Mutagen

The first alarm chirped.

Zara groaned and flopped onto her side, dragging a pillow over her face like it might smother the sound—and her.

Across the narrow room, Tallis stirred in the second bunk, her platinum hair a wild halo of sleep and static. She squinted at the ceiling, one eye twitching against the pulsing orange glow.

“Oh no,” she rasped. “No. No, no. Zara, kill it. Kill the alarm.”

“Mmmnnhhhrgh,” came the response from the tangled pile of limbs and sheets that was Zara Quinn.

Tallis rolled onto her side, flung a sock at the offending console—missed—and sat up with a groan. “We are so late.”

Zara peeked out from under the pillow, her hair a snarled red nest and eyeliner smudged from the night before. “Define late.”

“Shift briefing starts in twenty minutes.”

Zara made a sound like a dying capacitor.

Tallis kicked her mattress. “Up. I’m claiming the shower. You make coffee. Or synth-coffee. Or whatever doesn’t taste like battery acid.”

Zara threw an arm out in surrender. “Deal.”

The bunk’s privacy panel hissed open as Tallis ducked out, dragging her jumpsuit behind her. Zara staggered up with the slow grace of a failing drone, rubbing her temples and muttering, “Why is gravity louder today?”

She shuffled to the kitchenette alcove and stabbed at the auto-brewer like it owed her money. Steam hissed, smelling like recycled warmth and faintly citrus-flavored regret.

The shower hissed to life, the sound of water against tile oddly inviting. Zara hesitated. Glanced at the clock. Sighed.

Then stripped.

________________________________________

Tallis had just worked shampoo through her hair when the stall door slid open behind her.

She spun around, startled. “Zara?!”

“Relax,” Zara said, already under the spray, eyes half-lidded. “We’re late. This is efficient. Shared water, shared heat. Very eco.”

Tallis blinked, chest rising with a breath she didn’t realize she’d held. “You’re insane.”

Zara smirked, reaching past her for the wall scrubber. “And yet here you are.”

Tallis sputtered, half-laughing despite herself. “You could’ve warned me.”

“What, and miss the look on your face?” Zara grinned, then nudged Tallis sideways with her hip. “Come on. Lather me. We’ve got maybe eight minutes to turn into presentable people.”

Tallis rolled her eyes and reached for the soap. “This better not awaken anything in me.”

Zara chuckled. “Too late.”

________________________________________

Tech Maintenance Hub 3-B

Ten Minutes Later. Miraculously On Time.

Zara and Tallis swept into the workshop like they hadn’t almost drowned themselves in half-warm shower spray and panic five minutes ago.

Tallis looked sharp—jumpsuit zipped, boots polished. Zara looked… decent. Her hair was tied back, her uniform clean, her ID patch aligned. Tallis had even insisted on wiping a smear of grease from her cheek before they left the quarters.

“I’m not walking into Maddox’s line of fire with you looking like a grease goblin,” she’d said.

Now, as they entered, Maddox glanced up from a console and grunted. “Quinn. Rayn. Shock of the cycle—you’re not late.”

Zara gave a lazy salute. “We’re embracing professionalism.”

Tallis added, “One of us is, anyway.”

Maddox folded his massive arms, cybernetic joints clicking. “I’ve got a priority fault out of Xenobio Bay 8. Full environmental blackout. No updates from the team assigned down there. They haven’t logged activity in six hours.”

Tallis frowned. “And station security hasn’t flagged it?”

“Working under the assumption it’s just a system loop or comms glitch,” Maddox said. “But protocol says we send tech first before waving guns around. And since both of you are somehow vertical today, congratulations.”

Zara raised an eyebrow. “We going in blind?”

“You’re going in cautious,” Maddox corrected. “Load out with standard EVA gear. No fire suppression needed—this is more likely a coolant overrun or software fault. Still, the zone’s a Class-C bio-compatibility lab. That means mask seals and no direct contact. You’re cleared to override the atmosphere lock manually if needed.”

Tallis didn’t look convinced. “If there’s no crew and the systems are dead, shouldn’t we be calling in SecOps?”

“I will, if it escalates. You two are my eyes for now.”

Zara met Tallis’s gaze. “C’mon. Could be a busted regulator again. Like last time.”

“Or another frog-tank rupture,” Tallis muttered.

“Fingers crossed.”

Xenobio Bay 8

Environmental Control Ring | Level 47-F

The ride down was quiet.

Zara adjusted her mask seal for the third time, fidgeting in the pressure suit like it itched. Tallis stood stiffly beside her, eyes flicking to the panel above the door where the red Status: No Internal Logs Detected blinked steadily.

