Chapter 12
Consequences
We killed nine of them.
That’s what he kept telling himself on the way back to Engineering. The plan had worked, nine creatures were dead, because Levi looked at a schematic and saw the strategy game underneath.
Games don’t hand you the win at the two-thirds mark.
Asher walked beside him, close enough that their shoulders almost touched, but not touching.
Levi kept noticing the gap the same way he noticed the vibration earlier, registering as information he didn’t know what to do with yet.
He was used to Asher touching him all the time, even when it was inappropriate.
Asher wasn’t touching him at all.
Please tell me what I did wrong.
They found Zoe in a corridor near Deck Four, face sideways on the ground with her eyes open. The extraction was identical to every other one he had seen: uniform peeled, skin separated, the spinal column removed. She’d been dead for a while, before the alarm, maybe.
Levi stopped walking, the guilt arriving as a weight that sagged his shoulders, pressing down alongside everything else he was carrying. Tyler’s grunt cut short. The radio silence after. Asher turning away from his touch…
“Keep moving,” Asher said. “There are still two of those things in this place.”
Why won’t you touch me?
“Yeah,” Levi said.
They kept walking.
The screens were still lit up back in Engineering in front of Owen, Jasper, and Elliot.
“Both remaining creatures are orienting tightly on Sector Nine, one is a deck above us, which explains why it didn’t make it into the kill zone,” Owen said.
“With the others purged, there’s less signal noise, so it looks like they are moving faster than they were before. ”
“So we know where they’re going?” Elliot asked.
“We know exactly where they’re going.”
“Then we use that information to find a way to get rid of them.” Levi watched the two creature dots moving towards the same destination.
Jasper was already at another console, running data. “Hey, Levi. Come look at this.”
The screen showed a graph with two lines on it, both timestamped against the blackout.
“This one is the array’s broadcast signal, it pulses on a steady frequency for in-ship and deep space comms. This is the signal we are picking up from the creatures.
Now watch,” Jasper said as he played the timeline forward.
When the purge fired, both lines went flat.
“They went offline,” Jasper said. “All of them. Every creature on the ship, the second the array stopped broadcasting, even while they were dying, they just remained in roughly the same place.”
Owen’s data pads hit the floor. “Wait. Wait. Show me that again.”
Jasper played it again. “Whatever the creatures are, it looks like they just…give up with some sort of beacon?”
“Why didn’t they breach before now?” Levi asked.
“They were brought up, unnoticed, in surface samples,” Maddie piped in, walking up with her own notes on a tablet. “I’ve been looking at images from ship security from when they first emerged from containment and the remains of the ones from earlier. Look.”
Levi looked down at her tablet. The first image showed the creatures emerging from the containers, looking like they just stood up and broke the boxes they were in, rock and rubble all around them.
The second image showed a charred version of one, sprawled out on the ground next to a crew member’s burnt corpse, its skin blistered and burst, revealing a strange network of organs and wiring.
But right where a throat would meet a collar bone: a hole that looked like it had been grown rather than made by a weapon. “Are they…evolving?”
“More so adapting, I think,” Maddie said. “If they adapt to their surroundings, maybe it took until they were exposed to enough of our biology to breach? It’s just a theory, at the moment.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Elliot said, still staring at the screen with the signal readout. “If we can make them dormant, we can find them and shoot them out of the airlock with manual overrides. No one else needs to die.”
The room was very still.
The idea was too clean, too simple, too survivable. Find the array, kill the signal, the two remaining creatures freeze wherever they happen to be standing, and a team walks the corridors to find them and shoot them into space?
There’s something we’re all missing here. I know it. It can’t be this simple.
“Where’s the array?” Levi asked.
“External,” Owen said. “Port side hull, Sector Nine. Access is through the Sector Nine exterior airlock, but that section’s lost life support. We can’t walk there from inside.”
“Can we use EVA suits to get to Sector Nine?” Elliot asked.
