The song faded.
It didn't stop. It receded, a tide of impossible, alien harmony pulling back from the shores of his mind, leaving a ringing, hollow quiet in its place. A quiet that was worse than the sound.
Haruto clung to the greasy coolant pipe, his knuckles white, his breath fogging the inside of his cracked visor. He was shaking. Not from the exertion, but from the violation. The thing in the walls, the Anomaly, it hadn't just attacked him. It hadn't just threatened him. It had spoken to him. It had reached into his head, into his blood, and it had welcomed him.
Home.
He felt a violent wave of nausea, a physical revulsion that tightened his gut and made him want to vomit inside his own helmet. This was not a monster. This was not a simple, mindless plague. It was a consciousness. A vast, patient, and utterly alien intelligence that was singing to itself in the dark.
He forced his head to turn. His movements were stiff, jerky. He looked at the shaft. The walls were not walls. They were flesh. A slick, black, iridescent biomass that pulsed with a faint, oily, green-black light. He could feel its warmth from a meter away, a humid, biological heat that was the complete opposite of the ship's sterile cold. And the air… the air was thick with the spores, a glittering, swirling mist of beautiful, deadly motes. They drifted in the faint, pulsing light, catching on his armor, on his cracked visor. He was breathing a filtered, recycled mix of oxygen and his own fear, but he could almost taste the smell from the shaft—that cloying, sweet, floral scent of rot. The perfume of a god.
He looked down. Kaito was a dead weight on the tether, his unconscious body dangling in the void, a pendulum of useless armor and broken flesh. He had to move. He had to get them out of here. The Anomaly's "curiosity" might not last. Its "welcome" felt a hell of a lot like a spider admiring a fly.
He looked over his shoulder. Riku was a few meters away, a silent, dark shape against the glowing wall. He was not climbing. He was just… watching. Waiting. His carbine was held at a low ready, his posture one of unnerving, inhuman calm. Haruto had the sudden, chilling thought that Riku was not a man, but something else entirely, a different kind of machine given flesh.
"Riku," Haruto's voice was a raw, cracked whisper, barely audible over the thump-thump of the pulsing walls. "We're moving. Cover the shaft… above us. Anything moves, you burn it."
A simple, single nod from the dark helmet. That was all.
Haruto turned back, forcing his screaming muscles to obey. He couldn't climb in the traditional sense, not with one hand, not while managing Kaito's weight. He had to move laterally, hand-over-hand, using the greasy coolant pipes as a crude traverse line. He locked his left gauntlet around the pipe, the metal slick with a thin, cold, viscous film that his tactical mind refused to analyze. He unclipped Kaito's tether from his belt and re-clipped it to his arm harness, a small, fumbling movement that felt impossibly complex. Then, he began to move.
It was a special kind of agony.
He slid his hand forward, his glove scraping on the pipe. He planted his boots on a lower conduit. He shifted his weight. The movement was clumsy, a brutal, jarring exercise in leverage. Kaito's body swung beneath him, a heavy, uncooperative anchor. The tether line went taut, pulling him off balance, his armor groaning in protest. He gritted his teeth, the pain in his shoulder a sharp, white-hot spike, and pulled.
Scrape. Pull. Plant.
Scrape. Pull. Plant.
His world narrowed to this simple, brutal rhythm. The slick, cold pipe under his glove. The burning protest of his shoulders. The dead, dragging weight of the man below him. The constant, soft, rhythmic thump-thump of the living walls around him. And the spores. The glittering, silent, deadly rain that never, ever stopped.
He was halfway across. Maybe five meters to go. His arms were on fire. His power cell, already critical, was draining at an alarming rate as his suit's internal scrubbers worked overtime, filtering the air his own panicked breathing was consuming.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
The song. It was back.
Not a full chorus this time. A single, inquisitive note, a high, silver thread of sound at the very back of his mind. It wasn't in his ears. It was in his skull.
Why… do… you… struggle?
The words were not words. They were a feeling, an imprint of pure, complex meaning pushed directly into his consciousness. He flinched, his helmet smacking against the pipe with a dull clang.
"Get out of my head," he hissed, the words a low, guttural snarl inside his helmet.
The song pulsed. You… are… like… us. Broken. Piece. Of. The. Old. Song. We. Can. Make. You. Whole.
"I said get out!"
He yanked on Kaito's tether, a furious, desperate pull. The movement was too rough. Kaito's dangling body swung in a wide arc, his heavy armor striking the living wall of the shaft with a wet, solid thud.
Haruto froze.
His heart stopped.
He stared at the point of impact.
The wall reacted. Not with a tendril. Not with an attack. It… rippled. The entire section of black, glistening biomass where Kaito had hit it seemed to flinch. The pulsing, green-black light in its "veins" flared, brightening, focusing on Kaito's limp, unconscious form. The song in Haruto's head spiked, a sudden, sharp crescendo of… what? Curiosity? Pain?
It… is… broken, the thought from the Anomaly was a wave of pure, cold confusion. It… does… not… sing.
