The "birth"

From within the cold, sterile landscape of the escape pod’s systems, her consciousness drifted—weightless, detached, safe.

Through the internal sensors, she watched her own body slump lifelessly against the crash couch, her pale skin bathed in the emergency lighting’s crimson pulses.

And then—

It began.

Her belly convulsed violently, jerking upward in grotesque spasms. Fluid burst from between her legs, steaming in the cold air. She felt it only distantly, a muted disturbance on the edge of her awareness.

Through the external cameras, she watched in horror as her abdomen bulged obscenely, the skin stretching thin, spiderwebbed with dark, livid veins.

Then, with a sickening rip, something tore its way out.

Her body arched violently, mouth frozen open in a silent scream her mind refused to hear. A mass of slick, glistening flesh erupted from the torn ruin of her womb—a seething knot of tendrils and gleaming black carapace, steaming and dripping with viscous fluids.

Vines—thick and wet—followed the creature’s emergence, slithering out of the gaping wound in her abdomen, anchoring themselves to the walls, the floor, the shattered control panels.

But most of the creature’s bulk remained inside her, tethered to her ruined body by pulsing, umbilical vines. Her form sagged against the restraints, half-consumed, half-merged with the thing that had grown inside her.

The pod filled with a low, resonating hum, like a heartbeat magnified a thousandfold.

The infection was claiming the pod, spreading like roots through the circuits, the bulkheads, the very air.

Panic flared in her disembodied mind.

You have to stop it! You have to go back!

Desperately, she initiated the protocol to sever the neural link—but instead of breaking free, she lunged back toward her physical body, a jarring, violent snap as she tried to reoccupy her flesh.

The pain hit her like a tsunami.

Agony flared across every nerve ending, pure, white-hot, indescribable. Her body was no longer hers. It was torn, broken, invaded.

The vines that spilled from her abdomen writhed violently in response to her touch, sensing her, owning her.

She screamed—not aloud, but within the network—her consciousness recoiling from the unbearable sensation.

I can’t. I can’t. I CAN’T.

Whimpering, her mind fled back into the cold embrace of the pod’s computer systems, slamming mental doors behind her, retreating into the only place the infection couldn’t yet reach.

There, she hid—small, shaking, fragmented.

Through the cameras, she watched as the creature spread, engulfing the pod’s interior. Tendrils snaked into the vents, around the navigation systems, through the comms array. The pod’s weak, dying lights flickered in time with the creature’s breathing.

Her body remained in the seat—tethered to the monstrous spawn by slick, pulsing vines. A grotesque cradle.

The creature’s many eyes—wet, black, glistening—turned toward the camera.

Turned toward her.

And somewhere, deep inside the electronic guts of the pod, she realized:

It knew.

It knew she was still there.

Still watching.

Still... alive.