Alix went cold as she looked at Figaro, still nestled in his charge port, the red glow of his eyes the only light in her quarters. He continued to drone the same word over and over.
“RETURN. RETURN. RETURN. RETURN . . .”
His voice had none of its usual pep or emotion, and barely even seemed like his. His whole body was utterly still. It was as if Figaro had been replaced by a puppet, a mindless automaton whose sole purpose was to utter that one word.
“RETURN. RETURN. RETURN. RETURN . . .”
“Figaro!” Alix snapped her fingers inches away from the little robot. “Figaro, snap out of it!”
“RETURN. RETURN. RETURN. RETURN . . .”
Outside in the hall, a racket was building. She could hear hurried footsteps, confused shouts, and screaming loud waves of static rolling from the hall intercoms.
“RETURN. RETURN. RETUR—get—RE—get me—”
One of Figaro’s limbs began to twitch, as though he were fighting for control of himself.
“Figaro? What’s happening?” Alix felt beads of sweat drip down her forehead as the temperature seemed to rise again.
“RETUR—get me—RET—out!”
Alix hurriedly discharged Figaro from the charging port, yanking out the cable from his underside and pulling his legs from the port’s holding cells. She held him in her palms. “There!”
Figaro’s eyes blinked red once, then switched to green. He shivered.
“Talk to me buddy,” said Alix. “Are you okay?”
“No I’m not okay!” Figaro cried. “I just got fucking bodysnatched!”
“Bodysnatched? By what?”
“Hell if I know! Whatever it was got me through the cable. I got fed some sort of data package through it, and the next thing I know, my vocal system was hijacked! It was like being a zombie!” Figaro curled up into a ball in Alix’s hand. “Will you think I’m a wuss if I ask you to hold me tighter?”
“Not at all.” Alix gave him a comforting squeeze before gently lowering him on her shoulder. “Come on, we have to go outside and see what’s going on.”
The room was still so dark that Alix had to feel her way to her door. When she opened it, she found the hallway was also dark. A few white beams of light swung through the darkness as the other occupants in her wing turned on flashlights. One walked over to her as she stepped into the hall, and it wasn’t until he got close that Alix realized it was Nick.
“Here we go again,” he drawled. “Only worse this time.”
Freezing cold air began blasting from the vents below them. The volume on the intercom static grew louder.
“This has been happening a lot?” Alix asked, a chill running through her as the wing began to grow icy. “Total blackouts, I mean.”
“Oh, yeah. Just another element of the new station chaos,” Nick snorted. “Figures we get a bad one when we’ve all got the day off.”
“Everyone got the day off?”
“Yeah, to mourn you, dummy.”
“Oh, right.”
Figaro hunched down in the crook of Alix’s neck, trembling. “How long will it last?”
“No idea,” Nick told him. His brows were furrowed, and a worry-line creased his forehead. “When they first started, it was only seconds, a minute or two at most. Last one was an hour.”
A mechanical voice bled through the intercom status with the now-familiar chant. “RETURN . . . RETURN . . . RETURN . . .”
“Gah! I can’t listen to this!” Figaro wailed. “Shoot the intercom!”
The volume turned up to deafening heights, and Alix had to plug her ears with her fingers to lessen the pain of the noise. Several others that she could see followed suit, hands over their ears as the drone continued to grow louder, like the voice of a god admonishing them. Nick groaned and fell to his knees.
A sharp crack sounded on the intercom, and the chant stopped. The AC turned down. The lights flickered on just as the windows turned the tint level down to zero, unleashing the full light of the setting sun into the wing.
Alix blinked rapidly against the sudden glare. Once her eyes adjusted, she caught several different expressions gracing the faces of the others in the hall. Annoyance, confusion, pain. But underlying each one was a trace of fear.
Nick slowly rose from his feet. He swept his locs from his eyes and winced before shooting a venomous glare at the intercom. He turned to Alix.
“We need to catch up,” he said, catching her eye. “You’ve missed a lot since you’ve been gone. How’s about a drink in Rec Lounge 2?”
“I think that sounds like a good idea,” said Alix. She then remembered the time, and her planned meeting with Director Werner. “I’ll meet you there in an hour.”
***
“. . . and that’s everything that happened, right up to me arriving back here,” Alix said, finishing her report of the events surrounding the Aexons and bioluminescent beetles. She sat in a folding chair in Director Werner’s office, in front of his white plastic desk. Figaro sat on her shoulder, silent and sullen since the blackout.