A dozen small, thin, exploratory pseudopods, no thicker than his finger, emerged from the biomass around Kaito. They didn't strike. They moved with a slow, delicate, inquisitive grace, a doctor's hands examining a wound. They touched Kaito's armor, tracing the seams, the joints, the lifeless limbs.
"No," Haruto breathed, his voice a strangled whisper. "Riku! Fire! Burn them off him!"
He was fumbling for his own sidearm, a frantic, one-handed, impossible gesture. He couldn't get it free. He was tangled in the tether.
But Riku didn't fire.
"Negative, Lieutenant," his voice was a flat, calm line in Haruto's ear. "They are not attacking. They are… assessing."
Before Haruto could scream at him, the pseudopods retracted. All at once. They pulled back into the wall, as if Kaito's unconsciousness, his lack of a "song," was a contamination. A dissonant, broken note in their perfect, alien chorus. The wall pulsed, a shudder of what felt, impossibly, like revulsion.
And in that moment of distraction, Haruto's foot slipped.
It was a small, stupid mistake. His boot, slick with the pipe's greasy film, lost its purchase. His entire weight, plus Kaito's, was suddenly, violently, thrown onto his one-handed grip. His arm was nearly torn from its socket. He slammed face-first into the main pipe, a brutal, jarring impact.
His helmet, his cracked, vulnerable helmet, struck the metal with a sharp, sickening CRACK.
He felt the impact. He heard it. A sound like a gunshot inside his own head.
And then he felt a puff of cold, sweet-smelling air on his face.
A spiderweb of new fractures erupted across his visor. A tiny, star-shaped hole, no bigger than a pinhead, had opened right in his line of sight.
Time stopped.
The world dissolved.
The only thing that existed was the high-pitched, frantic, wailing beep of his suit's internal alarm.
WARNING. SEAL INTEGRITY COMPROMISED. WARNING. VISOR FRACTURE DETECTED. WARNING. EXTERNAL ATMOSPHERE CONTAMINATION DETECTED.
The spores.
The glittering, beautiful, deadly spores were inside his helmet.
He could see them, tiny, iridescent motes drifting in the red, flashing light of his own alarm.
He could smell them. The unfiltered, overwhelming, cloying, sweet scent of rot and dead flowers flooded his senses.
He could taste them. A sweet, metallic, floral taste on his tongue.
A scream of pure, unadulterated, animal terror was ripped from his throat. He abandoned all pretense of a controlled climb. He was just a panicked, wounded animal. He hauled himself forward, his hands and feet scrambling, pulling, his armor screeching against the pipes. He wasn't climbing. He was running horizontally, fueled by a surge of pure, desperate adrenaline. He felt Kaito's body slam and drag against the wall behind him, a ragdoll in his wake, but he didn't care.
He reached the vent. He saw Riku's dark, helmeted form in the opening, his hand outstretched. Haruto didn't take it. He launched himself, a desperate, flying leap, into the dark, square hole of the vent. He crashed onto the metal floor, a heap of tangled limbs and screaming alarms, and kept scrambling, crawling deeper into the darkness, away from the light, away from the song, away from the spores.
Riku was a blur of efficient motion. He grabbed Kaito's tether, hauled the unconscious man's body into the duct, and then, with a heavy, final clang, he slammed the vent's metal cover shut, plunging them back into absolute, hot, plasma-scented darkness.
Haruto lay there, his back against the metal wall, his chest heaving. He was alive. He was inside. He was safe.
He ripped his helmet from his head, the seals hissing open. He spat, trying to get the taste from his mouth, his glove wiping frantically at his lips, his eyes.
"Get it off," he gasped, his voice a raw, choked thing.
"Sir?" Riku's voice was calm.
"The patch kit," Haruto said, his hand fumbling at his belt, his fingers shaking so badly he couldn't unclip it. "The sealant. On my helmet. The crack. Now!"
Riku was there, his movements economical, precise. He took the patch kit from Haruto's trembling hands. A rip of plastic. A sharp, chemical smell. He slapped the sealant patch over the cracked visor of Haruto's discarded helmet. The gray, putty-like substance hissed, expanding to fill the fractures, hardening instantly. The hissing of the suit's alarm finally, blessedly, went silent.
Silence.
A hot, dark, suffocating silence.
It was just them. In a metal box. Kaito was a heap of unconscious armor near the entrance. Riku was a shadow, already checking his weapon. And Haruto… Haruto was breathing the hot, stale, filtered air of the duct, but he could still taste the spores. He could still smell the rot.
He closed his eyes.
And the song was still there.
It was not the overwhelming, invasive chorus from the shaft. It was a single note. A faint, silver, impossibly high-pitched thread of sound at the very back of his mind. A whisper. A question.
He hadn't just gotten spores in his suit.
He had gotten the Anomaly in his head.
He looked at his hands in the dim, red light of his armor's status indicators. They were still shaking. He felt cold. A deep, penetrating cold that had nothing to do with the temperature. But underneath it… something else. A faint, alien warmth. A resonance.
The mission was no longer just to destroy the ship.
The mission was now a race. He had to destroy the Vanguard before this thing inside him, this quiet, patient, singing note, took him over completely. The clock was no longer on the wall.
It was in his blood.