Movement came slow, sluggish, a hunting more mental than it was reflex of searching fingers. A weapon, a weapon, the words pounded again and again within her mind. Eyes moved, darted, rose, fell away. There had to be something– anything. Izzy’s stunner lay nearby, torn open and flayed to dead optics by the same rain of metal shards that had worked themselves through her chest, her heart, her lungs. Tessa closed her eyes again, squeezed them against the sudden ripping of pain as it rose again within her, tore upward through fragile layers of resolve and strength like a cruel and deep-running blade. There had to be something... Something.
The Cygnan stirred in an odd rustling of limbs as it worked at the pulsing chrome tentacles slithering through the walls, sewing like some surreal amalgam of tailor and mechanic, coaxing new life into that patchwork of iron and mercurial thread. Fifteen paces away, Tessa’s eyes searched the deck, searched for her own stunner, something, anything that Dimitrov or Murphy might have left– but there was nothing. Nothing. She racked her mind desperately for some fragment of a memory, some idea, anything that might lead her to some weapon, however small, that she or Izzy might have secreted away in a pocket, a boot...
Nothing.
...And then she felt it.
Moving slowly, working its way smoothly, secretly, one mirrored tendril had wriggled its way around one of her legs, unseen until it tightened suddenly, pinning her to the floor in some instantaneous unknowable reflex, knotting so quickly, so strongly that she cried out with the sudden snapping pain, the fracturing of bone. Beyond the shattered landscape of corpses, broken chrome and jellied blue that separated her from the Cygnan, arms stirred again, moved excitedly, ushering forth a vibration that was harsher, keener, played off the tones of her scream and cannibalized them into a lingering semblance of alien speech, a macabre platform for untranslatable words. Hands clawed at the deck, fought the pull of the tendril as it dragged her suddenly away from Izzy and toward the opposite wall, gaining strength as new tentacles of unyielding viscous chrome seized her, filled her body with that same subtle vibration. There was no resistance– the lines of mirrored metal worked so quickly, tore her away from Izzy with such undeniable purpose that there was no room for movement, no room or way to fight. Where she tried to dig her fingers into the deck or seize other tendrils, the floor plating simply gave way, smooth and yet spongelike, as if magnetically repelled by her hands. Within the space of a breath, she hit the wall and was dragged up the side, instantly restrained by the quickness, the efficiency with which metal seemed to seize her, binding her spread-eagled and upside down in a writhing cocoon of living chrome that left only her face and a scrap of her uniformed chest exposed, teeth bared as she fought in vain. Turning and scuttling across the deck, the Cygnan closed the distance between them in a matter of seconds, turned its hideously alien body toward her, appendages clattering and clacking in an excited cacophony of clicks and hums. Deep within Tessa’s chest, something came alive, flared fire-like and spread hot and angry to every inch of her restrained body. In the same instant that her lips pulled away, teeth flashing in a shriek of primal rage, she felt something cross the air between her and the blueskin, felt it lance through her mind and into that impenetrable sapphire maze of limbs and clicks that hung like spheres in a jellied reality. For one terrifying instant, the tentacles holding her against the wall weakened, felt like they might suddenly part and release her, then tightened suddenly again. Frozen in an odd silence less than a pace from her, the Cygnan seemed to watch, stood motionless, as if straining to hear some distant sound that no other ear could discern. Filled with a fiery anger that could not be contained, could not be quelled, Tessa beared her teeth again, shouted.
“What!? What are you waiting for you big blue bastard!?” She screamed. “Kill me already! Fucking kill me!”
Hesitating, almost as if confused, the Cygnan shifted oddly, scuttling into a half turn and then slowing to an odd stop, making no other moves, unwilling or unable to click or call spheres from the vineyard of chrome that writhed all around them. Somehow, in some twisted, unknown way, it seemed to be watching her, studying her, absorbing every sound and vicious movement with the eye of a scientist observing a dangerous animal under glass. Furious and unable to contain it anymore, she screamed again, struggled against her unyielding bonds until fatigue and the tightening pain of the restrictive chrome wore her down. Only when she spat directly at the thing, hitting it in the center of its almost humanoid torso, did it finally react.
Flaring out and clattering like some hissing and vicious carnivorous orchid, the Cygnan flicked one bladed limb out on reflex and jabbed it though her chrome restraints and into her abdomen, impaling her just below the ribs with such force that her eyes flew wide, pupils narrowing, mouth moving, shocked, pulling at air that refused to come. Hands spasmed in her chrome prison, strained against metal that would not yield, would not bend. Vibrating with a tone that was sharp and hostile, limbs moving in an rattling fury, the Cygnan twisted the limb in her gut, rattled more as she cried out in pain. Warm, dark blood welled around the blade-like appendage, ran in trickling rivulets from the wound to trace a line across chrome and stain her uniform where it sat exposed, streaming in lines that touched her neck, slid across her cheeks. I’m going to die, came the sudden thought. Teeth came together, bared against the pain as eyes squeezed shut. I’m going to die. Oh god, Izzy.
And then, as suddenly as it had struck her, the Cygnan ripped its limb out of her and chittered away, stamping and shifting almost as if agitated, as if something unseen had disturbed it out of its rage and put it on a frightened defensive. Breathing, gasping, fighting against the waves of pain, she closed her eyes again, felt the fresh blood as it spilled down the wall and ran across her neck, up the line of her chin and widened into thin rivers that traced their way across her cheeks, stained crimson streaks into her long, midnight hair. Somewhere beyond, the Cygnan chittered again, flared and rent the air with a hooting noise, a loud, hollow and booming vibration that played through the air and spiked a new, inexplicable fear into her heart, her soul. When she opened her eyes an instant later, the blueskin was gone and only the hooting remained, lingering in the air like a ghostly afterimage of something beyond human understanding, beyond three-dimensional comprehension.
And then the entire corridor moved.
Tessa’s stomach leapt into her throat with the onset of a sudden sinking sensation, and then she was falling, toppling forward out of the wall and smashing into the deck plating with enough force that she went skittering across it, collapsing forward, gasping for breath. Hands splayed against floor that seemed to move with a new hurriedness, writhing beneath her as if frightened, as if it couldn’t withdraw into the walls fast enough and was struggling to move faster. Eyes squeezed against the pain, the noise that permeated everything, a frantic slithering that seemed to echo from every inch of the ship like the crawling terror of a thousand maggots fighting to escape their metal prison– and then she screamed, howled all her pain and terror and anguish into the void, into the noise, unable to care, unwilling to fight. In that terrible instant, she wished for death, begged it to come and take her, to silence the world that moved with horrific intent around her and carry her away like a specter in the night. A fire built from the pain of loss flared in her chest, ate at her heart, forced fresh waves of angry and violent tears from her eyes, made her cry out one final time before the shock and loss of blood caught up with her, silenced her and left her in a cold and aching delirium among the drying crimson slick of her own dark blood.
Izzy... came her final thought. So close... so close.
She gasped, shuddered.
It won’t be much longer now.
