What do you pack when you only have five minutes of oxygen left? In the constant barrage of thoughts Camila found herself spiraling in, her primary focus had to be figuring out how to stay alive. She has to get out of here. Her eyes scan the room and land on the snow globe she brought with her from Earth. Mount Fuji, a gift from her husband to commemorate their sixth wedding anniversary. Tiny sparkles float around the globe, catching the shine of the flashing emergency lights. Her throat tightens. Dead weight. Maybe, if she’s lucky, they’ll see each other again soon. But, if she’s unlucky, she’ll get to keep regretting having left him in hospice to come to Ganymede.
Another quake rocks the station, sending Camila stumbling and clutching the edge of the desk. She frantically starts a transfer of the most critical research she can think of to a borrowed hard drive. Ice samples, bioscans, autopsies, all of it. Captain Roscoe’s passkey clears the myriad warnings of an unauthorized device, and unlocks the classified folders she knew where always there, hiding in the system. So, two things must be true. Camila’s hunch that Mark’s hard drive is decidedly not standard-issue, and that the Captain was lying about this mission not having any classified information kept from the research team. Add it to the ever-growing list of lies and misdirection that have plagued the crew since liftoff.
Camila gulps in a breath, having forgotten to breathe all this time. She has to remember to breathe normally. No hyperventilating, either. The remaining oxygen in the tank will need to last as long as possible, so she can’t afford to panic. The download time might feel agonizingly long, but she’s a steward of monumentally important information. Time is worth the sacrifice right now. If this hard drive doesn’t make it off-world then it’s only a matter of time before Meridian sends a rescue crew and this hell starts all over again.
She checks her wrist monitor. Four minutes of oxygen left.
The exosuit’s comms crackle to life. “Doc, you ready to move?”
“Almost done, Vi.”
“Copy that. Almost to you.”
Camila felt relief flood her body at the sound of Vi’s voice. They had swept the lab for any of the infected and found it empty, but Camila was still on edge from the harrowing, near-death experiences of the past 24 hours. Having a security specialist had felt like a formality when they had first come to Ganymede, an unnecessary guard dog amongst the lambs of researchers and engineers. But with how quickly the situation here had descended into chaos, she was glad someone back on Earth had the wherewithal to have someone who could stay calm under pressure. Someone who could fight.
They’ll need to move quickly to get to the evac shuttle in time. Camila’s exosuit is heavy, but nothing she wasn’t used to hauling around. This lab has state-of-the-art equipment, but the standard equipment on the ship waiting in orbit could contain the infection, though for how long was an unknown factor. Camila picks up a tablet with personal and professional logs, puts them into her backpack. What handwritten notes she could see, a few folders of excavation documents and seismic readings, also into the backpack. More and more folders find themselves haphazardly crammed into Camila’s backpack as the download’s progress bar crawls to its completion.
Camila’s thoughts drift to protection. The infected haven’t found them yet, but they have a lot of ground to cover. Weapons and protective gear would fall under Vi’s jurisdiction, but she still decides to grab the small stun pistol taped to the bottom of her desk. A couple extra pounds of security could prove worth it. The pistol clinks into place on the magnetic strip of her exosuit’s belt, where it will be tucked nicely under her backpack but still easy to reach. The moment the computer pings that the file transfer is done, Camila rips the hard drive from the interface and takes a hammer to the computer.
She had completely forgotten about the hammer. It still had blood on it, barely dried, still a deep red, as well as some unknown viscera from the blond cafeteria worker. Some of it was still on her exosuit. Camila deflated with guilt. She didn’t even remember his name, just one of the many faces that kept the station running. Not that calling out his name would have stopped him from trying to rip open her exosuit and tear a mouthful out of her neck before she stopped him with several blows to the head.
Knocking at the door. Vi must be here. Camila secures her bag, her resolve, and enters the override code for the doors to the lab.
Vi is already waiting for her in the hallway with a go-bag of her own and several guns strapped to her back. One of which she now extended to Camila. Much better than the hammer she now tossed back into the lab. Vi was focused, “Mark is already on his way to the shuttle. We need to get moving.”
“Any word from Pearson?”
“No,” Vi said quietly. “I don’t… I don’t know if he made it.”
