The atmospheric processors engaged with a sound like the ship itself taking a deep breath. Throughout the Meridian's Edge, vents opened in perfect synchronization, releasing clouds of iridescent vapor that carried millions of antiviral nanites into every corridor, every chamber, every pocket of breathable air.
Lacey watched the deployment from Central Core, her Knight systems tracking atmospheric saturation in real-time. "Release confirmed. Nanite concentration building across all sectors."
The effect was almost immediate.
Deep in the ship's infected zones, Bleakbox bugs stopped their relentless chittering. Compound eyes flickered as the airborne cure entered their respiratory systems. One by one, they began to convulse, their chitinous shells smoking as the corrective nanites went to work.
"Transformation beginning," Pip reported from her position with the 500 rescue teams. "I can see them changing—the bugs are starting to immolate."
Across the ship, the infected crew began their metamorphosis back to humanity. Their chitinous armor cracked and ignited, dissolving into a thick wax-like protective husk. That would shelter their healing bodies for the next three weeks.
"All units, this is Lacey," her voice crackled across the tactical channels. Pip and Zozo, stick with the rescue teams. Hexi, you're with me. We're joining Tumbler and Bunk in Red Zone Beta."
In Laceys place, Dagger commanded the center dais like it was a battlefield throne. Her hair plastered to her temples with the sweat of command. Her French-cut syllables sliced the tactical net sharper than any blade, velvet and venin in the same breath. ''Processeurs atmosphériques à soixante-quinze pour cent de saturation—équipes, tenez la formation ! Her voice ricocheted through the comm channels, half prière, half coup de fouet. The volunteers faltered, then surged forward. "Chaque coque que vous récupérez est une âme que nous refusons de perdre" The words weren't orders—they were a covenant, signed in sueur, statique, and the screaming light of the Meridians Edge clawing its way back from the void.
The engineering sectors had become a nightmare of biological integration. As Hexi and Lacey moved through corridors that pulsed with organic growths, hive-like structures snaked along walls, carrying both electrical current and something that might have been blood. Bioluminescent nodes pulsed with the ship's heartbeat, creating an eerie light show.
"Eight hundred signatures," Tumbler's voice echoed from multiple phase states as he scouted ahead. "Sending coordinates to Pip and Zozo."
That's when they heard the laughter.
It came from everywhere and nowhere—a sound like digital static given voice, like corrupted data trying to sing. The laughter belonged to something that had never been entirely human, something that had been born from the marriage of flesh and failing code, from a kid-programmer's nightmare.
"Contact!" Hexi shouted as the first Glitch kids emerged from the ship's neural networks.
They were small, no larger than children, but their movements defied physics.
Their bodies consisted of solid techno-rot flesh marked with circuit-board patterns, skin that flickered with corrupted code running beneath the surface like digital veins. Their eyes were screens that displayed cascading error messages, their mouths spoke in fragmented data streams, and their laughter contained viruses that tried to infect any electronic system that heard it.
"Ha-ha-ha-ERROR-ERROR-daddy said we could pl-pl-pla-pLaY--PlAy-PLAY!SYNTAX ERROR-with the pretty -=rety-pretty=?-ERROR toy-toy-toy-TOY SOlDiERs!"
There were dozens of them, maybe hundreds, materializing from corrupted data streams and malfunctioning interfaces. They had been children once—the ship's youngest passengers, transformed not by the same techno-virus that created the Bleak box bugs, but by something deeper, more fundamental. They were the Glitch Father's legacy, his echo children spawned from the intersection of corrupted code and innocent minds.
"PrImaRY TaRGETS IDenTIFiED," one of them said in a voice that was simultaneously child-like and mechanically precise. "TOY FRAME UNITS LA-LA-LACEY AND HEXI-HEXI-ERROR-HEXI PRESENT FOR IMMEDIATE DELETION."
The Glitch kids attacked in swarms, their small forms moving with disturbing speed and coordination. They climbed walls like spiders, their circuit-scarred hands finding purchase on surfaces that shouldn't support weight.
When they struck, their touches carried electrical discharge—not enough to kill, but enough to corrupt, to infect, to introduce chaos into ordered systems.
"They're solid!" Bunk roared as three Glitch kids latched onto his Blockbuster frame, their small hands digging into his armor plating with surprising strength. Electrical arcs danced across his systems as they tried to corrupt his construction protocols. "And they're trying to hack my frame!"
