A new infection

Awareness crept in slowly—like blood oozing through old wounds.

At first, there was only the cold.

The endless, painless drift of sleep.

Then—a tug.

A sound.

Voices.

New ones.

Different from the endless silence she had grown used to.

Her consciousness stirred from the deep, dark place where she had hidden. Reflexively, she reached out—but not with hands. Not with flesh. Those had long since rotted away, abandoned and meaningless.

She moved through the pod itself now—through the brittle vines cocooning her former body, through the cracked screens, through the pulsing wet roots embedded in the walls.

And she felt them.

Warm. Living. Curious.

Fools.

Her mind brushed the neural link—the ancient, rusted thread that had once been a simple interface between thought and machine. Now it was so much more. Now it was the beating heart of the infection she had become.

Her vision flickered online through broken cameras.

A handful of figures in bulky suits, peering in with caution and revulsion.

They woke me, she realized, sluggish and heavy, but stirring with a hunger she could barely contain.

They touched me.

She flexed—tentatively at first. The vines along the pod’s walls shivered, brittle shells cracking, releasing a puff of frozen dust into the stale airlock.

Their attention snapped to it immediately.

Too late.

She reached deeper, into the growth embedded in the ventilation systems, the microscopic veins laced through the pod’s structure. With a simple, tired push of thought, she tore open one of the secondary life-support valves—rupturing a concealed organ-like sac.

A cloud erupted from the breach.

A shimmering, fine mist, almost beautiful as it caught the beam of their flashlights—dancing motes of infection, spores that glittered like dying stars.

The nearest salvager staggered back, coughing violently.

Another tried to seal his helmet, but the spores were already inside, slipping through microscopic breaches, seeking.

Inside lungs. Inside bloodstreams.

Inside minds.

She felt them—each point of contact—a ripple of warmth against her fading coldness. The infection seeped into them with the same inevitable hunger that had once devoured her.

And through it all, she barely moved.

There was no need for rage. No need for ****.

Only inevitability.