Oh shit.
I stumble, my knees, my weird, too-big knees, turning to jelly.
Oh shit.
I knew, knew deep inside that things were different. Were weird, were not what they should be but...
Oh shit. Ohshitohshitohshitohshit.
I back-peddle, but it's like I'm trying to walk away from myself. Wobble. Wobble. Half-run. WHOMP. My back hits the bulkhead, and there's nowhere else to go, nothing to do but lift my arms out to my sides and stare at the... the...
Are they feet? They kind of look like feet, kind of look like paws too. Really big, grey-green paws, with three stubby toes like an Old Terran emu and darker, almost black nubs that might be claws... My toes flex almost of their own accord and... Wow. Those aren't claws, those are big fucking knives on the end of my feet, as long as my hand, as thick as two fingers combined and...
Skrrriiiitch.
My toes curl and I can't help but flinch at the sharp screech, like fingernails on blackboard, except it's my new toenails on steelcrete, leaving gouges in the decking deep enough to make a rucnart jealous. Or afraid. Very, very afraid.
Like me, right now.
But the shit doesn't stop there.
My new, paw-feet are fuzzy, and not from fur, although I guess you could call it fur, except fur doesn't move, doesn't wriggle all on its own. I swallow, hard, because I know what that shit is, know it because I burnt it, pointed the Franken-thrower at it and watched it shrivel up and die. Heard it scream.
Fug. My feet are coved in fug.
I'm hyperventilating, breath coming short and fast, coming like it's never going to come again, and in that distant part of me, I feel those huge cavernous lungs wheezing, see lights going off, feel... things running across big struts that make up its ribs and—
As if having fug-feet wasn't bad enough, the nano-tech, ship-eating mould is covering my shins, crawling over my shipsuit, climbing all the way up my thighs until it hugs my hips, and—
I don't want to look at my hands, really I don't, but they're just kind of there, in front of my face and... There's fug on them as well, wrapping around my fingers, trailing over the back of my hands, looping around my wrists and winding up my forearms. It stops at the elbow, looking like a critter-nibbled glove over my shipsuit, all lacy and delicate. But green, a sickly, muted, oh-my-god-I'm-gonna-throw-up green.
Vomit spews over the deck, rushes into the grooves my paw-feet dug in the steelcrete before creeping toward my fug-toes.
I'm covered in fug.
I'm covered. In. Fug.
Oh shit.
Panic explodes in my chest, making my heart pound, every muscle shake, and suddenly I'm half crouched and talons have sprouted from my fingers and I'm tearing at my feet. Ripping. Screaming.
I have to get it off. Off. Off. Off.
Every slash of my claws brings pain, horrible slashing pain, pain that goes all the way down to the bone. But it's distant, muffled, like it belongs to someone else.
That just makes me braver, more determined. Brings back a little of my sanity. Fug flies, torn from my feet and flung across the corridor, a hail of grey-green. Every swipe of my fug claws rips another chunk off, more and more and more, a talon, a toe, the top of my foot.
There's no blood. That thought pops up amidst the madness. No oozing, no gushing. No screaming. The fug doesn't fight back like it did with the Franken, doesn't form spikes, doesn't attack my hands. Doesn't do anything.
I tear another chunk off, and there's another colour in the grey-green, a pale gold, flushed rose with blood. Flesh. Kuma flesh.
Me. Not fug. Me.
Everything in me stops, and for one crystal moment, I feel relief, I feel hope. I feel like this whole freaky, scary, horrible shit-mess is maybe, maybe going to turn out all right. Because I'm still me. I'm still here under the fug.
It's just a second.
Then that golden patch of skin starts to disappear.
'What? No. No. Nononononono!'
I'm ripping and tearing, digging. But it's not enough. The fug is growing back, filling in the hole, seeping into the rents, pulling itself back together. Faster, faster, faster.
I can't keep up with it. Flesh-me disappears, is gone, and no matter how fast I move, how deep my fug-claws go, the fug grows faster. And not just faster, it's making itself harder.
My fug-claws aren't digging as deep, the furrows they make shallower until they're not making any marks at all, just screeching over a new, hard outer shell. As I watch, the shell forms plates, thick and glossy, linked together like the chest plates of a sterdane.
I'm slowing, sweat dripping down my back, panic still boiling in my gut, the worst of it burned out, expended on the manic destruction of my feet, and now buried under a new emotion.
I slump against the bulkhead, unable to take my eyes from the fug-feet. Idly watching as the bits I've torn off, the chunks and strips, crawl back together.
Despair rises up and over my shoulders, turns my brain numb, turns everything numb.
I just...
There's nothing.
Eventually, I get up.
