"Research lab first," Chen decided, backing out of the bathroom. "If there are containment protocols, weapons, anything that can help us—we need it now before we stop to read journals."
"Agreed," Marcus said, still watching the ceiling. "Move fast, stay together. Sergei, can you seal this vent?"
"Not quickly enough. We go now."
The four of them moved back through residential quarters at a near-run. Chen could hear it in the walls now—that sliding, scraping sound, moving through the ventilation system. It was following them. Learning their patterns.
As they passed Dr. Tanaka's room, Chen grabbed the laptop and the stack of cassette tapes, shoving them into their pack. No time for anything else. Behind them, something crashed in one of the other rooms—distant, but deliberate. It wanted them to know it was there.
The research laboratory corridor felt longer than it should be. Their flashlight beams created jumping shadows, and every emergency light flicker made Chen flinch. Above them, the ventilation grates were dark squares of potential threat.
The lab door was sealed with a biometric lock, but it had been overridden—hanging open like everything else in this cursed station. A sign on the door read: BIOSAFETY LEVEL 3 - AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
Marcus pushed it open carefully.
The laboratory was a disaster.
This wasn't abandonment—this was a battle. Equipment was smashed. Microscopes lay shattered on the floor. A biological safety cabinet had been torn open from the inside, its reinforced glass scattered in glittering fragments. Scorch marks blackened one corner where someone had tried to burn something.
And there was blood. Real blood, human blood. Sprayed across one wall in an arterial pattern. Frozen handprints on the floor where someone had crawled.
"Stay alert," Marcus muttered, moving through the space methodically.
Nora went immediately to the cryo-storage units lining one wall. "The samples," she said. "If Specimen Z-01 is what we just saw, there might be more. Or there might be data on it, cellular structure, weaknesses—"
She opened the first cryo-unit. Empty slots, some with broken sample tubes. She moved to the second unit, scanning the labels. "These are all dated. March 18th, initial collection. March 20th, culture growth. March 25th—" Her voice caught. "March 25th, all containers marked 'SPECIMEN Z-01' are empty. Ten separate samples. All gone."
"It escaped containment," Chen said.
"Or they released it," Sergei countered, pointing to a workstation. "Look."
A computer monitor was still active, running on emergency power. The screen showed a looping video feed—security camera footage from inside the lab, dated April 12th.
Chen watched as Dr. Tanaka entered the frame, moving stiffly. She approached a cryo-storage unit—the same one Nora had just checked—and deliberately opened it. She reached inside and removed a container marked Z-01. Her movements were mechanical, wrong.
Then she opened the container and poured the contents onto her bare hand.
The footage pixelated for a moment. When it cleared, Tanaka was still standing there, but something was different. She looked directly at the camera, and even through the grainy video, Chen could see her eyes were wrong. She smiled—that too-wide smile—and walked out of frame.
The video looped back to the beginning.
"She was already infected," Nora whispered. "It got to her first, then used her to release more of itself."
"Or it was never contained at all," Chen said, moving to examine the research notes scattered across a nearby desk. The handwriting changed throughout the documents—neat at first, then increasingly erratic.
One page caught their eye:
April 8th - Dr. TanakaThe specimen demonstrates unprecedented mimetic capability. It doesn't just copy appearance—it absorbs memories, personality, thought patterns. Richards is gone. What wears his face knows everything he knew. How do we contain something that learns from us? How do we fight something that becomes us?
Another note, different handwriting:
April 14th - Dr. MartinezProposed solution: Thermal elimination. The organism shows extreme sensitivity to temperatures above 200°C. Recommendation: Burn the entire station. Better to lose the facility than risk global contamination.
Marcus read over Chen's shoulder. "They knew how to kill it. Fire. Extreme heat."
"But they didn't do it," Sergei observed. "Station is still here."
Chen flipped through more notes. The final entry, dated April 20th:
We failed. It's in all of us now. Some faster than others. I can feel it in my thoughts—new ideas that aren't mine. Chen, if you're reading this (and you will be, because it knows you'll come), know this: It doesn't want to leave. It wants to understand. Fifty thousand years alone in the dark, and now it's found companions. It's not malicious. It's curious. And that makes it worse.
The incinerator is in sub-level 2. Emergency fuel reserves. Burn everything. Burn us. Burn the samples. Don't let it reach civilization.
—Dr. Maria Kowalski
A sound from the ventilation duct made everyone freeze. Not the sliding sound—something else. Breathing. Multiple rhythms, overlapping.
Then a voice, Marcus's voice, coming from the vent directly above them: "Chen, we need to talk about extraction protocols."
The real Marcus was beside Chen, staring at the ceiling. He didn't speak. His finger moved to his rifle's trigger.
Another voice, Chen's own voice, echoed from a different vent: "Everyone stay calm. We assess before we act."
Nora's voice, from a third vent: "There might be samples, data we can use..."
Sergei's voice, rumbling from the walls themselves: "This place was cursed..."
Their own words. Their team's voices. All playing back from the darkness above.
"It's learning us," Nora breathed. "Right now. Listening. Copying."
The real Sergei moved to a cabinet and pulled out a large emergency flare gun and three road flares. "Fire," he said simply. "We have this. And if there is incinerator below, we have more."
"Sub-level 2," Chen said, pointing to the note. "Kowalski said emergency fuel reserves. We could burn the entire station."
"Kill it and us with it," Marcus said flatly. "That the play?"
"Or we get to communications, call in an airstrike," Nora suggested desperately. "Let them burn it from outside."
"Takes twelve hours minimum for military response," Marcus countered. "We'd have to survive that long. And every minute, it's learning more."
In the vents, their voices continued to whisper, overlapping, conversing with each other in a mockery of their team's discussions.
Chen looked at the flares in Sergei's hands, then at the note about the incinerator. Fire killed it. But to reach sub-level 2, they'd have to go deeper into the station. Or they could make one more attempt at engineering control—restore main power, which might give them options to vent atmosphere, control environmental systems, trap the entity somehow.
The voices in the vents grew louder, more insistent, their words blending into an incomprehensible chorus.