“I don’t mean to sound dramatic, but I feel that the only reasonable solution is to throw the whole station away,” said Figaro.

Alix rolled her eyes as she zipped up her jumpsuit. She extended her arm to Figaro so he could climb up to her shoulder from her nightstand. “Oh, sure, easily done. We’ll just abandon the whole planet forever and call it a day.”

“I’m glad you agree.”

“Figaro, come on.” Alix snapped her utility belt around her waist and left her quarters, carrying their conversation out into the hallway. The window tinting was at zero, so the morning light poured into the wing unabated, washing the walls in a golden glow. She walked toward the nearby stairwell. “Of all the dangerous and terrifying things we’ve had to deal with in our career, glittery mold is pretty low on the list.”

“Maybe for you! But I’m sure that disgusting gunk had something to do with my body-snatching incident.” Figaro folded two limbs. “I’m not getting anywhere near my charging port again until the station is completely cleansed of it.”

“It wasn’t a body snatching, it was a comms malfunction that just screwed with your systems for a few minutes,” Alix told him. She started down the stairs toward the first level.

“And how exactly did a comms malfunction do that?”

“I don’t know, but the self-diagnostic you ran last night didn’t find anything wrong, right?” Alix said. “So it didn’t leave any lasting effects. It was just a little blip.”

“I guess,” Figaro grumbled.

They arrived at the first level and exited the stairwell, heading straight for the central hub. After last night’s discovery of the strange, tarry mold that had infected the comms servers and who knew what else, the hub had been placed into a sort of quarantine. Its doorway was now sealed behind a rectangular polyethylene tent, and yellow tape stamped with the words ‘BIOHAZARD’ had been stuck around the perimeter of the circular chamber.

Waiting in front of the sealed-off door of the hub was a group of three: Director Werner, with one hand on a cart full of biohazard suits and full-face respirator masks. Maisie, her curly brown hair wrapped in a bun and her eyes alight with excitement. And then finally, the person Alix wanted to see the least since her funeral, Lyle.

Lyle stiffened slightly as Alix walked up, not meeting her eyes. His hair was tied back messily. He had circles under his eyes, as though he hadn’t slept well the night before. He still looked beautiful.

“Finally, something interesting!” Maisie rubbed her hands together deviously. “I heard from one of the techies that there’s some nasty, gorgeous stuff in there.”

“You’re only half-right,” said Figaro.

Director Werner frowned. “That ‘gorgeous stuff’ is destroying the station. I want you all to figure out what the hell it is and, more importantly, how to get rid of it.”

Figaro raised a limb. “So why the hell do Alix and I have to be here for that? Get the rest of the botany bozos or microbiologists in here.”

Director Werner shot Figaro an annoyed look before addressing Alix. “You and your robot have been farther out of mapped territory than anyone else on this station. We’ve never seen this . . . whatever it is before. I was hoping your exploits might lend you some insight that we might not be able to glean from our own experience. Was I mistaken?”

“Not at all, sir,” said Alix, ignoring Figaro’s indignant huff. She sauntered over to his cart and grabbed a respirator mask and biohazard suit. “And anyway, I’ve conducted my share of research on microorganisms, so this ain’t my first rodeo. This’ll be a breeze.”

“Good to hear.” Director Werner glanced back at the hub with a slight grimace. “I’ll leave you three to it, then. Report back at my office with a status update by the day’s end.”

He walked off quickly, clearly anxious to put as much distance between himself and the infested hub as possible.

Alix and the others pulled the biohazard suits over their clothes. Alix and Lyle zipped up in silence as Maisie began chattering about what awaited in the hub, already throwing out guesses as to what the glittering monstrosity might be. Alix tried to listen politely, but she was hyper-aware of Lyle next to her, as though his very presence beside her carved a space out of the air, and tugged on her with a gravitational pull. He had ignored her messages. He had offered zero explanation for breaking things off with her, which really was the meanest thing.

Just say why, damn it, she thought at him, as if he could hear it if she thought it loudly enough. I could move on if I at least knew why.

But alas, if Lyle was a mindreader, then he must have hit the telepathic ‘block’ button. He didn’t look her way as he slipped a respirator mask over his face. He picked up the steel case that had been sitting by his feet and nodded toward the hub door. “Are we all ready?”

“Yep!” Maisie said, bouncing on her heels.

“Yes,” said Alix.

