The alien moved into the room with unsettling fluidity, as if it had been born in zero-g, turning and twisting with seemingly no preference for which direction its torso pointed.

At the sight, Kira felt a response from her suit: a rising rage as well as a sense of ancient offense.

Grasper! Wrongflesh manyform! Flashes of pain, bright as exploding stars. Pain and rebirth in an endless cycle, and a constant cacophony of noise: booms and cracks and shattering retorts. The pairing was not as it ought to be. The grasper did not understand the pattern of things. It did not see. It did not listen. It sought to conquer rather than to cooperate.

Wrongness!!!

This wasn’t what the xeno had expected from the summons! Fear and hate roared through Kira, and she didn’t know which was the suit’s and which was hers. The tension inside her snapped, and the skin of the xeno rippled and began to spike out, same as on Adra, needle-sharp spears jabbing in random directions. But this time, she felt no pain.

“Shoot it!” Carr shouted. “Shoot it, you fool! Shoot it!”

The grasper twitched, seeming to shift its attention between them. A strange whispering surrounded Kira, like a billowing cloud, and from it she felt currents of emotion: first surprise, and then in quick succession recognition, alarm, and satisfaction. The whispers grew louder, and then a switch seemed to flip in her brain and she realized she could understand what the alien was saying:

[[—and alert the Knot. Target located. Send all arms to this position. Consumption is incomplete. Containment and recovery should be possible, then we may cl—]]

“Self-destruct in T-minus five minutes. This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill.”

Carr swore and kicked himself over to the dead Marine and yanked on the man’s blaster, trying to free it from the corpse.

One of the laser-wielding tentacles shifted positions, the gelatinous muscles within flexing and relaxing. Kira heard a bang, and a white-hot spike of metal erupted from the side of the Marine’s blaster as a laser pulse hit it, sending the gun careening across the room.

The alien turned toward her. Its weapon twitched. Another bang, and a bolt of pain lanced her chest.

Kira grunted, and for a moment, she felt her heart falter. The spikes on the suit pulsed outward, but to no avail.

[[Qwon here: Foolish two-form! You profane the Vanished. Foulness in the water, this—]]

She scrabbled for the rungs of the ladder by the access hatch, trying to get away, trying to escape, even though there was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

Bang. Heat stabbed her leg, deep and excruciating.

Then a third bang, and a scorched crater appeared in the wall to her left. The suit had adapted to the laser frequency; it was shielding her. Maybe—

As if in a daze, Kira spun back around and, somehow, lifted the pistol, held it before her. The barrel of the gun wavered as she struggled to aim at the alien.