Chrysalis

by Brendan Reichs

  Gray opened his mouth to protest, but Rose cut him off. “We’re all-in now, G. For better or worse.”

  He clenched his jaw, but nodded. Gray turned and ran for the door.

  I moved to follow, but Rose stopped me with a hand. “Not that way.”

  “Doesn’t that lead to the outer ring?”

  “We need to attack the command center.”

  “What?” Tack scowled. “Why? We tried that once and it didn’t go well.”

  “Because we’ll never get to where Min is in time,” Rose said. “Our only shot is to shut down the Chrysalis network. Come on.” Before I could respond, she sprinted in the opposite direction.

  I glanced at Tack, who wiped his nose. “Your friend is weird.”

  “Are you good?” I asked. There was a lot to the question, and he understood.

  “In this? One hundred percent.”

  I smiled. “Then let’s take this place down.”

  We took off after her.

  35

  MIN

  Two guards led me to the red X.

  The death mark.

  Cenisa’s scream echoed inside my head, freezing my limbs and numbing my emotions. In seconds they’d electrocute me, then feed my body into a blender. I’d be lunch for those left alive, and they wouldn’t even know it.

  Noah. Tack. She’ll feed me to them.

  My paralysis snapped. I would not go down without a fight.

  The left-hand guard signaled that I was in position.

  I stomped on his foot and he stumbled. Then I kicked him in the side of the knee, and the trooper collapsed.

  The other guard lunged for me. I lurched awkwardly out of reach. He took another step but then went rigid, his shoulders bunching tightly. I looked down to see the bastard’s fat foot on the now-yellow X. His helmet flew off, and suddenly I was staring at a face I’d never seen. The man’s eyes were oddly dead. I left him spasming as something black leaked from his mouth.

  The other guard sprang up from the ground and began circling warily. I mirrored him, keeping the dying trooper and bright yellow X between us.

  I had to get out of there.

  I spotted Sophia watching through the glass, her lips pursed in annoyance. At least, I thought that was her mood. I had no idea if the thing lurking beneath that façade could feel displeasure, or anything else. I didn’t have time to wonder.

  The X faded back to red. The scorched guard dropped like a bag of soccer balls.

  The other trooper shot across the mark and grabbed me by the shoulders, driving us both to the ground. Sophia’s voice crackled from a speaker. “Forget repurposement. Finish her.”

  He reached for his weapon and changed the setting. I gasped, unable to breathe.

  This was it. After everything I’d been through, I would die alone on the floor of a space station slaughterhouse.

  The lights abruptly dimmed. The guard glanced up. I slammed my palm into his nose and heard a weird crunch, like glass breaking. The trooper dropped his weapon as black liquid poured from his nostrils. The guard’s cheek twitched spastically. His eyes shook like marbles. I wrestled the gun from his hand and fired.

  The trooper slumped on top of me, a ragged hole in its head. I saw wires and arcing circuits.

  A machine.

  I rolled the thing off of me, nearly gagging as caustic fluids coated my body. I looked to the window. Sophia was gone.

  The speaker hissed again. “Min? Min, are you out there?”

  My heart nearly stopped. I ran to a wall unit and slammed the button.

  “Noah! Noah, I’m here. I’m alive!”

  Noah’s relieved voice poured into the room. “Thank God! Where are you?”

  I tried to control my emotions. “I’m in the repurposement room. Noah, it’s horrible. They’re recycling people for food. Sophia is Chrysalis, and she isn’t human!”

  Silence. Then, “Say that again.”

  I mashed the button. “Chrysalis isn’t part of Project Nemesis anymore. The station is being controlled by an alien consciousness. Sophia only wants living bodies she can reprogram!”

  “Holy shit.”

  “Um, yeah.”

  Another voice spoke. “Min, can you get to the command center?”

  “Tack!” I nearly wept with relief. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m great. Noah and I made some new friends and managed to destroy a lot of the guards. FYI, they’re all robots or something.”

  I barked a nervous laugh. “Yup. Noticed that.”

