*Hurry it up. The Wallfish is almost here.*

“Roger. I—”

*Oh shi—* said Falconi, and static filled the line. A second later, the ship tilted around her, and the bulkheads creaked and snapped with alarming violence.

Kira stopped. “What? What is it?… Falconi? Nielsen?” She tried several more times, but neither of them answered.

Dread welled up inside Kira. Cursing under her breath, she tightened her grip on Trig and continued along the corridor, moving even faster than before.

A flicker of motion at the far end of the passage caused her to grab a ridge on the wall and freeze. A mess of jumbled shadows had appeared in the facing intersection, and whatever cast them was moving closer.…

Desperate, Kira looked for a place to hide. The only option was a shallow alcove with a coral-like structure directly across from her in the hall.

She pushed herself over to the alcove and tucked Trig and herself behind the coral. Trig’s stiff, shell-encased body bumped against the bulkhead, and she stiffened, hoping the sound wasn’t loud enough to attract attention.

Insectile chittering drifted toward her, growing louder now. Louder.

… Louder.

Kira pressed against the back of the alcove. Don’t see me. Don’t see me. Don’t—

Four nightmares moved into view. Three of them were much like she’d seen before: raw-skinned mutations that crept along the deck upon four and six legs respectively, their fang-laden snouts swinging back and forth as they searched for prey. The fourth nightmare was different. It was humanoid, with only one pair of legs, and arms that began as segmented lengths of carapace and then transitioned into tentacles without suckers. Its elongated head had deep-set eyes as blue as Falconi’s and a mouth with tiny, moving mandibles that looked sharp enough to bite through steel. An armored lump between its legs hinted at some sort of genitalia.

The creature was frighteningly alert; it kept glancing around, checking corners, making sure no one was creeping up on them. There was an intelligence to it that Kira hadn’t sensed among the other nightmares. And something more: the skin on its plated torso shimmered in a way that seemed uncomfortably familiar, although she couldn’t quite figure out why.…

A fast chitter came from the humanoid, and the three other nightmares responded by forming a tight knot around it.

Despite her overriding concern with protecting Trig and herself, Kira was intrigued. They hadn’t seen any evidence of hierarchy among the nightmares so far. If the humanoid was one of their leaders, then … maybe killing it would disrupt the others.

No. Attracting attention would just cause more problems. Don’t see me. Don’t see me.…

It took all her self-control to hold still as the nightmares approached. Every instinct toward self-preservation urged her to leap out and attack before they spotted her, but the more rational part of her counseled patience, and for whatever reason, she listened.

And the nightmares didn’t see her.

As they hurried past, she smelled them: a burnt, cinnamon-like scent laced with a sickening mix of shit and putrefaction. Whatever they were, the creatures weren’t healthy. Two of the beast-like nightmares glanced in her direction as they passed by. Their eyes were tiny and red-rimmed and wept drops of yellowish fluid.