Camila had caught Vi and Pearson once, late in the evening. Vi was a small woman but she had an almost supernatural strength, a relic of her days in the black ops of some Meridian operation out in the outermost reaches of the solar system. Dark skin, dark hair, dark eyes, and a dark sense of humor, Vi was usually all business. Pearson softened her when the two were together. Pearson was a former revolutionary from one of Neptune’s orbital stations, a bright-eyed and charismatic young man fighting for the cause. They challenged each other, like in the enemies-to-lovers novels Camila used to read. Star-crossed lovers on different sides of a war finding each other and falling in love. Heartbreaking that Vi might see whatever monstrosity Pearson might have become. Worse, if she already has.
“His comms may be down,” Camila offered. “We should keep trying on the main channel. At least until we take off.”
Vi’s reply was non-committal. She was already moving quickly down the hallway towards the exit. Camila had to walk at a pace to keep up, already regretting how many files and supplies she now carried in her backpack. Digital files felt insecure, and the weight and sounds of papers shuffling together was a small comfort. Thankfully, they wouldn’t have to move silently until they reached the main facility, so this was ample opportunity for her to test ways to be as quiet as possible.
Three minutes left.
The evac shuttle was already prepped, under Roscoe’s last orders before the infection took over the station. All they had to do was get to the hangar bay and lock it down until everyone was inside. Mark would fly them out, but Camila knew if he didn’t show that Vi was capable of flying too. And as a last resort, Camila could get them out. Space flight was in no way part of her skill set, not even regular, in-atmosphere flight. But the captain had given her a few tutorials after she begrudgingly gave in to his flirting. She found that he was much different in those private moments. Much softer, gentler. It was harmless fun at first. Before she was finding herself in his cabin most nights.
Roscoe was a handsome man with a square jaw and kind eyes. He had the look of an ocean vessel captain with a hearty laugh to match. Everybody on the crew liked and respected him and his leadership. Something about the way he spoke captivated Camila. A slight drawl to his carefully chosen words that drew her in to everything he said. The way he would whisper her name in an exaggerated drawl in the after-glow of sex because it made her laugh. He must have read her file, known about her husband back on Earth. They never talked about it, the unspoken undercurrent of their relationship. Neither of them cared. She shuddered at the thought that Roscoe’s might still be roaming the area.
Camila and Vi reached the lab facility’s emergency exit, and Vi began the arduous process of turning the enormous emergency release wheel on the interior airlock door. A dozen bright orange exosuits still lined the metal wall. So many still left. Camila thought of the other scientists she was stationed with here, all of them either stalking the main facility or blasted out onto the frozen surface of Ganymede to suffocate after one of the lab assistant’s failed attempt to disconnect a portion of the lab for safety. In total, a hundred or so people were stationed here on Ganymede. Only five, potentially six, of them were left: herself, Vi, Mark, Darcy, Karlov, and potentially Pearson. Only one person needed to make it off-world, and it had to be Camila. It had to be. She would make sure of it.
The airlock door clicked loudly as it unlatched, echoing down the hallway. Camila and Vi stared at each other, faces pale in shock. None of the infected were in the lab complex, but if Darcy hadn’t been able to turn the power on in the main facility that click would be a death sentence. Camila nodded at Vi to open the airlock. The only way was forward.
Two minutes left.
The lack of hissing from the air pressure equalizing between interior and exterior was unnerving as they stepped out onto the gray surface of Ganymede. The moon’s thin atmosphere, though full of breathable oxygen, was uninhabitable due to the lack of air pressure. As was much of the dull grey, rocky, barren surface of the moon. How strange to slowly suffocate in an exosuit surrounded by the oxygen they needed to live. The research station was settled on what could be considered a Ganymedian coastline, rocky terrain butting up against the frozen edge of a massive, underground ocean that had broke through the surface. Meridian had picked this location for just that reason. It was the perfect place to set up a station tasked with researching the abundant water of Ganymede’s ocean. The search for extraterrestrial life, whether on land or in the sea or in space.
Jupiter was looming huge on the horizon, dominating the sky and beginning its triumphant arc through the heavens above. As they crossed the short distance to the main facility, Camila was struck by how beautiful it was here. And how the nightmares that called Ganymede home were far worse than she could have imagined. How awfully those nightmares had clawed their way onto the surface and into her colleagues.
The infection went unnoticed at first. The main excavation team had an accident down below the surface of the ice that resulted in an engineer’s oxygen line sprouting a leak. As a precaution, the excavation team was quarantined. In hindsight, having the whole team quarantine together was a bad call. Camila was a biologist, so she had found it odd when she was called to the med bay later that evening. The medics had her look at blood samples, only later was she told the samples were taken from the engineer. His blood was inexplicably orange. They moved the engineer into isolation, but by then the infection had spread to the rest of the excavation team. It was airborne. Within a few hours, the engineer was running a fever, with the rest of the team showing symptoms shortly after. By the next morning, they had begun to change. The situation spiraled from there.
