Hunger of the Void

DECLINE

DE la Vega winced in pain, tenderly holding his side.

The wound was nothing. The software loaded on the screen and he punched in his ID password - a three-dimensional image of NOV-A and the temperatures.

Cold spots originated from both the top and bottom of the ship. The monitors indicated structural damage and engine impairment.

De la Vega typed furiously. He couldn't indulge by taking a second to dwell on the chaos that was happening - if he stopped working, fixing, planning - the anger would seize him again.

He didn't want to become its prisoner.

The heat map activated. De la Vega's chest thumped.

One by one, warm-colored images began flooding the blueprint model of the ship. A mass of yellow and orange clearly indicated the seven of them together. No cause of concern.

However, the temperature levels fluctuated.

De la Vega's stomach jerked. The heat map displayed activity in a range of areas throughout the ship: the medical bay, storage, even the living quarters.

Up until then, he had been oblivious to the people crowding behind him.

Castro breathed shakily. "They're everywhere."

"Hold on." De la Vega authorized an action on the screen.

Tiny red dots appeared on the map. Attached to each dot was a surname. The trackers in their arms had been activated.

Clustered together were the names:

ATTWOOD. CASTRO. DE LA VEGA. HELLER. PAVLOVIC. SINCLAIR. ZIEGEL.

ZHAO was not moving. The dot remained back in the exact location where she had been abandoned.

"Can you bring up the cameras?" Ziggy suggested quietly.

De la Vega said the truth.

"I don't know if I can bear it."

Nothing could be heard apart from the low hum of technology. The brightness of the screens cast ugly shadows behind the figures stood in paralyzed silence.

No one could have foreseen the traumatic events that had occurred in the past few hours. This moment that had allowed them to stop and ruminate was proving more harmful as every minute passed.

At least when you were running for your life, you weren't concerned about the long-term.

"Wait a minute..." Castro said.

The tracking dot labelled FINCH was on the move.

Surrounded by a warm-colored mass, the dot blinked as it navigated the corridors. Turning the corners, it paused. Then, surely, it began moving again.

When the realization hit them, it was horrible. A gut-wrenching stab that trapped one's breath painfully in the throat.

There was only one conceivable explanation.

And it did not include Finch reassembling her body and rising from the dead.

The tiny chip - which had been embedded deep in the flesh of every member of NOV-A on day one - was now travelling while in the stomach of another being.

"I'm going to be sick," choked Anna. Her short trip to the wastepaper basket proved she wasn't lying.

Meanwhile, consciousness had been an unreliable state for Laika.