The ladder was slick.

  Grease mixed with harbor mist.

  Frankie pulled herself up, hand over hand. The metal rungs bit into her palms, freezing cold.

  Below her, the black water of the cargo hold churned. A blue light pulsed from the depths, rhythmic and slow. Like a heartbeat under deep water.

  The roar of the hive echoed in the metal. Thousands of legs scratching against the hull.

  They weren’t just waking up. They were coming up.

  “Come on,” she hissed. “Move faster.”

  Damon was right behind her. He grunted with effort, the aluminum bat strapped to his back clanking softly against the maintenance cage.

  Frankie reached the top platform. A steel catwalk that wrapped around the ship’s superstructure. She vaulted over the railing and crouched low.

  The fog was thinner up here, shredded by the wind. But the smell was worse.

  Ozone. Copper. And something sweet—like flowers left in a vase until the water turned gray.

  She signaled the others.

  Ted scrambled over the rail, clutching his sharpened spoon. He looked green. Dee Dee followed, her tablet glowing faintly against her chest.

  “We’re in the blind spot,” Dee Dee whispered. She tapped her screen. “Camera seven is looping footage of an empty deck. We have eight minutes before the system resets.”

  “Forget the cameras,” Frankie said. “Do you hear that?”

  Scritch. Scritch.

  It was in the walls.

  “Door,” Frankie said.

  She pointed to a heavy steel hatch ten feet away.

  Not rusted shut. Sealed.

  A thick, gray resin coated the seams. It looked like hardened wax. Or scar tissue.

  Frankie approached it.

  She touched the resin.

  Warm.

  It vibrated against her fingertips. Thrum. Thrum.

  The sound was inside the material.

  “It’s glued,” Damon whispered, coming up beside her.

  “Not glued,” Frankie said. “Fused.”

  She stepped back. She didn’t have a crowbar. She didn’t have a torch.

  She had leverage.

  She grabbed the wheel of the hatch. She planted her boot against the bulkhead.

  She pushed.

  The veins in her neck strained. The muscles in her back fired.

  The resin fought back. It was elastic. Organic. It screeched as it stretched, a sound like tearing meat.

  “Frankie, stop,” Ted hissed. “You’re going to pop a blood vessel.”

  Frankie ignored him. She channeled the anger. The fear. The image of Sarah’s head rolling on the lawn.

  She roared, a low sound in her throat.

  SNAP.

  The resin tore.

  The wheel spun.

  The door groaned inward, breaking the seal with a wet, sucking sound. Schluck.

  Frankie stumbled back.

  The smell rolled out of the open hatch.

  Hot. Humid. Suffocating. Ammonia and rot.

  “Oh god,” Ted gagged. He pulled his parka collar up over his nose.

  Frankie clicked her flashlight on.

  She aimed the beam into the corridor.

  The light didn’t hit steel walls.

  It hit veins.

  A translucent, bioluminescent film coated the interior of the SS Borealis. It covered the floor, the ceiling, the pipes. Running through the slime were thick, pulsing cables of blue light.

  They pumped.

  Whoosh. Whoosh.

  Moving fluid toward the front of the ship.

  “It’s eating the ship,” Dee Dee whispered. Her voice trembled.

  Frankie stepped inside.

  Her boot sank into the floor. It was soft. Spongy. The steel deck plating had softened into a gray paste.

  “Watch your step,” she said.

  The thrum hit her instantly.

  Out on the deck, it had been a noise. In here, it was a weapon.

  It slammed into her temples. A high-pitch drill boring into her skull. A physical force pushing her back.

  Frankie stumbled. She grabbed the wall to steady herself.

  Mistake.

  The wall reacted.

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  The slime rippled under her hand. The blue veins flared brighter, surging toward her touch.

  She yanked her hand back.

  “Don’t touch the walls,” she gasped. “It feels us.”

  “Frankie?” Damon touched her shoulder. “You okay?”

  “Headache,” Frankie gritted out. “It’s loud in here.”

  “I hear nothing,” Ted whispered. “Just the squishing. The terrible, terrible squishing.”

  “It’s the frequency,” Dee Dee said. She was staring at the pulsing veins. “Bio-electric. It’s too high for human ears. But you…”

  She looked at Frankie.

  “You’re an antenna.”

  Frankie rubbed her eyes. The red ring was bleeding into her vision again.

  “We still need to head to the bridge,” she said. “We get the logs. We find out what Daria is. Then we leave.”

  She started walking.

  The corridor was a throat.

  They moved single file. Frankie on point. Damon covering the rear.

  Every step made a wet sound. Squelch. Step. Squelch.

  Shadows danced ahead of the flashlight beam.

  The doors to the crew cabins were open.

  Frankie shined her light into the first one.

  Empty bunks.

  But the bedding was gone. The mattresses were gone.

  Organic substances dissolved completely. Even the photos taped to the lockers were just white squares of pulp.

  “Recycled,” Frankie whispered.

  “What?” Ted asked.

  “The hive wastes nothing,” she said.

  They kept moving.

  The hallway turned.

  Ahead, the corridor widened.

  The bioluminescence was brighter here. The veins on the ceiling were thicker—arteries now, the width of a fire hose. They all seemed to feed into a central junction further ahead.

  Frankie paused.

  She held up a fist. Halt.

  “What is it?” Damon whispered.

  “Listen.”

