The door to her apartment was battered to hell and back. The metallic alloy was pockmarked in several places from the killer’s attempt to break in.

“Here goes nothing,” she muttered and palmed the door controls.

The door’s motors whined and whirred, but nothing happened.

“Shit.”

When she’d agreed to this fool’s errand, it hadn’t occurred to her that she might be trapped inside her apartment. She tried the controls again. The same troubling sound of a motor under strain.

Violet popped open the panel to manually open her door and started cranking. The door began to slide open and she said a silent thanks. Beams of red light flashed into her apartment from the emergency strobes out in the dimly lit hallway.

One, three, six inches and then, clank! The door jammed, stuck on something.

Violet peered into the track along which the door slid and saw bits and pieces of metallic debris. Something similar probably held up the door farther down the track where Violet couldn’t see.

“If at first you don’t succeed, use force,” Violet recited her father’s favorite motto. She turned the crank with all her strength and managed to slide the door open another inch before the crank handle snapped off and sent her flying on her ass.

The gap in the door was just wide enough for her to squeeze her body through. She started with just her head, peeking out into the hallway to make sure no homicidal maniac waited to murder her, and then the rest of her followed.

She tried to close the door from the outside. She wasn’t sure if it was just habit, or if the thought of that psycho going through her underwear drawer was too much to bear. Either way, she attempted to seal her quarters. The door motors whined with effort and then sparked. Smoke began to drift up from around the door seals.

There was no going back home now, she knew.

Violet crept down the empty hallways outside her apartment with all the stealth she could muster. The corridor was lit with an auspicious, red glow that flashed in second intervals.

She lessened the brightness of her comm screen to avoid night-blinding herself and followed the path highlighted on her device.

Silence filled the corridors of Sector Six. The experience brought to mind a story her mother had told her once about a family surviving an asteroid impact on one of the first mining stations. Specifically how she’d said that they remembered exactly where they were and what they were doing when the tragedy struck. Violet had a feeling that this is what they were talking about. She would remember the way this hallway felt for the rest of her life.

Violet felt sweat run down the underside of her arms and soak into her sleeves. Was it actually hot in the corridor, or was her mind playing tricks on her? Maybe it was the damage done to the station’s life support or the adrenaline pumping through her veins? Either way, it didn’t matter. The result was the same. She wiped her brow and flicked the sweat off her fingertips.

Moments later, she reached the turnoff for the original cut-through to the relay station. It was just as she feared—closed for maintenance. She would need to go the long way around now. She took one final look at the cut-through and cursed her luck before beginning.

Halfway there, she heard a noise up in the ceiling panels. Either the station’s rodent population had done a serious power bulk or something big was up there.

The noise stopped as quickly as it had started and she began to doubt she’d heard it at all. Could she be imagining it? Projecting monsters where there was only an aging space station, stretching and groaning under the strain of several explosions.

She continued at a slightly faster pace, and she heard the noise again. She walked faster still. It was keeping pace with her.

Definitely not the space station. Something was tracking her. And given that everyone in the sector was either dead or missing, there was only one thing it could be. Zane.

She broke into a run, her footsteps echoing down the hall. Behind her, she heard the sound of a ceiling panel being thrown open. She stopped and turned to look, knowing that she shouldn’t, but she couldn’t help herself.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Her stomach rose into her throat as she saw the monster drop down out of the ceiling. He panned his gaze toward her, the dried blood still crusted on his face and chest, and smiled.

She recognized the crooked smile from the rapey bartender from last night. But just barely. His body had grown to werewolf-like proportions and his facial features were camouflaged by his victims’ blood spatter.

“Violet…” he said, almost growling her name. “Where are you going? We have a date to finish!”

A sickening moan involuntarily escaped Violet’s lips and she turned, running as if her life depended on it.

And it did.

She heard Zane yelling something behind her, but she couldn’t make out what he’d said. If it was anything like the game he’d tried to spit last night, it wasn’t very poetic.

She skidded to a stop on the freshly polished floors, almost missing the turnoff that would take her down to the relay station, and risked a look behind her. She shouldn’t have.

