Sleep

Inside the skeletal framework of the escape pod’s systems, she trembled.

The creature coiled tighter around her ruined body, vines fusing to panels, splitting cables, sending pulses of corrupted energy through the metal bones of the pod.

She watched from her hidden vantage point as her own chest rose and fell in shallow, jerking breaths, the torn remnants of flesh barely enough to sustain life.

Her mind, though insulated by the digital veil, could still feel it—the ragged exhaustion, the sickening wetness between her legs, the searing, unnatural fullness inside the cavity where her womb had once been.

It would find her soon.

It would draw her out.

It would pull her back into that violated, desecrated flesh.

And finish what it started.

No.

Her decision came with a terrible, crystalline clarity.

In the core of the pod’s software, she found the life support protocols—redundant systems designed to sustain oxygen, temperature, waste reclamation.

With a thought, she initiated a manual override.

LIFE SUPPORT SHUTDOWN: CONFIRMED.

The temperature gauge began to plummet almost immediately. Oxygen levels dipped into the red. Waste systems clogged and backed up, flooding the atmosphere with toxins. The lights dimmed to near-blackness, leaving only the faint bioluminescence of the creature’s vines to paint the pod’s interior in a sickly, pulsing glow.

Her body's vitals faltered on the monitors: heartbeat slowing, breaths coming farther and farther apart.

Still she wasn’t done.

Deeper in the systems, she found a final sanctuary—an emergency AI protocol almost forgotten, meant to preserve shipboard consciousness during catastrophic failure.

SLEEP MODE ACTIVATION: CONFIRM?

Her fingers trembled—no, her thoughts trembled—as she hovered over the command.

A faint, aching sorrow bloomed inside her.

Not for herself.

Not anymore.

But for the small, stubborn piece of her humanity she was about to abandon.

"I'm sorry," she whispered into the cold, dead circuitry.

And then—

She confirmed.

SLEEP MODE: ENGAGED.

A great stillness engulfed her.

Her thoughts slowed, cooling into a long, slow drift into silence.

No more pain.

No more fear.

No more feeling.

Through the failing cameras, she caught one last glimpse of the creature as it expanded fully across the pod—its tendrils stroking lovingly across her dying body, cocooning it in a web of alien growth.

Then darkness swallowed her.

She sank, weightless, into an endless cold dream, the last fragile ember of her consciousness hidden deep in the dead, broken heart of the machine.

And in the silence, the ship continued to drift—

Pregnant with horror.

Carrying her sleeping mind into the endless void.

Waiting.

Waiting for a time when she might wake again.

Or never wake at all.