Opening his eyes, Max discovered that he was lying in a bed. Pristine mint green walls greeted him, and the light filtering through the seams of the walls resembled a sunset. There were no windows, however. As he remembered, his head throbbed. One moment he was sprawled on the floor of the ship's dungeon, crawling towards his sister's ghost. The next, he was lying in a hospital bed.

  He felt a sudden jolt in his chest and tried to sit back. Big mistake. Invisible metal straps were squeezing his skull, forcing him to stay still as they extended towards his eyes. Suddenly it hurt to move, and his subconscious told him it was better to stay still.

  His throat ached with every breath, and it was dry, like the sand of a Martian pteau. Max moved slowly, with deliberate and slow movements, and put his hands in front of his eyes. He discovered that all five fingers were intact. Then he felt his face. There was a nasal cannu under his nose and a patch on his left temple that sent a shiver down his spine when he touched it.

  After groping through the sheets with trembling hands, he found a button and pressed it without hesitation. With a bit of luck, a nurse would come, and with a bit more luck, it might even be Naomi. But minutes passed and nothing happened. He pressed the button once more.

  —. Nurse! – he shouted then, horrified at how pathetic and hoarse his voice sounded. A dry cough attack interrupted that plea, and his eyes watered from the sudden itch as he regained his breath. He gave up, counting on someone to come.

  He felt Naomi walk through the door. The illusion faded when he opened his eyes. He discovered that he had fallen asleep and dozed off without realising it. Now his stomach was rumbling and Max wasn't sure if it was hunger or a craving for a cigarette. It could be both. Without thinking, he pressed the button again.

  —. Nurse! – he shouted again. He heard his own voice being drowned out by the walls of the recovery room, and the only response was silence, interrupted by the beeping of a heart monitor that was a constant melody.

  Cursing to himself, Max leaned back. He noticed that the initial tiredness had subsided. It was a recovery room in the intensive care unit. Besides his bed, there were three others, one to his left and two in front of him. All were empty. The smell in the air was an aseptic mix of vender and medication.

  His hands stumbled over a folding table he hadn't noticed, and the pstic cup on it fell to the floor with a hollow thud. And near the bed, Max noticed a sink and another empty pstic cup that seemed to be calling him.

  Driven by the need to wet his throat, which was begging for a drink of water, Max turned and put his feet on the ground. But what y beneath his knees were not his legs. He could feel his cells groaning in pain as he looked down. His heart was pounding and his eyes couldn't tear themselves away from the prosthetics welded to his bones. A muffled cry rose from deep within him.

  Two prosthetic legs clung to his knees, and a tight, neat bandage separated flesh from pstic. Max's fingers brushed the material. It was cold and bone white. Metacarbon and silicon. Bck artificial muscles contracted with the movement, and the patch on his temples vibrated slightly.

  Max had a dark premonition, and with nervous gestures he removed the povidone-iodine stained pster. His fingers brushed over his forehead, then he discovered the remnants of a geometric scar where they had opened his skull and accessed his brain. A spasm shook his new limbs and something vibrated in his head. He then discovered that there was an impnt embedded in his grey matter.

  —. Oh, God. — A feeling of primal dread came over him, and suddenly the walls of the room seemed to close in on him. He gasped for breath and a sudden cold enveloped him. He felt like a guinea pig that had been cut open, dissected, reassembled and sewn back together again. Tears welled up in his eyes, filled with helplessness.

  Images appeared like a reel of film. He was talking to the colonist who had asked for help. Yakiv. Suddenly, everyone present was immersed in a collective vision, trapped in the Firefly Forest. Ryken Tabakar decapitated himself with a ser, and when he tried to save Harding, the scalpel beam cut off his legs. Sudden dizziness struck, and then Max suppressed a gag.

  Thirst struck again. He was tired of waiting for help that wasn't coming. So he decided to act. Slowly he removed the drip from his arm, burying it like the sting of a giant mosquito. Then he went for the catheter from his urethra, pulling it slowly and with more force than seemed possible. As he freed himself from his torment, a shudder went through him and he was overcome by a wild urge to pee.

