Alix knew that the worst thing she could do right now would be to stay and wait for the oncoming feeding frenzy.

Every plant in her vicinity was rapidly becoming overrun by the strange beetles that had been spreading madness throughout Kabir’s Crimson Forest. Their bodies glowed with the addictive hallucinogen that Alix herself had only just now gotten free of, and the scent of it was summoning every creature in the forest that had been unlucky enough to get a taste before.

It was about to be a rampage. It was going to be a mess of claws and fangs and stampeding hooves. Alix could well end up dead if she stayed rooted to her current spot.

So why couldn’t she make herself move?

“Uh, Alix?” Figaro squeaked from his spot on her shoulder. “Earth to Alix? We kinda have to get moving here . . .”

A shiver ran through Alix’s spine as she marched the procession of beetles up the tree to her right. She almost felt like she could smell them, a cloying scent drifting straight into her head.

“It’s about to be a beetle buffet, man! We’ve gotta go!”

Alix remembered how good it felt to have the wing fragment in her hand. How sharp it made her. The little rush every time she rubbed it against her fingers. She swallowed hard.

“This may sound surprising, Figaro,” said Alix. “But I think the last couple hours may not have been enough for me to be totally over my chemical addiction.”

“Oh hell no. . . tell me you’re not about to pop one of those bugs in your mouth.”

“Of course not! But what if I just rub one on my face a little for one teeny tiny second?”

“Alix!”

“Right, right, bad idea.” Alix forced herself to close her eyes, but the scent remained. “I . . . I don’t know if I can force myself to keep moving. It’s like I’ve been wandering the desert for a year and I just stumbled on an oasis. My whole body is screaming to touch one.”

“Let’s play a game, then,” Figaro said quickly. “It’s real easy. I’ll ask you a question, and if the answer is yes, you take a step forward.”

“Ok . . .” Alix clenched her hands into fists to keep them from reaching out. Her nausea had returned in full force. A few beetles fell from the branches onto her shoulder, making her head swim as Figaro hurriedly kicked them off.

“Do you want to get back to the station?” he asked.

Alix took a small step forward. A beetle crunched beneath her boot.

“Do you want to rub it in your coworkers' faces that you survived the wilderness of Deimos X by your wits, and make it so everyone on the station and this side of the galaxy knows you’re a certified badass?”

Another step. From all directions, the sounds of hooves and paws beating against the ground sounded as the beetles’ victims from around the forest began to close in.

“Do you want to see your friends again? Do you want to enjoy an ice cream bar while you watch the sunset? Do you want to know how your favorite TV serial ends? Do you want to travel to more planets, discover more new species to write about in the Compendium, and watch that goddamn Compendium become an interstellar bestseller?”

As Figaro spoke, Alix found herself taking bigger steps, gradually carrying her through the beetle swarm.

“All you have to do to leave this swarm behind is remember that all those things are a thousand times better than a stupid beetle,” said Figaro. “Everything you love and care about is on the other side.”

Alix walked faster and faster. She ignored the feeling of parvolope bodies hurtling past her. She ignored the wings that zipped past the top of her head. As she walked she soon found herself struggling against a current of snarling bodies, dodging all things reptilian and carnivorous and sharp-toothed, all rolling past her toward the beetle swarm like a living, breathing tsunami. She ignored the desperate yearning to join them, to be carried back by the wave. She forced herself to look ahead rather than at the alluring glow of the beetles, thinking of everything Figaro had said, letting herself imagine a warm cup of tea in her hand or watching the stars pass from the window of a starship.

Soon she was past the beetle swarm, ascending a hill and breathing a sigh of relief to be out of the storm. She could hear the racket from below as crazed creatures of the woods descended on the beetles.

Figaro looked behind them. “Goddamn, it’s a free-for-all down there!”

Alix couldn’t help but pause and look back. Down in the beetle swarm, the three-eyed howlers (as she planned to call them in their Compendium entry) were digging beetles out of the ground and lapping them up, pausing only to occasionally snap at the parvolopes that were trotting past them to lick beetles off the trees. Malars flew smack into branches as they dove for the beetles. A group of talozis screeched at each other as they fought over the larger beetles, hissing and scratching at each other’s faces. There was even a Giant treeboy lumbering through the chaos, far more gaunt and bleary-eyed than the one Alix had first met, blankly scraping clusters of beetles off branches with his claws. The scene only got worse as more beetle-addicted animals were drawn in. More fights broke out over the rapidly decreasing beetle supply. Blood spilled, hunks of fur and feathers went flying, the air echoed with howls, screams, and bellows.