“Still think it’s just a glitch?” Tallis asked quietly.

Zara tried to sound more confident than she felt. “It’s probably nothing. Maybe someone forgot to log out. Maybe a breaker blew. We’ll take a look and bounce if it feels off.”

The doors hissed open.

The corridor was dim, only the backup emergency strips glowing faint blue along the floor. The lab beyond was sealed, its heavy door inert. The pad flickered as Zara approached, requiring a hardwired bypass instead of standard clearance.

“Atmospheric regs are in fallback mode,” she murmured. “That’s… odd. No alarms, though.”

“No signs of fire,” Tallis said. “Or rupture.”

Zara popped the manual override and waited for the door’s atmospheric equalizer to cycle. The pressure lock took longer than usual.

Psshhh—click.

The lab door unlocked with a sluggish hiss, hydraulics straining more than they should. When it finally slid open, Zara stepped in first, Tallis a half-step behind, both of them in full sealed gear—masks secure, oxygen circulating in gentle, rhythmic puffs through their rebreathers.

The lighting inside was low, flickering in staggered intervals like a dying pulse. Emergency tracklights ran along the floor, casting shadows that twisted as the overhead strips flickered. The primary ceiling panels—normally glowing with full-spectrum daylight—were almost completely offline, their power cycling erratically.

Zara swept her headlamp across the entryway. “Infrareds aren’t picking up anyone.”

Tallis was already checking her wrist display. “No internal tags broadcasting. And the logs… look like they cut off eight hours ago. No exit pings. No internal movements logged.”

Zara glanced over her shoulder. “Could be a system lockout. Power surge might’ve corrupted access logs.”

“Or the crew didn’t leave,” Tallis said flatly, glancing toward the far end of the lab.

Everything was… off. Not chaotic, not damaged—just wrong. Equipment sat idle. Diagnostic tablets were still in their cradles. No signs of emergency, but no sign of life either. The far console was still on standby, its screen glowing faint blue against the gloom, untouched.

Tallis swept her scanner left to right. “No movement. No heat signatures outside of ambient systems.”

“Still too warm in here,” Zara muttered, checking her suit telemetry. “Ambient’s about three degrees above spec. Could be a feedback issue.”

They moved deeper into the lab. The hiss of their filtered breaths was the only sound—loud in the helmet’s interior, almost meditative. Zara’s eyes flicked over the workbenches. Tools laid out mid-task. A small rack of nutrient injectors toppled and left on the floor. One of the glass observation tanks had droplets of moisture on the inside—more than there should’ve been if cooling was active.

She paused beside a central control panel and jacked in with a hardline connector.

“Interface is up, but sluggish. Something’s chewing bandwidth.”

Tallis, kneeling near a wall-mounted terminal, pointed toward the rear quadrant. “System's registering Zone 4-B as 'active,' but it’s not responding to remote commands.”

Zara tilted her head. “Quarantine zone?”

Tallis nodded.

They exchanged a glance.

“I really think we should call this in,” Tallis said again, her tone tight. “No crew, unstable systems, possible lab breach—this is security’s problem now.”

Zara hesitated, fingers hovering over the interface screen. Her eyes flicked toward the side corridor leading to Zone 4-B. The door at the end was closed, but small indicators on the control panel beside it flickered green—unstable but powered.

“We’re already here. If it’s just an overgrowth issue or a sensor fault, we’ll look ridiculous when security shows up in full armor to find a busted vent fan.”

Tallis stared at her through her visor. “And if it’s not?”

Zara gave a small shrug. “Ten minutes. We do a sweep, we log what we find, and we leave. No touching anything, no breaking seals, no heroics.”

A beat of silence. Then a sigh.

Tallis stepped forward and drew her sidearm from its magnetic clip. “Ten minutes.”

Zara keyed in the override and the panel beeped—soft, mechanical, almost hesitant.

The door to Zone 4-B slid open.

Beyond, the chamber was dim and filled with dense condensation—droplets clinging to the inner windows of isolation tanks and high-pressure humidifiers lining the walls. The headlamps of their suits sliced through the gloom, catching strange, wet glints along the surfaces.

Still no movement. Still no bodies.

Just the quiet echo of machines left running long after their operators had vanished.

Xenobio Bay 8 – Isolation Wing

The door whispered shut behind them.

Inside, the air scrubbers hummed faintly—soft and distant, like the mechanical murmur of someone breathing just out of sight. Their helmet lamps cut arcs through the haze, catching motes of moisture drifting midair like tiny suspended worlds.

The room was symmetrical, clean, and deeply wrong.

