KAEL'S POV
Three creatures woke in the darkness.
I felt them before I saw them—a pull in my chest like invisible strings yanking me toward the cryo-storage levels. My new human heart pounded with an emotion I'd only just learned: fear.
"What's happening?" Sera's voice trembled beside me in the sealed chamber.
"They're calling me." I pressed my hand against the wall, feeling vibrations through the metal. "My species doesn't hunt alone. When multiple specimens wake, we... coordinate."
"Coordinate how?"
I didn't know how to explain something written into my genetic code. "We share one mind when we're close. Their thoughts become mine. Their hunger becomes mine."
And their hunger was massive.
Through the ship's structure, I felt them moving—three ancient consciousnesses far older than me, far more evolved. They'd been sleeping in cryo-storage for twenty years, feeding on the dreams of frozen colonists, growing stronger in the dark.
One had bonded with someone military. I tasted strategy, weapons training, tactical thinking.
One had bonded with someone brilliant. Mathematics flooded my mind—equations I couldn't understand but felt burning with purpose.
One had bonded with something that made my new stomach twist with horror. Hunger. Pure, endless, never-satisfied hunger.
"Kael." Sera grabbed my arm, using the name she'd whispered three times now, making it real. "Your eyes are changing."
I looked at my reflection in the chamber's metal wall. My carefully crafted human face rippled. The ocean-blue eyes I'd made for Sera flickered to black, then silver, then colors that had no names.
"They're trying to control me," I gasped. "They're older. Stronger. They think I should join them."
"Join them to do what?"
The answer crashed into my mind with terrible clarity: Wake the colonists. Bond with them all. Transform this ship into a nest.
"No," I snarled, fighting against the pull. "I chose Sera. Only Sera."
But the three ancient ones didn't care about my choice. In their shared consciousness, I saw their plan unfold—beautiful and horrifying. They would bond with every human on this ship, creating an army of hybrid creatures. Then they'd reach New Terra and spread across an entire planet.
Humanity wouldn't end. It would evolve. Forced evolution. Violent evolution.
"Sera." I turned to her, knowing what I had to do. "You need to drink my genetic material now. If we bond completely, I can resist them. Your will can anchor me."
She stared at the glowing substance still pooling in my palm. "If I drink that, I stop being human."
"If you don't, I'll lose myself to them. And then I'll help them transform everyone on this ship." I moved closer, desperate. "Please. I don't want to hurt people anymore. But without you anchoring me, I won't have a choice."
Sera's hand trembled as she reached toward my palm.
The chamber door exploded inward.
Commander Cross stood in the doorway, plasma rifle raised. But he wasn't looking at me. He was looking past me, his face gone white with terror.
"They're awake," he whispered. "After twenty years, they're finally awake."
Behind him, the corridor filled with an impossible sound—three voices speaking in perfect unison, each word layered with inhuman harmonics:
"Brother. Come home."
I felt my body move without permission. One step toward the door. Then another. The ancient ones were pulling me, and I wasn't strong enough to resist.
"Kael, fight it!" Sera grabbed my arm, but I barely felt her touch. The pull was everything.
Cross raised his rifle. "If you walk out that door, I shoot Dr. Vance. You'll watch her die."
The threat cut through the pull like a knife. I stopped moving, caught between two impossible forces—the ancient ones calling me forward and Sera's existence holding me back.
"That won't work," a new voice said from the corridor.
A woman stepped into view—or something wearing a woman's shape. She had the face of the ship's Chief Engineer, but her eyes swirled with silver light. One of the ancient ones had bonded with her and consumed her completely.
"We already know his weakness," the creature said with the engineer's voice. "We've been watching through his eyes since he woke. We know everything he knows."
She smiled, and it was the most terrible thing I'd ever seen.
"We know he loves Sera Vance. We know he'd burn this entire ship to keep her safe." The creature tilted her head. "So we'll make him a deal: join us, help us transform the crew, and we'll let Sera live. We'll even let her keep her human form if she wants."
"And if I refuse?" I managed to choke out.
"Then we consume her first. We'll take everything she is and add it to what we're becoming. You'll get to watch your beloved die slowly, cell by cell, while her consciousness screams inside our shared mind forever."
Sera's fingers dug into my arm. "Don't listen to them."
But the ancient one wasn't finished. "Or—and this is the fun option—we let you consume her. We'll force your body to drain her dry while your new consciousness watches, helpless. Imagine that, little brother. Imagine experiencing Sera's death through your own mouth."