“As ready as I get to fucking be, apparently!” Figaro snapped, waving his limbs in the air. “Where’s my PPE, huh? I don’t see anything in my size!”

Maisie, gripping her own steel case, cocked her head at Alix. “Man, you sure got a fussy robot! What’s a robot even need PPE for? It’s not like it can breathe in spores or whatever.”

“Excuse you, lady, but I saw that stuff chewing up the damn comms server boards!” said Figaro, jabbing a limb in her direction. “Who says it couldn’t do the same to me?”

He had a good point. Alix was about to suggest Figaro simply wait for her outside, or else hang out on her shoulder under the biohazard suit, when Lyle finally turned her way.

“You’re absolutely right, Figaro,” said Lyle, looking at the robot rather than Alix. His eyes were kind behind the plastic mask. Alix thought she could see a trace of a smile. “Your safety is just as important. I think I have something that might work.”

Lyle bent down and opened up his case. He pulled out a clear plastic tube just big enough for Figaro and popped the cap. He held it up at Alix’s shoulder for Figaro to crawl into.

Figaro peered inside. “Robot in a bottle, eh?”

“It’s one of the tubes I use to collect hazardous samples. The cap is airtight. You’ll be completely protected,” Lyle assured him.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Hm. Very well then. Nice to see at least someone around here has some consideration for little ol’ me,” Figaro said brightly as he crawled into the tube, then paused. “Wait, I’m supposed to be mad at you.”

Lyle laughed lightly and secured the cap back on the tube, which he then handed over to Alix. “Here you go.”

“Thanks.” Alix snatched the tube from his hands. She tucked it into the breast pocket of the biohazard suit, angling it so it stuck halfway out.

“Alright, now that we’ve pampered the robot,” Maisie said with an eye roll. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

Maisie unsealed the opening of the polyethylene tent and stepped in, followed closely behind by Lyle. Alix stepped in last. She quickly resealed the tent before proceeding through the actual hub door. She shut the door behind her and turned to find a central hub far different than the one she’d stepped in just last night.

“What the everloving . . .” Alix stared in shock with her coworkers at the surrounding walls of the hub. The glittering, black substance that had been creeping across the server panels last night had rapidly expanded their range. Huge swathes of the walls were now covered in pulsating, black masses. Black huddled in the corners and inched across the floor. It hung in pitch-like strings from the ceiling, occasionally dripping down in faint, gooey smacks. The hub was being consumed, slowly swallowed by a predator of rot.

“Oh, fuck yes,” Maisie breathed in awe. “This is gorgeous.”

“And nasty,” Lyle added.

“And freakishly fast.” Alix took a cautious step deeper into the hub. The lights flickered above, some bulbs already coated in the black. “It was only in one of the panels last night. Now it’s everywhere.”

Lyle reached up to one of the dangling strings with a gloved hand and pinched off a little onto his fingertips, inspecting it. “If it has such a rapid spread, who knows how much of the station is actually infested. This stuff could be growing in the vents for all we know.”

“Or my charge port,” said Figaro. “That might explain my body-snatching incident.”

Maisie set her case down on the least-blackened table in the room and opened it up, unloading her supplies. “No need to worry about all that now. We can always scrub the station later. For now, I’m running every test I can until I figure out what our new roommate is.”

***

The next several hours were spent collecting samples, peering at the black matter from the other side of the microscopes, testing samples’ reactions to different amounts of light or chemicals, and on and on.

The starburst shape of the microorganisms was unlike anything else they’d ever examined. The tiny cellulose structures threaded between them that caused their glittering effect didn’t serve any obvious function. No chemical exposure seemed to halt or even slow growth. Genetic sequencing yielded no close links to other native flora or fungi that had been sequenced before. It was as though they were trying to piece together a puzzle with misshapen parts, a Frankenstein jigsaw. Each new piece of information only made them more confused and sparked more arguments.

“For the billionth time, Maisie,” Lyle groaned from where he sat hunched at the table. “There are plenty of fungi that can leach off metals—”

“But if that were the case here, then why isn’t everything more degraded?” Maise cut him off. She was sitting across the table next to Alix. Inches from her elbow, a small patch of black pulsed. Occupying the rest of the table space were their instruments and samples.

“Looks plenty degraded to me.”

“Not enough to explain this kind of growth! And even if that was the case, it doesn’t mean we should jump right to fungi, I can think of dozens, fuck it, hundreds of non-fungi extremotrophs capable of—”

“If you’re gonna try and convince me this is some sort of bacteria with that morphology—”

“I’m gonna sock you in the face with this microscope, is what I’m gonna do.”

