The nightmare deepens

Ward locked the bridge hatch manually, ramming the heavy steel bolt into place with a metallic shriek.

It wouldn't be enough.

They both knew it.

Sarah sat curled on the floor, arms wrapped tight around herself, pistol resting uselessly in her lap. Her skin still crawled where Devlin—the thing wearing Devlin—had touched her. She could still feel the echo of it inside her, like a poison slowly spreading.

Ward stumbled to the nearest console, hammering at the controls. Static spat from the speakers. The comms were down. The long-range sensors were dead. Life support barely sputtered at minimal levels.

The ship groaned again, a deep seismic rumble like some vast leviathan shifting in the black sea of the void.

Sarah hauled herself upright, every muscle trembling with exhaustion and fear.

"Options?" she rasped, her voice raw.

Ward turned to her, his face lined with shadow and grim determination.

"If we can reach the reactor core, we might be able to do a full shipwide purge. Hard reset. Burn out whatever's nesting in the systems."

Sarah's heart twisted. "And if we can’t?"

Ward’s mouth pressed into a thin line.

"We don't survive."

The words hung heavy in the air, thick and final.

A loud clang echoed through the bridge — not from the door.

From the walls themselves.

Sarah spun, gun raised.

The metal paneling along the far bulkhead bulged outward — just for a second — like something huge and wet was pressing against it from the other side.

Moving inside the walls.

Ward cursed under his breath, grabbing his rifle.

"We move now," he snapped. "Stay close. Shoot anything that tries to touch you."

Sarah nodded numbly, forcing her legs to obey.

The bridge door ground open under Ward's manual override. The hallway beyond stretched out like a throat — dark, pulsing faintly, the walls sweating moisture that hadn’t been there before.

The ship is changing.

They moved fast, boots thudding against the trembling deck.

Ahead of them, the walls breathed — expanding and contracting almost imperceptibly. Veins of black mold crept along the ceiling, pulsing with sickly bioluminescence. Somewhere far away, a wet, slithering sound echoed — thick and organic.

And voices.

Whispers.

Sarah flinched as she heard them — murmuring directly into her ears, though when she spun around, there was no one there.

You want this.

Give in.

You're already ours.

Ward gritted his teeth, shaking his head like he could physically dislodge the sounds.

"Don’t listen," he barked, voice ragged. "It's in our heads. It's not real."

But it felt real.

Sarah stumbled over a body sprawled in the hall — Wren.

Or what had been Wren.

Her face was frozen mid-scream, lips peeled back to expose bloody gums, her eyes plucked clean from their sockets, dark holes leaking viscous fluid. Her hands were fused to the floor by ropes of black tendrils growing from her palms.

Sarah gagged, **** down bile, forcing herself to look away.

Ward grabbed her arm, yanking her forward.

They ran.

The whispers grew louder, overlapping, becoming a roaring chorus — a thousand **** voices shrieking in wordless agony, clawing at their sanity with invisible fingers.

Sarah could feel them inside her mind now — searching, probing — peeling back her defenses like skin from muscle.

Her memories warped under their touch.

She saw flashes —

The colony ship launch — smiling faces twisted into drooling, eyeless husks.

Crates of food bursting open, tendrils writhing from within like maggots.

The void outside — no longer empty, but crawling with shapes too vast to comprehend.

Ahead, the ship’s main elevator loomed — a gaping maw leading deeper toward Engineering and the reactor core.

Ward jammed the call button.

Nothing.

The elevator remained stubbornly still, the panel flashing red: ACCESS DENIED.

Behind them, the corridor walls split open with wet, tearing sounds — hands, arms, faces emerging from the walls themselves, grasping, wailing, pleading.

Sarah turned, gun raised, heart slamming against her ribs.

"Override it!" she screamed.

Ward wrenched the panel off the wall, fingers flying across exposed wires, sparks raining down in a shower of angry light.

Sarah fired into the first figure that clawed free of the wall — a half-formed Devlin, its face melting, re-forming, smiling through a gaping mouth of serrated teeth.

The bullets barely slowed it.

Ward slammed a final wire home, the elevator doors screeching open an inch.

"Move!" he bellowed.

They shoved themselves inside just as the corridor erupted into a writhing sea of grasping limbs. Sarah smashed the close-door button, Ward punching the manual override.

The doors ground shut.

The elevator shuddered, then began to descend — slow, too slow — into the bowels of the ship.

Sarah sagged against the wall, hands shaking violently, blood roaring in her ears.