"After it!" Chen shouted, adrenaline overriding caution. "It's wounded—we can corner it!"
Marcus moved first, rifle up, sweeping into the bathroom with professional precision. Chen was right behind him, flashlight cutting through the space.
The bathroom was larger than expected—communal showers, toilet stalls, a row of sinks. Moisture had frozen in strange patterns on the mirrors, creating crystalline fractals that almost looked organic. The emergency lights cast everything in blood-red.
The Tanaka-thing was in the far corner by the showers, hunched over. Black liquid pooled beneath it, steaming slightly in the cold air. As they approached, Chen saw it was doing something to itself—its hands moving over the wound, fingers working beneath the skin like it was adjusting a poorly-fitted glove.
"Don't move!" Marcus commanded.
It looked up at them. This close, under direct light, Chen could see the truth. It wasn't Dr. Tanaka. It was wearing her—skin stretched over something that was the wrong shape underneath. They could see the seams, the places where the flesh didn't quite meet, held together by something that looked like ice crystals but moved like living tissue.
"The specimen," Nora breathed behind them. "Oh God. Specimen Z-01. It got out."
The thing wearing Tanaka's face smiled, and the expression was almost right. Almost. "Got out?" it said in that layered voice. "No. They brought me up. Studied me. Fed me. Taught me." The smile widened too far. "I was so hungry. Fifty thousand years, sleeping in the dark. So much to learn up here."
"What are you?" Chen demanded.
"Curious," it answered, tilting its head. "Adaptable. I learn from what I consume. Memories. Structures. Patterns." It touched its chest where Marcus had shot it. "This hurts. But now I understand pain. Thank you for teaching me."
Sergei whispered something in Russian—a prayer, maybe.
"The crew," Chen said, trying to keep it talking, trying to understand. "What happened to them?"
"Learning," it said simply. "Some ran. Some let me inside willingly—they were so lonely, so desperate to understand. Richards was first. He talked to me through the ventilation. Taught me words. English. Russian. Japanese." It stood slowly, and Chen saw that its proportions were wrong—legs too long, arms hanging at odd angles. "Dr. Tanaka tried to stop me. Locked herself away. But I was already learning from the others. Already becoming."
Marcus kept his rifle trained center mass. "How many of you are there?"
The thing laughed—a horrible sound like ice cracking. "How many? I am one. I am twelve. I am the crew. I am what they became." Its form seemed to shimmer, and suddenly Chen was looking at Marcus—another Marcus, standing beside the real one. Same weathered face, same tactical vest, same rifle.
The real Marcus's finger tightened on the trigger. "Nora, Chen—back up. Slowly."
But before anyone could move, the fake-Marcus lunged—not at them, but at the ceiling. Its fingers sank into the metal like it was soft clay, and it pulled itself up into the ventilation grate with impossible speed and strength. The grate tore open like tissue paper.
"Ventilation system!" Sergei shouted. "It can move through whole station!"
Chen caught a glimpse of it in the duct—but it wasn't wearing Tanaka anymore, not wearing Marcus. It was something else, something translucent and wrong, like living ice with too many limbs. Then it was gone, the sound of it sliding through the ducts fading in multiple directions at once.
Marcus immediately swept the room, checking corners. "Clear. But it could come back through any vent, any time."
Nora was shaking. "It consumes people. Takes their memories, their appearance. How long does it take? How do we know—" She looked at each of them with sudden terror. "How do we know it's not already one of us?"
"We've been together since landing," Marcus said firmly. "Constant visual contact. No one's been alone. We're still us."
"For now," Sergei added grimly.
Chen's mind was racing. The entity was intelligent, adaptive, could mimic perfectly. It had the memories of the entire Polaris crew. It knew the station layout, the systems, everything.
And it could move through the ventilation to anywhere in the facility.
Chen looked up at the torn grate, then at their team. Marcus was watching the ceiling. Nora was clutching her sample case like a lifeline. Sergei had his toolkit open, already pulling out duct tape and wire mesh.
"We seal vents as we go," Sergei said. "Slow it down. Not stop it, but slow it."
"We need those logs from Tanaka's room," Chen said. "The laptop, the tapes. They might tell us more—how to kill it, how it spreads, if there's a weakness."
"And we still need power and communications," Marcus added. "We're trapped in here with that thing until we can call for extraction."
The bathroom suddenly felt very exposed, with its open vents and multiple entrances. Chen could hear the entity somewhere in the walls, sliding through the ductwork, learning their voices, their patterns.
Dr. Tanaka's room was just across the hall—thirty seconds to grab the laptop and cassette tapes. Then they could barricade themselves in the research lab, review everything they'd found, and form a plan.
Or they could head to the research lab immediately. If there were samples, equipment, or containment protocols there, they needed them before stopping to read journals.
The choice felt urgent. Every second they stood here, the entity was moving, adapting, preparing.