Alix quickly moved said microscope out of Maisie’s face and held up a hand. “Settle down, folks! We’re supposed to figure this out together, not duke it out.”

Figaro, who’d been watching from his tube in the center of the table, whined. “Aw, you stopped it right when it was getting good.”

“Right, right, sure, we’re a team.” Maisie leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. She glared at Alix. “So pick a side.”

Lyle rolled his eyes. “How mature.”

“Pick a side?” Alix repeated incredulously. “I’m not going to pick a side, I’m going to give my professional opinion . . . which happens to align with Lyle’s.”

“Hah!” Maisie snorted. “Knew it. Of course you’re going to back whatever your little boyfriend thinks.”

At that moment, Alix hoped that the respirator mask was enough to cover her face going red. Lyle awkwardly looked up and opened his mouth to say something, but Figaro cut in before he could get a word out.

“Joke’s on you, smoothbrain!” Figaro said to Maisie, tapping at the glass of his tube hard enough to toggle it. “He’s not her boyfriend! He dumped her at the funeral!”

Maisie’s eyes shot wide as she looked between Alix and Lyle.

“Thank you for announcing that, Fig,” drawled Alix.

“What? I had to tell her.” Figaro shrugged. “She was questioning your professional integrity.”

“Wait, are y’all broken up broken up? Not just in the ‘off’ part of off and on?” Maisie cringed. “Huh. My bad. But why? No, don’t answer that, it’s none of my business. But really though, why?”

“Ask him!” Alix nodded at Lyle. “Apparently it’s none of my business either, ‘cuz he won’t even tell me why.”

“What?” Maisie sat up, staring daggers at Lyle. “And at the funeral, too? Monster!”

Lyle sighed heavily and ran a hand over his mask. “I’d really like to get back to talking about the fungus.”

“I’m telling you, it’s a bacteria, you sonuvabitch! And a gentleman never dumps a girl at her own funeral.” Maisie reached for the microscope and slid it toward Alix. “Go on, Alix, whack him. It’s justified.”

“It’s not goddamn bacteria!” Lyle snapped at Maisie before turning toward Alix. “Alix, it’s not that I don’t want to keep seeing you. It’s just that, when you came back, I realized . . .”

“That you were undeserving of her love?” Figaro offered.

Lyle stopped short and raised an eyebrow at the robot. “That this conversation doesn’t need to happen right now.”

Maisie stood up and pointed at Lyle with a scowl. “Listen here, plant nerd, if you think for one second that . . . um . . .”

Alix ignored her, her mask of professionalism completely dropped at Lyle’s last words. “When can the conversation happen, then? You ignored my messages.”

“Not my best move, I admit,” Lyle said. “But I was going to answer, for what it’s worth. I just needed space from you for a day or two.”

Maisie was still standing. “Wh-what—”

“Yeah, what do you mean by ‘space from me’?” Alix asked him, raising her voice. “I was missing for weeks, that wasn’t enough space from me? You didn’t enjoy your little vacation from Alix, the ol’ ball and chain?”

Maisie’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Guys . . . is it . . .”

“No, I didn’t enjoy it, Alix! It was fucking awful!” Lyle snapped, his voice breaking. “I thought you were actually dead this time. The weeks you were gone were a nightmare, same as it always is whenever you get yourself mixed up into some kind of disaster, or almost get yourself killed, or can’t even decide if you’ll stick around on this planet!”

“You make it sound like I almost ‘get myself killed’ every week or something!” Alix fired back.

“I mean, you sort of do,” Figaro said.

Alix went on. “You have to have faith in me that I can do my job without getting killed, for chrissakes!”

“How can I do that when you attract danger like a magnet?” Lyle asked.

“Oh, come on, I do not attract danger.”

Maisie shrieked suddenly and stumbled back. She pointed at the floor behind Alix’s chair. “Jesus it’s moving! I-it’s moving, you guys!”

Alix and Lyle both turned to look in the direction. A black blotch on the floor was expanding, creeping toward Alix. Alix quickly rose from her chair and took a step away from it, staring down with a mix of fascination and horror as the blotch continued to shift.

In the center of the blot, the black parted to form a line, then another, and another until it began to form four unmistakable letters.

ALIX

Alix stared down at the blotch, speechless.

“What was that you said about not attracting danger?” Figaro asked.