Two held the box in both hands, breathing heavily as she stepped into the maintenance tunnel, already sweating due to both the stress of the situation and the fact that she was wearing four t-shirts, two pairs of gloves, a few pairs of socks under some overly large boots they’d found, and two lab coats that dragged behind her in a vain attempt to put as much material between her and the sludge creature as she could.

Five stood a good distance behind her with her ordinary shirt on, not intending to do more than be present in the area with her to make sure she could get her out if she got hurt. She stopped when they got to the part of the hall with the discolored wall, but she gulped when she saw that the slime-covered trails had become much more plentiful since they last left. “Two… be careful in there, okay?” Five sounded worried, not wanting to take a step further since the slime covered the floor now.

Two nodded and proceeded into the creature’s territory, watching every nook and cranny for even the slightest movement. She stopped frequently to take stock of her surroundings, becoming more tense by the moment. She had to take a breath to calm herself by the time she reached the intersection. The paths went all over the place down both paths, and she had to make a choice. “Five…” she called back “I’m taking the right path. Okay?” she stepped heavily down the thin corridor, feeling the slick slime stick to the bottom of her heavy boots. She starting to become terrified of the possibility of what she was getting into. What was Five supposed to do if the thing incapacitated her somehow? She couldn’t follow to retrieve her after all. The only thing she could do was go get Three and hope she had a way to navigate the hall safely.

Two shook her head. This wasn’t the time to be thinking about this. She just had to find the creature, place the trap, and get out. They could retrieve the box later in the same fashion, hopefully with the creature contained within.

Two stopped dead in her tracks when she saw it. At the intersection ahead rested what looked to be a large dollop of what looked like some kind of semi-solid pile of sludge, squirming down one of the hallways far more quickly than should have been possible. She shuddered at the sight of it, thankful that it was moving away from her, and approached the intersection staring down the path it had taken to make sure that it didn’t double back while she placed the box down on the floor.

She opened the solid hatch Five had built into it before taking the tube of gel out of her pocket “Hope this isn’t a waste.” she muttered as she spread a dollop of it on the bottom of the box and activated the weight sensor. The trap was set.

She backed up and stumbled on the boots, leaning back into the wall on one arm and panting loudly before she realized it was just the oversized clothing hampering her and not the monster under her feet. She tried to stand back up, but something felt wrong. Her hand was heavier than before… Turning to look slowly, she saw that her double-gloved hand was placed directly on top of a weakly squirming mass of a dirty semi-solid material. It had come back down the other hallway behind her and she had stuck her hand directly into it.

Breathing frantically, Two let out a loud scream as she tried to throw the creature away from her, shaking her arm wildly to try to dislodge it, but it seemed like it was stuck to her. Stepping forward to the box, she did her best to try and throw it down into the opening, continuing to find no luck. The creature, meanwhile, began trying to engulf her hand further, wrapping around it slowly. She knew that if it kept moving like that it would find a way around the gloves, so she stuck her hand down in the box and tried to scrape it off the side, finding it just stuck to the other side of the glove.

“Let go! LET GO!” she shouted hysterically, putting her boot down into the container to scrape it off the other side, only now it was sticking to her boot. Two pulled her foot out of the boot entirely and let it fall in, making the container close around it. In her panic, she had peeled off the outer layer of her gloves, leaving it in with the creature.

Two fell back and scrambled backwards away from the container, panting loudly and on the verge of crying as she inspected her hand, feeling a growing irritation and what almost looked like burn marks around the back of her glove, where it had managed to touch her skin. Directly. She stared at the box from the floor, shaking as if expecting it to burst open and attack her again, but it never happened. After a few moments of silence, she almost leaned back to rest on the floor before she remembered where she was and sat up instead, slowly getting to her feet and making sure to only touch surfaces with her better protected hand.

She whimpered as she picked up the box, uncomfortable keeping that thing so close to her, even if it was on the other side of solid steel, and started making her way back “F-Five?!” she called, her eyes tearing up as her hand started to feel itchy “Five, I-I caught it!” there was no answer. All she could do was walk slowly back through the filthy corridor, trying to ignore her obvious infection. Three would be able to take care of that later, as awful as she knew it would feel if it was anything like Seven’s exposure to it. She hoped that the residue on the floor wouldn’t also infect her foot since she didn’t have a boot anymore, but that was why she’d worn several socks on top of each other as well.

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

By the time she got to the maintenance entrance, she was dragging the box from her good hand. The other one was starting to feel weak. It hurt to flex her fingers around the handle, so she just let it hang limp. She wondered if that was a bad sign.

