Now it was Jen’s turn to play the silence game.

“You’d be right.” Carly was speaking so quietly that Jen had difficulty hearing her. “Before this, I was in charge of a mineral processing plant. Big place, dozens of people under me. There was this one conveyer belt that was designed to crush rocks into gravel, and I took a walkway above it every morning on the way to my office.”

She glanced to the side, and her eyes went hazy as she relived the memory. “One man there—I don’t remember his name; Jon or James or something—tried to talk to me every morning about this idea he had. A way to streamline the plant. He’d follow me from the front door until I locked myself in my office. Tried to corral me every lunchtime, too. His plans were flawed and wouldn’t have worked in a million years, but no matter how often I told him that, he’d keep on, like a fly you can’t catch, chasing me every morning. And eventually, I couldn’t stand it any longer.”

Jen swore under her breath, and Carly smiled, her dark eyes flicking back to watch her companion’s face with relish. “You can guess what happened, can’t you? He was still alive when he hit the conveyer belt, but the crushers took care of that pretty quickly. He painted the floor red.” She laughed and licked her lips. “I told them he slipped. No one saw me push him, so they couldn’t accuse me, but they guessed. And they punished me in the most effective way they could: they sent me here.”

“Enough,” Jen said. She was shaking.

Carly had never spoken like that before. She was sometimes brash, rude, or reckless, but Jen had never seen such maliciousness come from her.

“Just thought you’d like to know,” Carly said sweetly before closing her eyes and pretending to sleep.

Jen turned on her heel and marched towards the bedroom. Her head was throbbing from stress and frustration. I need some time-out. A chance to centre myself, away from Carly.

The bedroom was dark and cool. She paused in the doorway, listening to Alessicka’s breathing from the bed at the back of the room, using the sound to reassure herself. She didn’t bother changing—she didn’t expect to sleep more than a few hours—so she crawled into her bed fully clothed.

Jen didn’t fall asleep for a long time. Images of the black pulsing creature kept drifting across her closed eyelids. She saw Carly, too bold for her own good, snatched into the air. Then the tendrils latched onto and tore off her faulty helmet. Jen heard her scream. She was running towards her, but the faster she tried to move, the less progress she seemed to make. A tendril forced itself into Carly’s mouth; she struggled against it then bit it, and ink-like blood burst from it to coat her face.

A loud bang pulled Jen out of the nightmare, and she sat up in bed, drawing in thick, ragged breaths. Sweat coated her body as though she’d just finished running a marathon, and her blanket had fallen to the floor. As she sat still, trying to rein in her thundering heart, she realised something was wrong: she couldn’t hear Alessicka’s breathing anymore.