Kade felt something on his face, and he reached up to touch it, seeing a dark liquid on his hand.

The lights on the bridge had turned to a deep shade of blue; some sort of emergency lighting attuned better to Greggan senses, but it left him nearly blind.

He was still on the bridge, or whatever this room was, as no other crew had ever come back to man the consoles.

Some had tried; they had banged at the door, tried to override it, then even to breach it. They had failed.

Tarsota had ignored them all, ignored every call and attempt to contact him.

Then the ship had been hit. Kade had no idea how badly, but he felt the shudders, and then one had been so near and so strong that he'd been thrown into a wall.

Had he lost consciousness? He wasn't sure.

Tarsota was unmoving, slumped in his chair still. He hadn't moved or changed position in minutes, as if the massive explosions had not even affected him.

Was he dead? Kade had no idea how to even tell on a Greggan, they did not breathe in the same way as humans.

He had to get out of here. There was no more pounding on the door, so the crew trying to get in must have fled.

Or died, he thought. It could be a vacuum out there.

Shit, this kinda thing was why he lived on a planet, not on a station. He'd always been terrified of dying in space, feeling the air sucked from his lungs and knowing, even if just for a few seconds, that his time had come.

Give me a nice atmosphere! Some solid land under my feet and gravity that isn't from centrifugall force, he thought bitterly.

Wasn't like it had been his choice to leave the colony world . . .

He reached for the door controls when the box exploded into a shower of sparks. Burning spots of pain spread across his face and he screamed, falling back.

"No," he heard Tarsota gurgle, his smoking handgun still pointing towards the door controls. "You do not leave."

He felt more warm liquid flowing down his face. He'd just been cut up by the shrapnel.

Tarsota said nothing else, but his arm sagged, slowly sinking towards the floor in fits and starts.

Kade crawled away from the door, taking cover behind an instrument panel. He glanced up at the readouts, seeing that the screen was on in some kind of low-light mode.

He did a double-take. It was a video feed, this was a security station.

Reaching for the controls, he took a moment to puzzle them out. Blood ran into his eyes, making them sting, and he wiped it away as best he could, blinking fiercely.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Figuring out the controls, he began to change the view. It took him a few tries, but he figured out the system - it was all pretty obvious, clearly intended for poorly-trained crews.

He found the prisoner pits, and began to cycle through the camera views there.

He saw the cages, but they were empty. He continued to flip, his heart beating with terror. Where were they?

He saw a flicker of motion on the edge of one view as he cycled through and went back. It was already gone, but looking to the corner he tried to figure out what camera would be sequentially next and flipped to it.

There. It was a large Greggan, dragging a man by his leg. The man was flailing in terror.

Kade flipped switches, trying to turn on audio, but he couldn't hear anything.

He managed to make the image clearer, saw that the floor was darker under the man. It looked like hundreds of footprints, smearing and smudging something black along the floor. It hadn't been that color before, he'd seen that hall.

Where were they taking the man? Kade realized with a start that he knew him. He was a city leader, head of the agriculture department. He was fighting with all his strength, but the Greggan dragging him did not notice. It didn't even seem to care as the man tore at its exposed flesh with his hands, leaving gouges from his nails.

Like it was in a trance, it pulled him down a hall. Kade followed it through another view, saw a heavy sealed door.

The dark streaks went under it, and as it opened to let the guard drag the man in, the brighter lights inside showed that the streaks were not black, but red.

Blood.

The man screamed as he saw in the room, his flailing turning to new horror.

Kade tried to find a camera in the room, desperate to see what was in there. But if there ever had been cameras in that place, they had been removed.

He looked back, helplessly, as the door sealed.

More movement at the edge of the screen, and he realized he could pan the camera.

It was two more Greggans. Their mouths were open, drooling. Their eyes were staring off into space. One of them had a knife stabbed into his cheek, but did not even seem to notice.

They were struggling to pull another human along. He was fighting ferociously, like a cornered animal.

Kade saw an option he hadn't noticed. Flipping the switch, he finally got audio.

"I'm one of you!" the man was screaming. "I'm not a sacrifice I'm a part a tha crew!"

His voice was beyond hysterical, almost unintelligible.

It was Surc, he realized.

The doors opened again, and as they did, a wave of blood splashed out into the hall.

Kade screamed falling back from the console, trying to crawl further and further away, but only pressing himself more into the console behind him.

It took him a few moments to regain any semblance of his senses. He was hyperventilating, his head swimming.

Struggling to regain control, he fought his fear, trying to shove it aside or at least function.

Feeling weak, shaky, he turned and looked out, towards Captain Tarsota.

He needed to get out of here. Eventually the crew would come back and get him.

Tarsota seemed even more slumped than before. Kade rose, his terror at the thought of being caught by the crew giving him the bravery to approach the Captain. When unconscious - or dead? - he was not as fearsome.

Stepping closer and closer, he watched the hand holding the gun. But the weapon looked to be slipping from his grip.

Perhaps he really was dead . . . ?

But as he stepped up next to the being, he saw his eyes move. They were affixed on him, and Kade froze in terror.

"There is not long," the being said, his voice soft. Intimate.

He leaned forward, making a horrible retching sound and vomited a disturbing quantity of black liquid that smelled like bile.

"I die soon," he said, his eyes going back to Kade as if nothing had happened. "You will live. At least so long as it does not."

"So long as what doesn't live?" Kade found himself asking.

Tarsota made a gurgling sound, leaning away slowly, as if in great pain.

"It took control of me," he said, his voice raspy and weak. "Controlled my actions. Took so much. Demanded even more. I gave and gave but I can give so little now. Its attention wanes."

Tarsota's eyes had drifted off, unfocusing, but they snapped back to Kade. "It controls them all now. Makes them act. They think they control themselves, but they are slaves. Like I was. But I am cast aside now. Leaves me some strength to defy it."

"Defy what?" Kade asked, leaning in, putting a hand on Tarsota. The being's words terrified him - because Kade believed them.

"The thing we found . . . so long ago . . . years." His eyes opened wider. "Or was it only months? I no longer know. Deep in space . . . I hid the location. Killed most who came with me. Wanted its power, it helped us, whispered to me secrets that . . ."

He coughed again, slumping, but Kade pushed him back upright. "What kind of secrets?" he demanded, not even sure why he was asking.

"Secrets of space. Of . . . the nature of things. Ways to change the engines that let us jump so easily. It only took blood, demanded blood. It did not want ours, I do not know why . . . We gave it the humans."

His head slowly moved back and forth, shaking. In what emotion, Kade wondered.

Shame?

"Nothing was enough . . . it was not enough . . ."

His words faded.

He was not dead, Kade thought. But he could say no more.

The gun slipped from his hands completely, and Kade didn't feel afraid of him anymore, even though he was still otherwise terrified.

He stepped back, looking at Tarsota's console, and saw that his journal was open. There were entries, newer ones, that hadn't been in the version he'd shared earlier.

His curiosity was stronger than his fear. Besides, what else was he to do?

Kade pulled over a seat, turning the console so he could see it fully, and sat down to read.