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in the void, they dwell
chapter eleven

Written by Alex Hera

“Freeze it,” said Adair.

The faceless creature descended from the ceiling, casting a black shadow on the reactor core. Bruno’s fingers flew over the keys of his console and the door behind the wayfarers slid open. As the god made its way to the ground, he pressed one final key – and a plume of cryofuel shot from the floor and straight at the creature. The party turned and ran as the pipe began to rupture, the hiss of cryofuel hot on their heels as they sprinted out of the door. They found themselves in a massive tunnel used for transportation, large enough to fit vehicles and huge pieces of equipment inside of. Windows staring out into space lined the walls as they sprinted for their lives. Behind them, they could hear the sound of ice crackling. Bruno dared to look over his shoulder to see if his plan had worked, and sure enough, the creature was shifting and morphing into different shapes to escape from the ice, parts of its flesh frozen solid and unable to shift. However, it soon twisted itself free, and the engineer focused straight ahead. A thundering noise came from behind them, heavy footsteps of a massive creature coming their way. Adair was the next to look, seeing a being with eight arms, made up of dark and tightly bound fibrous strands, its white face and humanoid body making up the center of it. It sprinted towards them, faster than she’d ever seen the creature go before. As the tunnel curved, it leapt onto the wall and then climbed its way onto the ceiling, holding itself upside down as it grew closer and closer…

“Bruno, can you seal that?!” Cassian yelled, spotting a bulkhead door in front of them, opening out into a cargo lift.

“Maybe!” he shouted back, fumbling with his datapad and trying to establish a link.

“Better hurry!” said Florian.

The being was gaining on them, though still quite far behind. Each of them passed the threshold and Bruno slammed his finger down on the screen of his pad. The bulkhead slammed shut, only moments before the being slammed into it with its full force. It backed up and leapt towards the door again, its eight arms stretching out wide, grasping at the door. It did this again and again, the rumbling and warping of metal echoing through the room each time it slammed into the door. Adair ran for the cargo lift controls, passing by a forklift, and switched it on, then pressed a button with an arrow pointing up.

“Everyone get on!” she shouted.

The large platform jerked upwards and the lift began to rise through the massive shaft running the vertical length of the station. The party scrambled to hop on, with Florian needing Cassian’s help to be lifted a few feet up as the lift travelled. Their feet landed on solid ground, just as the being burst through the cargo door. It scurried up the walls and leapt onto the rectangular platform with a thud. Its body was twisted and its face upside down, as its bent legs held it up sturdily. Bruno felt a shiver run down his spine. This felt so familiar.

Suddenly, a forklift slammed into the creature, piercing its skin and sending it flying off the edge. Adair leapt from the seat of the forklift as it tumbled over the edge and landed right on top of the creature, pinning it to the bottom of the shaft.

“Hopefully it won’t be bothering us for a while,” she said.

Bruno focused his attention back to his datapad.

“This isn’t bringing us straight to the bridge,” he said.

“As if a little bit of convenience was too much to ask for,” said Florian. “Where are we going?”

“Deck 3. The bigger issue is that the bridge is locked off. It seems like Ambrose is sealed in there and some sort of encoding… the same as the monolith… is preventing us from accessing the bridge any way except manually,” he said.

“What are our options?” asked Cassian.

“Well, I could try to decode the monolith. See if it tells us how to kill that thing,” said Bruno. “I took scans of it before we booked it out of there.”

“Or we message Ambrose. Convince her to let us in,” said Florian.

"Now who’s insane?” asked Adair.

“We could pretend to surrender. Or propose a truce,” said Cassian.

Art by Sage / HerbalSpecialTea