The first scream came from the corridor—high, desperate, and abruptly cut off by a sound like wet fabric tearing. Then another. Then a dozen more, overlapping into a symphony of terror that made the walls themselves seem to flinch.
"Lock the door!" Lacey shouted, but Tumbler was already there, his hands fumbling with the manual override. The mechanism clicked, sealing them inside what had once been Classroom Seven-Alpha and was now something from a fever dream.
Through the rainbow-trimmed archway that had been their door, shadows moved with impossible fluidity. Dr. Martinez stumbled past—or what had been Dr. Martinez. Her lab coat hung in tatters from a form that undulated on a tentacle bug like monstrosity, it bore physiology that couldn't decide what species they belonged to. Where her hands should have been, clusters of finger-like appendages writhed, each tipped with an eye that blinked in different rhythms.
"Jesus Christ!" Bunk whispered, pressing himself against the far wall as the thing that had been their physics instructor pressed its malleable face against the archway. The eyes in its fingertips swiveled to focus on them through the transformed doorway, and when it spoke, the voice was Martinez's but layered with harmonics that hurt to hear.
"Children... come out and play... the lesson isn't over..."
The creature's form began to squeeze through the archway like toothpaste from a tube, its borrowed lab coat catching on the rainbow trim. Behind it, more shapes moved in the corridor—Chief Engineer Sato sprouting mechanical appendages that sparked and whirred, Navigator Chen flowed across the ceiling like animated liquid, her uniform somehow still perfectly pressed despite her complete lack of solid bones.
"The door won't hold them," Hexi said, her voice clinical even as her hands shook. "They're not bound by physical constraints anymore. They're becoming something else."
As if responding to her words, the classroom around them accelerated its transformation. The walls stretched upward, the ceiling disappearing into theatrical darkness punctuated by old-fashioned stage lights that flickered to life with warm, yellow illumination. The floor tilted and leveled into risers, creating a perfect amphitheater with them at the center.
"No, no, no," Pip backed away from the emerging stage, her book clutched to her chest like a shield. "This is wrong. This is all wrong."
The rainbow archway began to shift, the opening narrowing and widening like a breathing aperture. Dr. Martinez's liquefied form squeezed through with a wet sucking sound, her eye-tipped fingers reaching toward them with desperate hunger.
"Stay back!" Zozo grabbed a chair—now puffy and cartoon-bright—and hurled it at the approaching horror. The furniture bounced harmlessly off Martinez's undulating mass, which absorbed the impact with a sound like a child's giggle.
The stage lights above them began to move, swiveling on invisible tracks to focus their warm glow on the six young people. A spotlight found Lacey first, illuminating her auburn hair like fire. Then another caught Hexi, making her wire-rimmed glasses gleam. One by one, they were each bathed in theatrical light while the darkness beyond became absolute.
"Welcome to the show!" The cheerful voice from the speakers had multiplied, now a chorus of children's voices speaking in perfect unison. "Tonight's performance features our special guests! Everyone take your seats!"
And impossibly, they were taking seats. The transformed adult crew members began flowing into the amphitheater seating that materialized around the stage. Captain Morrison, his uniform still pristine but his body now a writhing mass of tentacles topped by his unchanged head, settled into the front row with a sound like escaping air. His human eyes watched them with terrible awareness, his mouth moving silently as if trying to scream warnings he could no longer voice.
The thing that had been Dr. Martinez finally finished oozing through the archway, which sealed itself with a cheerful pop behind her. Her face cycled through expressions—confusion, terror, hunger—while her voice continued its educational tone.
"Today's lesson is about adaptation, children. Evolution in real time. Observe how forms follow function in non-Euclidean space."
"Shut up!" Bunk lunged at the creature, his hands passing through its semi-liquid torso like it was made of warm gelatin. "You're not our teacher! You're not human anymore!"
The spotlight tracking him flared brighter, and suddenly Bunk froze mid-swing. His face contorted in surprise as he found himself unable to move, held in place by the warm yellow light like an insect in amber.
"The show must go on," said the chorus of children's voices. "Everyone has a part to play."
More crew members flowed into the seating—Chief Medical Officer Yates now sporting a dozen arms that applauded in different rhythms, Engineering Specialist Kohl whose head had inverted so his face looked out from inside his chest cavity, still wearing his cheerful smile. They filled the theater seats like a nightmare audience, their transformed bodies creating a constant symphony of wet sounds and mechanical whirring.
In the front row, Captain Morrison's mouth finally found its voice, though the words came out backwards and upside-down: "...pleh... su... ton... nac... ew..."
The stage beneath their feet began to warm, and when Lacey looked down, she saw that the floorboards had developed a grain pattern that looked disturbingly like neural networks. The spotlight on her face intensified.
"Act One," announced the children's chorus as unseen orchestral music began to swell from all directions. "In which our heroes discover their purpose."
Hexi struggled against her own spotlight, which had locked her in place just as effectively as Bunk's. "This isn't possible!" she shouted at the nightmare audience. "Matter can't behave this way! Physics has laws!"
The creature that had been Dr. Martinez undulated closer, its borrowed voice now layered with harmonics that seemed to come from the walls themselves. "Physics is just a local phenomenon, dear. Here, in the spaces between spaces, different rules apply. Older rules. Rules written by minds that think in dimensions your species can't even perceive."
The music swelled, and the stage lights began to change color, cycling through hues that didn't quite exist in normal space. The spotlight holding Tumbler shifted to a sickly green that made his skin look translucent, revealing the network of veins beneath.
"I can see," he whispered in horror. "I can see inside myself. Inside all of us."
And suddenly, terrifyingly, they all could. The lights revealed not just their physical forms but the patterns beneath—the electrical firing of neurons, the quantum dance of particles, the strange geometry of consciousness itself. They were being examined, studied, prepared for something.
In the audience, Captain Morrison managed to force one more word through his backwards vocal cords: "...noisnemid..."
The music reached a crescendo, and the children's voices spoke in perfect unison: "Let the first act begin."