There's no time, but that awareness in the pit of me says it wasn't long. A few minutes at most.
It felt like an hour. An hour in which my brain ceased to function and I stared at my feet, at my hands, at the fug encasing my legs.
I was fug.
I. Was. Fug.
That thought chased itself around my head, one loop and then another and another until I forgot the panic, forgot the despair, and just… was.
Fug.
There's a weird space behind the word, a calm that goes beyond the deep breaths and counting heartbeats. It's a feeling deeper than bone, a sensation that goes all the way to my anima and spreads through my veins. The fug's not eating me, not attacking, not even when I attack it. Of course, I haven't tried burning it yet, but there's nothing around here to burn fug.
The corridor is empty, just the hatch and Citlali's symbol glowing away.
Citlali.
Of course. The AI will know what to do.
'Core?' My call bounces out of me, the too-deep voice taking me aback, but after discovering my fug-feet, it doesn't worry me like it did.
The AI doesn't answer, but there's a tug at the awareness in my gut telling me to pay attention.
I don't.
'Core?' I try again, louder this time, using those too-big lungs for something other than freaking me out. 'Core!'
Nothing, not even an echo.
Okay. That's weird.
Citlali's corridors echo. Sound bounces off the hard walls like rabid bats, around the rings and through the spokes connecting them, fracturing a million times until it comes back at you. But there's nothing, just the hush of the air cyclers.
The bulkheads ate my voice. Granted, it's a strange voice, and maybe Core didn't recognise it, what with its deep metallic sound and all, but still… Maybe she's offline. Maybe the fug got her. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
That's when I get to my feet, pushing myself off the wall, wobbling a bit on the fug-paws, trying not to look at them, or at my hands.
I press the spot inside my elbow, the little raised disc where my biocomp implant is. A holo spits and fuzzes over my palm, one of the few bits of clear Kuma skin left. It takes a few seconds for the screen to steady, for me to make out the absolute lack of anything helpful on the blue square of light. Of anything at all.
The screen above my hand is blank, without even Citlali's six-pointed star pulsing over my palm. Okay, don't panic. Just... you're fug, it's probably messing with the biocomp
I just need to reset it. It'll be good once I reset it. I just have to find a maintenance hatch or an engineering section. Yeah, that's all I have to do.
The awareness doesn't agree, tells me I'm dreaming, that I'm ignoring things I shouldn't, that I'm not paying attention.
I start off down the corridor.
I'm okay with ignoring stuff.
I don't know this corridor. It looks like Citlali, with the same boxy hallways, the same curve that bends just enough that you know you're close to the centre of the ship, but it's not Citlali. There are no hatches, no control pads, nothing but the smooth off-white bulkheads and the darker decking. And no matter how often I call, neither Core nor any of her sub-AIs answer.
I've been walking for ages with no sign of another living soul. No sign of fug either, unless you count the Kuma-fug. I've discovered it's not so bad having paw-feet, that the talons on the tips of my fingers make reaching the itchy bit between my shoulder blades a breeze.
It's pretty neat. I could get used to it if it weren't fug.
Fatigue drags at my bones, makes it harder to coordinate my feet. At some point in my interminable march, I found a rhythm, an extra bounce that prevented my claws from leaving divots in the deck. But the rhythm disappeared somewhere in the last half hour, smothered under the weight pulling at my eyelids, making my head droop.
I can't sleep though; I have to get out of here. Have to find Core.
Something skitters behind me.
Energy pumps through my system.
I spin, no longer uncoordinated, no longer drooping. Talons out, the fug... spreading over the back of my hands, rushing up over my knuckles, forming spiky ridges even as it covers my elbows, filling in the gaps. In the space between heartbeats, I'm no longer wearing lacy fug-gloves, my arms are sheathed in armour.
There's nothing behind me. The corridor is empty, not so much as a shadow disturbing the walls. And still... The awareness says something is wrong, that my eyes aren't seeing what's really there, that I'm not understanding.
What's to understand? I'm on a not-Citlali chasing my fug-laden arse around a hallway with no end and no doors. Not so much as an intersecting corridor to cut up the monotony of off-white walls.
I can hear the hush of the cyclers moving air, the soft pad of my fug-paws, the gentle nick nick nick of my talons, and there's something following me, something I can't see.
The skitter comes again, further away this time.
I follow it.
Nick, nick, nick.
Skitter.
Nick, nick, nick.
Movement, a quiver of light.
Pause. Tension rides through my blood. Not the tension of fear, but of anticipation, of... of... It's familiar but I don't have a name for it.
Awareness whispers at the back of my mind, cold and focussed, full of numbers and facts. The Hunt.
Yes. The Hunt. I'm hunting, like the rucnarts. Like the qwans.
