The descent began three decks down from Central Core, where the ship's familiar geometry started to betray itself. What should have been Deck Seven's main thoroughfare had been stretched to impossible lengths, corridors elongating like taffy pulled by invisible hands, distorted like the reflections from a fun house mirror.
"Xylogram, maintain constant scan," Lacey ordered through the comm, her Knight systems painting tactical overlays across her vision. The familiar bronze and gold of her HUD flickered occasionally, replaced by brief flashes of something else—symbols that looked almost like writing, but in no language she recognized.
"Copy that," the AI's voice crackled with static. "Dagger and I are tracking your descent. Warning: the architectural distortion is increasing exponentially with each level. Reality seems to be... more flexible down there."
Dagger's voice joined the channel, tense with worry. "Be careful. The deeper you go, the more zee corruption spreads. It changes everything—even zee way you think."
The Six moved in perfect formation despite the growing wrongness around them. Lacey and Hexi took point, their analytical systems working in tandem to navigate the shifting maze. Bunk and Tumbler flanked them, ready for close combat, while Pip and Zozo brought up the rear, their area-effect capabilities covering their retreat.
That's when the walls started screaming.
It began as a vibration—a low-frequency hum that made their Toy Frame systems resonate uncomfortably. Then the sound resolved into something unmistakably organic: the chittering, clicking chorus of hundreds of mandibles working in perfect synchronization.
"Contact," Hexi whispered, her Tesseract plates shifting into combat configuration. "Multiple signatures emerging from... everywhere."
The Bleak Box bugs erupted from surfaces that shouldn't have been able to contain them. Ceiling panels burst open like infected wounds, disgorging creatures that had once been the night shift cleaning crew. Their elongated bodies unfolded with mechanical precision, chitinous limbs finding purchase on walls and ceilings with equal ease.
The first wave hit them like a living tsunami.
A thing that might have been a Chief Petty Officer dropped from directly above Lacey, its compound eyes reflecting her brass armor in a thousand fractured images. Where hands should have been, scissoring mandibles snapped at her helmet with enough force to crack composite ceramic. Lacey's Knight reflexes kicked in—brass gears whirring as she pivoted, clockwork precision guiding her armored fist directly into the creature's thorax. The impact sent chitinous fragments spraying across the corridor, but the bug barely flinched.
"They're armored!" she shouted, dodging another strike that left gouges in the deck plating. "Standard impact isn't enough!"
Hexi's response was pure mathematical beauty. Her Tesseract Weaver plates reconfigured into a complex geometric array, firing concentrated beams of toy force energy that struck the creatures at precise angles. Where the beams hit, the chitinous armor didn't crack—it unfolded, revealing the soft, vulnerable flesh beneath. The bugs shrieked as their protective shells betrayed them, geometry turning their own defenses inside out.
"Structural weak points!" she called out, her weapons painting target markers across the swarm. "Hit the junction nodes between segments!"
Bunk didn't need the technical explanation. His Blockbuster frame was built for one thing: hitting hard things until they became squishy. He grabbed the nearest bug—something that had been a teenage crew member, its school uniform still visible over the carapace—and squeezed. His angular fists found the seams in its armor and applied pressure until chitin cracked like eggshell.
But for every bug they dropped, two more emerged from impossible spaces. Ventilation shafts that were too small to contain them. Wall panels that opened onto empty vacuum but somehow held entire nests of the transformed crew.
Tumbler was in his element, phasing between realities to strike from angles that didn't exist in normal space. One moment he was behind a charging bug, carnival mask grinning as he drove his fist through its spine; the next, he was inside its compound vision, attacking from within its own sensory network. The bugs couldn't track him, couldn't predict him, couldn't even be sure he was really there.
"They're learning our patterns!" he called out as he phase-shifted away from a coordinated strike. "These things are sharing tactical data!"
Pip's Storybook armor erupted in a cascade of narrative energy. Floating pages swirled around the attacking bugs, each one containing a story of what they used to be—memories of laughter, of love, of simple human moments. The creatures faltered, their compound eyes flickering as fragments of their former selves struggled against the biological corruption.
"I can see them!" she shouted over the chaos. "The people they were—they're still in there, trapped!"
