Izzy and Tessa were halfway to medical when the lights sputtered and died. Hesitating in the sudden darkness, they waited breathlessly for the dull crimson lights of backup systems to come to life, hands knitting together unconsciously, entangling in a mass of desperate fingers that locked, held. For a span of breaths, they waited– too long, longer than it was supposed to take for emergency power to kick over. Izzy swallowed, tried to shut off the fear washing through her, the emotions that mixed and mingled with Tessa’s own hard anxiety to become darker, more turbulent.

“The power. . .” Izzy breathed. In the darkness, she felt Tessa nod, pull in a deep, shaky breath. Not good.

Medical. Came Tessa’s thought. It’s not much further. We have to. . .

“I know.” Izzy managed. One hand moved, stretched, found wall. “It’s. . .”

“I can almost see. . .” Tessa stepped forward, put tension on their connection. Izzy glanced back, saw only darkness.

“Tess. . .”

“It’s okay.” Came the soft response, the gentle squeeze. “Just. . . stay close to me.”

I can’t see a damn thing, Tess. Izzy’s thoughts came through fast, edged with fear. Tessa squeezed again, tried a smile.

We’re most of the way there. She breathed, paused for the space of a tired blink. Let me be your eyes.

Izzy nodded, a nod Tessa more felt than saw. Even as good as her eyes were, she couldn’t make out much in the darkness– just edges, blurs of walls and deck plating. Tessa’s thoughts reached back through the connection, flowed through Izzy’s hand to light in her mind, stir new thoughts there.

I bet it’s just this section. . . it’s–

Clicking.

Izzy froze, stopped in her tracks at the same instant that Tessa did. Hairs came alive on the back of her neck, bristled as she strained to hear every sound lurking in the darkness. Nothing.

“Did you just”

“Yeah.”

Clicking?

Yeah.

Izzy swallowed. We’re nowhere near the outer hull. Could they have gotten this far already?

I don’t know. Came Tessa’s blank, flat response. Wide eyes searched the darkness, tracked slow, sought movement, found none. I don’t hear it anymore.

Maybe we should–

In the distance, something squealed, and for the barest instant, the lights spat brilliance and flared in the corridor. Light shot across walls and floor, blinded terrified eyes with a frame of something so horrific it made skin curl and shiver in terror. Tessa swallowed, hand tightening against Izzy’s, receiving the same desperate squeeze back in response.

Did you. . . ?

Veins. Tessa closed her eyes, forced herself to breathe. Yeah.

Izzy closed the distance between them, put her back against Tessa’s, free hand reaching for her sidearm. Bits and pieces of that flash, that instant of light played sickly though her mind, the network of blue-chrome tentacles threading themselves through wall, crawling up across the ceiling from where they descended into the darkened distances like the dark herald of some Cthulian nightmare.

...and they had been moving fast, she realized. Within the space of a few spare seconds, the tendrils had come seemingly out of nowhere, silent as they worked themselves into every inch of corridor around the two women like some insidious metallic cancer.

I don’t like this. Izzy swallowed, We should get moving.

Agreed. Came Tessa’s immediate response. In the silence, she pulled in a desperate, frightened breath, felt Izzy squeeze her hand again, knew in the hazy sensations of the bond between them that she had closed her eyes against the fear, the darkness. When movement came, it came slow, a lethargic uncoiling and unknotting that clung to limbs for an instant, only to quickly give way to panicked haste. In the unknowable darkness, Tessa led, terrified of what she could not see, could not hear, didn’t dare to try and reach out and feel. It was enough knowing that it was pulsing, twisting and moving through the walls and ceiling around her, alive in it’s own strange, unknowable way. Tessa swallowed, put her head down. Medical was just ahead, just a short run. . . If she could just. . . if. . .

There was one terrible instant of sickening free fall that caught Tessa and spun her between collisions. In the time it took her to lose traction, to lose the floor and with it all sense of perspective in the darkness, she knew that it was too late, that whatever had hit her, whatever had smashed her out of the air and thrown her against a writhing bulkhead was not human, was not a wall or errant machine. In the darkness, something stirred, chittered with an alien oscillation of blade-like limbs. “Tessa!” She heard Izzy hiss, but she too was lost in the darkness, close and yet so very far away. Hands reached reflexively for the holster of a sidearm, hesitated.

Somewhere in the darkness, the thing chittered again, a clatter and click of almost chitinous sound projected and undulating in a way that seemed layered, deeper than just dry snapping. The sound seemed to permeate reality, to cut through layers of space and time to echo and deliver itself to the nearest ears with pinpoint accuracy, the sonic nuances of each click so complex, so full of subtle data that it could have meant anything. There was no way to decipher it, no way to even collect an inkling of what was being said. No one had invented a Coralate translator yet, no one even had the faintest idea how the language worked, and even the best scientists back on Terra couldn’t make heads or tails of the few samples of alien clicks they had to work with, couldn’t even agree on whether it was even really a language or not. Sitting there dazed in the darkness, just a short but unknowable distance from what had to be the source, Tessa couldn’t see how it could be anything other than a language. It was unmistakable– the sound that every pilot in the Galactic Navy knew as well as their own heartbeat– the sound of the greatest threat to mankind since humanity had left its cradle and spread forth into the cosmos in unending waves of eager pioneers.

She swallowed reflexively. Somewhere in the darkness, a Cygnan was hunting them.

Playing with them.