Mark's eyes opened to a searing white light. Cold air hit his lungs like razors. He staggered out of the cryopod and collapsed to the floor as his long silver locks sawyed in the air. Joints shrieked—25 years of inactivity crammed into his muscles. He gagged, ribs convulsing, and tasted copper. *Hunger*. It hit him like a punch, his stomach as empty and ravenous as his mind. But all he could do was think of Lena. Her laugh, the way she'd stuffed a sunflower into his pocket as he set off on the *Ark Horizon*. *"Come back,"* she'd told him. *"Or I'll kill you myself.
Pockets hissed open before him. Nearby, a woman spat bile on the floor. A young teenage boy stumbled out, eyes mad, clutching his chest like he'd forgotten how to breathe. Mark could estimate about 200 people in the room, faces drawn out, skin pallid from suspended decades. An elderly woman clutched the hand of a shaking old woman and was supported by a scar-cheeked man. *We are ghosts*, Mark mused.
The chamber walls were scratched and dirty, holopanels snapping with static. A robotic voice warbled: *"Colonist Squad 719, debrief to Sector Hydra—"*
"Debrief?" the teenage boy growled, voice cracking. "Where the heck are we? Where's 'wake up on Exidous'?"
It didn't make it any further before the center screen flickered to life.
Dr. Elias Vorne controlled the frame, his lab coat splattered with dark staining. Broken glasses, strained breathing. *""If you're reading this… they're already here. They're in the code, the air, the—""* A raw roar drowned out his words. The camera lurched. Behind him, a shadow *twitched*, like a diseased hologram. Then it attacked—a blur of red sinew and jagged bone.
The monster's talons sunk into Vorne's shoulders. The scientist shrieked as its jaws—too wide, too many teeth—closed over his skull. The feed broke.
Silence. Then a whimper. A woman shielded her face, tears streaming down her cheeks. "That… that was my *dad's* lab," she breathed. Mark recognized her—Maya Vorne, the botanist. Her hands shook as she grasped a pendant around her neck.
Metallic *clang*. In the back of the room, a panel slid open, revealing lines of arms: rifles, knives, shock batons.
"Oh God," someone whispered. A tall woman with a buzz cut—Priya, Mark remembered, an ex-marine—gazed at the guns. "They equipped us. They *knew*."
The lights began to flicker.
Then—*boom*.
The iron door vibrated. Colonists screamed, retreating. *Boom*. Metal sagged inward. *Boom*. Hinges snapped.
A figure in a mechanic's coveralls—Jake—ran for a rifle. "Barricade the door!"
Too late.
The door opened. A colonist in front was gone in a red cloud. From behind the smoke, it *crawled*.
The creature was worse up close. Its body appeared muscular, the flesh red to the bone. Crimson sinew pulsed like live wire, and its face—a gaping maw surrounded by serrated bone. Eyes like dying stars blazed at the crowd. The air throbbed, a subsonic vibration that hurt Mark's teeth.
It moved.
It had been across the room one instant; the next, its talons phased through the chest of a young man. The boy gasped, staring down at the creature's claw *materializing* inside him, wrapping around his heart from the back. It yanked—a sodden *pop*—and the boy fell. Blood suspended in the air like rubies.
Havoc erupted.
A pulse rifle spewed. The monster stumbled, ichor pouring from its shoulder. It howled, the sound shattering holoscreens. Priya pushed Maya back behind a pod. "Fire at the head!" she yelled.
Mark fumbled for a knife, his ring flashing in sunlight. *Lena*. He had promised her he'd create a garden on Exidous. Now his hands shook as he plunged at the beast, jamming the blade into its eye. The knife smoked and sizzled. The beast thrashed, talons ripping through a woman's throat.
"Get back!" Jake slammed Mark onto the floor as the creature whirled. They landed, Jake's breath tasting of frozen cryo-air. "You have a death wish, grandpa?"
Five of the colonists fired their guns dry. The creature's skull burst in a splatter of black ichor. It disintegrated, becoming static and nothing more than a stench of burned hair.
Silence.
182 survivors stood breathlessly. There was blood gathered on the floor. The adolescent boy vomited. Maya dropped to her knee beside a dead body—a 20-year-old girl at most, her hand still clutching a picture of a smiling pair.
"What… what *was* that?" Jake exclaimed, clutching at a gash on his arm.
Mark scowled at the knife in his hand. Lena's sunflower remained stuck in his pocket, wilted and brown. "Something they didn't tell us," he snarled.
The AI voice crackled, distorted: *"Squad 719… go to the kitchen."*