“Ah, the beauty of nature,” said Figaro.

“I wonder if this is how it went down in grocery stores during the Great Oreo Shortage of 2065,” Alix mused. As she watched as an enraged talozi hurled one of the parvolopes into a tree and winced. “I can’t watch this. That was almost me down there.”

Alix turned her back on the sight and continued up the hill.

***

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

Alix and Figaro continued through the forest. Alix still had to imagine the comforts of the station every now and again to keep her mind of the sweet scent of the beetles, which faded the longer she went on. They stopped a few times to climb up the height of a tree and to ensure they were still going the right way. As the day wore on, the silver rectangle that was the station began to grow larger and larger.

“Do you think we’ll make it there by the end of the day?” asked Figaro.

“If we can keep up the pace,” Alix answered, dragging her feet. “And by ‘we’, I mean me. Must be nice hitching a ride this whole way.”

“Excuse you, Boss! It’s not my fault I got these adorable itty bitty feets.” Figaro waggled half his limbs in the air.

“You could roll some of the way.”

“Heavens no, on this uneven terrain? I’d only slow us down. Now hurry up so we can get back already! Ya!” Figaro smacked the side of Alix’s face repeatedly. “Giddyup!”

“Cut that out!”

“Git along, lil’ doggie!”

Alix flicked him playfully. “If you do that one more time, I’m zipping you up in my pocket the rest of the way.”

“Do your worst, Boss. I’m getting sick of this view anyhow,” said Figaro.

“It’s nice though,” said Alix, looking around. Without the influence of the wing fragment or the fear it had infused into her, she felt like she was seeing Kabir’s Crimson Forest with the same fresh eyes she’d had when she’d first landed on Deimos X. Everything was lush and in bloom. The red of the flora and canopy seemed less foreboding now, less like a warning sign and more like a declaration of vitality. Red trees grew tall and strong. Red flowers unfurled along red vines. Palm-sized, fuzzy black marsupials hopped between the silky leaves of red ferns, avians plucked off red-tipped branches for their nests, and red insectoids chirped their songs from the atop of the cushions of red mushrooms. These and other sights reminded Alix that Kabir’s Crimson Forest was wilderness only to her and the others who had come stomping through uninvited to plant their station and stamp the forest with a human name. To everything else here, it was simply home.

***

“Have you tried pinging the station again?” Alix asked Figaro a few hours later.

“Oh, just a few hundred times,” said Figaro, twirling a limb in the air. “I didn’t even get so much as another “return” message from them. We’re back to radio silence from them.”

“Man, there’d better be a damn good explanation for this. I just can’t buy that they’d ignore us like this.”

“Either something’s gone wonky on my side or something’s gone wonky on theirs,” said Figaro. “And if it is on theirs, then I say we sue!”

“What exactly would we even be suing them for?”

“Negligence? Incompetence? Breach of contract? There’s gotta be something!” Figaro rubbed his forelimbs together in a greedy gesture. “Asteria INC. is loaded. We could walk outta this with a down payment for a private starship.”

“Ugh, you know how much the maintenance costs for one of those?” Alix shook her head. “Almost as much as the team of lawyers one would need to sue a corporation as big as Asteria! Look, we’re not suing. We are reasonable, well-mannered people. First thing we’ll do is go in and assess the situation, see if there’s a good reason they didn’t take our messages. And if there’s not, we’ll raise hell the old-fashioned way, by kicking over chairs and stealing all the staplers.”

“Meh, I guess that works.” Figaro shrugged. “I don’t know if my comms system is jacked up, but my chronometer sure is, thanks to being shut off by the Aexons and stuck in the caverns all that time. I don’t know how long we’ve been gone, but I’m guessing you already missed those interstellar traders.”