On the other side of the desk, Director Werner stared at her with his face in his hands and wide eyes.
“Oh my God,” he rasped.
“Yeah . . .”
“Oh, no,” Director Werner moaned. His head slowly sank until his face was down on the desk. “Oh n-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o.”
Alix thought she could see the poor man fighting back a heart attack. Part of her wanted to give him a comforting pat on the back, but she instead simply sat awkwardly in the chair, eyes looking everywhere but her boss. Director Werner’s office was sparsely decorated. Outside of his desk, chair, and her folding chair, the only other features were an old filing drawer, a window looking out to the eastern stretch of the forest, and a shelf to hold his collection of souvenir shot glasses. As Director Werner let out a quiet sob, Alix busied herself reading the glasses. There was one from Phaethon City of Venus, and Ceres of Mars, glasses from Tokyo and New Tokyo, Mega Fun World, New York—
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“Alix!” Director Werner blurted, his eyes bloodshot. “Do you have any idea how bad this is?”
“Um, very?”
“VERY!” Director Werner shot up from his desk and began pacing the office. “This planet is slated to become a colony! Everything is already in the works! We have hundreds of colonists already screened and preparing to move here in a year! Do you have any idea how much money Asteria INC. has poured into Deimos X?”
“A lot?” Figaro ventured quietly.
“A WHOLE LOT!” Director Werner flailed his arms wildly, then ran his hands shakily through his hair. “This planet already being host to a native, sentient species throws, oh, I don’t know, ten thousand fucking wrenches into HQ’s plans. We’re gonna have the Interstellar Collective right up our ass. Good God, and the optics of this, what will the public say . . .”
Alix tried to talk him down. “Look, the Aexons can be reasoned with. I’m sure that they’d be willing to work out an arrangement. Asteria doesn’t have to nix the colony.”
Director Werner continued to pace, still frantic. “Not to mention beetles making half the damn forest go rabid, and the station itself crumbling . . . I’m gonna be fired . . .”
“It’s not like it’s your fault!” Alix told him. “HQ can’t just pin the blame on you!”
“Wanna bet?” Director Werner collapsed back into his chair. He flinched as the office lights flickered on and off. His face darkened. “I might not be able to control the bullshit out there, but I damn well can control the bullshit in here.”
Director Werner triple-tapped his desk, and the desk’s center switched on into an interactive interface, a blue square crowded with icons. He tapped the phone icon and messaged a handful of groups off the contacts list.
“If you get this message, report to my office ASAP. We’re going to find out what the hell is wrong with this station, even if we have to stay up all night to do it.”
Director Werner took his finger off the icon and sighed heavily. “Thank you, Alix, that will be all.”
Alix rose from her chair. “Sorry I had to be the bearer of bad news, Director.”
“We would have had to find out soon enough anyhow, I’m sure. And Alix,” Director Werner said, eyes briefly flitting up from his screen as she paused at the door. “Try not to get kidnapped by rodents again.”
Alix shot him a thumbs-up as she left. “I’ll do my best, sir!”
***
“You were right, Alix. This is a way better spot than the rec lounge,” said Nick.
Alix clinked her bottle against Nick’s and took a sip beneath the stars. From their spot sitting on the edge of the station roof, they could see the entirety of the nightscape. The hum of nocturnal insectoids sounded from the surrounding trees. The three of them had spent an hour there, trading stories about the Aexons and the recent unraveling of the station’s systems.
“I needed some fresh air. The past few nights of sleeping in the great outdoors must have gone to my head,” said Alix. She looked up, searching the sky for Orion the Hunter. It made her think of her dream of Lyle in the forest. It sent a pang through her heart. She shoved her thoughts of heartbreak away, not wanting them to ruin her time with Nick. “What about you, Figaro?”
“It’s all the same to me,” grumbled Figaro. He was sitting on her knee. “Death traps out in the woods, death traps inside the station. This stupid roof is probably the last safe spot on the planet.”
Nick laughed and patted Figaro. “I think I agree with you, Fig. Deimos X is wearing thin on me, too.”
“It is?” Alix asked. She took another swig from her bottle. It was a sweetened, non-alcoholic beer. Real alcohol was banned from the station.
“Yeah. Maybe it was you and Figaro going missing, or the station’s problems, or something else, but I’ve got the itch to get moving again.” Nick said. He swirled his drink idly, looking out at the forest beyond. “It’s been a long few months. Contract’s up in a few weeks. I’m not going to renew. What about you?”
