With a jolt, the monorail car began to stop where it shouldn't. —. Warning. Unexpected obstruction in the monorail shaft. — the unfeeling voice of the Non-Sentient computer broke the tense silence as the car gradually slowed down. —. No. — Ayna sobbed —. No. Please, no. — —. Welcome to Hydroponics/Biob. — ignoring the growing fear, the monorail came to a zy stop, and the doors opened with a hiss. The ptform of the section awaited them, with sterile white metal walls with a slight greenish tint, unpleasant to the eye. The only thing that betrayed a sense of abnormality was the flickering of the lights. However, the station seemed spotless. With a gesture, Max asked them to step aside and turned on the Psma Saw. Slowly, he peeked out cautiously, holding the tool in front of him the whole time. The buzzing of the incandescent beam screamed danger and a painful death. Looking to his left, he saw nothing. A yellow and red recycling bin seemed to be watching him. A Replicator stood in the corner near the door, dispying a constant error message. Naomi followed him, removing the safety from her weapon and looking to the left. —. Clear. — Max assured, and nodding, invited everyone to get off. Harding echoed him and ordered Satoshi to watch his back. Ayna stubbornly shook her head. —. No. — she said softly with her arms crossed. —. We have to do this, Ayna, for God's sake. — Yakiv pleaded wearily. —. I'm not going down. — she concluded, to which Yakiv firmly grabbed her wrist, as if wanting to pull her with him. She protested, and there was a slight struggle, but he gave up, letting his shoulders drop. —. Come on, let's go. Either we go down and find a way to continue, or we die here. — Ayna's rebellion faded, and she let out a painful sigh. —. We should have stayed in the barbecue. — —. So we could be eaten, for sure. — Satoshi joked. —. We can't go back. — Max stepped forward with a firm voice and cast a decisive look at his reluctant crewmates —. We were cornered, and committing suicide wasn't the best option either. — Harding nodded silently, the weight of the decision on his shoulders. The idea had been his. The security chief took a deep breath and activated his communicator. —. Angie. — he said —. Your route hasn't worked. We're in Hydroponics. Something is blocking the tracks. — On the other end, a curse could be heard through the white noise. —. For the love of God. Fuck me. — and then murmured off the mic —. Sawatari, help me check the structural integrity of the Hydroponic Farm and Bioboratory section, please. — —. Of course. — the frantic and incessant tapping on a keyboard was heard. Then, the sound of a notification. A fateful bell indicating that something was horribly wrong. Max could almost feel how they were holding their breath on the other side. —. Oh. This is bad. — Sawatari commented. —. Shit. Something is blocking the tracks. — Angelina indicated —. A tentacle just pierced the tram's shaft. Echmann had said that the Firefly Forest was experiencing accelerated growth in the st few hours. I didn't think it would affect the structural integrity of the ship so quickly. At this rate, it will consume entire decks. — —. Well, it was something that was coming. — Harding observed, and then let out a nervous ugh. The hollow sound echoed dully through the small space of the ptform —. I think we made it this far, Angie. It seems you led us to our death. — —. Don't be dramatic, Dan. — Angelina interrupted him —. We're looking for an alternative route. But you'll have to walk. — —. Obviously, but where? — Several notifications could be heard from the other side, those that alert catastrophic failures. Harding could imagine Angelina dropping her shoulders, defeated, and the heavy sigh only confirmed it. —. The entire deck is in the red. Several sections have been isoted. It's a miracle that some systems are still functioning, although not for long. The atmosphere is becoming contaminated. The only possible way is through the Air Hyperfiltration Towers, and then through the coont ducts of the radiators. That way you can exit through the maintenance workshop to an airlock, where you will do a spacewalk and reach us. It's the most direct route. — Angelina concluded. —. Mendoza said that the saturation of the atmosphere was rising to critical levels. — Naomi commented quietly. —. It must be because something is preventing the filtration. — Max added —. Doc. Can you check what it is? — —. I tried, Max, but EREBUS won't let me. We only know that the air quality is deteriorating at an accelerated rate, and the cause is coming from there. — he felt a knot in his stomach and inwardly pleaded that it was just a mechanical failure —. I'm trying to access it, but a looping error is preventing me. Also, someone has been pying with the elevator in the Main Sprout Chamber. — —. Why? — Max asked him. —. I don't