone shards violently ricocheted off of the walls, imbedding themselves into whatever unfortunate thing found itself in their way.

She stood there, staring out at her shaking, gore-soaked body. It was too much.

“It’s too loud… It’s too loud,” she whispered to herself as racking sobs shook her body, her eyes burning with tears.

“It’s too loud…” She slowly eased herself to the floor, curling up in a ball next to the now-silent body of the Gwen and sobbed freely, wishing so desperately that Luvenia were here. That thought brought a new wave of despair upon her.

“...Artemis…” she whispered, holding herself.

No response.

“Artemis!” Frustration clawed at her throat, threatening to overtake her as well.

No response.

“ARTEMIS!” she wailed, sitting up and throwing a fist against the floor.

A terrible, drawn out computerized screech came through her speakers, forcing Ayelen to slap her hands over her ears, the sound acting as a catalyst for more frustrated tears. It was hard to breath.

No words came through.

“Artemis, w-what am I supposed to d-do!” Her breaths caught in her throat as she curled up in a ball again, wiping her nose. “... What am I supposed to do…”

Another screech sounded before quickly being cut off. Artemis’ spoke in a monotone.

“Go outside.”

A quiet sniff from Ayelen’s end before she answered.

“...O-Okay…” Slowly pulling herself from the floor, she made her way to her locker, absentmindedly flicking off a piece of skin from the handle. Her body went through the motions of putting her suit on, mind a million miles away.

She stepped outside.

Before her lay the grey, grass-like stalks that had always surrounded the base, and the shifting veil of gravity beyond.

She made her way to it.

Artemis’ suddenly spoke through her helmet:

“Warning! Shifts in gravity are imminent. Turn back immediately!”

She found that, after a while, she didn’t need to click the buttons to release her boots - they came up just fine without it.

She stood at the edge of their safety ring.

“Warning! Shifts in gravity are imminent. Turn back immediately!”

Tentatively, she stuck a hand out into the pulsating air.

Her hand wasn’t immediately crushed, nor was it ripped off of her body.

There was no change.

Artemis’ voice was distorting.

“Warning! Shifts in gravity are imminent. Turn back!”

She made her way into the grey void. Behind her, she could see the base and the ship sitting as they always had. Before her was a grey, flat void that faded into a light on the horizon.

“Turn back!”

She stopped and slowly took her suit off.

Nothing.

She didn’t explode. Nothing popped out of her skull, nothing inside of her ruptured.

Nothing changed.

She walked towards the light on the horizon. Artemis’ voice suddenly echoed across the empty sky above her.

“You’ve broken reality.”

The world faded to white.

-

“Hey.”

Eyes swollen and red, she pulled her tear-streaked face from her arms, gazing up at the voice.

“You okay?”

Wiping her nose on her hand, she shook her head, looking anywhere but those dark, brown eyes.

The girl sat down next to her, pulling her knees up and resting her elbows to mimic her position.

“... You scared?”

A small nod, accompanied by silent tears.

“You miss home?”

Another nod.

“...You know anyone here?”

No.

The girl leaned back, spreading her legs and arms out, and closed her eyes as she faced the ceiling. A silence fell between them as she continued crying to herself, trying her best to stop, though it wasn’t working.

The girl lolled her head to the side, facing her, and scrunching up her face before opening her eyes.

“I’m Luvenia.”

No response.

“What’s your name?”

There was a pause before an incoherent mumble.

“What?”

“Ayelen,” she whispered.

The girl smiled, exposing a missing front tooth that brought a tiny smile to her face. She looked so goofy…

“Well, I like you Ayelen.”

A tiny smirk appeared, though it was quickly drowned out by her thoughts and disappeared.

The silence grew as they both became lost in their own little worlds.

“You just wanna hang out in here?”

“...Mhm…”

The girl stretched out and leaned back onto the floor again, staring up at the ceiling as if she were sunbathing. She closed her eyes again and simply said, “Cool with me.”

Ayelen sighed heavily as she, too, closed her eyes, feeling hot tears falling down her face again as her mind drifted back to home.

A sudden movement to her side cause her to open them again. Luvenia had stood up and was starting with dead eyes at the closet door, face hidden from Ayelen’s current angle; all air of cheerfulness and comfort around her was quickly replaced by a growing dread.