Zara’s boots clicked lightly on the damp floor as she stepped past a bank of isolation tanks. Each one was intact—sealed, powered—but all were dark. No subjects. No records.

Just condensation running in slow streaks down their interior walls.

Tallis followed more hesitantly, her posture rigid and close. Her hand stayed near her sidearm, and she kept glancing over her shoulder, her breathing a little faster now—too fast for the soft whisper of the room.

“Doesn’t feel right,” she said, her voice tinny through the comms. “It’s too quiet.”

Zara didn’t disagree. Every piece of equipment was just slightly out of place. Not destroyed. Not looted. Just… subtly shifted. Chairs askew. A diagnostic pad lying screen-down on the floor. A single glove hanging from the edge of a biosuit rack, limp like a shed skin.

“I know,” Zara said, voice low. “But look—we’re not in any immediate danger. Atmosphere is stable. No contaminants. No signs of damage or escape. Just... an absence.”

“That’s the problem,” Tallis whispered. “People don’t just vanish.”

Zara turned toward her, watching her friend’s face through the visor—lips tight, jaw clenched.

“You’re not alone in here, alright?” she said gently. “I’ve got your back.”

Tallis looked at her, eyes softening just a little. “Yeah. I know.”

Zara offered a faint smile. “Besides, if anything jumps out at us, I’m throwing you at it and running.”

That pulled a half-laugh out of Tallis, even if it was tight. “Asshole.”

They moved deeper.

Zara’s eyes traced the control panels on the far side of the room. The power grid here was steady. No surges, no warnings. But the internal logs had dead spots—large gaps in the timeline where data simply… stopped. No errors, just blank space.

She frowned and tapped the display. “Logs from thirteen-hundred to twenty-hundred are missing. Not corrupted—just gone.”

“Like someone deleted them?” Tallis asked.

“Maybe. But not from this console. That’d need a master override.”

Zara stepped past the last tank and paused at the far wall.

Something had been written there.

Her helmet lamp flicked over the white polymer surface and revealed smeared residue—letters scrawled in a hurry. Almost invisible in normal light, but her infrared sweep caught the difference in heat retention.

It was a message. Written in condensation or oil. The top half was blurred by time or heat, but the rest was legible:

THEY’RE INSIDE—

Zara’s breath caught.

She leaned closer, examining the drag of each stroke. Finger-written. Someone used their hand. The letters trailed off with a smear near the edge, as if the writer had been pulled or had stopped suddenly.

“Tallis,” she said quietly. “I found something.”

Her partner stepped up beside her and froze.

Zara ran her gloved hand just beneath the writing, not touching—tracing the movement.

“This wasn’t logged. No record of writing. No timestamp. Whoever wrote it didn’t make it to any other terminal.”

Tallis was silent.

Then: “We’re calling security.”

Zara hesitated.

But this time, she didn’t argue.

“Yeah,” she said. “We are.”

She tapped her comm for a secure line—only to hear static.

She tried again.

More static.

Then, very faintly—just beneath the static—she thought she heard her own voice.

Just a word.

Spoken in perfect mimicry.

“Inside…”

The comm static hissed in Zara’s ear for another second before she killed the transmission.

She turned toward Tallis, her voice low but steady. “Something’s interfering with our link.”

Tallis didn’t respond right away. Her eyes were fixed on the wall—the writing—then slowly scanned upward, as if expecting something to be watching them from the ceiling vents.

Zara reached for her external signal pack and tried again. A local pulse. Short-range broadcast.

"Tech Hub, this is Quinn and Rayn—Zone 4-B. Interference on primary. Requesting confirm of system integrity and signal rebroadcast."

No reply.

Zara took Tallis’ arm and headed towards the door. “We should be able to contact them from outside.”

The door failed to open. Zara tried the override.

ERROR. DOOR CYCLE INTERRUPTED. LOCK STATE: AMBER.

Her brow furrowed. She checked the panel again—manual systems were responsive, but the exit sequence wasn’t executing. As though the environment control loop had flagged an incomplete cycle and refused to allow the seal to disengage.

She keyed the diagnostic manually.

ZONE 4-B INTEGRITY: STABLE

ISOLATION LOCK: ENGAGED

RELEASE CONDITION: PENDING...

“Okay,” she murmured, “it’s stuck waiting for something. Probably a system check that never completed.”

“Or something tripped a fail-seal,” Tallis said, voice clipped. “Zara. We need to get out.”

“I know, I know—hold on.” Zara pulled up her interface cable and jacked into the wall panel, fingers moving faster now. “If it’s just waiting on an internal temperature reading, I might be able to spoof it long enough to cycle the lock.”

