Judas had never been fond of the bathrooms on Caliban Station. They were utilitarian in the worst way—no sense of privacy, no effort to make the experience remotely pleasant. Just a row of narrow stalls, the constant hum of the air scrubbers, and the faint, ever-present smell of industrial cleaner that somehow only made the whole place feel dirtier.
But for the past few weeks, it had become their sanctuary.
The bathrooms were the only place the NSS Buddies couldn’t follow—the one space on Caliban where cameras, mics, and surveillance systems were prohibited. Regulations. Even the most invasive corporate security systems still respected some sense of dignity. And so, they huddled there. Whispered plans between chipped sinks and bulkhead-cracked mirrors, heads ducked low like they were confessing sins in the world's most depressing confessional.
But even that was starting to feel fragile.
Judas leaned against the wall now, feeling the faint vibration of the station beneath his shoulder blades. Somewhere, deep in the mass driver, coils were humming—testing, calibrating. Preparing for the next asteroid. The one that would decide everything.
“Three more days,” Dara whispered, arms crossed tight. Her voice echoed strangely in the tiled space, like the walls themselves were listening.
“Yeah,” Judas murmured back. He was staring at a hairline crack running across the floor. He hated that he knew it so well now—could trace its path in his mind, knew the exact point where it forked into two thinner fractures.
Ibrahim was pacing, back and forth in the cramped space, boots scuffing against the floor. “They’re acting weird.”
No one argued. It was obvious. The NSS Buddies had grown... off. It was subtle at first. Patrols had shifted slightly. Some of the Buddies started lingering a little too long near the ballistics hub or the environmental controls. At first, it had seemed like standard paranoia—overzealous security protocols.
But then, two days ago, Judas had passed an NSS Buddy in the corridor. A standard model—bipedal, armored in dull polymer plating. Its sensors had swiveled towards him as he walked by. Nothing unusual.
Except it hadn’t moved. At all.
It just stood there, motionless, long after Judas had turned the corner. Watching.
Stolen novel; please report.
“They know something,” Reya whispered now, from where she sat crouched on the edge of the sink.
“They don’t,” Tariq said, but the words sounded hollow.
“They’re waiting for something,” Ibrahim added, his voice tight. “They’re always near the docking bay now. The lampreys. They’re prepping them.”
Judas knew this, too. He had seen them, he had seen the disused docking bay go from empty to riotously full of the most silent partygoers imaginable. When they weren't menacing random workers, they were preparing their big lamprey, the one that brought them all here. Judas supposed the little ones could be sacrificed with Caliban. Or maybe they were already detached at this point? It's not like Judas was going to fix the flux until this was all over, anyway. The NSS Buddies weren't doing anything overt.
They were just... waiting.
“Maybe they’re planning to evacuate,” Dara suggested, her jaw clenched. “Leave us here. Let the mass driver do its thing. Let Caliban eat itself.”
Reya made a bitter noise. “Why wouldn’t they? They don’t need us alive.”
No one responded to that.
The quiet stretched, heavy and suffocating. The air felt thicker here—maybe because they weren’t supposed to be breathing it together, so close, so tense.
Judas rubbed at his temple. His head ached. He hadn’t been sleeping much—not with the countdown hanging over them. The asteroid would arrive in three days. Seventy-five days of waiting had passed like molasses, slow but suffocating, each hour tighter than the last.
And the worst part?
The NSS Buddies weren’t stopping them.
They weren’t interrogating. They weren’t hunting for conspiracies. It was like they knew something was coming but didn’t care enough to stop it. Or maybe they were waiting to leave before it happened—abandon ship before the storm hit.
That thought was worse than open hostility.
“Have you noticed,” Tariq began, his voice low, “that they’ve started lingering near the bathrooms?”
Everyone tensed.
Judas looked up. “What?”
“Yesterday. I saw one near D-ring lavs. Just... standing there.”
“Did it go in?” Reya asked.
“No. But it waited outside. Like it was... listening.”
Judas’s stomach twisted. “Regulations prohibit—”
“Yeah. But they don’t care about regulations, Judas. Not anymore. They already plan to kill us.”
Ibrahim exhaled sharply. “We don’t know that.”
“Don’t we?” Dara said, cold.
They fell into silence again.
There was nowhere else to go. No other place on the station to hide. If the NSS Buddies started monitoring even here—then it was over. All they could do now was wait. And pretend. And hope.
Judas pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead, breathing deep.
The worst part wasn’t the fear. It was the limbo—the helplessness, knowing they had a plan, that everything was set, but they couldn’t act yet. Not until the asteroid arrived. Not until the final moment.
And the NSS Buddies? They were just waiting, too. Maybe they were betting on the humans freezing up. Giving up. Letting inertia win.
“Three more days,” Dara whispered again.
Judas didn’t respond this time. He just stared at that hairline crack on the floor.
Three more days. Then they either lived... or died.