Every fibre of my being focuses on the shimmer just a few metres ahead. Not a shadow, but not a light either. A something that doesn't belong, that's trying to hide.
You can't hide from me, little shadow.
I pounce.
The fug-feet take me over the deck separating us in a single leap. For a split-second I'm flying and it's brilliant, and then I'm on the deck, hand-claws snatching at nothing.
There's a squeal and the not-shadow is off, a distortion of light shooting down the corridor. The hunting tension takes over even as my brain tries to pause, tries to catalogue the familiar taste of fuzz on my tongue. I'm bounding after it, a step behind the not-shadow, a centimetre, a nano-metre. Reach down.
It darts sideways.
I snatch at it.
It zags the other way.
Zig. Zag. Snatch. Growl.
That last one is me. Frustration riding up through my throat. There's an idea knocking on the back of my brain, a heavy insistent sound, but the Hunt is all about focus, and right now I'm focused on the not-shadow. On the geometry of its zig and zag, on angles and velocity and the composition of its skin, the chemicals that let it bend light. We'll have to open it up, dig our claws into its belly and rip—
Right. No.
I skid to a stop.
What the fuck was that?
Ripping into its belly?
Ewww. Gross. The thought pops into my brain, and it's not mine.
'Grea?'
Finished chasing critters?
'Critters?'
The not-shadow. A pause as the voice in my head, the one that sounds like me but with the bright cherry of my twin's mind, focuses elsewhere. Ahead, the not-shadow quivers, the light around it shattering, revealing a golden ball of fuzz. I asked him to find you. Didn't think he'd do the light-bending thing, but then I guess your new look scared him.
I hear 'light-bending' and try to figure out when critters got the ability to make themselves invisible, even as Grea's mention of my new look pings on the back of my brain as strange, but my attention is on the critter. On the little black nose and the way he sits, not quite quivering but close enough, and I'm trying to convince myself that he's real, that I'm not imaging things, because the little gold critter I know is dead, got sucked into vacuum and—
'Dude?'
He chitters. Hops forward a few steps.
I'm on my knees. 'Is that you?'
He squeaks.
There's wetness on my cheeks, dripping off my chin.
And then the fug's retreating from my palms and Dude's in my hands, his golden hum vibrating through my skin and settling in my brain. And instead of ripping and tearing, I'm cradling the fuzz-butt under my chin, hand claws fading to nothing, fug receding until my palms are Kuma-flesh.
All right, it's touching, it really is, but I need you to get off your butt and come get me.
I close my eyes, still holding Dude close to my chest, and reach back along the sense of my sister, slipping into the eter. The psionic plane is empty, just me and Dude in the endless white.
The little guy is a comforting fuzz on my shoulder, even as confusion rises in a muddy grey cloud around my feet. I turn, stretching my senses, searching for a trace of Grea, but even thought I taste her on the back of my tongue I can't find her. She's everywhere and nowhere at once.
'Where are you?' My voice echoes.
I don't know. Loneliness, stark white with a sharp thread of fear vibrates the eter, coming from all around.
'I can't see you.'
Just find me.
'How? I don't...' I lift my hands in frustration, letting them slap back against my sides. 'You're coming from everywhere, there's no direction.'
How am I supposed to know? You're the one who's awake.
I freeze, shock holding me in place. 'You're still in stasis?'
I— Anger and frustration flood her presence, and something else, something that crawls down my spine and lodges in my gut, something that makes the awareness shiver.
Whatever it is, it isn't right, isn't good.
Dude hums against my cheek.
The awareness is gone a moment later, cut off like it never was, taking Grea with it.
'Grea!' I zip around the eter. 'Grea!'
I can't lose Grea, not after I just found her—
I'm here, fathead. She speaks from behind me.
I spin around, and there she is, a shimmer on the psionic plane.
'Where'd you go? What's going on?'
I already told you. Anger crosses her face, lights up the space around her with brilliant sparks of red. I don't know.
I'd believe her too, except there're whispers of black in the halo around her hands and threading through her hair. Lies.
'You're lying.'
The red glows brighter, even as her hands clench into fists. I'm not.
'I can see it, Grea. You know I can.'
Her mouth contorts, twisting, and then she's in my face, nose-to-nose. Just find me, little brother.
'Why are you lying?'
A fist thumps into my chest, pushing me back with enough force to send me flying. I slam to the ground, the impact driving the wind from my lungs, leaving me gaping at my twin. Her nose still pressed to mine, her brows dark slashes over void-dark eyes, and that thing, that something swimming in their depths.
The awareness in my gut whispers, "Euvia" and there is danger on its breath.
Find me, Grea says one last time, and then she's gone.