  “This place is going off the rails, but we managed to take over the command sphere. We crashed the system a few seconds ago but it’s rebooting.”

  I blinked in shock. “How’d you do that?”

  A momentary silence. “I dumped water on it.”

  My hands shot to my forehead. “We really need to find Sarah.”

  “Enough jokes, you dope,” a girl’s voice said testily. Rose? “I rerouted a subprocedure to force an error loop. That’s why the system fritzed, but it’s temporary.”

  Then Noah’s voice sounded again. “Min, can you get here?”

  I nodded even though they couldn’t see. “I think I know how.”

  “Hurry. This window won’t last. And if what you said is true . . . I . . . I don’t know . . . Just get here.”

  “On my way.”

  I cut through the now-vacant observation room. The hallway outside was empty. I turned a corner and ran smack into a squad of troopers, but they were all sprawled on the ground, staring blankly at the ceiling.

  Crashed. How much of Chrysalis is offline?

  Hope surging, I sped along the corridor. If the guards were down everywhere, then only Nemesis Three kids were left guarding my classmates. We could smash them and get everyone out of the testing facility.

  I reached a cross corridor leading to the inner ring, and was rounding a corner when a hand clamped onto my arm. I shouted and kicked out, but the grip didn’t loosen and we both tumbled to the floor. Frantic, I bit my attacker’s hand and was rewarded with a grunt of pain.

  “Min, wait!”

  I glanced up. Cyrus released me and rubbed his knuckles, mumbling something about rabies. But I only had eyes for Sarah as she wrapped me in a hug.

  Tears filled my eyes. Over her shoulder I spotted other welcome faces. Derrick. Rachel. Hamza. Ethan. More classmates were crouched in a nervous line stretching down the corridor.

  I pushed back from Sarah. “How many?”

  “Nine of ours, plus four kids from Nemesis Three. They’re on our side now. Cyrus just sprang us from the facility.”

  “Good.” I squeezed Cyrus’s nonbitten hand. “This station isn’t what you think.” I quickly told them about Sophia and Chrysalis. “We have to get to the command center. Noah and Tack are holding it, but the system is rebooting. We won’t have free run of this place much longer.”

  “Rose is with them,” a brown-haired kid said. “We’re headed to the same place.”

  “Then let’s hurry before we get trapped. The troopers are out of commission right now.”

  Cyrus nodded. “We passed some on the way. I kicked a few.”

  “Great work. But if the system comes back online while we’re exposed, we’re toast.”

  Gray grunted. “Cyrus and I know the fastest way. Just follow my lead and keep quiet.”

  I shot him a look, but Sarah gently took my arm, speaking loud enough for the boys to hear. “Gray thinks he’s a big deal, but he happens to be useful right now, so we’ll play along. We can educate him later.”

  Gray frowned, then ducked his head in apology.

  “Come on,” Cyrus said, rubbing where my teeth had sunk into his fingers. “I need to put something on this wound.”

  We formed up in a tight line and raced toward the heart of the
station. Red lights blinked all around us, but no alarms sounded. As we approached one of the access tunnels, the lights flashed to blue. Vents around us hissed.

  “The system’s up!” Gray shouted. “Hurry!”

  He opened the airtight door and we rushed through it like stampeding cattle, racing down the tunnel for the command center airlock at the opposite end. But after ten paces my feet suddenly drifted off the floor. I floated toward the roof of the tunnel, unable to propel myself forward.

  Sophia’s voice filled the corridor. “Back online. And I must say, I’m mildly impressed. I never anticipated this would be so difficult. I’ve manipulated countless species before yours, and none gave me as much trouble. You certainly are resourceful creatures.”

  Everyone flailed in zero gravity. Cyrus managed to reach the ceiling and tried to slide along it, but the smooth plastic provided no good handholds and he bounced off. Most of the group spun in helpless circles, unable to gain traction.

  The airlock taunted me from fifty feet farther down the tube. I couldn’t get there, and Tack and Noah couldn’t open it now anyway.