“...Lu...venia?” she croaked.

Standing stock still, everything about her had become a pale-grey and slightly translucent, as if she’d been partially erased from reality; Ayelen could see the faint outline of the closet door through her. Concern and confusion growing, she slowly crawled forward on her knees to see the girl’s face. Her heart jumped painfully against her ribs as two black, empty voids replaced Luvenia’s eyes, letting a strange, smoke-like substance begin pouring from them. She jerked violently to a side and back into place as a chunk of static appeared where her mouth was, closely resembling that of a severe computer glitch. All the while, she made no sound.

“Luvenia?” Ayelen whispered, terrified. She tentatively reached a hand forward to touch the girl, and as soon as it made contact, an incoherent, quiet vomit of words escaped the girl’s mouth:

“Thedoorthedoorthedoorthedoorthedoorthedoorthedoorthedoorthedoorthedoorthedoor...” The voice was raspy and dry, as if she’d been a smoker her whole life. The words simply kept looping over and over.

Ayelen quickly jerked her hand back, scooting backwards as fast as she could into her corner again, trying to cover herself with the clothes hanging overhead as tears covered her face and she began hyperventilating. Curling herself into the tightest ball possible, she was able to see through a tiny parting in the fabric: the girl hadn't moved. She only stood, black smoke falling and static convulsing.

What was that.

Moving her hand ever so slightly, Ayelen made her peephole a tad larger.

There was movement from the wall near the girl’s foot. Her breath caught as she realized that the wall was fluidly expanding and retracting in that one area, as if made of putty; the shape of an arm was desperately clawing at the air, though it seemed that it was being forced back into the wall.

“...thedoorthedoorthedoorthedoorthedoorthedoorthedoorthedoorthedoorthedoor…”

Covering up her opening, Ayelen quickly retreated into herself, trying to silence her terrified whimpers as sounds of muffled speech began pouring through the wall.

"...thedoorthedoorthedoorthedoorTHEDOORTHEDOORTHEDOORTHEDOORTHE-”

Silence.

After waiting nearly 10 minutes, making sure that her quiet, heavy breaths were the only thing to be heard, Ayelen cautiously poked a hole in the clothes again to see what had happened.

Nothing.

No corrupted girl, no black smoke, no arm reaching out of the wall.

Nothing.

Ever so slowly uncurling, Ayelen moved the clothes around her face away and let out the breath she’d been holding. Before even taking in her next breath, a sickening, wet crack reverberated around the tiny closet, and a massive pile of discolored skin, broken bones, and fluids spewed unceremoniously from the ceiling, drowning Ayelen in a horrid, pasty amalgamation of flesh and fabric.

There was a second of pure silence as she sat, cowering in her corner, before a deafening, guttural screech instinctively forced her hands to her ears.

A thick, wet “pop!” emanated from the walls of the closet.

''Don’t look at it. Don’t look at it. Don’t look at it. Don’t-''

Ayelen looked up.

Pressed against the closet door stood a skinless ragdoll of a human being. It’s elongated, twig-like limbs seemed to barely support its severely hunched torso and oversized head. Exposed, wax-like muscles pulsated against bone as viscous liquids dripped off of its body, and its face melted to one side as if a candle had been held to it, eyes and jaw saging. It just stared, cocking its head to one side as it inspected Ayelen, before reaching out to the pile of flesh and peeling off a piece of skin from the top and laying it over its head like a mask.

It was Luvenia’s skinned face, though it fit all wrong on this creature. Bones protruded and sagged in unnatural patterns, though the eyes held the same friendly and welcoming glimmer as the original had; it traumatized Ayelen. This was not Luvenia.

And yet it was.

Luvenia stared for only a second longer before unhinging her jaw with a wet crack, muscle and fluids spraying with it, and screeching that horrid sound again. It petrified her.

Before she could even react, Luvenia bounded towards her in a massive leap despite the tiny closet.

She violently flinched and slammed her eyes shut.

Nothing.

Body tense, expecting to find that jaw lodged around her head though feeling nothing, Ayelen slowly pried her eyes open.

She was still inside the pod.

...What?

Shaking from the adrenaline, she shouldered the door open; the dimly lit aisle of cryostatic pods surrounded her.

“Good morning, Ayelen,” suddenly cooed Artemis’ soft, mechanical voice from above. “You have been in cryosleep for two years, three months, and eight days. How are you feeling?”