Vi was already halfway through opening the outer airlock door of the main facility when Camila caught up with her. “So, as I see it, we either need to run to the evac shuttle when the inside door opens. Or,” she turned to Camila, “we need to run quietly. How much oxygen do you have left?”
“I don’t have much left. Trying to stay calm here, Vi.”
“Your oxygen tank might be empty, but you’ll still have oxygen in the exosuit. Stay steady, and we’ll get you another tank on the shuttle while we wait. Mark should have loaded some up earlier.”
“Stay steady,” Camila repeated. Vi’s favorite saying in a time of crisis. “Right.”
The outer door groaned as it unlatched and opened, and the two crept slowly into the airlock proper. The room was clear. The lights were on, but Camila wasn’t sure if they were lit with emergency power or if Darcy was successful in restoring power to the station. Vi was hard to read, as always, but Camila was sure they shared the same wariness. They closed the outer door behind them, just as a precaution. Vi paused before the final turn of the emergency release, turning to Camila, “If that noise happens again, you know what to do.”
“Run.”
“Exactly. And you remember where the shuttle bay is?”
“Yes. Just open the door.”
“Let’s do this.”
Camila felt a bead of sweat on her forehead. What she wouldn’t give to rip off this exosuit and be done with all of this. Step out onto the surface and die in the light of Jupiter and the far-distant sun. She checked her wrist monitor. Just over one minute left.
The airlock door did not make a sound, but Camila’s heart dropped as it swung open to reveal a dark hallway lit with the soft red of emergency lighting. Darcy hadn’t been successful in restoring power to the station. Instead, the middle-aged lumberjack of a man was being scraped along the ceiling by the airlock door with a sickening cry of pain as his body stretched unnaturally, attached to some new appendage that grew out of his abdomen and was attaching itself to the door like another seal of the airlock. Darcy hadn’t fully turned yet, and was horrifyingly aware. Dozens of tiny fingers sprouted from what had the shape of an unnaturally long arm of a baby, covered in the same hair as Darcy’s arms, that was growing and gripping the metal around the edge of the door. Camila had the thought they had caught Darcy in the act of sealing off this door and accidentally pinned him to the ceiling. But he wasn’t really sealing anything. They had put him here as an alarm.
“FUCK!” Darcy was screaming, “HELP ME! CUT IT OUT OF ME! PLEASE!”
Vi was yelling apologies to Darcy through horrified sobs as they sprinted to the hangar, Camila in such shock Vi was practically dragging her along. Darcy’s pleading echoed through the hallways, more of a death sentence than any airlock door clicking. Already, Camila could hear crashing and banging from somewhere else in the facility. Already, Camila could hear the horrible moaning of those who were unlucky enough to live through the initial fight with the infected excavation team, and were left to grow along the walls of the facility until they were unrecognizable as humans and become grotesque. There was no being quiet now. The hunt had begun. In a sick way, Camila was thankful that at least Roscoe wouldn’t have to live in such a horrifying state. But she knew that Roscoe was somewhere in this building hunting her too.
Vi was yelling into the comms between gasping breaths, “If anyone can hear me… get to the hangar… NOW!” She let go of Camila and started running even faster, shouting, “I can’t carry you, Doc, you’ve got to move!”
The lab had been a graveyard, but the main facility had come alive. Camila and Vi sprinted towards the hangar bay, through the facility’s maze of hallways and concourses that began to press in on them as they narrowly avoided the shambling masses of flesh and hair and limbs that hunted them. These hallways that were once familiar now felt alien, felt more and more like the body of a massive creature, the facility itself come to life to swallow them whole. Camila had never felt farther from home.
Camila’s CO2 alarm went off as they ran, but she knew they were close. Almost there.
Vi was a few yards ahead as they reached the final hallway to the hangar, still maintaining a full sprint as Camila began to slow, when a side door burst open and Karlov came crashing through and into Vi. He was screaming, desperately clinging to his neck where blood was spurting from a freshly severed artery. The entire left shoulder of his exosuit was ripped open, and Camila could see tendon and bone and all that was left of Karlov’s arm. He wasn’t a big man, but he slammed into the wall with a sickening crunch, falling from being thrown through the door and scrambling to get back up as his blood drained out of him along the wall, the floor, and on Vi. She was screaming now too, trying to get Karlov off of her and continue through the hallway as Camila ran past.