Zane rounded the hallway corner, running on his hands and feet like some kind of demonic horse-dog. Instead of slowing down, he took the corner by running up the far side of the wall and using it as a banked turn.

Violet inhaled sharply and ran on, trying to remind herself not to hold her breath.

Zane gained ground behind her, and Violet knew she would never make the relay station in time.

To her right there was a pile of construction debris that the workers hadn’t cleaned up yet and she decided she would make her stand. She scanned the piled materials for something useful and lit up when she saw a length of durasteel pipe that would make a lovely club.

She retrieved it just in time to turn and see the monster charging straight for her.

Whether Zane saw her raise the pipe and swing or not, Violet didn’t care. Maybe he thought he was invincible and nothing could hurt him. Violet wasn’t going to bother to ask. She swung the pipe with all her might, suddenly grateful for the four years of sports that her father had forced her to play as a child. Every bone in her body vibrated violently as she connected with Zane’s forehead. Pain radiated up and down her skeleton and then disbursed through her musculature until the energy of the collision dissipated. What the fuck was he made out of? From the feel of the impact, he couldn’t just be flesh and bone. It felt like she’d been hit by a fully-loaded ore sled.

The blow stopped Zane from reaching her and tearing her to shreds. But the half-man-half-demon was only stunned. It should have left him a mushy pile of sinew and bone, but instead he shook his head back and forth as if he’d been wearing an armored helmet or something.

“What the hell happened to you?” Violet couldn’t help asking.

Zane’s lips parted, revealing a demon’s smile. “You like? I tried to do the same for you. If you’d taken me up on the gift I tried to give you last night, you would be standing here beside me! But, too bad… now you’ll die like all the rest.”

“Sorry, I didn’t feel like getting date-raped, dude. Why don’t you blow me!”

Zane dove in, swinging his hand in an open-palmed strike at Violet’s head. She ducked and swung back, feeling the satisfaction of the durasteel pipe finding a home in the douchebag’s ribcage.

She thought maybe she’d heard a faint crack as he grunted from the impact.

Zane growled and lashed out, striking her upside the head. Stars swam in the corner of her vision, and she fell to a knee, but she managed to stay conscious.

Violet tried to clear her head as the monster delivered another blow. This one landed across her shoulder blades.

Violet attempted to break her fall, but failed, her arms refusing to obey her mind’s commands. Her forehead hit first and then her nose, making an ugly cracking noise.

She knew it was broken the moment she heard it. There was a slight delay and then the pain came. Her eyes filled with tears and her sinus cavities filled up with blood and mucus, making it difficult to breathe.

She rolled onto her back and blindly reached out for the pipe she’d dropped. By dumb luck, her hand closed around it, and she tightened her grip.

The monster’s footsteps grew closer as he looked to finish her off.

Trusting in her blurry vision, she swung with all her might and connected, sweeping his legs out from under him.

They both scrambled back to their feet at the same time. Violet wiped at her eyes sporadically, trying to clear her vision. Her whole face hurt.

Like two prizefighters, they circled each other. Zane feinted in and Violet bit on his ruse, swinging the heavy pipe with all her strength. She hit nothing but air as Zane danced back out of reach. But now, Violet’s back was exposed. She spun as fast as she could to remedy her error, but Zane, in his altered state, was faster. He leaped in and wrapped his arms around her, dragging her down to the ground. She felt his heart pounding against her back as he pulled her forehead backward with one hand, exposing her neck to the ceiling above. Faster than she would have thought he could move, Zane snaked his other arm around her neck and began to squeeze.

Violet gasped for air, shocked to find that she could still breathe. But then her vision quickly narrowed from the outside-in. The pressure built in her head until it felt like her eyes might pop out of her head. She clawed at the man’s eyes behind her, but she couldn’t find them. Panic took over as she realized she was going to die.

With one final, last ditch effort, Violet bucked and lashed out with all her remaining strength. Zane Anderson responded by laughing as he continued to squeeze. “Goodbye, Violet.”

As the lights dimmed, Violet’s final thought was that she’d rather be anywhere else right now than here, dying.