  Removing the rest of the patches, electrodes, and IV bags stuck to his body like leeches, he took a breath to stand up. He was surprised at how easy it was. A subtle electric current coursed through him, and his prosthetics, instead of trembling, remained firm. It was as if they were his limbs, but something deep within him knew they weren't, and instead, he felt an inexplicable void.

  Slowly, he advanced toward the bathroom. One step at a time and carefully. He tripped over the cup he had knocked over and fell face—first to the floor. He grabbed onto a curtain and ended up falling with it, nding with a fleshy, dry thud. The air escaped from his lungs, and his bare skin made contact with the cold floor like ice.

  —. Nurse! – he cried out, torn and helpless —. Is anyone listening to me? I need help, please! – his eyes fixed on the door, filled with expectation and hope, but minutes passed, and the result was the same.

  Resigned, he struggled to his feet, refusing to wet himself lying on the floor like a decrepit old man. For a few seconds, the sudden agility of his new limbs seemed counterproductive, and he stumbled with the clumsiness of his own body. He burned into his mind, whether he wanted to or not, that these were indeed his legs. It seemed to work.

  Standing, he began the odyssey of reaching the bathroom once more. And after emptying his bdder, he reached the sink and drank two cups of water in one go, as if he had been lost in the desert for weeks. Having satisfied his physical needs, he looked around the recovery room and found a screaming silence around him.

  With the commotion he had caused, someone should have come through the door. But help was conspicuously absent. They were not on their way. Then he had a terrible premonition. He decided to see for himself, but first he had to find some clothes, for his shame was exposed to the air.

  On a small table at the foot of the bed he found something to wear. A pair of bck shorts and a white T-shirt, along with a pair of ergonomic trainers. The air suddenly smelled of peaches. Max immediately made the connection and his neurons unlocked memories. Naomi had been there. She had left the clothes with him, surely to accompany him to the recovery therapy. Max assumed she had done the bandaging.

  But a wave of grief washed over him. Where had she been? Was she well? And why had she stopped coming? More importantly, why had no one come through that door to help him? A dark foreboding crossed his mind. What if those things got in? He dismissed it as if it were bsphemy. They had searched the whole ship. Another equally dark thought appeared. What if the crew was in hypersleep and forgot about him? That would be tragic, but also a good sign. It meant they were on their way home, leaving the hell of Lacaille 8760 behind.

  The door opened with a hiss, and then Max faced an obstacle. A stretcher blocked the way to the corridor. With both hands and all his strength he pushed it out of the way, his stiff muscles protesting. He wondered how long he had been unconscious, and when he remembered his own reflection in the sink, he found a beard of at least three days' growth.

  —. Hello? – Max shouted, and the only response was his echo echoing down the corridors of the medical deck. The walls remained as pristine, a greenish utilitarian tone, and the artificial sunlight filtered through the lights shaped like rectangur slits in the corners. A sense of normality tried to break through, but as Max watched and paid attention, he realised it was only a facade.

  It seemed that the crew, doctors, nurses, androids and medics had been abducted in a surprise raid.

  The holographic screens in the corridor were still glowing. Max noticed that the appointments with Doctor Echmann had been postponed or given an error message. The same was true for Priya Tanaka, Marcus Feng, Yuuval Green, Jonathan Mentzer, Naomi Roux and the others.

  A mixture of smells assaulted his senses. Coffee, vanil and sweet dough. Max discovered that some ghost had forgotten his coffee shaker, and on a foam tray, wrapped in napkins, was a 3D-printed chocote cake. Half chewed, a few flies gathered around it. They must have escaped from the entomology bs, attracted by the smell of sugar.

  —. Hello! Is anyone there? –

  A dry thud from a junction answered him. Fleshy, hard and muffled. It repeated at irregur intervals, along with the grinding of a mechanism that kept insisting on doing its job. Curiosity overcame fear and Max approached to see from the other side.

  The sweet smell of rotting flesh hit him like a blow, along with the buzzing of a swarm of flies attracted by the rot. He turned away, covering his mouth with his arm. One of the gss doors that separated one section from the other kept trying to close. Something was stopping it. A lump y between the two sections.