Tallis turned back to face the center of the room. Her headlamp washed over the tanks again. She paused.

"...That one wasn’t fogged earlier, was it?"

Zara didn’t answer—too focused on the code.

Tallis stepped closer to the observation tank against the left wall. A faint handprint was now visible in the misted glass, slowly forming. No heat. No pressure sensors tripped. It just appeared—as though pressed from inside.

She stepped back quickly.

“Zara,” she said sharply. “Now. Open the door.”

Zara heard the tone shift. She looked up, saw Tallis staring at the tank—and followed her gaze.

The condensation handprint lingered. Then ran down the glass in a slow streak, vanishing.

Zara’s hands flew across the keypad.

Manual override initiated… cycling…

The wall lights dimmed for a full second.

Then came back up—slightly bluer than before.

Tallis was breathing harder, her visor fogging slightly from the exertion. “The seal—”

Zara hit the door panel again.

Nothing.

LOCK CYCLE ABORTED. ENVIRONMENTAL LOOP UNSTABLE.

“That’s not a sensor issue,” she said under her breath. “Something’s actively cancelling the signal.”

Tallis moved back beside her, and for a moment they were just two dark silhouettes in the center of an empty lab full of silent equipment, their own reflections ghostlike on the inner walls of the tanks.

No alarms. No sudden crash. Just the growing realization that something wasn’t adding up—and might be watching.

Zara looked at the diagnostic feed.

Then froze.

A subroutine was running beneath the environmental software—one she hadn’t noticed before. It wasn’t a standard process. No timestamp. No source.

It simply read:

Observation Mode: Active.

Subjects: 2

Behavioral Patterning: In Progress

Her blood ran cold.

She slowly turned her head toward Tallis.

“We’re not stuck because of an error,” she said quietly. “Something’s keeping us here.”

Tallis stared at her. “You mean someone.”

Zara shook her head.

“No.”

She pointed to the screen.

“Something.”

Tallis stepped back from the tank, jaw tight beneath the visor. She **** herself to breathe slow and steady, channeling fear into motion. She crossed the room and knelt by the main console Zara had jacked into, eyes scanning the auxiliary command tree.

“Alright,” she said, her voice trembling slightly through the comms. “If we’re trapped, I’m finding out why.”

Zara was already at the door panel, on her knees with her toolkit laid open. “Good,” she muttered. “Because I’m going to brute-**** our way out.”

With her gloves off, she dug into the terminal casing, prying out insulation and pulling the panel free with a snap. Sparks flared. Her fingers danced over copper shielding and conduits, identifying the primary lock controls.

Tallis activated the console’s deep archive, navigating several levels deeper than normal diagnostics allowed. She patched through bypass code from her suit’s local interface—unofficial, but effective.

“Okay… There’s a hidden branch here. Wasn’t flagged in the mission logs.”

Zara didn’t look up. “How hidden?”

“Deep. Private channel. Not linked to station-wide systems.” She hesitated. “Zara... this lab was working on controlled biological modifications.”

Zara blinked, pausing mid-circuit.

“Modifications for what?”

Tallis kept scrolling. “Interspecies mating compatibility.” Her voice dropped. “Cross-organism receptor alignment. Fertility augmentation. Hormonal override protocols...”

Zara froze.

“You’re telling me someone in here was trying to **** species-level reproductive compatibility?”

Tallis swallowed. “Looks like someone was testing synthetic mutagen compounds on select volunteer pairs. Stimulus-responsive biology. Adaptive tissue reprogramming.”

She clicked into the last log entry.

And stopped.

“Zara,” she said quietly. “There’s a note—here, audio flagged red.” She played it.

A distorted voice hissed through the speakers. The timestamp was twelve hours ago.

“...Initial reaction successful. Behavioral compliance exceeded threshold. Physical adaptation—unexpected. Containment—compromised. Subject 3... not responding to inhibitors... subject... no longer needs permission…”

Then static.

A subtle creak echoed in the room.

Zara spun, looking back toward the tanks. The condensation on the inside of the glass was sliding—not dripping. Sliding upward. Like gravity had started shifting.

Something moved in the far back corner—too quick to see, but enough to send both women snapping to attention.

“Time’s up,” Zara said, slamming the bypass wire into the manual override node.

Override in progress...

“Come on,” she hissed, tearing out a circuit fuse to disable the security lock.

A deep mechanical groan shuddered through the door.

Suddenly, the glass on one of the tanks behind them cracked—a thin, hairline fracture spidering across the pane with a sharp, wet pop.

