“No…”

“Yes,” Alessicka said. “And you finally snapped yesterday. You knew how wrong it was, how terrible what you were doing was, so your mind built a fantasy. A fantasy about a monster that tried to kill Carly… but it was you all along.”

Jen pressed a hand to her cheek and found it was wet. Her body was shivering. They were lying to her, she knew, trying to chip away at her resolve and make her doubt herself.

“Do you remember what you did to be sent to this station?” Carly asked. Her lids were half-closed, and her voice was a low, comforting murmur. “Do you remember?”

“I—I talked back to a superior—”

“No, Jen, you tried to strangle your superior. You always protested your innocence. Your mind washed it over. You couldn’t stand to think of yourself as a killer.”

“No—no—”

“What will the relief unit from Perros think when they arrive and find you’ve locked both of your team members in a room with no food or water?”

“But I haven’t…” Jen stammered. “We gave you food.”

Carly waved her hand at the room. “No you didn’t. It’s just your mind telling you that you did.”

Jen stared at the ground, the shelves, and the boxes, trying to find the packets of food and bottles of water she’d passed through the door. We did give Carly food, didn’t we?

“You see?” Carly said, her voice a sweet song in Jen’s ears, her eyes drawing the other woman back to drown in them. “You can’t trust your mind. But you can trust us. We want to help you, Jen. Let us out before the relief team arrives, and we can protect you, look after you… make sure no one hurts you.”

“Let us help,” Alessicka whispered. She was standing so close to the glass that her breath fogged it. “We want to help you.”

“It’s okay, Jen. Just open the doors.”

“Open them, Jen.”

“It’s okay.”

“You can trust us.”

Jen found her hand hovering over the red button that would unseal the airlock. Her body was shaking, and her head was foggy. Tears dripped off her chin as she stared at her teammates, the two people she’d relied on, cared for, and watched over for nearly three years. They smiled at her so warmly and so kindly that she knew denying them would be insanity.

Her hand pressed the button. The doors drew open with a gentle whoosh, and it felt good to give in, to stop resisting, and to stop fighting her friends. That’s what they were—friends. They walked through the doorway, came to her with open arms, and embraced her. The women held her still as she cried, stroked her hair, and told her she’d done the right thing.

Then Jen looked at Alessicka and saw a hairline fracture running down from her scalp, between her eyes, down her nose, and over her lips, chin, and neck before disappearing behind her shirt’s collar. Jen frowned at it, confused and mesmerised. It began to part, splitting open, peeling the girl’s smiling face back to show the pulsing, black mass inside her. Jen tried to pull away, but they held her firmly. She looked at Carly and saw she’d mimicked her partner; her skin was coiling back in on itself as the black tendrils reached out of their shell, tasting the air, and stretching towards Jen’s face…