know, and you'll have to pass through there to get to the Hyperfiltration Towers. — a hint of apprehension was heard in her voice. Max recognized the change in her tone. She was no longer the head of IT of the Chronos, but a maternal figure —. Guys. I have a bad feeling. Please, be careful. — —. You too. — Max pleaded.The door opened with a hiss before them. Max and his weary crew entered the waiting room of the Hydroponics section. An unsettling calm greeted them. The order and absolute solitude contrasted with the chaos that was battering the ship and threatened to tear it apart. The air y abnormally still, as if the ship itself were holding its breath. The white lights, embedded in the ceiling, flickered, casting the elongated shadows of the group on the immacute walls of shiny greenish metal. Empty chairs were perfectly aligned against the walls with precision, next to a counter where some C-Sec officer would be on guard, attentive to arrivals and security cameras. Instead, there was nothing. —. Welcome to the Hydroponics deck. — the Computer's voice broke the tranquility, and Max jumped, stopping abruptly —. Members of the Hydroponics and Bio Labs Crew must wear HAZMAT suits at all times and pass through the decontamination shower as mandatory. If you are visiting, show your captain's authorization to the on-duty C-Sec Officer and follow the instructions of the Deck Chief: Doctor Xiuying Yueh, Agricultural Engineer. He will indicate the instructions to follow. Location: Air Hyperfiltration Towers; Section C, Level —4. Thermodynamic Systems Maintenance. — Harding let out a long sigh. —. I'm surprised that thing is still working. — he commented quietly. —. And that it hasn't gone insane. — Naomi added. —. And where could Doctor Yueh be? — Ayna asked, her voice trembling —. Maybe he can help us. — —. Dead. — Satoshi replied. —. That would be the best thing that could have happened to him. — Yakiv commented. Ayna tried to protest. —. But the computer said that... — —. He was in the thermodynamic maintenance ducts, yes. — Max confirmed —. But people don't go through there. That pce is an oven. And even if they go in suits, they don't stay there long. —. Satoshi and Yakiv are right, Ayna. — Naomi added —. Let's hope Yueh is just dead. — Max's gaze drifted to a corner, where he found an improvised mattress. Someone had been living there before they arrived. At the foot, there were drawings on the floor. The runes he was seeing in his nightmares. They formed spirals and twisted in patterns that gnawed at the edges of his consciousness. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't tear his gaze away from them. A chill ran down his spine when a whisper seemed to emanate from them. Likewise, fireflies appeared in his vision for a fraction of a second. A part of him wanted to keep looking, wanted to keep listening to understand what the runes and the fireflies were trying to tell him. Knowledge that remained out of his reach. He rubbed his temples and felt drops of sweat sliding down his forehead as he closed his eyes and a migraine threatened to appear. Naomi approached him. Looking at her, he could see the anguish in her features. He tried to force a smile and nodded. It didn't seem like enough of a response to her, but she just returned the gesture. —. We have to move forward. Stay alert. We don't know what awaits us here. — he took a step forward and raised the activated Psma Saw before crossing the door. If something jumped from the darkness, Max was ready to slice it before it had the chance. After passing through the preparation and decontamination room, the airlock opened with a reluctant hiss. An expanse of metal walls seemed to defy the utilitarian and narrow norms of Chronos architecture. The compartment extended four levels upward, with the metal walls a sterile, opaque gray. Huge shelves were scattered throughout the pce, forming monotonous aisles between them. Potatoes, tomatoes, pumpkins, bell peppers and chilies, wheat and rice sprouts, spinach, lettuce, corn, all formed a mosaic of green and pnt life. An oasis in the middle of the ship, illuminated by purple UV mps. Automated irrigation systems activated with a snap, showering each row with a perfectly calcuted rain of water and nutrients. But outside the systems that clung to normalcy, the absence was palpable. Orange robotic arms hung inert from the ceiling. In the past, they would have moved back and forth, harvesting from each shelf to take the produce for food processing, while another legion of arms would cut the sickly hooks and sprouts. Those would be burned, and the ashes reused. A division of crew members in white and green isotion suits would have strolled through the room, carrying HoloPads in their ps and moving in the elevators, checking the pH levels and health of each crop. They would take random samples and