  Max recognised it as a corpse. A blond, middle-aged man. He knew from the tactical vest that he was a C-Sec officer. Ayden Petrelli. Cause of death, a shotgun bst at close range that pierced his stomach, and he y dead in a pool of infected blood. The scene of a crime, but there was something more, and Max's stomach sank as he realised it.

  —. No, no, no. — he said under his breath, but it didn't change the horrendous reality unfolding before his eyes.

  This pallor was not the result of decay. It was the pgue of Lohengrin. Ayden had taken on a yellowish hue, and tumour-like lumps were emerging from beneath his skin, disfiguring his face and body. Blood spttered on the floor, and the door that tried to close was a disgusting beige colour with a slimy texture.

  And the icing on the cake, the fatal wound. Yellowish tendrils sprouted from inside him, spreading like horrible tendrils of some kind of mycelium. They had formed knots around the wound and were slowly spreading beyond the pool of blood. Max heard a bubbling crackle and noticed a subtle movement within the protruding entrails. They were moving slowly, like a mass of worms. He was forced to look away and return the way he had come.

  With the fire extinguisher he broke the gss counter where a huge wrench was kept, one made to force the mechanisms of a pressure seal. Max swung it and grabbed it with both hands. It could crush a skull with a single blow if one of the infected approached. With it, a breathing mask with an air filter.

  The images of that first encounter kept repying. The corpses of his mutited comrades, and Ali Khan being torn apart before them. The sickening, guttural sound of that colonist who took his life. If only C—Sec had arrived faster.

  A horrible vision projected before him. Naomi being dismembered by one of those goblins, just like his comrades, torn apart like a broken doll. Or worse, herself caught by that yellowish pgue, disfigured, and stripped of all humanity, transformed into a monster. Max wondered if he would be able to end the misery of his beloved.

  He stopped and leaned against a wall, catching his breath. A sob threatened to form in his throat, and tears hung from his eyes, tempting to overflow. With his forearm, he wiped them away while biting back the cry. As long as he didn't see Naomi dead, he would assume she was still alive. Max inhaled, filled with courage, and held his makeshift weapon in his hands. He had only one goal in mind: to find Naomi.

  ***

  Upon leaving the medical deck, Max found signs of resistance. C—Sec checkpoints, mobile airlock—like structures, containment zones, and ser cannons nests. The illusion of a surprise rapture began to fade. There had been some kind of confrontation.

  It wasn't long before he found bodies. The remnants of a terrible firefight in the crew's common room. The lights were flickering, and the walls were covered in bck scorch marks from energy projection weapons. As Max stepped inside, his sneakers crunched on something, producing a slimy crunch, and he stepped back. A sickly, sour stench permeated the pce. Decay, as if someone had spread faeces through his mouth and nose. There was something else, sick and rotting flesh, like being inside a corpse. Fighting the urge to vomit, he covered his face with the breathing mask.

  There was nothing left of this former pce of meeting and rexation. One of the holographic screens in the centre dispyed a fateful error message, and the rest of the holograms projected sequences of ominous yellow butterflies flitting from pce to pce, dancing among the corpses of his comrades. The sofas had been used as barricades, but the mass of infected soon reached this small resistance, which eventually fled or joined the others.

  It was a bloodbath. Bodies y strewn about. He couldn't tell if they were healthy crew members or infected, both mixed together in a macabre spectacle of limbs, torn intestines and guts. A mixture of red, brown blood and yellow slime spread across the floor, walls and ceiling, forming a gruesome work of abstract art.

  And then, amidst the flickering lights, something that was not a corpse at all. A yellowish-brown, human-sized cocoon y cornered. At first gnce, it appeared to be a person in the fetal position, but he quickly dismissed that. The head was a barely recognisable mass, and the arms and limbs seemed to have fused with the body and the yellowish growth.

  The tumours and lumps in the flesh had completely engulfed the poor bastard, who was now raw material for the pgue. It was a fleshy sack, swollen and throbbing, its tendrils spreading sideways, little by little, like sinister, thirsty roots. A guttural, bubbling, heavy sound reached Max's ears.

  A gasping breath echoed through the corridors of the entire ship. Streams of yellowish material slowly oozed out, and with a bubbling crackle, more clumps appeared in the cocoon, increasing its size. The mass in the corner writhed, and Max sensed that something was growing inside it. Not wanting to investigate, he stepped back and continued on his way.