  “I’m tempted to launch you into the void,” Sophia continued, “but then I’d have to start all over, and I’d rather not. I’ve learned enough to wipe you clean. Hold please for collection. Then I’ll deal with your friends.”

  Derrick bumped into Ethan in zero gravity. “Oh man, we’re screwed.”

  Ethan reared back and pushed Derrick toward the far airlock. “Go!” Ethan said.

  Catching on, Derrick made himself as aerodynamic as possible, riding the momentum of Ethan’s shove toward the hatch. Ethan tumbled backward in the opposite direction.

  A harsh beep sounded. The corridor lights turned red.

  I dropped painfully to the floor, felt someone land on top of me.

  An alarm blared. The command center airlock opened and Rose fired out, waving for us to hurry. “You have ten seconds! Run!”

  I needed no more prompting. I popped to my feet and sprinted, the others pounding down the tunnel all around me. Kids slipped through the inner door one by one. Derrick. Alice. Gray and Jerica. Sam. Akio. Sarah.

  I came next. Once through, I spun immediately to help, but Rose shoved me out of the way.

  Rachel. Casey. Parisa. Hector. Hamza.

  “Time!” someone shouted, just as Ethan threw himself through the opening. Rose slammed the portal shut as cracking sounds echoed from beyond the airlock. She spun the wheel and slammed home the manual locking pin, then slid down with her back to the metal, sweat glistening her face.

  Through the window, I watched the tube we’d fled flex and shatter into a thousand pieces.

  “Holy crap,” Derrick breathed. “What’d y’all do?”

  “We short-circuited the pressure system,” Rose answered. “The vacuum Sophia created was artificial, so when we cut support for it, air refilled the tube. But we couldn’t stabilize the inflow and the tunnel exploded. Not pleasant if you’d still been out there, but we ran out of options.”

  Arms found me. Noah’s. I kissed him hungrily, oblivious to all else. For a moment everything was okay. Whatever might happen next, we were alive and together. We were nobody’s slaves.

  “If you guys are done?” Rose said. I was fairly certain I didn’t like her.

  Noah had turned crimson, and I was sure I didn’t like that.

  Then I saw Tack and broke free, wrapping him in a hug. It had been too long.

  He tensed, then hugged me back. “It’s good to see you, nerd,” he choked out. “I stole a space station.”

  I snarked a goofy laugh. “Turns out it’s an alien, though.”

  “Chrysalis rebooted,” Rose said, ignoring us. “This command sphere is the only part of the station that must always remain pressurized, so Sophia can’t just flush the chamber. And it has its own life support, so she can’t suffocate us, either. But we have a problem.”

  She pointed through the window at one of the five remaining access spokes. Troopers were flooding down its length. It was the same in every direction. We had no escape route.

  Sophia’s voice thundered inside the module. “I am no longer amused.”

  “How is she broadcasting?” Sarah hissed. “Every line into the module is severed!”

  “I don’t need a link to make myself heard, little fly,” Sophia mocked. “I can vibrate the very walls of this station. You sit in the palm of my hand and think yourself safe, but my patience with your species is fully exhausted.”

  Tack made a rude gesture at the ceiling. “Then piss off and find a new planet to ruin. I’m sure you have a spare ship somewhere.”

  “No. I like this station. I’m going to keep it for a while. I’ll wipe the consciousness from your bodies and use them as my fingers.” Pause. “You cannot win this fight. You don’t even know how to fight me. You’re trapped within a machine I control. There’s no magic colony waiting for you. No place to go. The rest of Nemesis Three has already been repurposed. Your species is finished. It’s only a matter of time, and I’ve existed longer than time itself. Prepare yourselves for extinction.”

  The voice faded, but Sophia’s mocking tone echoed in my bones.

  She was right. We had no place to hide. No cards to play. She was Chrysalis. We could no more fight the station that kept us alive than battle the sun.

  Rose’s nostrils flared in and out. “She . . . she killed my classmates. And it’s my fault.”