“The main EVA bay in Sector Four took creature damage early in the breach. An automated purge ran through it. Those suits are gone.” Owen scrolled to the equipment manifest. “But the command EVA locker in Sector Two is intact.”
Jasper pulled up the locker specs on his console. “Reynolds. Elliot. Chief Kane. All biometrically calibrated.”
“Two usable suits,” Elliot said as he straightened, the decision already in his shoulders before he said it. “I’ll go.”
Jasper brought up the array schematics. “Three power connections, a signal modulator, and a broadcast relay. Disconnect any two of the three power leads and the signal goes dark.”
Levi let himself believe it, because it was the only thing he could do, and his mind was still half on the fact that Asher still hadn’t touched him.
He didn’t hear anything being discussed beyond the vague specifics: the array goes down, the creatures go dormant, they survive.
The game would end, and Levi would convince Asher to leave with him this time.
The path forward looked like something he could walk to the end of.
Elliot moved through the room one person at a time, which immediately made Levi acutely aware of what he was seeing.
The big goodbye. The moment in every movie or game where someone heroically sacrifices himself.
He shook hands with Owen, who looked like he wanted to say ten things and settled on a nod.
He touched Maddie’s arm briefly — she squeezed his hand once and let go.
Then he got to Levi and his expression softened, the NPC romance subplot winding up to deliver a moment that in any other game would have been sweet, something that Levi would have liked to watch in a cutscene in his old life. Don’t. Don’t do this. Not now. Not with him in the room.
Elliot hugged him.
Levi went rigid, his arms locked at his sides, his jaw clenched, every muscle screaming with the awareness of Asher’s attention on his back.
His body flooded with the particular terror of being touched gently by the wrong person in front of the right person.
If he pushed Elliot away, it could cause a scene, and a scene would slow down the progression he was making to the end of the game.
If he didn’t push Elliot away…there was no good option.
So he stood there, as rigid as the metal walls around them, enduring the warmth the way someone endures a blade against their throat.
“I know he’s hurting you. Things won’t be bad forever,” Elliot whispered. “I promise.”
Don’t whisper. He can see you whispering and that is so much worse than hearing it.
Elliot stepped back and smiled a smile that was probably meant to be comforting, then moved to Jasper. They began some over complicated fist bump, and Elliot leaned in towards Jasper, his voice low, “Keep an eye on Mercer while I’m out. He’s been through more than he’s showing and Kane isn’t—”
He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t need to. The shape of what he didn’t say filled the space anyway: Kane isn’t safe for him.
Levi’s eyes stayed locked on Asher, watching the shape of the statement land on his face as Asher’s jaw set, the furrow between his eyebrows deepening as his hand landed on his sidearm. No. Levi moved to his side and placed a hand on his forearm. “Hey.”
Asher still glared at Elliot.
“Dovey,“ Levi said through his teeth. Asher’s eyes widened and he glanced down at Levi, his face losing some of its tension as he did. “Please. It’s just the game making him say that stuff.”
Asher’s hand covered Levi’s on his arm, and his thumb traced a circle on Levi’s knuckles. “This isn’t a game, baby,” he said softly. “If he touches you again, I’m shooting him in the face.”
Levi just nodded, watching as Elliot made his way to the door.
Asher’s jealousy wouldn’t be an issue soon.
Elliot would do his job, they’d stop the final two creatures, the game would probably throw one or two setbacks at them, and then they would beat the game once and for all.
He’d make Asher leave with him. It would be okay.
Then his sternum caught the vibration, in his chest this time before settling into his ribs. He looked up at the ceiling without thinking, staring at the ventilation grates and barely heard it. Clink. Clink. Clink.
Metal on metal, somewhere in the ducts above Engineering.
It was the same kind of sound the metal made when the temperature shifted and old infrastructure remembered itself.
Anyone who hadn’t been listening for it would have missed it entirely.
Levi turned his head a fraction. Asher’s eyes were also on the ceiling.
