Chapter 11 #2
“Closing junctions in three,” his voice came out even and not shaking, which was a minor miracle he didn’t have time to be grateful for, “Two. One. Close.”
He hit the sequence of buttons and toggles Jasper wrote on the back of his hand and held his breath.
The electromagnetic seal engaged with a vibration that traveled through the metal panel, into his fingers, and up through his wrists.
Through the radio, Tyler confirmed Junction A sealed. Jasper confirmed Junction B.
One open path left, leading to Cargo Bay Two.
Owen’s voice crackled through the handset, the excitement audible even through the bad signal, “Movement in the funnel corridor. They’re entering — two, three — they’re following the open path.”
And they waited.
“Six in the bay,” Owen said. “Seven.” His voice was doing the thing it did when the numbers were working — the fear dropping away, replaced by the excitement of someone watching a theory prove itself.
“They’re following the signal gradient exactly as predicted, Levi.
The heading deviation is less than two degrees. ”
“Owen. Just count.”
Elliot’s voice cut in from Engineering, “Junction A is failing. I’ve got the seal integrity on my terminal and it’s not catching. Something damaged the frame.”
“Yeah…the frame’s bent, I’m trying to get it—” Tyler grunted, confirming what Jasper was already reading. Metal grinding against metal screamed through the walkie. “I’ll hold it.”
Levi’s knuckles went white on the panel. “Tyler, get out of there. Leave the junction and—”
“If I leave it, they come through. Everything that hasn’t reached the bay yet diverts through my junction and the funnel breaks.” He was breathing hard. “How many in the bay?”
“Eight. Two still in the funnel corridor, approaching. One unaccounted for — probably in the vents.” Owen said.
“So I hold this until those two get past me.” Tyler’s voice sounded steady again, the confidence returning now that he’d found a problem his body could solve. “Then you purge.”
“Tyler—” Levi began.
“I’m holding it, Mercer.”
“You can’t hold it indefinitely,” Jasper said. “The frame is bending further each second you push on that door, and without it sealing, those things just go right through.”
“Owen, how long until the funnel corridor is clear?” Tyler grunted.
“Ninety seconds for the last two to reach the bay. Maybe less if they pick up speed on the gradient.”
Through the radio, Tyler’s breathing grew harder as the metal screamed louder. And underneath that — just audible, just barely, the thing Tyler could probably hear in his own corridor — the metal fingertips on the bulkhead. The apertures. Tck tck tck.
No.
“Tyler, let go and run. Eight in the bay is enough—” Levi shouted.
“Twenty more seconds. I can give you twenty more seconds—”
The door gave.
Levi heard it through the handset — the mechanism shrieking, the magnetic lock finally surrendering, the frame buckling inward. And then Tyler’s sound…a short cut off thud, the specific noise of a body being hit hard and fast by something much bigger.
Then a heavier sound against metal.
Then silence.
“Tyler?” Levi called, holding the walkie to his ear, hoping there was something, anything, that indicated he was alive.
This was your plan. Make a funnel. Use the same bullshit techniques Ethan used to complain about on the monsters.
You could have made it to the end with everyone if you were just a little bit smarter.
Through the radio, the apertures cycled over the quiet—tck tck tck—fading as it moved away.
“Tyler...” Levi felt a sob bubble up his throat. He knew it was irrational, he had seen Tyler die in so many different ways, hearing it was probably the least gruesome, but he was still gone, and it was Levi’s fault. “Tyler, respond.”
Nothing.
“Tyler.”
“He’s not moving.” Owen’s voice came over the walkie, thin and shaky. “Sensor shows a body mass near the far wall of his junction, but it is cooling.”
Levi closed his eyes and took in a deep breath. Beat the game. End this. Be sad later. He opened his eyes, exhaled, and said into the walkie, “Nine is good enough. Elliot, purge Cargo Bay Two. Maximum intensity. Now.”
“Purging. Hold on to something, you’re going airborne.”
The lights went out.
The ventilation hum cut off mid-cycle, and the gravity released under Levi’s boots with a lurch that sent his stomach into his throat and his feet off the floor.
The air pressure shifted as the ship’s atmosphere redistributed without systems to manage it, the temperature dropping into a cold that settled onto his skin like something wet.
Asher’s arm found him before his body finished leaving the floor, tight across his chest. They were floating.
Anchored to the wall by Asher’s grip on a structural beam, Levi’s back to Asher’s chest, their legs drifting in the space that used to be a corridor with a floor and a ceiling and was now just dark.