  In stark contrast, the cabin area appeared unblemished. The hallways were illuminated by a soft orange twilight that invited rest. The feeling was ruined when Max found traces of blood. A fight, apparently, and then footprints of bare, bloodied feet that faded into the darkness until they disappeared. He gripped the wrench tightly as he advanced, wondering if he could react quickly enough.

  Upon reaching his room, he entered his code, and the door opened before him.

  —. Naomi? It's me, Max. — but no one responded. The cabin was spotless. The small table they had taken out to the balcony overlooking the internal garden was still there, waiting for them. When Max peeked out, he was greeted by artificial sunlight and the ship's inner gardens. A snap, and then a gentle mist fell. The automatic watering system was still working.

  Upon returning inside, memories overpped with reality. The moments shared in the small dining area of his room, making pns for a boring Sunday afternoon aboard the Chronos. Max was coming back from the undry, and they were pnning to eat noodles with mushrooms ter.

  Their conversation was repced by an unperturbed silence. Looking at that corner and the perfectly ordered cabin, it gave the impression that she had also been part of that raid. Abducted, no, his mind corrected: caught by the Firefly Pgue. Max bit his lips from the inside and shook his head.

  —. She is alive. — he mumbled.

  As he rummaged around inside, Max's head was spinning. He refused to believe that the pgue had reached them. They hadn't known what it was until hours before the failed unch, before they'd tried to board it. How could the Chronos have fallen so quickly? he wondered. There are 1500 people on board; there must have been some resistance. He tried to imagine more optimistic scenarios, like they hadn't spread throughout the ship, just a few decks. They had isoted them. Max would communicate with the outside and they would get him out.

  But then he wondered, why didn't they just discard the modules? Cutting the branch with the infected hooks was the most logical option in case of an outbreak. An unwritten rule since before the Starcrappers. Did they know Max was still in there? Then why didn't they get him out sooner? The more he thought about it, the less sense it made. Joey Jim's backpack was begging to be picked up. Max put it in his pocket like an amulet.

  He checked the safety deposit box under his bed and entered the password. The compact shotgun he expected to find was conspicuously absent. Someone had taken it, and it had to be Naomi. She was the only other person who knew the password. Silently, Max prayed that she was all right. But there was another box under the bedside table, and apparently it hadn't been checked.

  —. Bingo. — he said to himself.

  Inside were an emergency communicator, a belt, a pair of fres, an automatic syringe, bandages and a belt pouch with ten doses of Alfevac for pain. Max put on the belt first, to which he attached the two fres. Then he slipped the fanny pack over his torso, where he kept the automatic syringe. He picked up the emergency communicator and waited with anticipation to hear a familiar voice.

  — Picard calling the bridge. I’m on the Crew Deck. There was an outbreak of the Lohengrin Pgue. Is anyone receiving me? Over. — nothing —. Picard to the bridge, is anyone there? Captain? Sawatari? Daimonji? Patel? – the white noise in response shattered the hypothesis of a partial outbreak —. Picard to OPS, is anyone there? Mendoza? Janhonen? Dubois? Zhang? Harding? – silence. He cursed inwardly. He stored the communicator in the fanny pack and sighed.

  There was a good reason why Max didn’t give Naomi the password to that compartment. And that was because below, there was a false bottom. He removed a cover, revealing a second panel with a numeric keypad. With nervous gestures, Max entered the password, his birth date in reverse; 55420113.

  The same tool he had used to kill his uncle and save his sister. The same psma saw y before him in its bulky, utilitarian form, begging to be picked up once more. In the darkness, he even thought he could see blood stains on its frame. It seemed that even the most thorough cleaning could not erase them.

  For seconds that seemed like an eternity, Max stared at it and a pounding began in his head, hidden in the recesses of his own memories. Screams, muffled by gasping breaths, rhythmic like a metronome, telling him that his time was running out. A reminder. An invitation. A sentence. A simple choice. Naomi was in danger, as was Lay, and he had to save them. The solution was right in front of him. All he had to do was take it.