He got the first one open and crawled into the smaller space, turning back to dog the hatch out of habit before he stopped himself and left it open.

May need to get out of there in a hurry. Let’s leave a back door, just in case.

There was a ladder heading down, only now it headed off at an angle. Eric used it to control his slide as he dropped down to the lower level of the Odyssey’s keel. Three hatches later he let himself out, planting one foot on the wall and one on the floor as he looked around the immense space of the hangar deck he’d emerged on.

Most of the Odyssey had been evacuated before she, and he, went down in the fight, but not all of it. There was a twisted wreck of a machine that he recognized as an Archangel that had had its wings well and truly clipped. The once-sleek fighter would not fly again in this life.

Eric pushed it aside, moving up now in a crawl as he made his way up the awkward incline of the deck, heading for munitions, weapons, and the Museum. The magnetic boots built into his armor helped, thankfully, keeping him from sliding down into the darkness as he climbed. The enhanced senses of his armor kept updating him of the increased noises from above him, letting Eric know that the clock was ticking on his little mission.

Lyssa bobbed along with the powerboat, idly floating about fifty feet off the port side of the Odyssey’s keel. She’d moved far enough away not to be driven into the metal reef by waves or wind while she waited.

It was the barest hint of motion that caught her eye, and Lyssa half turned toward it before her mind caught up with her and she recognized what exactly she was looking at.

It was crawling out over the metal beam of the Odyssey’s keel, tearing a piece of the metal apart like it was pulling a fluff of cotton candy from the rest of the ball. She watched as the creature hunched over the prize for a moment, then seemed to gobble it down in a series of motions that reminded her of a mix between a spider and a snake feeding.

Lyssa slowly dropped down behind the controls of the powerboat, eyes not leaving the horror for an instant. She couldn’t bring herself to look away as warring impulses tore at her. Part of her wanted to turn, to run, to hide in the dark if she could. The thing she was looking at triggered every primal urge to terror she had. Every core facet of her mind and body was screaming at her to get the hell away.

The more rational part of her mind, the thinking brain, told her to watch and to learn. It told her not to look away because knowledge may be the only thing that saved her life, and she wouldn’t learn by hiding her head in the sand.