Mist always assumed that she might die in the mines.

She was reminded of that fact when she saw the new faces at the start of every shift, filing one-by-one into the rickety elevator, arms jostling, elbows knocking against each other, the stagnant air thick with the vinegary stench of body odor. With a scowl, she nudged one of them away as the contraption groaned to life and descended, the darkness swallowing them whole.

Death in the mines was a common enough occurrence. The question was always less when it happened but more how. Did you die by some tragic occurrence like rocks falling on you or by the gradual poisoning of the lungs, dirt rotting you from within in a way that no amount of coughing could satiate?

Mist adjusted her feet, shifting weight from one side to the other, ready to be done with the day. It was her fifth in a row, with only two more to go for this stretch. After that, she’d get one day off, and then work another seven. It’d been like that since she’d arrived, and it was hard to say how many more there were to go. After all, she’d already well outstayed her initial deployment to this godforsaken molten planet. The only blessing was that the mines were cooler than the world above with its volcanoes and molten lakes, both of which gave off the only light this planet received so far from this system’s sun.

It was a wasteland, caught at the edge of everything and nothing; a place easy to forget.

And that was even more so for the people stuck here.

The elevator groaned to a stop, dull orange light illuminating the cavernous tunnel beyond.

“Ya ready, Mist?” Another miner, Swamp—named like Mist for the planet she hailed from—jammed her elbow into Mist’s side. With so many people coming and going, the miners decided that these names were the easiest way to get to know people—while also keeping their distance for when something bad inevitably struck.

Mist fixed the mask covering her face, thankful for the millionth time that she had decided to clip her white hair as short as it would go, and concentrated on her breathing, one breath in, the next out, calming in this place that she’d never fully gotten used to despite agreeing to extend her contact time and time again. She’d decided, though, that after this current cycle was up, she’d call it and head home. If they let her. “Ready to be done.”

Swamp hummed, swinging her jackhammer back and forth, strands of her black hair working their way loose from her ponytail. “What do you think they’ll serve in the mess tonight? I’m kind of hoping for some kind of meat.”

“You’re always hoping for some kind of meat,” Mist retorted, the corridor growing progressively darker around them as they made their way to the furthest depths.

“Yeah, because it’s meat.”

They stopped just long enough to grab wheelbarrows for the debris.

“Back home, we never ate meat,” Mist remarked, a twang of nostalgia rippling through her. It’d been a while since she’d talked about home—it was a hard topic, even for the best of them. For most, when the mining executives came and took them away wasn’t a good memory. Mist hadn’t cared all that much, personally. Anything to make money and this job paid better than anything else she could find.

“You were missing out,” Swamp commented and turned down her specific tunnel to hell, the area reeking of some sort of gas that the supervisors claimed wasn’t harmful even though it probably was. Swamp flipped her visor down and gave a half-wave. “To the crust.”

A salute of sorts.

“To the crust,” Mist returned and walked to the next one over. Little disposable lights followed her only so far, her night vision goggles taking her the rest. She flipped them on, along with her soundproof headphones and dust mask. Her jackhammer burst to life with an exaggerated roar, and she pressed it against still frozen permafrost.

Hours passed like that, the dirt crumbling away, exposing yet more frozen ground that’d be broken apart to collect some kind of critical material that built the ships that took them to and from this planet.

Her jackhammer hit something unusually soft.

Mist frowned, switching it off, and peered into the dark hole.

At the other end, something wet glistened—probably something that got buried by lava and forgotten like her at some point. With a sigh, she reached in.

Her gloves snagged, catching on the strange material. She yanked her hand out and stumbled backwards, her gloved fingertips coated with something that looked suspiciously like glowing slime.

“What the—” she breathed and wiped it on a rock, leaving a translucence smear.

In all her years, Mist had never encountered anything like that. It wasn’t burning through her gloves or anything, though—nothing worth ending her shift early or bothering Swamp about. It wasn’t like a creature had jumped out at her. Just ooze, trapped like the rocks beneath the hardened magma. Mist adjusted her goggles and mask on her bare skin, and, after a quick check to make sure there wasn’t any more ooze, picked her jackhammer back up and continued.

She dug deeper, the vibrations in the rock bouncing back at her.

Her wrist spasmed.

Mist winced, grasping the jackhammer harder, hoping the episode would pass. She couldn’t shut it off again, already behind schedule from the ooze.

“Ah, you poor soul.”

A voice, from nowhere. The hairs on the back of Mist’s neck stood on edge, sure she must have imagined it. It had sounded so real, though, reverberating all around her. She’d probably just spent too long in the dark. She’d heard rumors once that a miner had succumbed to that after too much time underground.

Her hands spasmed again, the still-going jackhammer slipping from her grasp. It spun around in a circle, and she backed up, grasping her arm, muscles roiling with cramps.