  Cyrus covered his face with his hands. Jerica and Parisa embraced each other, praying softly with their eyes closed.

  Four more kids, dead. It was gutting.

  “Enough,” Sam said abruptly, looking at Rose. “You didn’t kill anyone. We saved ourselves, and you shouldn’t feel an ounce of shame about it. Mourn your friends, but don’t take on the blame for something you didn’t do. There’s no point in that.” He looked at me, and an understanding passed between us. I nodded sadly.

  Gray looked shell-shocked. “There’s no colony?”

  I shook my head. “Never was. She needs biological vessels to extract a meteorite from the planet’s surface. That’s all. She won’t leave our minds intact. She just needs our bodies.”

  Sarah was leaning over the closest monitor. She straightened. “Chrysalis has shipped a lot of equipment to the surface.”

  Cyrus nodded solemnly. “We know they sent down supplies, and machines to build shelters and seed crops. Scott and I helped pack one of the pods ourselves.”

  “Makes sense,” I said slowly. “Whatever Sophia is, she can’t go to the surface herself. That’s what this is all about. She needs biological workers, because the element we’re supposed to extract fries anything electronic that comes close to it until it’s refined.”

  “She told us preparations were nearing completion.” Rose’s hands had balled into fists. “That it was a matter of weeks.”

  Sarah tapped her lips as she read the monitor. “Perhaps there’s some truth there. The surface might be ready for a colony. Sophia is planning to send down living humans. This report says Earth’s current environment is compatible with human life.”

  I cleared my throat. “Um . . . Mars, actually.”

  Everyone stared. I explained. Then it took a while for the group to recover.

  Finally, Noah shook his head to clear it and knifed forward, eyes intense. “Rewritten humans still need the same things to survive. Air. Water. Food. Stockpiles might already be down there.” He blinked. “On Mars.”

  A new charge filled the room. “There might be enough to survive,” Ethan said. “We just need to get to the surface!”

  Everyone started talking at once. Tack’s whistle cut through the uproar. “Play out the scenario, guys. Even if we somehow escaped this room, found an actual freaking spaceship, and figured out how to launch, fly, and land it, Sophia could still zap anything we built from orbit
. We’d never be safe—not with a pissed-off immortal alien Death Star hanging over our heads.”

  Silence filled the room as hope died.

  Then I felt a spark. A desperate idea formed in my mind.

  “That’s all true,” I said slowly. “If she’s up here to attack us.”

  Tack looked at me in confusion. “I don’t understand. How would she not be?”

  I smiled. Determination swelled inside me.

  “It’s simple, really. We take Sophia down, too.”

  36

  NOAH

  I stopped short.

  So did everyone else in the command center. The final remnants of Project Nemesis stood in a loose circle with Min at its center.

  “Take down Sophia?” Ethan said, his brows arching. “How are we supposed to do that?”

  Min’s gaze carried a blistering intensity. “Tack is right. We have to get to the planet’s surface somehow, but we can’t leave Chrysalis circling above us as a constant threat. So . . . let’s bring it down, too.”

  “The whole space station,” Sarah said slowly. “You want to land Chrysalis on Mars.”

  Min laughed unsteadily. “I doubt we could figure that out. But I bet we could crash the damn thing, right?”

  Gasps. Raised voices. Derrick was staring at Min like she was nuts.

  “What else can we do?” I said quickly, trying to keep them listening to Min’s idea. “Chrysalis is our enemy. The station itself wants us dead. We can’t fight back on equal terms, not when the emptiness outside these walls can kill us all in an instant, and Sophia has the controls.”

  “Why hasn’t she done it yet?” Sam asked.

  “We have a closed life-support system in this module,” Rose answered. “Sophia can’t turn it on us remotely, but there’s no food or water in here. She can wait us out. And the moment we open an airlock, she can destroy our environment.”

  I nodded, warming to the desperate gamble. “There’s no future for us with a functioning Chrysalis, up here or down there. So I say we destroy it.”