The door hissed open.
Cold air rolled out like fog, thick and chemical. A faint metallic rhythm echoed from the darkness beyond—slow, deliberate.
Arin's finger tightened on the trigger. Lira stood beside him, rifle raised. Kai moved behind, limping slightly but steady, flashlight cutting through the black.
Professor Ren didn't move at all. He just stared into the opening, his face pale behind the cracked visor.
"Professor," Arin said quietly, "what's in there?"
Ren didn't answer.
The footsteps stopped.
A light flickered deep inside the chamber, revealing a shape—tall, human-like, but wrong. Its outline shimmered as if reality itself was struggling to decide what it looked like. Then a voice came through the intercom, faint and static-ridden.
"Ren… you came back."
Lira's breath caught. "That voice—"
Ren whispered, "Dr. Elara…"
The name hung in the air like a ghost.
He took a step forward. Arin blocked him. "You know her?"
"She was my co-lead on Project HALO," Ren said softly. "She stayed behind… when containment failed."
"Then how is she—"
A sudden flicker of light interrupted him. The figure inside moved, fast, graceful, and wrong. When it stopped, it stood in the doorway.
The face was human. Almost.
Eyes silver-white, veins glowing faintly blue beneath translucent skin. Her voice was calm, too calm.
"You left me here, Ren."
Ren's hand trembled. "Elara… you survived."
"I adapted," she said. "You called it infection. But it's evolution."
Arin stepped between them. "Evolution doesn't kill a planet."
Her gaze snapped to him—sharp, unreadable. "Do you know what they made us do here, soldier? They called it research. But we weren't studying life. We were rewriting it."
Kai whispered, "She's infected."
Elara heard him. "You still don't understand. The virus doesn't consume—it remembers. Every cell that dies carries the memory of the one before. I remember everything."
Ren took another step forward, desperate. "Elara, listen to me—whatever you've become, we can help you—"
She smiled. It was small and almost kind, and that made it worse.
"Help me? You already did, Ren. You just never realized it."
Her arm shifted—flesh rippling like liquid metal. Then it solidified into a blade.
Arin fired before she moved.
Pulse light tore through the dark, but she blurred aside, faster than sight. The beam scorched the wall, cutting through old cables. Sparks rained down.
She appeared behind him, one hand around his throat. The grip was cold, mechanical strength hiding in soft fingers.
"You shouldn't have come back," she whispered.
Lira lunged, slicing through Elara's arm with her plasma blade. The limb fell—but instead of blood, a silver mist spilled out, and the limb began to regrow.
Ren shouted, "Don't kill her! She's the key to—"
Arin slammed his shoulder into Ren, pushing him down just as Elara struck again. The blade cut the air where Ren's head had been.
"Key to what?" Arin roared.
Ren's answer came through clenched teeth. "To reversing it!"
"Reversing?" Lira shouted. "You made this?"
"I discovered it!" Ren screamed. "They used my work! They turned it into a weapon—against their own people!"
The words froze everyone. Even Elara paused.
For a moment, the air hummed—machines waking in the walls, red lights flickering to life. A voice spoke from the terminal, monotone and mechanical:
"Containment breach detected. Initiating purge protocol."
The alarms screamed to life.
The walls sealed, doors slamming shut with metallic thunder. Red lights bathed the chamber in blood color.
Kai stumbled to the console. "System's locked! The purge countdown just started—two minutes!"
Elara turned, her expression unreadable. "You brought this on yourselves."
Arin pulled Ren to his feet. "Tell me how to stop it!"
Ren's eyes darted to the control core in the center of the room—a glowing sphere pulsing like a heart. "That's the failsafe! If we overload it, it'll burn out the purge circuit—but it'll blow half the station!"
Lira cursed. "So we die either way?"
Arin grabbed a power cell from his pack. "Not if we control the blast."
He ran for the core. Elara moved to stop him, but Ren stepped in front of her, desperation breaking through guilt.
"Elara, please," he said. "If there's anything left of you—let them live."
Her gaze softened for a second. Just a second.
Then she stepped aside.
Arin jammed the cell into the core. The sphere flared—light spilling like liquid fire.
"Everyone down!"
The explosion ripped through the chamber.
White light. Heat. Silence.
When Arin opened his eyes, he was lying in rubble.
The alarms had stopped. Smoke drifted through cracks in the ceiling. Kai was groaning nearby, Lira coughing beside him.
Ren was alive—barely—half-buried under metal.
And Elara was gone.
Only a trail of silver dust remained, shimmering faintly in the dark.
Lira pulled Arin up. "She's dead?"
Arin shook his head slowly. "No. She left."
Ren coughed blood, his voice barely a whisper. "She has the core data… the cure… and the virus both. If she leaves the station—"
Arin's expression hardened. "Then this isn't over."
He looked toward the shattered bulkhead, where faint footprints glowed silver in the dark, leading deeper into the facility.
"We find her," he said. "Before the world ends twice."
Sometimes, monsters are made. Sometimes, they're left behind.