“What’s…” Mist began and stopped, a warm current flooding her arm. Yanking up her sleeve, a thick rope-like protrusion weaved its way beneath her skin. With a gasp, she threw off her gloves and stumbled backwards in the dark, falling into the rock wall.

This would be the time to scream, Mist realized with a start. She opened my mouth, but nothing came out, all noise lodged within her throat.

“Most interesting,” the voice within said.

“Get out,” she managed after a moment of gasps.

“I’m sorry, but that’s not possible.”

She shook her head and shakily stood, grasping the hard rock for support, her body quivering, growing hot. “Get out, get out, get out.”

The jackhammer switched off the next corridor over followed by footsteps. Mist opened her mouth to scream at Swamp to stay away but nothing came out, her breath sucked from her lungs. Swamp peaked her head over. “Hey, are you alright?”

The walls felt like they grew closer and closer. Mist grabbed her wrist and winced, her nails, normally bloodied and short from daily labor, piercing her skin. Even her fingers felt longer, but that wasn’t possible.

“Let me go get some help,” Swamp said quickly and ran back toward the mine entrance.

Mist wanted to say no. If Swamp did that, then she might not get paid for the day. No, she was fine to be left down here. Once this episode passed, she’d get back to work. She staggered after her and fell, head slamming into the rocks she’d mined earlier that day. Blood pooled in her mouth and, shuddering, her eyes rolled back into her head, something sinking its claws deeper and deeper within her with a purr.

Mist blinked in and out of consciousness, darkness and light in equal measure.

A blistering hot wind singed her skin, and she gasped a breath, clutching her dirty, threadbare uniform top, lying on her back. This isn’t the coolness of the crust, she realized with a start. She was above ground, where the residence halls and living facilities were. They’d brought her where the volcanic gods could find her. She arched her back with a moan, the pain throughout her body excruciating. Her eyes squinted open to a young woman, her honey-blond hair bouncing around her face. “Where are you taking me?”

“We don’t have a medic on this planet, so we’re taking you to the hospital on the next planet over.”

The next planet over. Mist’s brain swam, drifting between made up memories and real ones, scenes blurring together. “No, you can’t do that,” she managed.

“Shh, you’re not well,” the person said in a way that Mist thought was supposed to be nurturing. Instead, it was just annoying, especially coming from someone dressed in a navy-blue ship uniform.

“Don’t shh me,” Mist snapped, pushing against the grasp holding her down on the stretcher. The woman was right about one thing, though. They weren’t medical staff. They were the garbage collectors who hauled dead miners away. Mist wasn't dead. She wasn't even dying. She just needed to get back to work.

“Bindings,” the woman said, and other crew members came over, metallic bands in their hands. The texture was harsh against flesh, slick and cold in a way that almost burned. Mist struggled as they pressed one against her chest, another around her arms, and the final around her legs, strapping her down. They carried her on some kind of a stretcher onto a huge ship, almost as large as the miner’s residence halls.

“Okay, why can’t we take you to the hospital?” the woman finally asked, wheeling Mist into an isolated room.

But Mist couldn’t articulate why. Maybe because she’d dealt with much worse injuries since coming here and the line from the boss was always ‘if you can walk, you can work,’ but the moment she showed a hint that it wasn’t an injury and was something from the mine itself, where they were liable, she was skirted away. The idea didn’t sit right with her.

“I’m fine,” Mist insisted, even though she definitely wasn’t. There was a pounding behind her eyes, a whispering in her ears that wasn’t her own, but at least the pain was diminishing. She just couldn’t shake the general strangeness left in its wake.

The woman’s eyebrows rose. “Well, you can call me Lieutenant Ivy if you need anything. I’ll be stationed in the hallway.” She clicked off the light, leaving Mist in the dark. A dull yellow and red light filtered through the room’s singular window, bouncing off the ground’s sulfuric crust. It was so different from how she’d gotten here, packed into a ship full of people from her planet of mist, many of whom have since left or died. There were still a few, though, stuck in the mines like her.

Mist had no idea what would happen to her after they checked her out and found she was fine. Whatever it was that had plagued her down in the mines was seemingly quiet now. They could send her back to the mines for an extra decade as punishment for wasting resources. Or maybe, if they were feeling generous, they’d decide she wasn’t worth their time and let her finally go home.

Home. Her heart leapt, that idea looking like it might finally be within reach.

The ship’s engine shuddered to life with a dull roar. Mist struggled against the bindings, flexing her fingers, stretching them out and then curling them back in again. Smoke obscured her view out of the window as the ship gradually lifted higher and higher into the air. She licked her lower lip, chapped and brittle from dry air. She couldn’t leave this place—she couldn’t. She rattled the cold bindings that would not give harder, shaking the whole table.

Lieutenant Ivy came back in with an exasperated sigh. “I know this isn’t ideal, but I need you to calm down. This is for your safety until we can get you properly examined. We don’t want you hurting yourself, okay?”