“Oh, that’s right!” The memory flashed in Alix’s mind like lightning. Their arrival had spurred her into trying to capture a live Aexon in the first place, in hopes of netting a big enough bonus to buy something fancy off them for Lyle. She hadn’t thought about those traders in days. “Not like it matters. No way I could afford one of those wristwatches now anyway.”

“Well, I’m no fan of Lyle, but if you still want to impress him, I think I see something even nicer than a wristwatch,” Figaro said, pointing upward.

“Huh? Where?” Alix looked all around, seeing only red.

“Ah, your pitiful human eyes! I’ll just go get it. Wait here.” Figaro hopped from Alix’s shoulder to a nearby tree and scurried up into the foliage. He returned moments later, clutching a flower the size of Alix’s head. Its petals were a bright purple and blue, flecked with golden dots.

“You’re very welcome,” Figaro said with a bow.

Alix’s eyes shot wide as she took the flower from Figaro. “A Polyminia rosae? Oh my God, Fig, this is amazing! We’ve only ever managed to find three of these, and the last sample was lost in a lab accident before the botany department could finish their tests ”

“I know! I remembered Lyle bitching about it a while back. But now he’ll have a nice new sample to experiment on. Your botanist boytoy is going to go bananas when you give this to him,” said Figaro. “Which should be pretty soon, by the looks of it!”

Figaro pointed forward. Alix looked and saw that the station was just ahead, its silver walls shining from behind the red foliage. Alix’s heart leaped in her chest. Finally, after days of struggle, she had returned to human civilization. She felt like singing, crying, dancing a jig, or all three at once. Instead, she broke into a run, holding the Polyminia flower close to her chest as she made for the station.

Figaro clutched Alix’s hair as she ran. “Faster, faster! I’m finally gonna get to watch TV again!”

“And take a shower!” Alix said with a breathless grin as she kicked up the pace. The station loomed larger and larger with each step.

“And scroll mindlessly on the web!”

“And sleep in a real bed!”

“And charge my nanobatteries back to full!”

“And kiss Lyle!”

“I’ll leave that one to you.”

Another minute and Alix was finally in front of the steel doors of the station. It was all so blessedly familiar. Rectangular with two stories, squat like a silver frog nestled in the forest. Beside the double doors, black-tinted windows and security cameras lined the walls, and the doors themselves were equipped with a keypad.

Alix glanced around. Outside the station, all was quiet. None of her fellow researchers milled about or hung around outside like usual. That seemed odd.

“Huh. Everybody’s inside?” Figaro asked, his thoughts apparently mirroring hers.

“I guess so,” Alix said with a shrug. “Probably because of the heat.”

Alix walked up to the doors, a thrill running through her as she input the security code into the keypad. The pad flashed green and a buzzing sound indicated that the doors were unlocked. Alix broke into a wide grin as she pushed against the door, already imagining the looks on her coworkers’ faces when she came through to the other side.

Yet, when the door swung open, it revealed only a wide, empty hallway.

“What the hell?” Alix said as she stepped into the building, the door swinging shut again behind them. The inside of the station entrance looked the same as usual. Same white tiles, same blue walls, same ironic motivational cat poster plastered on the door of the HR office. But the usual hustle and bustle that characterized the entrance was absent. No one emerged from the many rooms lining the hallway, or from one of the other halls, or out the elevator or stairwell. There was no idle chatter as researchers walked in groups. No muffled talk from behind a door as a meeting commenced. No hapless scientist shouting at people to get out of the way as they transported a sample from one lab to another. Nothing but Alix, Figaro, and silence.

“Some welcome this is,” Figaro said, a trace of fear in his voice.

“Where the hell is everybody?” Alix began walking down the hall, ducking her head into labs and offices. All the equipment was still present, and even small personal effects still remained on desks or next to computers. The lights flickered in every room and hall. Static hissed and popped on the intercoms. The elevator dinged and the doors opened to reveal an empty compartment.

Alix and Figaro kept walking and looking, scouring the first floor and finding not a single soul. By the time they reached Rec Lounge 1, its cozy chairs and beanbags empty and its TV screen blank, a terrifying thought began to take root in Alix’s mind.

“Figaro,” she said as the robot scanned the desolate lounge. “I think the station is empty.”