His jaw was set. His pulse was visible in the side of his throat.
Levi kept his face neutral. His hand stayed on the console as if he were still reading the schematic.
The clinking moved.
Clink. Clink. Clink. Across the ceiling toward the corridor, where Elliot reached the door to maintenance and was unlocking the door.
Levi heard the clinking slow, the vibration in his chest wavering as it moved, and watched in horror as metal fingertips pushed through a poorly welded section of ductwork.
The vent above the corridor entrance buckled inward as the metal sheared along its weakest seams. The creature followed in a cascade of torn steel and dust, the height of it filling the corridor mouth.
Elliot stumbled forward into the corridor, his boots catching on the threshold, his free hand finding the doorframe for half a second before shoving it forward.
“SHUT THE DOOR!” Elliot shouted. “JASPER, SHUT IT, NOW—”
Jasper was on the controls before the sentence finished and the electromagnetic seal engaged with a deep mechanical hum.
“Elliot’s badge just went hot.” Owen’s voice was tight, reading his sensor feed. “He reactivated it. Manually.”
The creature dot moved again on the ship schematic, following the activated badge. The walkie near Levi crackled to life: “I’m taking it to the Sector Three purge zone. I can seal the door behind me, burn it, then keep going to the locker. Two minutes.”
“Elliot—” Levi was on the radio.
“Two minutes, Mercer. Trust me. I’ve got this.”
Levi looked at the schematic. Sector Three…Elliot could make it. Elliot was making it. The plan was bending but it was still the plan, and Elliot was the one bending it, and the team just had to not move for two minutes—
Asher was at a console marked with at least seven different warnings taped around it to not accidentally push the button.
“Asher.” His hand closed around Asher’s forearm and he pulled, his whole weight yanking back against the arm, trying to drag Asher’s hand off the panel. “Please. Please. He’s two minutes from the locker. We’re so close. We’re so close to being done. Please don’t do this.”
Asher didn’t move. Levi might as well have been pulling on the wall.
“He put his hands on you,” Asher said, his voice quiet and even.
“He’s running. He’s fixing this. Asher, please, please, I’m begging you —” Levi’s fingers dug into the fabric of Asher’s sleeve, his other hand coming up now, his palm flat on Asher’s chest, pushing.
“He whispered in your ear—”
“ASHER!”
“And you let him.” He caught Levi’s wrist, and held it there against his heart as he turned away from the tracker to look at Levi. “Am I not safe for you, Levi?” Asher asked, sounding small and hurt, but the look on his face was cold.
“Asher, please —” Levi made no effort to stop the sob working up his throat, shaking as he kept pulling. “Please…let him finish the mission, let him—”
“I love you,” Asher said.
Levi’s mouth opened and nothing came out. His tongue moved against the roof of his mouth. His throat worked. The sound that was supposed to come out of it was the sound that would save Elliot’s life, and it was supposed to come out fast, and it didn’t.
The silence stretched one beat. Two. Long enough for Asher to hear it. Long enough for Asher to sigh.
He pressed the panel.
The section sealed. The purge engaged. The distant roar — quieter than Cargo Bay Two, the reserves nearly spent, but enough. Over the walkie, Elliot was saying something, but Levi couldn’t make sense of it before he heard it cut off. He didn’t look at the screen to watch the signal fade.
Gone.
Levi’s fist connected with Asher’s jaw with a force that came from somewhere beneath tactics, beneath every careful negotiation he’d been trying to run since the forest. Asher’s head turned with it. He took a step back, fingers rising to his lip and coming away red.
He smiled with blood on his lip and warmth in his eyes and Levi’s stomach turning because Asher wore the same expression he always wore after Levi did something unexpected — charmed and fascinated, like Levi had given him a gift.
“What did you just do?” Jasper whispered.
Asher straightened his uniform and adjusted his cuffs, still smiling at Levi. “I contained the threat.”