“Doc! Help me!” Vi called out to her. But it was already too late.
One of the infected stepped out of the darkened corridor through the door and into the light. It must have been one of the first infected when the quarantine broke, because it was huge. It turned and made eye contact with Camila, sending a chill down her spine. But it turned away. What used to be its legs now dragged on the floor behind the mass of flesh that now made up the rest of its once-human body, an elongated human head with a drooling maw and several rows of teeth set its sights on its prey. Karlov’s blood was a red carpet to the feast before the creature, as it moved unnaturally fast to descend on both Karlov and Vi. Karlov was already almost gone, but Vi’s shrieks of pain and horror paralyzed Camila. What had once been Pearson now tore into Vi’s body, new blood spraying across the hallway onto Camila. The two women locked eyes.
“Run!” Vi gargled out.
Camila ran. Faster than she ever thought possible. The weight of what she carried felt insignificant in this moment. If Pearson turned on her next, she wouldn’t make it. She prayed he took his time with Vi. Maybe some part of him was still human and able to help Camila escape, or Vi could hold his attention long enough before she faded. Camila could barely see through the tears. Why had Pearson spared her? How could any of this have happened? Did Meridian know what was out here?
Camila was lightheaded. She was almost out of air, and time.
The hangar bay door slammed behind her, barely a moment after she made it through. Camila turned to see Mark barring the door with a crowbar. His wire-frame glasses were fogged up in his helmet and his shaggy hair was slick with sweat. He must have been in a fight of his own because his exosuit also had orange smears and spatters of blood. A thought flashed through her mind. Had he meant to lock her out? “This should hold them until we’re on the ship,” Mark said. “Let’s go.”
Already the hangar was filled with the sound of creatures banging against barricades. Mark had been at work here, sealing off the main doors and vents with whatever he could find, crowbars, pipes, crates, anything he could lift. It would buy them a few minutes, but Camila was focused more on finding a spare oxygen tank. Her vision was blurring, still breathing hard from running through the facility and unable to catch her breath. “Mark,” she wheezed. “Oxygen. Tanks?”
“Moved a bunch of them on the shuttle. You almost out?”
“Yeah.”
Mark quickly led her to the rack of spare oxygen tanks he had moved into the entrance of the evac shuttle. “I just need to grab another supply crate and then we can go.”
“What? No time.”
“It’ll just be one second.”
He disappeared back into the hangar as Camila switched out tanks. What was he grabbing? She didn’t have the breath to waste on interrogating him further, but she would in a moment. The hard drive was already a big question looming in her mind. Could he be in on something Meridian hadn’t shared with the rest of the crew? Did he know what was out here? As the new tank clicked into place and flooded her suit with oxygen, Camila took in greedy, savoring breaths of the fresh air. Perhaps it didn’t matter now. Or it mattered even more.
Mark returned with a small crate, looking pleased with himself. “Alright, let’s go!” But as soon as he pushed the button to shut the evac shuttle door, what remained of Captain Roscoe came crawling over a stack of crates just a few yards away. It still retained Roscoe’s face, with a few new sets of eyes and a grotesquely elongated neck, but a new body had grown out of the old one. Camila could see where the new growth had split open Roscoe’s old body, the shoulders she had once caressed now broken and sprouting long, spindly arms, the arms that once held her gone limp and dragging along the sides of a slug-like body slithering along the crates that now buckled under its weight.
The door wouldn’t close in time. Camila knew Roscoe was too fast now. If anything, they would be trapped inside with it. Camila held the gun firmly. Staying steady, just like Vi had showed her. She took aim, and fired. Bullets pierced and shredded Roscoe’s already blood-covered flesh, and it let out a spine chilling shriek of pain that brought Mark to the ground in horror. Roscoe scrambled backwards, using its array of arms to shield its face from the bullets. Camila knew she couldn’t kill it, but she could keep it away from the shuttle long enough for the door to close. She could hear more infected breaking through their barricades and flooding into the hangar bay. Stay steady.
In a last, frenzied effort, Roscoe leapt from the crates towards the closing shuttle door. But it was too late. All it could manage to grab was the nozzle of the gun, yanking it from Camila’s hands as the shuttle door closed. She yelled for Mark, but he was already in the cockpit starting the engines that now thrummed to life. Roscoe stared calmly at Camila through the porthole of the shuttle door. Its eyes were all still eerily human, as if the feral, predatory instinct had now subsided and some form of intelligence came forward. She felt something stir inside her. It saw her. But was she looking at Roscoe, or something else? Some new stage in this creature’s evolution?
