"We did something similar back in the war," Michael said as he packed the tissues covered in goop into the air vents. "Of course, we were doing it because of the mustard gas."

Andrew stood beside him, packing his own vent with tissues and goop.

"I wasn’t aware they used mustard gas in the Martian wars," Andrew said.

"No," Michael replied. "But we were damn sure scared they were gonna."

He and Andrew started to chuckle.

"Attention! Attention! Is someone else alive on this damn spaceship?" Bobby’s voice broke out over the intercom.

Andrew and Michael looked at each other. Even Lila, who had been on the floor half-heartedly packing a vent with tissue, jolted with energy and jumped up. Andrew hit the intercom button first and said, "Hello? Who’s there?"

"This is Science Officer Bobby Gill! Oh my God, I can’t believe there are other survivors! I’ve been looking all over, calling out to the sleeping bays. Where have you been? Never mind that—who are you, and where are you?"

"Doctor Andrew Hughes," Andrew said. "Right now, we’re in hallway 37-B, trying to trick the system into letting us into the mess hall."

"Andrew Hughes? From the University of Carousel?” Bobby asked.

“Yes,” Andrew said slowly. “Wait, Bobby? From the class of ‘72? Is it really you?”

“Unfortunately,” Bobby said. “Small world.”

Bobby had brought his Remember Me trope, which allowed him to elevate to the main cast. It worked well.

Now, with all of the surrogates debuffed by the bedbugs and Bobby healthy, he was the highest Plot Armor character and a main character.

He was our star.

“We’ll catch up later. Glad to see a Medical Officer aboard. Got some bad bites. You having any luck with getting up this way?" Bobby asked.

"That remains to be seen," Andrew said. We have just three survivors, and I am not a medical officer. I’ll look at your bites, though. How many survivors are on your side?"

Bobby was silent for a moment.

"Just me. I’ve been trying to get ahold of my buddy up in the auxiliary sleeping bay, but they’re not answering up there either."

"I’m sorry to hear that," Andrew said. "I suppose the bed bugs are thick up there too?"

"Bed bugs?" Bobby asked. "Oh yeah, we got bed bugs. We got all kinds. How are you keeping them at bay?"

"We’re not," Andrew said. "No matter where we go, they find us in our sleep. It’s maddening."

"In your sleep?" Bobby asked. "I wasn’t talking about the little bedbugs. Who cares about those damn things? I’m talking about the big ones. The mutants."

Andrew and Michael looked at each other.

"Mutants?" Andrew asked.

"Never mind. If you haven’t seen them, then count yourself lucky. They seem to be quarantined in my lab so far. Thank God they haven’t gotten out. I was worried they’d crawl through the ventilation system. It’s only a matter of time."

"We haven’t seen anything but normal bed bugs back here," Andrew said.

"Normal bed bugs… Who’d have ever thought I’d be relieved to hear that?" Bobby asked.

"I feel you," Andrew said. "Where are you? Do you have access to the helm? There should be manual overrides if you can get to them."

"I’m on the other side of the anti-gravity device from where you are. I’m having difficulty moving forward because science officers aren’t very highly ranked, and IBECS is a son of a gun."

"Do you have food and shelter there?" Andrew asked.

"Some of both," Bobby said. "But be careful, and if you see a door labeled 'Protein Lab,' do not open it."

"Roger that," Andrew responded.

With that, they started hurriedly packing the vents, using essentially the same technique they had used in the first run but in a different part of the ship.

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"Alright," I said, turning to my friends on the helm of the Helio. "It’s time for Phase Two. Ramona and Isaac, you stay here. Cassie, you’re welcome to stay here too. I’ve told you a thousand times—you’ve done more than enough."

Cassie shook her head. "We need to do this," she said. "If you need my help, I’m going to be there."

I nodded. I didn’t need her for anything but some additional scouting, but I was willing to let her tag along as long as things stayed safe.

"You two, keep your eyes on the screen and keep everyone apprised of what’s going on. You are our center of communication, and you’re our eyes in the sky."

Ramona and Isaac nodded.

IBECS could maintain a party line between all of us, no matter where we went on the ship, so we could all be in communication when we were Off-Screen, but we wouldn’t be able to see each other. That was an essential piece of the puzzle that Ramona and Isaac would cover by staying on the Helio.

"Antoine, Kimberly, Cassie—you’re the backup. Dina and I will forge ahead to try to solve the puzzles and unlock doors.”

“We know what we’re doing here, folks," Antoine said. "Now, let’s go run this thing."

"Do we put our hands in the middle and say 'Go team'?" Isaac asked.

He meant it sarcastically, but we did it anyway.

Back on the IBECS, the most important member of our team was meeting up with the surrogates. They were at the anti-gravity device on either side of the gaping hole.