The heat of Asher’s body through the jumpsuit was startling in the sudden cold — furnace-warm, running hot with adrenaline, and Levi could feel his heartbeat through the contact, hammering against Levi’s shoulder blades at a rate that didn’t match the steady man who’d been clearing corridors five minutes ago.
The ship made sounds when it was dead. The metal cooling, contracting, ticking in the dark like a clock winding down. The creaking of structures settling without gravity to hold them. It wasn’t quiet like Levi thought it would be. It was empty, like a space where sound used to live.
Levi’s eyes went to the window. The only light left.
The black between the stars so absolute it looked solid, and LV-347 hanging in the middle distance, grey and cratered, rotating with the indifference of a thing that would outlast everything that was happening inside this ship.
The void pressed against the glass like it wanted in.
Asher’s arm tightened until Levi’s ribs ached.
Listening for something, Levi thought. Bracing. It was the only thing that made sense — Asher was tracking a noise Levi couldn’t hear, expecting the next bad thing. Levi made his shoulders soft against Asher’s chest, the way he did when he wanted Asher to ease up.
The grip didn’t ease.
Asher’s face pressed into the back of Levi’s neck.
His forehead ground against the knob of Levi’s spine, his breathing fast and shallow against the small hairs there, every muscle locked down the length of Levi’s back.
His eyelashes fluttered against Levi’s nape, and that was the part Levi’s brain caught on — that small, involuntary movement, completely wrong for a man who once sawed someone’s throat open with a screwdriver.
“Asher, what’s wrong?”
For once, Asher had no response. His arm compressed Levi’s ribs further.
“I’m here. I’m right here, Asher,” Levi heard his own voice come out gentle and was distantly surprised by it. What is wrong with him?
Asher’s mouth moved against the back of his neck, like he was saying something into Levi’s vertebrae that his voice couldn’t carry.
The distant roar of the purge reached them through the sealed bulkheads — muffled, enormous, the sound of a room becoming an oven. Nine creatures shrieked in Cargo Bay Two, dying in temperatures Levi had ordered, loud enough that they could hear it.
Levi pressed his palms flat on Asher’s forearms, counting in his head for when the gravity would kick back on, still stroking Asher’s skin because he didn’t know what else to do.
He had seen many different versions of Asher.
Asher angry. Asher jealous. Asher delighted.
Asher poorly-timed with his horniness. He had a procedure for each of them.
He had no procedure for this.
His mouth had gone dry. His own pulse was up, climbing to meet Asher’s, and somewhere underneath the tactical part of his brain that was tracking the time, a much smaller part was thinking: I don’t know what this is.
Whatever this was, it scared Levi worse than Asher’s hands ever had.
The gravity came back like a slap. The floor arrived all at once under their feet, making Levi’s knees buckle from the impact, but Asher’s arm absorbed the drop and held him upright.
The lights stuttered on — amber first, then white, then amber again.
The ventilation coughed and whined and resumed.
The ship lurching back to life around them, every system restarting at once, the shudder of a machine that had been dead for ninety seconds remembering how to work.
Asher relaxed slowly. Each finger released from the beam first, then his arm pulled away from Levi’s chest, reluctance visible in every joint. He straightened up, drew his sidearm, and adjusted his stance.
His hands were shaking.
“Asher?” Levi turned, lifting a hand toward Asher’s jaw, filled with a need to comfort him.
Asher turned away from him before the contact landed, lifting the walkie to his mouth. “Owen. Report.”
Levi’s hand stayed in the air a second longer than it should have.
Asher had never done that before.
“Purge complete,” Owen said. “Cargo Bay Two is sterilized. Nine confirmed kills.”
Levi let his hand drop and pressed back against the wall.
The metal was still cold from the blackout, the chill seeping through his jumpsuit into his shoulder blades.
His knees ached. His sternum hummed. His ribs were sore where Asher had held him too tight for too long, and when he breathed in, the air tasted like recycled metal and something burnt.
Asher was three feet away with his sidearm, his shaking hands, and his back half-turned, and Levi was registering the distance like a temperature change — like the cold of the metal at his back.
He’s recalibrating. It’s a tactical pause. He’s fine.
The smaller, newer thing under the tactical thought was harder to look at.
It was the part that wanted the contact to land.
The part that was now noting, with a kind of clinical horror, that he wanted it for himself and not for Asher management.
He wanted to comfort Asher, to feel him calm under his touch, because even if he didn’t know what the problem was, Asher was his constant. His everything, at this point.
Don’t think about it.
Nine down. Two left. Tyler gone.
“Everyone regroup at Engineering,” Levi said into the handset, his eyes burning and his throat aching as Asher began to move without looking at him.
What did I do wrong?