Zozo's bubble launchers fired in rapid succession, each iridescent sphere containing a different chromatic frequency. Where the bubbles burst, the bugs' coordination faltered. Their synchronized movements became erratic, individual, human. Some even stopped attacking entirely, mandibles clicking in what might have been confused recognition.
"The color disrupts their hive-mind connection!" Zozo reported, her launchers cycling through every frequency in her arsenal. "But it's temporary!"
"Tactical retreat!" Lacey barked as more bugs poured from impossible spaces. "We need containment, not casualties!"
The Six pulled back in formation, but Bunk had stopped moving. His Blockbuster frame stood motionless in the corridor as his tactical systems ran construction algorithms at lightning speed. Around him, chitinous creatures clicked and hissed, but his attention was focused inward, on blueprints that materialized in his mind like divine inspiration.
"Bunk!" Tumbler phased beside him, carnival mask flickering with concern. "What are you doing?"
"Building," Bunk replied simply, his angular block hands beginning to move.
What happened next defied physics and common sense in equal measure. Bunk's Blockbuster frame erupted in golden light as nanoscale fabricators emerged from hidden compartments throughout his armor. The deck plating beneath his feet began to reshape itself, metal flowing like liquid as his construction protocols took hold of the ship's raw materials.
Within seconds, the corridor floor had become a mobile platform—a sleek, angular vessel that looked like a cross between a construction vehicle and a deep-sea submersible. Retractable arms unfolded from its sides, each one ending in containment pods that hummed with magnetic fields strong enough to hold a charging rhinoceros.
"Mobile Bug Containment Unit, Mark One," Bunk announced with satisfaction. "Patent pending."
"Time lock, now!" Lacey commanded, her Knight systems already cycling into temporal manipulation mode.
The world slowed to a crawl around them. The approaching Bleak Box bugs froze mid-leap, their compound eyes reflecting the corridor lights like frozen fractals. Mandibles stopped clicking. Wings ceased buzzing. Even the dust motes in the air hung motionless.
But the Six continued to move at normal speed, their Toy Frame systems synchronized to Lacey's temporal field.
"Thirty seconds," she warned, sweat already beading on her forehead. "Temporal manipulation at this scale is taxing."
Bunk's mobile unit rolled forward with mechanical precision, its containment arms extending toward the frozen bugs. Each pod sealed around a motionless creature with satisfying clicks, magnetic fields humming as they maintained perfect stasis.
"We got twelve specimens," Bunk reported, his vehicle's scanners painting detailed readouts across their shared tactical display. "Various stages of conversion, different crew specializations. Should give us plenty to work with."
The temporal field collapsed with an almost audible snap, and the remaining bugs suddenly found their quarry vanished. They chittered in confusion, mandibles clicking as they searched empty air where their prey had been moments before.
The Six were already three corridors away, racing back toward the operational sections of the ship with their captive specimens secured in Bunk's mobile containment vessel.
Once they had safely retreated to the med-bay level they began their analysis. Thankfully the Merdian Edge was also outfitted with large cargo elevators that ran through all levels of the ship, easily accommodating the newly constructed containment vessel.
The bioanalysis lab hummed with activity as the Six worked with desperate efficiency. Bunk's containment vessel parked itself in the center of the sterile chamber, its dozen pods glowing with status lights that projected complex data streams on curved screens. Inside each pod, a Bleak box bug remained perfectly still, suspended in magnetic fields that prevented even the slightest movement.
Hexi's Tesseract Weaver plates had reconfigured into a complex analytical array, geometric sensors probing the creatures' biological structure at the molecular level. Data streams flowed across holographic displays—protein chains, DNA sequences, foreign DNA sequences that shouldn't exist in human physiology.
"It's a techno-virus." she announced, her voice tight with discovery. "There's artificial architecture integrated into their cellular matrix."
Xylogram's avatar materialized beside the containment unit, the AI's crystalline form pulsing with processing activity. "Cross-referencing with crew medical records. Every Meridian crew member had routine nanite enhancement packages—standard medical, cognitive, and physical augmentation technology."
"The nanites," Lacey breathed, her Knight systems already calculating the implications. "Something corrupted the nanites."
"Not corrupted," Hexi corrected, her analysis growing more detailed by the second. "Reprogrammed. The techno-virus wove into their base code—something that turned medical nanites into biological construction equipment. It's building the chitinous structures, rewiring neural pathways, integrating insectoid genetics into human DNA."