More infected slammed themselves into the shuttle as it took off, Roscoe’s face sinking away in the porthole window. She could hear the thumping and muffled screeching as the infected tried and failed to find a hold on the shuttle’s smooth exterior. Mark was in the pilot’s seat as Camila entered the cockpit, settling into the co-pilot seat and fastening the safety belts for the bumpy ride out of atmosphere. Relief washed over her. She made it. And she wasn’t alone.
As the shuttle exited Ganymede’s thin atmosphere into space, Mark slowed the shuttle and began flipping switches and punching codes in the controls, setting the autopilot to dock with their ship in orbit. As he flipped the final switch, a confirmation of the autopilot docking sequence popped onto Camila’s co-pilot screen. They’d be back on the main ship in less than an hour, and finally begin the long journey back home to Earth. They spent the next couple of minutes cycling through the shuttle’s air supply to remove any airborne contaminants. Once that was finished, they removed their helmets, and Camila took in a deep breath, exhaling slowly and savoring the clean air inside the shuttle.
“Mark, what kind of hard drive did you give me?”
“What? Oh, right. It’s a personal hard drive. DNA encrypted so only I can access.”
“Well, I need those files to look over on the journey home.”
Mark laughed at that. “That information will be classified, Doc. I don’t think you have a high enough security clearance to see it.”
After all they had just gone through, Mark seemed eerily calm in this moment. “What was in that crate?”
“Tissue samples. Data. You name it, it’s in there,” Mark said as he placed his hands behind his head, closed his eyes, and relaxed back into his chair. “There’s a lot of people out there that would be keen to see what happened here. And also pay well for that information.”
“You’re not with Meridian, are you?”
Mark cracked a smile and opened his eyes to look at her, “Now, what would give you -” but Camila pulled the trigger of her stun pistol to cut him off. Mark’s body jerked violently before he slumped into his chair, twitching. What a mess this had all become.
Several hours later, Mark woke up in a sterile white room in the main ship’s med bay. His whole body was sore, with sharp, pinpricks of pain in his left arm.
Camila. He shot straight up, but was yanked back to the bed. He was restrained. Leather and metal straps bound his wrists and legs to his bed. His head was swimming. Weakly, he tried to pull himself free but only managed to tire himself out more. What the fuck was he doing in here?
“Camila?” Mark shouted. “Camila!”
A crackle of the room’s intercom turning on before Camila’s voice came through. “I’m here, Mark.”
“Get me out of here!”
“I don’t think so.” One of the walls became clear as Mark continued to pull at his restraints. He was in an observation room. Panic began to set in.
“Let me out, Doc. People are going to come looking for me.”
“You’ll find that won’t be a problem. I’ve contacted your employer to let them know that you were unable to finish your mission.” Camila took a few steps closer to the window so he could see her better, tucking the loose strands of her red hair behind one ear and crossing her arms. “I’ve also let them know that I’ll have ample time to study the effects of the infection on my way to them.”
No. No, this can’t be happening. “Camila, don’t do this!”
“You’ll find that I’ve already started.”
The pinpricks. Mark looked closer at his left arm, seeing tiny spots of red where she must have injected him. She infected him. He could already see lumps where something was growing out of his arm. Already he could feel a coldness in his chest, an itchiness on his side. “No!” he begged. “Please don’t do this!”
“Like you said, they’re offering a lot of money. And I need money for my research. I’ll try to make this as comfortable as possible for you, don’t worry.”
Mark’s shouts of protest went unheard as Camila shut off the intercom. He was already well into the second stage of the infection, though he wasn’t aware enough to see how far along he already was.
Camila had sorted through his files after using the DNA sample she took from him to unlock the hard drive. She had seen his contract, just how much this third-party was paying him, and that Mark had broken the excavation team’s quarantine to cover his tracks. Everyone was dead because of him. So now, his suffering will serve as both punishment, and opportunity for herself. According to the data, this infection wasn’t viral, so it could be cured. And now, she had a subject to test potential cures on.
She could already feel the fetus kicking around inside her, much farther along than should be possible. Roscoe was already infected when they had sex the night before the quarantine broke. She had noticed the condom was broken when she went to throw it away, on her way to the bathroom to wash up after. The fetus was changing her, in subtle ways even she didn’t notice. What doubt she had about keeping samples and a live, infected subject had disappeared by the time they reached the main ship and set their course to Earth. This fetus wasn’t infected to her. It was her child. It was her’s. And she was carrying something that could change the entire world.