It took a long time for Kin to process what was happening. His face was on a piece of paper on a derelict station full of monsters that were trying to eat him. And those monstershad referred to him as inhuman.

Kin started to feel faint.

Why was he here? And why was he “UNACCOUNTED”?

The angry red letters seemed to reach out to him. They seemed to accuse him of some wrong, seemed to promise, we can’t find you now. But we will, Kin, we will.

And if his photo was here, it meant that he had something to do with the monsters plaguing his life, in both waking and sleeping. And more chillingly, it vastly increased the chances that the thing that smiled wasn’t mistaken when it called out to him.

Kin felt an overwhelming urge to get out of this place.

He backtracked and turned into a side corridor marked “EXIT”, wasting no time in getting the hell out of this spiderlike web of mystery that he was drowning. The rusted (why did that keep coming back?) walls seemed to press down on him, trying to trap him here forever in the murky depths of not-knowing, coming closer and closer, crushing him down, down, down...

Kin kept moving.

After winding through several turns, Kin opened back out into the long tube that he had been using to move quickly through the station. From here, he could see much further than he could in the claustrophobic confines of the station.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Something darted in the corner of his vision.

Kin turned and yelled.

It was the scuttling thing, the thing that had stolen his mother’s face.

Fumbling for the pressure pistol before realising it was inoperational, Kin opted for his knife instead. The scuttling thing closed the distance between him and it with terrifying speed, crawling upside-down in defiance of every law of physics. Kin waited for it to come closer, then lashed out with his knife.

Nothing.

It was gone.

“What are you doing, Kin?”

Kin’s head began to itch inside, and he clawed at his skull to try and relieve the feeling.

“Kin, what are you doing?”

“Thing...mother’s face...where?”

“It’s not real.”

“I saw it, Mion.”

“I said it isn’t real, Kin. Get a grip.” Mion’s voice was cold. “Your little tryst with that huge organism left you with less than three days of oxygen.”

“It was there.”

“It isn’t! Now MOVE, Kin! Do you want to die here?” Kin mistook the desperation in Mion’s voice for anger and derision, and snapped.

“I said I FUCKING saw it Mion! I saw it right there! It’s no less real than you, who’s just a voice in a damn box! How do I know you’re real, too? How do I know you’re not just a sound in my head? How do I know everything isn’t all in my head?”

Mion went silent. Then she spoke again, this time sounding smaller, and...hurt? “I’m sorry, Kin. I just wanted you to be safe.”

“Yeah.” Kin’s voice was husky as the itching sensation went away. “I’m sorry, too. That was mean.”

“Kin?”

“Yeah?”

“While you were looking around in the room with the monitors, my scanners detected...something.” Mion paused, her vocabulator sifting for the right words.

“It was a smokescreen. A signature of sorts emitted by an engine running calculations fast enough to be sentient. Not sapient yet, but sentient like me.”

“There is something else here.”

Kin cocked his head. “Mmm. Do you think it can help us get out?”

“My guess is that it’s the system mainframe. If we can access its servers, we can use it to unlock an escape pod. If that doesn’t work, I can rig it up to broadcast a distress signal.”

“Where?”

“Further up. In the first Sphere.”