"What do we do here?" Andrew cried out.

"The gravitational force on the tiles changes depending on the state of the ship at any given time. Some of the tiles are stationary and can be walked on, but the others will fall. You have to be careful and find a path across."

Funny design for an anti-gravity machine, but it sure looked sci-fi enough.

I trusted Bobby enough to guide them across, and the rest of us took our places. We had relocated the Helio further up the IBECS, past the anti-gravity machine.

I didn’t even manage to get out of the Helio and back into the IBECS before Ramona started yelling at me.

"Riley, it changed!" she said.

At first, I didn’t know what she was talking about, but before I even made it up the stairs, I knew. I looked at the 3D model of the IBECS, and it was pretty easy to figure out what had moved.

It was Bobby’s lab.

Previously, it had been at the back of the ship, on one side of the anti-gravity device, but now it was at the front of the ship. There was no reason for it not to be based on the established lore of the story. The audience certainly wouldn’t make heads or tails of the layout of the ship and wouldn’t notice whether his lab was at the front or the back.

"Carousel’s making a response," I said. "Nothing to worry about, but keep us posted."

Bobby’s lab contained many of the mutant bedbugs we had created. It made sense that Carousel wouldn’t want them left behind—not when there was so much action to be had.

On the plot cycle, it was almost to the middle of Rebirth.

We were making excellent time.

In our first run, they didn’t get to the artificial gravity machine until Second Blood. Bobby only took ten minutes to help them solve the puzzle and get Lila across.

That was the last puzzle they would have to solve because we had changed the nature of the story.

As we ran through the IBECS, we noticed how dark it had gotten—darker than it had previously been.

Antoine had a metal pipe, which was about the only thing he could find that resembled a weapon.

The rest of us didn’t have much at all, but luckily, we weren’t really a part of the story, so even our plot armor didn’t exactly matter. Monsters would never come after us—unless, of course, we happened to stumble upon them.

They wouldn’t track us down or be led to us by the script.

We were perfect sneaking machines. Bobby and the surrogates were not.

"There’s something up there," Lila said.

"There can’t be anything up there," Andrew replied. "Unless there are more people up here."

"There are more things than people up here," Bobby said. "We’re gonna need to run."

"What are you talking about?" Michael asked. Like Antoine, he had a metal pipe. In fact, it was the same one he had used to trigger First Blood by beating against the deep sleep chambers.

"The mutants," Bobby said.

Antoine, Kimberly, Cassie, Dina, and I were holed up in a room not too far away from the surrogates and Bobby.

We were watching them.

Dina looked straight at them because she had a trope that made her confident she wasn’t On-Screen, and she was used to toeing that line. The rest of us huddled around the little intercom screen where the audio was coming from.

As if to demonstrate the mutant bedbugs Bobby spoke of, one appeared.

I didn’t need the audio feed to know what was there. This thing screeched like a banshee. I would know—I had heard a banshee scream hundreds of times.

At that point, I had only seen one of these mutants on the clone machine as it projected what the biological life form would look like in adulthood, just as it had projected what Cassie would look like based on her DNA profile.

The mutant bedbugs weren’t just bedbugs; they were a little bit of everything we had available to us—cow, pig, goat, chicken.

The goal was to make it bigger, uglier, and more dangerous.

We played around with DNA samples from all the animals we had, including the bedbug, and came up with something we thought we could use in a story: a monster.

On the clone gizmo’s screen, it had been a strange, giant, hairy insect with an arrangement of large teeth—not canine teeth, but molars—not to mention its giant, needle-like appendage that it could use to suck blood.

Feeling brave, I ran out into the hallway next to Dina to take a look.

In the distance, it was a terror.

It almost looked like some horror puppet come to life—like Jim Henson trying to scare children or something—but it moved like an organic creature, like an insect. It was the size of a large cat, but in every other way, it was just a hairy, misshapen bedbug.

"What the hell is that?!" Michael screamed.

I expected them to run, but instead, I heard Michael smacking it with a pipe. There was a wet crunch as he pierced its exoskeleton and continued to go to town on it.

"That was a juvenile," Bobby said.

"What?" Michael asked.

Out of the darkness, a dozen more of the misshapen, hairy bedbugs started to crawl down the hall toward the surrogates.

"Run!" Bobby screamed.

The mutant bedbugs had a few of the tropes from the normal bedbugs but much lower plot armor, which was the only reason we could possibly do this run.

The normal bedbugs were meant to be part of the setting—needing a high PA to ensure they were not eliminated, but these larger ones were actual enemies meant to be fought.

On the red wallpaper, they were called Bedbug Amalgamations, and they lived up to that name.

Some were the size of a cat, but others were much larger—easily as big as a large dog or larger. I suspected they would only get bigger from there.