“Uh…”

Was that a dream?

“Fine, I guess. What happened? Why am I awake?” she responded distractedly, leaning against the pod across from her to steady her shaking body. Looking around, the other cryopods almost appeared empty through the frosted-over glass.

“From your elevated heart rate and increasing restlessness, my sensors detected that you were having a nightmare; I decided to wake you. I’ve also discovered some abnormal plant growths in the greenhouses, but have no means of dealing with them myself - you’re best equipped to deal with them.”

“Okay, uh…”

Sliding a hand across her face to be rid of her weariness, Ayelen shuffled over to the entrance of the aisle and rounded a corner to the main area of the ship, mind completely elsewhere.

That felt so… real, though.

Artemis called after her: “Your friend, Cecelia, is also awake. I’ve waken her for my yearly inspection. Perhaps you should check up on her as well?”

“Uh, sure,” was the half-hearted response.

The dim fluorescents of the greenhouses were the only things lighting the rest of the ship, creating grotesque doublicates of the things that were once familiar and welcoming. Using the now-horizontal ladder centered in the room to guide herself to the planters, Ayelen stopped mid-stride.

Where are the plants?

The greenhouses were spotless. No spec of dirt, water, or growth - they seemed to have never been used before.

What the fuck.

Squatting down by the planters, she reached underneath to get her gardening tools out.

Nothing. The wall was flat and seamless.

“Uh…hey, Artemis?”

No response.

“Artemis!”

A faint crackling static came through the ceiling, but no voice.

“Okay… uh…” she mumbled uneasily to herself, glancing around. The sound of a pounding fist, quickly followed by a mangled scream, snapped Ayelen’s attention to the open door to the ship’s cockpit. Startled, she jogged to the doorway. Gore was splattered on every conceivable surface in the room, glistening in the faint light. Gathered around the center control panel of the ship were three people in lab coats, one holding an absurdly large syringe filled with blood and chunks of flesh. They didn’t have faces. Rather, it seemed as if an old, crusty eraser had been taken to their heads, leaving streaks of discoloration and skin tones strewn about haphazardly; you couldn’t focus on them.

Without a second’s hesitation, the group began quickly clipping towards Ayelen, arms stiff as boards by their sides and leaning forward, gliding through any object in their path at a terrifying speed.

“WHAT THE FUCK,” she screamed, desperately trying to figure out a hiding place in the ship.

With no other ideas, she booked it down the main bay of the ship, sprinting towards the door leading to the ship’s entrance tunnel, adrenaline coursing through her system. Upon reaching the door, it swung open with ease, revealing the expansive void of space. Quickly looking behind, the three figures were mere feet away, seeming to have gained speed. With no other option, Ayelen yanked herself through the opening, falling a few feet before finding solid ground; she was standing horizontally, facing down into the gaping maw of space.

Unable to consciously think, she took off sprinting again as the people clipped through the door to pursuit her. Never a runner, her legs were already burning and her side felt as if she’d been stabbed - she was slowing down and cold hands were now grasping for any fabric on her that they could get ahold of.

A star directly in front of her was growing drastically brighter by the second.

Please, please, pleasepleasepleaseplease…

With a last valiant effort to save her own life, Ayelen slammed into the light, eyes shut from the intensity, just as the back of her shirt was yanked backwards.

She snapped her eyes open, heart pounding.

She was still inside the pod.

...What?

Shaking from the adrenaline, she shouldered the door open; the dimly lit aisle of cryostatic pods surrounded her.

“You never went to sleep,” stated Artemis’ cold voice.

“Uh…”

Was that a dream?

Looking around, the vague outlines of the other cryopods were barely visible in the darkness.

“Check up on the plants,” was all that was crisply stated through the ceiling.

“Okay, uh…”

That felt so... real

Unnerved by both the darkness flowing around her, and the tautness of Artemis’ voice, Ayelen briskly started for the entrance of the hall, body tense and rigid.

Don’t look behind you. There’s nothing there. There’s nothing the-

The image of a humanoid shadow pulling itself out of the darkest crevice of the room, staring directly at her, eyes pale and emotionless, forced itself into her mind, subconsciously forcing her feet to move faster, her heart to beat faster.

There’s nothing…