  Frankie closed her eyes. She pushed past the pain of the thrum. She focused on the silence between the pulses.

  Scritch. Scritch.

  Above them. In the vents.

  Click… Hiss…

  “Something’s in the ceiling,” Frankie breathed.

  “Great,” Ted whimpered. He gripped his sharpened spoon with both hands, pointing it at the air vent. “Vent aliens. My favorite.”

  “Keep moving,” Frankie said. “Quietly.”

  They crept forward.

  Dee Dee checked her tablet. Screen glow lit her face.

  “We’re passing the mess hall,” she whispered. “The bridge is up the next stairwell.”

  Frankie nodded.

  She stepped past a dark doorway.

  A sudden noise made her freeze.

  Drip.

  She swung her light.

  The mess hall.

  Tables overturned. Chairs melted into the floor.

  In the center of the room, a pile of clothes lay in a heap. Blue jumpsuits. Boots. Hats.

  Dozens of them.

  Steam rose from the pile.

  “They didn’t even put up a fight,” Damon said softly.

  “They didn’t have time,” Frankie said.

  She turned back to the corridor.

  The heat was rising. It felt like a sauna. Sweat trickled down Frankie’s back, soaking into the borrowed slip.

  The thrum ratcheted up a notch.

  Frankie winced.

  “It’s getting closer,” she said. “The source.”

  “The bridge?” Dee Dee asked.

  “No,” Frankie said. She tilted her head, following the pain. It wasn’t coming from the stairs at the end of the hall.

  It was coming from a door to the right.

  A heavy, reinforced door.

  Unlike the others, this one wasn’t open.

  Not coated in slime.

  The corruption stopped a few inches from the frame, as if held back by an invisible barrier. The metal was clean. Cold. Sterile. A brass plaque on the door gleamed in the flashlight beam.

  CAPTAIN D. HEATHER.

  Frankie stared at the name.

  The blue veins on the ceiling didn’t bypass this room. They dove into it.

  They disappeared through the ventilation grate above the doorframe.

  “She’s in there,” Frankie whispered.

  Damon stepped up beside her. He raised the bat.

  “The Captain?”

  “Or the thing that ate her,” Frankie said.

  She looked at Dee Dee.

  “The logs might be on the bridge,” Frankie said. “But the answers are in there.”

  Dee Dee looked at the tablet. “The signal is red-lining. It’s a reactor.”

  “We shouldn’t go in,” Ted said. “Door is closed. Closed is good. Closed means safety.”

  “Closed means hiding,” Frankie said.

  She reached for the handle.

  It was cold. Normal cold.

  She tried to turn it.

  Locked.

  “Dee,” Frankie said.

  Dee Dee stepped forward. She pulled a ribbon cable from her bag. She jammed it into the electronic lock panel.

  Her fingers flew across the tablet.

  “It’s encrypted,” she muttered. “Standard naval code, but… wait.”

  She frowned.

  “The code is rewriting itself. It’s living code.”

  “Can you open it?” Damon asked, glancing nervously back down the hallway.

  “I can kill the power to the mag-lock,” Dee Dee said. “But it’ll trip the silent alarm.”

  “Do it,” Frankie said. “We’re already trespassing.”

  Dee Dee tapped a final key.

  Clunk.

  The lock disengaged.

  The light on the panel turned from red to dead.

  Frankie took a breath. She gripped her flashlight in her left hand, making a fist with her right.

  She pushed the door open.

  Darkness.

  Frankie stepped over the threshold.

  She expected rot. She expected the jungle smell.

  Instead, the air inside was freezing.

  It smelled of antiseptic. Bleach. And something else.

  Old paper.

  Frankie swept the light across the room.

  It was a stateroom. A desk bolted to the floor. A bunk made with military precision, the sheets pulled tight. Not a wrinkle. A bookshelf filled with navigation texts.

  It looked… human.

  Except for the walls.

  Drawings.

  Hundreds of them.

  Every inch of the metal walls taped. Sketches done in charcoal, ink, and… was that blood?

  Frankie walked closer.

  The drawings weren’t just shapes. They were scenes.

  Torn paper. Heavy charcoal strokes.

  They showed the sky opening. A hole in the stars.

  And something falling. Not a meteor. A seed.

  “Look at the dates,” Damon whispered.

  He pointed to a calendar on the wall. Heavy black X’s marked the days.

  But the X’s stopped three weeks ago.

  On the desk, a single notebook sat open.

  Frankie shone her light on the page.

  The handwriting started neat. Precise.

  Day 1: Object recovered. Stasis field intact.

  Then, halfway down the page, the writing changed. It became jagged. Spiked.

  Day 3: It’s in the walls. It wants out.

  And at the bottom, written repeatedly until the pen had torn through the paper:

  OPEN IT. OPEN IT. OPEN IT.

  Frankie felt a chill that had nothing to do with the air conditioning.

  “She didn’t just find it,” Frankie whispered.

  She looked at the perfectly made bed. The shrine of madness on the walls.

  “She invited it in.”

  Thrum.

  The sound spiked. Violent. Sharp.

  It came from the closet door in the room's corner.

  The door rattled.

  Frankie spun, raising her light.

  The closet door slightly ajar.

  And from the darkness inside, a blue light bled out.

  “Frankie,” Ted whimpered.

  Frankie stepped toward the closet.

  She reached out with her foot and hooked the door.

  She kicked it open.