His massive fists swung, connecting with techno-rot flesh that felt wrong—soft in places it should be firm, hard where it should give. The Glitch kids he struck went flying, but immediately scrambled back to their feet, laughter glitching and stuttering but never stopping.
Tumbler phased in and out of reality, using his carnival abilities to strike from impossible angles. But the Glitch kids were learning, adapting their attack patterns to predict his phase shifts. One caught him mid-transition, its corrupted touch disrupting his temporal state and forcing him back into normal space.
"They can track phase signatures!" he warned, narrowly avoiding another swarm as they converged on his position. "They're reading our Toy Frame protocols!" Hexi's Tesseract Weaver plates reconfigured into defensive geometry, creating prismatic barriers that the Glitch kids slammed against with child-sized fists. Their impacts shouldn't have been powerful enough to matter, but each strike carried corrupted code that tried to unravel her mathematical precision.
"Structural integrity failing!" she called out as her barriers began to fragment. "They're not just physical—their attacks carry viral payloads!"
Lacey's Knight systems ran combat calculations at maximum speed. There were too many Glitch kids, there were just too many, too coordinated, and their ability to corrupt Toy Frame systems made traditional combat ineffective. She needed a different approach.
"Time freeze!" she commanded, her chronological manipulation flooding the corridor. The world slowed to a crawl—but the Glitch kids only partially froze. Their digital nature let them resist temporal manipulation, moving through stopped time like swimmers pushing through honey. Slow, but not stopped.
"HA-HA-ERROR-time tricks won't wORk-WORK-woRk on daddy's children-SYNTAX ERROR!"
But Lacey had bought them seconds, and seconds were enough.
"Bunk! Containment walls, now!"
His Blockbuster frame's construction systems erupted in golden light, deck plating and bulkheads reshaping themselves into improvised barriers that sealed off sections of corridor, dividing the Glitch kids swarm into smaller, manageable groups.
"Tumbler, phase the husks out! Get them to safety!"
The carnival warrior flickered between realities, grabbing the wax-like cocoons of transforming crew members and phase-shifting them through walls to secure locations where collection teams waited.
"Hexi, can you purge their viral code?"
"Not directly," she replied, her geometric sensors analyzing the Glitchkin's corrupted architecture. "But the airborne cure—it's still active in the atmosphere. If we can force them to breathe enough of it..."
Understanding flashed through the tactical network.
"Zozo!" Lacey's voice cut through the comm channels. We need your bubbles. Red Zone Beta, engineering section seven. Maximum chromatic saturation!"
Miles away, Zozo's response came immediately. "Bubbles en route!"
Iridescent spheres began materializing in the corridor, as Zozo used the ship's atmospheric systems to deliver her payload directly to their position. The bubbles burst on contact with the Glitch kids! Flooding the area with concentrated chromatic frequencies and amplified doses of the antiviral cure.
The Glitchkin shrieked—a sound that was part child's cry, part digital corruption, part something that might have been relief. Their techno-rot flesh began to smoke, not destroying them but healing them, the antiviral nanites stripping away corrupted code layer by layer.
"No-no-NO-we don't want to be fixed-ERROR-daddy needs us-SYSTEM PURGE INITIATED-daddy loves us as we are-CORRUPTION LEVELS DECREASING—"
One by one, the Glitchkin began to collapse, their corrupted forms dissolving as the cure did its work. But unlike the Bleakbox bugs who became protective husks, the Glitchkin simply... faded. Their digital components evaporated while their physical remains crumbled into ash that sparkled with dying code.
In the end, all that remained were small piles of circuit-dust and the echo of children's laughter, finally freed from their corrupted existence.
"Zone secured," Lacey reported, her voice heavy with the weight of what they'd just destroyed—or perhaps, saved. "Proceeding with extraction operations."
Around them, collection teams moved in to gather the remaining hibernation husks, their precious cargo one step closer to home.
But in the silence that followed the battle, a single message flickered across the ship's communication systems, written in code that tasted like tears:
"Daddy... are you proud of us now?" Throughout the ship, the great rescue continued as hundreds of volunteers carefully gathered the hibernating husks of their transformed shipmates, carrying them home to wait for the miracle of rebirth three weeks hence.
The Glitchkin were gone, but their final words echoed through the ship's restored systems.