>>96024467
It’s been hours now. Maybe more. Time no longer means anything beneath the pulsing crimson of the emergency lights. The sirens still scream, duller now, or maybe I’m simply going deaf. Either way, I’ve stopped trying to navigate the ship. Every corridor is a mirror of the last...infested, throbbing, alive.

I lie curled on the floor, spine pressed against the slick warmth of corrupted metal, too weak to stand. My breath rasps in my chest, ragged and wet. The cough comes often now...deep, tearing spasms that seize my lungs and leave me gagging. Each one ends the same: a thick wet sound, and the taste of blood and bile as I vomit up meaty chunks of my throat.

Then come the voices.

Faint at first. Familiar. The crew. I hear Anders’ chuckle, the clipped cadence of Doctor Voss, the warm drawl of Thala at shift’s end. They call to me, soft and intimate. You’re not alone, they whisper. We’re still here.

But they’re not coming from the comms.

They’re coming from corruption.

The fungus breathes. It speaks with their voice.

I hear Anders’ laugh—low, confident. I hear Dr. Voss muttering observations to no one. I hear Thala’s gentle song, the one she hummed during engine checks.

“It’s alright,” Thala says. “We’re still here.”

“You were never meant to wake up alone,” whispers Voss.

“Let it go,” Anders murmurs, “you’ve done enough.”

I tell myself I’m hallucinating. That it’s the fever, the spores, the madness gnawing at what’s left of me. But then-

Then I see it.

The rot near the far bulkhead pulses, convulses. And something stirs.

A limb. Human. Twitching. Coated in slime and fiber. It pushes slowly, blindly, from the mass of fungal bloom.

I stare.

And this time, I don’t tell myself I’m imagining it.

My thoughts are clouded. I can't think straight. I crawl towards the arm. Towards the mound of fungal rot. I don't even scream as it swallows me.