Five was still nowhere to be seen as she walked down the main hallway, and it wasn’t until she saw her approaching in a hurry with Three in tow that she was thankful to see the other girl “H-Hey!” she let the container drop to the floor and waved her hand at them “Hey, I-I caught it.”

“Two! What in the…!” Three started, taken aback at her appearance “Your hand!”

“Yeah, it… it touched me. You’ll have to do whatever you did for Seven.” she let out a nervous chuckle and leaned into the wall, feeling far more tired than she expected to be.

“Five, get her out of those clothes and get her to medbay, NOW!” Three demanded as Five carefully helped Two get to her feet again.

“What about the monster?” Five asked, taking a hopeful step toward the box that surely actually contained the creature they were after if Two was still carrying it.

“Forget about the monster, just do what I said!” Three’s urgent anger made Five do as she said without another moment’s hesitation, using her own now-gloved hands to help pull off the outer layer of Two’s clothing while Three rushed back toward the medbay.

“Y-You actually got it in there?” Five asked “You lost your boot… and you’re covered in the stuff, at least on the outer layer. It’s a good thing you put all those shirts on.” she said as she pulled the second lab coat off and saw that nothing had seeped in further than that. Likewise, as the socks came off, she saw it didn’t leave anything on her feet. But her hand…

Two felt dizzy by now “Medbay… time.” she muttered before her vision started to blur.

—

Before Two knew what was going on, she was laying down on Three’s examination table. She couldn’t concentrate very well on what was happening to her, but things were starting to clear up, a result of her body being at rest. She still couldn’t see a thing though, her body was too busy trying to fight whatever it was that was coursing through her. All she could do was listen to their voices.

“C’mon doc, you gotta do something, it’s turning black.” Five cried out urgently.

“Don’t you think I see that!?” Three shouted back “It’s past her skin, we need to administer… something. I-I don’t know, okay! This is beyond my expertise, I have to do some tests!”

“Well do them quick, it’s spreading!”

“… What?” Three sounded confused.

“Look, it’s slow, but it’s moving out.” there was a long quiet stillness to the room that Two didn’t like to hear before Five once more shouted with renewed urgency “Doc!?”

“I… oh god.” Three sounded scared. The kind of fear that was accompanied by nausea “I… I need to…”

“Three?” Five called as Three rummaged through something on the other side of the room “Wait… no, no, you can’t seriously be thinking… are you just-”

“Stand back, Five. I-It’s the only way.” Three sounded like she was starting to cry.

Five was quiet for some time “Can we knock her out first?” she sounded just as upset, but had a defeated tone to her voice.

“Here. On her other wrist.” Three muttered quietly.

Two felt the prick of a needle at her other hand, and what consciousness she had left faded in a heartbeat, falling into a gentle dream almost instantly, where she forgot what was happening to her for some time.

—

The next time she woke, Two’s vision was still fuzzy, but she heard a distinct steady beeping noise overhead. She felt tired. Despite having just woken up, she wanted to go right back to sleep, but her natural curiosity kept her conscious enough to see a figure standing over her “… awake?” she heard the voice echo in her head to the point where she couldn’t tell who was speaking or what else they had said. It wasn’t long before her limited energy gave out on her again and Two passed out once more.

Time passed yet again, and this time, Two’s eyes opened with clarity. The examination table. The monster. It all started coming back to her slowly, playing in her head in slow motion. She had to tell herself that it was over, that the danger was passed now, so that she could calm her breathing. She turned her head slightly to see Seven on a chair next to her, an IV stuck into her own arm. She was looking down at her slate, unaware of her until she spotted the movement out of the corner of her eye and smiled at her “Oh! Two! Hi!” she said, a look of pity on her face.

“Seven…” Two finally spoke, finding herself barely able to get the words out, and deciding to just lay her head back to save energy “What… happened?” she asked as she kept trying to piece things back together and getting lost “I was on the table and…”

“Hey, look at me. Three will be right back, okay?” Seven reassured her, her own eyes looking glassy. She’d been crying. “Everything’s going to be okay.” Seven tried to reassure her.

Two followed the IV Seven was connected to up to a red bag sitting above her. And then back down from that bag to her own wrist “… Blood?” she asked.

“Good thing about being clones, I guess. We can donate to each other, haha.” Seven kept smiling at her as Two’s eyes started to wander “W-Wait, no, just look at me, okay? It’s going to be alright, okay?” she repeated once more.

But it was too late. Two’s eyes had already started to tear up as she looked to her other side, her body shaking as the beeps above her started to increase in pace.

And there she saw the faint red bandages wrapped around the stump where her forearm had been.