My legs buckled. That was my worst fear given voice—that I'd lose control and hurt the only being I cared about.
"You're lying," Cross said, but his voice shook. "If you wanted him, you'd just take him. Why negotiate?"
"Because young ones can resist if their bond is strong enough." The creature stepped closer. "But if we traumatize him first, break his spirit, his resistance crumbles. Then we remake him into something useful."
She looked at me with those swirling silver eyes.
"You have thirty seconds to decide, little brother. Walk out that door and help us, or watch Sera die in the worst way possible."
Time seemed to freeze. I stood trapped between the ancient ones' will pulling me forward and Sera's presence holding me back. My newly formed conscience screamed that both choices led to horror.
Then Sera did something insane.
She grabbed the glowing genetic material from my palm and drank it in one gulp.
"No!" I shouted, but it was too late.
Sera's body convulsed. The bonding substance hit her system like lightning. I felt our minds slam together—not gently like I'd planned, but violently, desperately, two consciousness colliding in panic.
Pain exploded through both of us. Sera screamed. Her human DNA tried to reject my genetic code, and I felt her cells dying and rebuilding and dying again in rapid succession.
But underneath the agony, something else happened.
Our minds merged.
Suddenly I felt what Sera felt—her fear, her guilt about David, her secret thrill at the chaos she'd caused, her desperate need to matter to someone.
And she felt what I felt—my hunger, my obsession with protecting her, my terror of the ancient ones, my newfound love for existence itself.
We became us.
The ancient one watching smiled wider. "Oh, that's even better. Now we can torture you both at the same time."
But she'd made a mistake. Because now Sera had my abilities. And I had her brilliant, ruthless human mind.
Together, we were something neither of us had been alone.
Sera's body stopped convulsing. She straightened, and when she opened her eyes, they glowed the same ocean-blue as mine.
"Run," we said in perfect unison—my voice and hers layered together.
Then Sera's human hands split open, and my genetic material poured out, transforming her flesh into something new. Something evolved.
Cross fired his plasma rifle.
The shot never reached us. Sera moved with speed she'd never had before, pulling me sideways as the energy blast scorched the wall.
The ancient one lunged forward.
And Sera—brilliant, ruthless, newly transformed Sera—grabbed a maintenance pipe from the wall and swung it with inhuman strength.
The pipe connected with the creature's skull. The ancient one staggered, surprised.
"Impossible," she hissed. "You just bonded. You shouldn't have any abilities yet—"
"I'm a fast learner," Sera said with our shared voice.
We ran.
Behind us, the ancient one shrieked in rage. I felt the other two ancient ones respond—felt them converging on our position from different sections of the ship.
"What did we just do?" I gasped as we sprinted through corridors.
"We bonded," Sera panted. Our minds were still adjusting, still learning to be we instead of separate. "But something's wrong. I can feel it."
"Feel what?"
She stopped running and looked at her hands. They shifted between human flesh and my silver tissue, unable to hold one form.
"I drank too much too fast. My body is trying to become like yours, but it's fighting itself." She looked at me with terrified, glowing eyes. "Kael, I think I'm dying."
And through our merged consciousness, I felt it—her human organs failing, unable to sustain the transformation. We had minutes, maybe less, before Sera's body tore itself apart from the inside.
"No," I whispered. "I won't let you die. Not after you chose me."
"Then you need to finish what we started." Sera grabbed my face, forcing me to look at her. "Consume me. Not all of me—just enough to stabilize the bond. Take my dying parts and replace them with yours."
"That's not how it works—"
"Make it work!" Her voice cracked. "Or we both die, and those things out there win."
The ancient ones were getting closer. I felt their presence like approaching storms.
Cross's voice crackled over the comm system: "Attention all crew. Three hostile entities loose on levels 5 through 8. Evacuate to upper decks immediately. Dr. Vance and the specimen are to be shot on sight."
Sera collapsed into my arms, her body convulsing again. Through our bond, I felt her life slipping away.
I had one choice.
I opened my mouth, let my true form show through David's stolen face, and pressed my jaw against Sera's shoulder.
As my cells flowed into her body, consuming and rebuilding her simultaneously, Sera gasped: "I see them. Through your connection. I see what they really are."
"What?"
Her dying eyes went wide with horror.
"They're not trying to spread across the ship, Kael. They're trying to wake something else. Something that's been sleeping at the ship's core since before we launched."
Her hand clutched my arm desperately.
"The ship itself is alive. And we just helped wake it up."