take them to the boratories for study. If they found defects, they would seek to eliminate them in the future, crossbreeding and artificially pollinating to create stronger and more resilient crops for life in space. Cssical and Lo-Fi music would have pyed from the speakers, along with nature sounds, like insects, birds, and running water. Now it shone by its absence. Instead, silk butterflies fluttered through the chamber and had taken over the pce. Someone had released them from the entomology b. —. Ryo Otoko would have a fit if he saw this, right Nam? — Max tried to joke. Naomi's expression remained in a limbo of fatigue and sadness as she pointed forward with her finger. —. It seems it doesn't affect him. — and then they saw him, slumped against a shelf, in a pool of his own blood. A dark red stain on his thigh smeared his pristine white uniform, and a burn revealed a cut in the femoral artery. In his right hand, the ser scalpel still clung to his fingers, and against his chest, he held a crumpled paper. The corpse showed an expression closer to fatigue and sadness than pain. Harding approached, as if he were at a crime scene, to recognize the corpse, and then took the paper in his hands. In kanji, he scrawled a suicide note. —. I can't do what the fireflies tell me. I can't condemn all of humanity to a hell like this. The ship was doomed anyway, just like the colony. It broke my heart to see those silk worms never able to transform into butterflies, so I gave them the chance. Let them fly one st time like with Chronos and all of us. Soon I will have joined them. Otoko. — —. My God. — Yakiv muttered.In a second, darkness fell. A stroboscopic yellow light flooded the room, followed by a loud siren, like the wail of a Banshee. Max and the crew felt the hairs on the back of their necks stand up, for they knew it. Nothing good was about to happen. —. Warning. Hazardous life forms detected. — announced the indifferent voice of EREBUS, reverberating off the walls —. Location: Main Sprout Chamber. Hydroponics Section. — —. EREBUS! — Max tried to call for attention over the sirens, but was completely ignored. —. Initiating isotion and decontamination procedure. — the lights turned red, and heavy yellow metal walls with biological hazard symbols dropped like guillotines, blocking entrances and exits. Pumping purification into the irrigation system. Decontamination in T—60 seconds. 59, 58, 57... — —. It’s going to start decontamination with us inside! — Naomi shouted —. Acid is going to rain down on us! — —. Oh shit. — Max couldn’t react fast enough when he heard it. A grate flew up from the floor, and from the darkness, the aberrations emerged. Masses of corrupt cells and tissues, with no trace left that they had ever been human at all. Amalgams of twisted, sick flesh trying to take shape, like a parody of life itself, crawling on all fours, with elongated snouts full of serrated teeth. Barks, like distorted screams, came from their maws, and as if they had sensed the smell of blood, they turned their heads toward them, ready to pounce. Like sinister hounds, they charged toward them. —. Run! — Max shouted without thinking. One of them jumped straight at his face, and tracing an arc with the Psma Saw, Max sliced it in half. He didn’t have time to feel disgust as he turned on his heels and fled. A shotgun bst fttened the head of one of the hounds, and its lifeless body slid across the floor, leaving a horrendous trail of sickly blood. With the crackle of a pulse rifle burst, Harding dispatched two more. Ayna was firing blindly, and then Yakiv, taking the Vdizva, impaled one of them with a hammer blow. A metal stake shot out from the barrel and skewered one of the hounds. He tried to advance, but Yakiv didn’t give him a chance. Max knew that the engineer was about to do something stupid. —. Wait, no! — but it was useless. Squeezing the second trigger, the creature exploded into pieces. The bst was like lightning, followed by a cannon shot. The shockwave pushed them like an invisible ram and made them fall. When Max opened his eyes, there was only silence, as if he were in the middle of the void. A ringing in his temples was the first sound he heard. There were guts and limbs wherever his eyes nded, and the torso of a Hound was trying to crawl toward Ayna. She was lying on the ground, desperately squeezing the trigger. Poor thing, she hadn’t taken off the safety. Max wanted to warn her, but then he felt something sliding over his left eye, warm and viscous. A metallic smell pierced his nostrils. Blood. He found his bloodied hand. A shard had cut his eyebrow. That didn’t look good. He would ask Naomi to tend to it. A voice sent chills down his spine. —. You have to listen to the fireflies, sad one. — Lay. When he turned, she was standing among the shelves. The only image that his nightmares could