Tallis spun. “It’s loose—Zara, it’s out—!”

The override clicked. The door seal hissed and began to open.

Zara shouted, “Go!”

Tallis lunged, making it halfway through the narrowing gap when something lashed out from behind—a flicker of something glossy and organic from the shadows.

Tallis screamed—brief and sharp—and stumbled forward, something tearing loose behind her.

Zara grabbed her by the back of the collar and yanked her bodily through the door.

The seal reengaged just as something slammed into it from the inside—loud and wet and heavy.

The door locked.

Silence.

Both women collapsed against the corridor wall, panting. Zara still had one arm around Tallis, who lay half-sprawled in the passage, her helmet clutched in her lap—cracked and useless.

Her breathing was fast, panicked, but regular.

Zara checked the suit.

“Tallis—your mask—!”

“I know,” she gasped. “It... it got pulled. I’m fine, I didn’t breathe in—I held it, I swear—”

Zara grabbed her shoulders. “We’re getting you to medbay. Now.”

Behind the sealed door, nothing moved.

But the control panel flickered softly.

And the message beneath its surface remained:

Behavioral Patterning: Adjusting.

Subject Count: 1 (Updated).

Station Medbay – Level 19-A

Karatros Station | Forty Minutes After Escape

The medbay doors burst open with a hiss of overpressure and panic.

Zara half-dragged, half-carried Tallis inside, shouting over the emergency channel before the automated triage systems even registered her. “Exposure case—xenobio lab breach! Full suit compromise. We need containment now!”

Tallis was pale under her flushed skin, her cracked helmet held tight against her chest like a security blanket. Her pupils were dilated—more from adrenaline than hypoxia—but she trembled beneath the soaked fabric of her inner suit layer.

Two medical drones zipped toward them with practiced speed, blue lights sweeping over Tallis’s frame. A human nurse followed—slim, gray-eyed, her hair wrapped back in standard med scrubs. Her voice was calm but clipped.

“What level of exposure?”

Zara didn’t slow. “We don’t know what it was. Unknown biological agent—potential mutagenic compound. She lost her mask on the way out. I’ve got logs and suit telemetry—”

“Get her on bed seven,” the nurse interrupted, already moving. “Seal room four. Begin oxygen purge and initiate Stage I pathogen screen.”

Tallis winced as the drones started cutting away her outer suit, peeling the layers down to her tank top and pressure shorts. Her breath caught in her throat, and Zara stepped back only when another drone nudged her out of the way with a sterilization wand.

“She held her breath the whole time,” Zara said, hovering. “I think. I—I don’t think she inhaled anything, but—”

“We’ll know soon enough,” the nurse replied, her expression neutral. “What about you?”

“Unexposed. Suit sealed. No breach.”

“Then you’re going to stay outside the glass.”

Zara hesitated, torn, but nodded. She backed into the viewing alcove as the medbay lights dimmed and the glass partition hissed shut, sealing Tallis in.

Inside, the diagnostics began: blood drawn via automated lance, retinal scans, dermal analysis, and internal spectrography. Everything whirred and pulsed with quiet mechanical efficiency.

Zara pressed her forehead to the glass, hands clenched in front of her.

Tallis caught her eye from the bed. “I’m fine,” she mouthed. Her lips twitched upward in something too tight to be a smile.

Zara didn’t believe it.

Her mind replayed the handprint. The flicker of movement. The whisper in the comms.

Then she remembered the console:

Subject Count: 1 (Updated).

Tallis. It had meant Tallis.

It marked her.

Zara swallowed.

A few minutes later, the diagnostics paused. A new screen lit up in the corner of the glass.

Primary Exposure: Negative

Foreign Pathogen Signature: Inconclusive

Tissue Activity: Elevated (Unclassified Response)

Suggested Protocol: Monitor + Isolate

The nurse stepped back from the console and addressed Zara through the intercom.

“No confirmed infection. No airborne toxins. But her tissue markers show stress. Something’s… active. We need to keep her here under observation.”

“For how long?”

The nurse’s mouth flattened. “As long as it takes.”

Zara glanced at Tallis again.

Her friend was lying still now, eyes on the ceiling. But something about her stillness felt wrong—as if she were focusing too hard on being still. On suppressing something.

The lights in her chamber flickered once—barely a stutter.

Tallis didn’t even flinch.

Zara’s fingers curled tighter against the glass.

“I’m not leaving her,” she said.

“We don’t recommend—”

“I’m not leaving her.”

The nurse didn’t argue.

But in the silence that followed, Zara couldn’t shake the feeling that someone—or something—else was listening.