>>96024296
I come to with my face buried in a mass of wet fungal rot. I scream, instinctively flinching away, but it’s already too late. The taste floods my mouth, bitter and cloying. I spit. Cough. Gag. I scrape at my tongue with trembling fingers, but the taste clings.

I don’t let myself think about what I may have ingested. I can’t. So I do what the training drills told us to do—focus. Make a plan.

And then, through the haze, I remember.

Before entering the cryopod, my team had secured the Ortega-model security unit in its charging cradle on the lower decks. Old, but reliable, built for colony defense, not peacekeeping. In the event of an emergency, the bot was supposed to wake first, assess the threat, and initiate defensive protocols.

Hope stirs and I run.

Corridors twist past in crimson flickers, the air thick with spores and silence. But when I reach the charging station, a fresh new horror greets me.

I freeze, my breath catching. My hand lifts, covers my mouth.

The bot is ruined.

Nearly torn in half, its armor peeled open like fruit rind. Viscous oil pools at its base, steaming faintly, and its right arm twitches in short, broken spasms. Sparks leap from its shattered chassis, arcing in the darkness. Cold, glassy optics fix on mine with a lifeless intensity, and though I'm not fool enough to believe it a sentient being, my heart breaks all the same.

And suddenly I feel alone again.