"Can we reverse it?" Pip asked, her Storybook armor's empathic sensors still picking up traces of human consciousness from within the containment pods.
Hexi and Xylogram worked in perfect synchronization, their processing power combining to analyze billions of viral sequences. Holographic models of nanite architecture rotated in the air as they tested theoretical countermeasures against simulated infections.
"There," Xylogram announced after what felt like hours but had been only minutes. "A targeted antiviral payload. It should restore the nanites' original programming and trigger cellular reconstruction protocols."
"Should?" Tumbler asked pointedly.
"Will," Hexi said with mathematical certainty. "The viral architecture has consistent vulnerabilities. We can synthesize a cure."
The lab's fabrication systems hummed to life, molecular assemblers working at plank scale precision to create doses of the antiviral nanites. Tiny vials of iridescent liquid emerged from the synthesis chamber, each one containing millions of reprogrammed nanites designed to hunt down and destroy their corrupted cousins.
"Test subject selection," Lacey announced, approaching the containment unit. She studied the captured bugs with clinical detachment, though her empathic sensors couldn't entirely shut out the tragedy of what she was seeing. "This one—former communications officer, minimal physical transformation. If the process works, recovery should be fastest."
The injection was administered through the containment field itself, nanoscale medical systems penetrating the bug's chitinous shell and delivering the antiviral directly into its bloodstream.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the creature began to convulse.
Its compound eyes flickered, individual facets dimming and brightening in rapid succession. The chitinous plates covering its torso started to smoke—not burning, but actually dissolving at the molecular level as the corrected nanites began dismantling the viral constructions.
"It's working," Hexi breathed, her sensors tracking the cellular changes in real-time. "The nanites are reversing the biological modifications. But the process is incredibly slow—natural healing rates would take weeks."
"Then we don't use natural rates," Lacey said grimly, her Knight systems shifting into temporal acceleration mode. "Time dilation. We speed up the healing process."
Her hands glowed with chrono energy as she focused on the test subject. The creature's convulsions accelerated, its chitinous shell cracking and peeling away like old paint. Beneath the insectoid exterior, human skin began to emerge—pale from confinement, but undeniably alive.
The transformation took minutes instead of weeks. Chitinous armor crumbled away completely, revealing a middle-aged woman in a tattered communications uniform. Her eyes—human eyes, brown and beautiful and filled with confusion—blinked in the lab's bright light.
"Where..." she whispered, her voice hoarse but unmistakably human. "What happened to me?"
Pip approached the woman and squeezed her hand, " A bad dream."
The Central Core erupted in celebration as word spread throughout the ship. The 500 survivors wept openly, embracing each other and calling out names of friends and family who might still be saved. The impossible had become possible—their transformed crewmates could be restored.
Dagger stood at the center of the crowd, tears streaming down her face as she gripped Lacey's armored hands. "You did it," she sobbed. "You actually did it. Davey and Calliope... they can come home."
Around them, the lab buzzed with activity as the Six worked to mass-produce the antiviral compound. Bunk's construction systems had been repurposed to create dozens of mobile containment units, while Hexi and Xylogram refined the cure's effectiveness against different stages of transformation.
The first test subject—Communications Officer Sarah Welch sat in the medical bay, slowly regaining her strength. Her memories of the transformation were fragmentary, nightmarish glimpses of losing herself piece by piece, but her core humanity remained intact.
"We can save them," Pip announced to the assembled crowd, her Storybook armor projecting images of hope and reunion. "All of them. It'll take time, and it'll be dangerous, but we can bring everyone home."
Lacey looked out at the faces surrounding them—500 people who had never given up hope, even in the darkest moments of their ordeal. The cysts on their backs still pulsed with alien rhythm, a reminder that their own transformation might yet come to pass. But for now, in this moment, they had given humanity its greatest gift: the possibility of redemption.
"Tomorrow, we begin the real rescue mission," she announced. "Sector by sector, deck by deck, we'll reclaim this ship and everyone on it."
The cheers that echoed through the Central Core carried across the entire Meridian's Edge, a sound of joy and determination that hadn't been heard in these corridors for far too long.
In the depths of the ship, something heard those cheers and began to plan accordingly.
But that was tomorrow's problem. Tonight, hope had returned to the stars.