Lies, the voice inside hissed. “Take me back to my planet,” Mist whispered to the person, but the voice was both hers and not. She blinked in surprise, wishing she could massage her throat. That planet had never been her home—it’d been her prison.

“After you get checked out, okay?” With that she exited the room, leaving Mist to the darkening skies outside the window, the way the engine sound changed the higher up they got, leaving the planet’s thin atmosphere.

Mist’s body quivered, alit with that same warmth, like the tips of fingers trailing ever-so-slightly on flesh, goosebumps radiating in their wake. She lightly groaned, back arching, hating how good it all felt. It was a feeling she’d long desired, taking root, consuming all that she was.

Her eyes fluttered open with a start—no she hadn’t. She’d never desired anything like that.

There, on her cheek, strange yellow-orange growths burgeoned from flesh.

With a gasp, Mist hoisted her head up, the surface of her skin covered with what looked like the little hands of fungi, with a web beneath her skin interlocking like the canopy of a tree. A silent scream caught in her throat, and she twisted, arms slipping out of the bindings with ease like they were coated in some sort of oil. She disconnected the others and fell off the bed onto the sterile ground, the ship shaking around her. She pushed herself up to her knees and brushed the growth off both arms, but, just as fast as they were gone, they grew once more, overtaking paling flesh.

“What the fuck,” she whispered and glanced to the door. Her dismissive guardian hadn’t responded yet, which meant they hadn’t yet noticed that she’d gotten loose.

Not that she could get free of this room—or this ship.

Beneath the fungi-like tendrils, something translucent oozed from Mist’s skin, glistening in the same way as that strange substance she’d found wedged between rocks. She gingerly touched her face, the slime there congealing like a gelatinous mask. She gagged, the stench of it all too much, like tepid water or centuries-old decay; the forgotten, left to rot. Mist’s stomach lurched, vomit spewing all over the sterile white floor.

The ship stilled and the door to the outside corridor clicked open. “Have you finally—” Lieutenant Ivy stopped, her eyes caught on Mist.

“Take me back,” Mist hissed, reaching out her hand.

Lieutenant Ivy’s pretty face distorted with something akin to revulsion and she shut the door.

This was meant to be a trap, another place to keep her. Mist pressed her molars together and shakily stood, stomach still unsettled, but better, the smell less overpowering. Whatever this room, this trap, was, she needed to escape it, shut it down before they could get too far from the volcanic planet.

Mist’s hand flexed, fingers much longer than they had been, nails grown out like little claws. She ran at the door, yanking at it, pushing, but it didn’t budge. There wasn’t anything to use in the room to pry it open. There were no shelves, no counters, no real space to even walk around. Just the stretcher and the table it had been placed on.

She just had herself—but that would be enough.

Mist backed up as far as she could and launched herself at the door, ramming into it. The metal trembled. She did it again and again, until it opened just wide enough for her to stick her long fingers through. Pushing as hard as she could, she forced it open.

Lieutenant Ivy backed away, one hand on some sort of a gun at her side, the thumb of her other pressed down on a telecom. In one swift motion, Mist knocked both it and her to the ground with distinct thuds. Crawling on top, Mist pressed her hips against the other woman’s, dug her nails into her cheeks.

Pleasure rippled through Mist, a smile unfurling on her face. She pressed harder and harder into the soft flesh, blood from the cuts dribbling down the side of Lieutenant Ivy’s face into her blond curls.

“Can you help me get home?” Mist whispered, a welcoming question, or so she hoped.

Lieutenant Ivy, now squirming beneath Mist’s grasp, hands pressed against her chest, glared at her. “Never, you… You monster,” she spat. “You’re obviously infected with something—something that we can’t let spread—so, we’re going to dispose of it, and you with.”

Dispose. So today really was her day to die. “So be it,” Mist said, the gentle tone gone. She pinned Ivy’s arms and leaned down, pressing her lips against Lieutenant Ivy’s, forcing the other woman’s mouth open. Something hard and thick grew from the back of Mist’s throat, almost like a second tongue. It pushed its way inside of the other woman, down her throat, pulsating, throbbing, spewing something warm.

The woman’s pushes relaxed, pupils rolling back into her head. Fungi-like tendrils grew from the whites of her open eyes.

Mist pushed herself off, the second tongue now a lump in her throat, breaths rasping out of her. She squeezed her eyes shut. “No, no, I didn’t do that.”

But you did, the creature within her purred.

Mist fell backwards, chest heaving. She hadn’t meant to… She had no idea what she’d just done, what’d come out of her, where that strength and speed had come from when every part of her felt brittle or slippery. Her fingers pressed against the ooze, which had hardened against her skin—or what should be her skin, now difficult to make out on the other side of the sprouting fungi.

