“Gotcha.” Not far ahead was a set of doors set into the dark concrete wall. They were white and modern, with clear Perspex windows. The doors were shockingly, achingly different from the surrounding hallways. There was no handle, but a keypad next to them. “Do we need a code?”

“Yeah, hold on a moment.” There was a rustle of papers, then a pause, and Nic yelled, “Not that way, Franc. Go right! Right!”

There was a moment of quiet, then a yell extended into a shriek, and Mitzi held her breath and clenched her fists as terror for her missing team member sent her stomach roiling. She could hear the sounds of a scuffle then the roar of the flamethrower followed by silence.

“Franc?” she whispered. He didn’t answer. She looked at the symbols at the bottom of her screen. Franc’s icon was flashing red, and the little note beside it read “damaged.”

Then suddenly, Franc’s voice came through her headset, breathless and weak but Franc nonetheless. “I’m okay. It’s okay.”

Mitzi closed her eyes in relief. “You sure?”

“Yeah. One of them jumped me from behind a door. I killed it, but jeeze, it messed up the suit pretty badly.”

“And you’re not hurt?”

“Winded, definitely. I’ll probably have some lovely bruises tomorrow. But the inside padding seems to be reinforced, and they couldn’t get through it.”

“Thank goodness for that,” Mitzi sighed. “Get Nic to direct you somewhere safe.”

“But first,” Nic said, “let’s get you through that door. The code is five-five-eight-two-zero-six-zero-nine. Got that, doll?”

Mitzi punched the numbers into the keypad. Her gloved fingers were too thick to hit them properly, but she managed, and the doors drew apart with a quiet whoosh. Harsh white light washed over them, and Mitzi had to squint against it until the night vision turned off.

“Follow the passageway straight for a while. You’ll need a personnel code to get through a few other doors, so use nine-two-five-seven. That’s the commanding officer code. It should get you through everything. Let me know when you get to the big reception-looking area.”

His line went quiet then, and Mitzi knew he’d silenced their connection so he could give instructions to Franc. She led her team forward, into the new section of the building.

It was like stepping into another world. White tile and white panelling had replaced the concrete. The fluorescent lights were still on, probably thanks to a backup generator that protected the most delicate and valuable part of the station.

There was something unnatural about it; the space was clinical and strangely hostile in a way that Mitzi doubted it would have felt before the parasites’ arrival. Large glass windows were set into the wall to their right. Mitzi could see labs beyond, where white chairs sat behind white tables covered in glass vials and petri dishes. A machine was moving in the background, rotating a glass tube, its light blinking red in a request for assistance that would never be answered.