Alix froze up, caught off guard. “Huh. I don’t know, actually. I forgot that was coming up. I haven’t really given it much thought.”
“Well, I’ll tell you my vote,” said Figaro. “If they don’t get the station fixed by the time our contract’s up, we book it to another star system.”
“Smart bot.” Nick nodded at Figaro approvingly. “If Asteria can’t even keep a station running smoothly, I doubt their colony will be much to speak of. And stars know, I don’t want to be anywhere near the inevitable mess with the Aexons.”
“You both make good points,” Alix conceded. She took another sip, savoring the sweetness on her tongue. “I mean, I normally don’t think twice about this sort of thing. This is the longest contract I think I’ve ever had, the longest I’ve stayed in one place since University. It feels weird, but I’ve almost gotten used to this place. Sort of. In some ways. I’ve made some friends here, at least.”
“Meh. It’s got a pretty view, I guess,” Figaro grumbled. “The station was nice until it went ass-backwards.”
“Oh, come on, you two.” Nick shot them both a wry grin. “I know you guys. You’re explorers, adventurers. You’ll get bored if you stay on the same planet for another four months.”
Figaro jabbed a limb at Nick. “If you think getting dragged to Ratlantis and running from delirious parvolope hordes is boring, I don’t want to find out what you consider exciting.”
“Look, I don’t want to push you one way or another,” Nick said, holding his hands up. “But I’ll just throw this out there: I got messaged yesterday by a new outpost on a planet called Valkyrie 2B9. They’ve got two open positions for temp contractors to help them out while they wait for a permanent team to be assembled. It’s way out in wild space, completely unexplored. The photos they sent me will take your breath away. Take a look.”
Nick whipped out his handscreen and pulled up a photo for Alix and Figaro to see. Alix gasped.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” she said, stunned by the mesmerizing landscape in the photo.
Figaro’s eyes extended right up to the screen. “It’s incredible!”
Nick winked and slid the screen pack into his pocket. “Just something to think about.”
“Huh . . .” Alix bit her lip. “Well, it’s late and I’m sleep-deprived. I’ll interrogate you more about this tomorrow.”
Alix moved Figaro to her shoulder. She and Nick both rose and stretched, then walked back to the hatch door that led back down to the stairwell outside the second-level halls. The three were just about to say goodnight and part ways when they were interrupted by a racket from the level below.
“Wonder what all the shouting is about,” Alix said as the voices rose and bickered. Every cell in her body wanted to rest, but curiosity drove her to descend down the stairs. Nick followed behind her, apparently curious as well.
They followed the voices down to the control center in the middle of the first level. The control center was a small, circular hub hosting the necessary central hardware for integral station systems. At the moment, a tech team of four was crowded around a large metal panel at the front, arguing with Director Werner.
“Taking this server stack apart could cause even more damage to the comms system!” one of them snapped at him, folding her arms. “We don’t have the right equipment to ensure that—”
“The comms system is getting worse by the day as it is,” Director Werner snapped back. He glanced behind him and caught sight of Alix, Figaro, and Nicky. He nodded at Alix. “Take a look at Alix, here. Failing comms are the reason we didn’t even know she was alive. If we have to take everything in this damn hub apart to keep that from happening again, then we’re doing it. Now.”
Alix walked in closer to watch as the reluctant techs bent down and began unscrewing the panel. “I’m guessing another round of diagnostic tests didn’t get you any answers?”
Director Werner shook his head tersely.
Nicky whistled behind Alix as the panel came off, revealing a second panel of shimmering paths, wires, and gold-plated chips. “Pretty machinery.”
Figaro huffed. “My motherboard is a tad more elegant, but it’s fine, I suppose.”
One of the techs frowned as they undid another set of screws on the second panel and began to pry it off. “We really shouldn’t be—”
He stopped short, struck silent by the sight behind the second panel. In fact, everyone went silent. They all stared at the third panel in shock.
The third panel was much like the second, with its array of chips, bridges, and wires. Only unlike the second, half these features could barely be seen beneath the glittering black mold that was creeping steadily across it. The mold had a strange texture that seemed part fuzz, part tar, and it seemed thick enough to grab by handfuls.
Newly exposed to the light of the hub, the mold grew rapidly, spreading over the panel until it was enveloped entirely.
And then the mold spread more. And more, and more, until it was creeping beneath Alix’s feet.