Maybe Lieutenant Ivy was right. Maybe she truly was a monster.

But if being a monster was what it took to leave this ship, then monster she would become.

Mist walked down the hallway, pushing on surfaces—any surfaces—to see what would give. Murmurs followed, seemingly coming from the walls themselves. Little voices in languages she didn’t understand, following her every move. She needed to get back down to the planet, back to the mines.

Staggering, Mist grabbed a hold of the wall with claw-like fingers, unable to fully straighten her body. No, she couldn’t go back there—what was I thinking? To go back there was to put her fellow miners—put Swamp—at risk.

But Swamp is a human, the creature reminded her. An invasive human, come to plunder my planet for resources.

But they weren’t the ones that started the mines. It was people, like those onboard the ship, that had caused the damage.

And Mist would happily take them out.

Running her claws along the metal walls, a loud screech rang out, grooves left in her wake. In front of her, a door opened, another officer coming out, pointing a gun right at her face.

“Get back to your room now,” he ordered.

“Why would I do that?” Mist said to the dumb question. There was no way she would willingly go back, accepting the death they devised for her.

The officer shot, the bullet whizzing right past her ear, breaking off bits of fungi that instantly grew back. Mist tilted her head and smirked, though her mouth felt wrong doing so, like stretched leather. The officer shot again, and Mist lunged forward, knocking the gun from his hands, and landed on top of him, ravenous.

“No, please, I have kids” the officer pleaded.

Mist licked his cheek with her normal tongue, that strange apparatus unfurling from deep within her throat like a burgeoning blossom.

“I’ll—I’ll get you onto the flight deck.” His words were so fast they collided into an almost indistinguishable noise.

“Do it, then,” she whispered, slime dripping onto him, soaking into his flesh. She crawled off, allowing him to shakily stand. Glancing nervously at her, he walked forward, his pace much too slow.

He turned down the hallway, going about halfway before stopping. “This is it.”

There was no indentation, nothing suggesting it was a doorway. Mist laid her clawed hand on top of it, and it did not budge.

The guard pressed a small piece of metal into the wall and another shimmered to life, a screen of sorts. He tapped a few things into it and the lights around them dimmed.

And loud beeping rang out, reverberating from the walls.

The guard took off running back the way they came, slipping to the ground. A scream of agony rang out and he clutched his face where the ooze had touched him, skin blistering beneath his grasp. Mist couldn’t help but smile, turning to the screen the guard had revealed. She pressed down on a few buttons, the screen cracking in half.

The door slid open, another gun pointed right at her face, the bullet ringing out as it hit her forehead. She stumbled backward, head throbbing as the crushed bullet clattered to the floor.

“That hurt,” Mist seethed. She grabbed a hold of the pilot’s head, crushing it like one of the nuts that used to hang on the tree branches behind her old home. If she closed her eyes, she could still remember the salty, yet sweet taste left on her tongue.

A cavernous growl reverberated from her stomach

Mist licked the blood from her fingers, savoring the way it lingered on her tongue, in the back of her throat. It was bliss, an experience she never realized she needed. Leaning down, she dug through the bodily remains, picking out a squishy bit of brain. She popped it into her mouth like a little berry and sucked.

Her body shivered, more strange growths radiating from her forehead, hard like bone.

Part of Mist, the human part, screamed to stop; part of her felt like she was drowning. But that voice was buried, becoming fainter with every passing moment, like the stars beyond these walls had devoured her along with the sound when they left the planet, her planet. The creature’s planet.

The creature had promised the body that they wouldn’t return there, back to the mines, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t return to the planet.

“Take me back from whence I came,” the creature demanded.

“We can’t do that—you know we can’t do that. You’ll die here,” the captain whispered, but all the fight was gone. The other pilot sat frozen with wide eyes.

“Then you are of no use to me,” the creature said and threw them out of the way. The captain’s body hit the back wall, hard, and they slumped to the floor, unconscious.

On the control panel, the creature entered a new trajectory: home. The whole ship lit up with colors, noises, at being flown off course.

At that, the other pilot’s eyes opened wide, and they slammed down a different override button, the sounds stopping, the lights flickering off, the ship itself slipping into a blissful silence.

The creature turned on the pilot, crouched. “What did you do?”

“The only thing I could.” The pilot smiled, resigned.

The creature sprang, grasping her head with both hands and squeezed until the skill cracked, blood splattering the window to the stars, obstructing everything but the creature’s view of the molten planet.

“To the crust,” the creature muttered, a slow smile unfurling, and licked its bloodied fingers.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

K.L. Brandt (they/them) is a speculative fiction writer and editor based in Denver, Co., that tells stories about dreamers stuck in nightmares. When not writing, there's a good chance they've given in to their inner cryptid and vanished into an aspen grove. Learn more about their work, including what they're working on now, at klbrandt.carrd.co.