evoke, like that time he saved her, and sliced his uncle with that same Psma Saw. She looked at him with a sad face and gssy eyes, and Max wanted to know why his little sister was suffering. He wanted to crawl toward her, but a sharp pain in his head prevented him. It was as if they were squeezing his skull, and then he let out a scream from the depths of his soul. The darkness turned to light, burning his retinas, and then he closed his eyes, but it was all he could see. Incandescent light that was burning his brain. Thus, the symbols appeared, searing into his gray matter. A procedure he had to carry out. The formu of life, only now the fireflies were shouting it at him. —. Max! — Naomi’s voice brought him back, and then he discovered that his sister was not there. A dismembered Fairy had repced her, and was trying to crawl toward him. The scream couldn’t form in his throat when a burst of hyperdiamond shards blew off the arm of that beast. Its flesh burned, and then Naomi emptied three shots into the light, one after another, until its body colpsed, writhing in a puddle of brown slime that grew and grew. —. Am I deaf? — Max said to himself, as the sound came muffled, as if he were underwater. Naomi turned and ran toward him while lifting him by the pels and shaking him violently. —. Max, we have to go! — and then he came to himself. —. Decontamination in T—30 seconds. — announced EREBUS —. 29, 28, 27, 26... — —. But where? — Max was surprised at how distant and tired his own voice sounded. He was still bleeding. And then he realized they were cornered. From the ducts in the walls, ceiling, and floor, hordes of aberrations emerged one after another, moving with palpitations and nervous spasms. A slug with spider legs and distorted human faces crawled, with screams and moans of a million souls. Twisted and emulsified flesh in shapeless aberrations, that didn’t deserve to be called life. If God existed, he was either indifferent or ignorant of the horrors occurring in his own creation.—. To the Biob! Now! — Harding shouted, and without questioning it, he turned on his heels and ran while pulling Naomi by the arm. Satoshi and Ayna dragged Yakiv. Something was wrong with him. He was missing an arm, and blood kept pouring out. Harding paralyzed a Fairy with the Reverse Field, and didn’t even bother to shoot. —. ten, nine, eight, seven... EREBUS continued. A Gorgon emerged from the corner, right next to the door, and then Max sliced her into three. Blood gushed from the charred stumps as they fell to the ground. With horrendous whimpers, those things approached. As they entered the booth, the doors closed —. five, four, three, two, one... — Streams of sulfuric acid and hydrogen peroxide erupted from the sprinklers. Nothing organic would be safe inside the room. Amidst screeches, like pieces of chicken falling into a boiling fryer, the pnts and the corpse of Ryo Otoko began to dissolve, amidst bubbling screeches. So did the creatures, but they did not relent. With a ravenous hunger, they threw themselves against the partition, trying to break it open, while their flesh bckened and fell to fiments, as if it were melted wax. They pounded, screamed, and hurled jets of bile at the narrow window, while the acid did its work. Ayna's screams rose desperate and high-pitched, unable to take her eyes off the front. As they were dissolved, the alien pgue thrashed, pushing itself toward life. Amidst burning blinks, the flesh writhed. Brown slime bubbled between the dissolved flesh and new limbs, tendrils and tentacles emerged amidst horrible crunches, only to be dissolved before they could even be born. Max wondered if they could get in. Ayna screamed and cried as she huddled in a corner, covering her head with her hands, while the First Officer pushed everyone against the back door, and with his heart in his hand, tried to position himself as a barrier. He had the Psma Saw on and was not afraid to use it. But the monsters found their own hell on the other side of the lock. Slowly, the screams began to fade, and the bodies colpsed, shattered with soapy sounds, crumpling to the ground, as the corrosion finished liquefying their remains. The Sprout Chamber filled with a white mist, and then, from the sprinklers, a Sodium Hydroxide solution shot out. The screeches ceased and an unsettling calm took over them, as the Sprout Chamber remained in complete darkness. The door behind them opened quickly, and they were greeted by a preparation room. Thick, bulky silicone isotion suits hung from the racks, and instructions in various nguages warned of the guidelines. They were entering a hazardous area. As soon as they set foot inside, Max realized that someone had been conducting experiments there, and it wasn’t exactly artificial pollination. They had fallen from the frying pan into the fire, and EREBUS was waiting for them.