Zoe stood over Chris's unconscious body, the plasma dagger at his throat. Her naked skin shimmered with fever heat, green-black tendrils pulsing beneath the surface like alien circuitry. Those purple-tinted eyes fixed on Luca with inhuman focus.

  The sedative injector lay on the floor between them, impossibly far away.

  "Zoe," Luca said quietly, his hands raised. "Let him go. Take me instead."

  She tilted her head, studying him. Chris stirred slightly, blood trickling from the bruise on his temple where she'd ambushed him.

  "I'm the one you want," Luca continued, taking a slow step forward. "I'm the captain. I'm the one who can change course, turn us around. Chris can't do that."

  Another step. The dagger's heat made the air shimmer around Chris's neck.

  For a moment, something flickered across Zoe's features, recognition, maybe even confusion. Then her hand moved away from Chris's throat.

  She released him and immediately attacked, one second crouched over Chris's unconscious form and the next airborne in a phasing leap that sent the plasma dagger carving toward his sternum like a falling star.

  Luca threw himself backward in zero gravity, feeling the blade's superheated edge sear past his chest as his enhanced reflexes responded faster than baseline human limits should allow.

  She landed against the far bulkhead and spun in the weightless environment, slashing horizontally with fluid grace.

  He pulled his knees to his chest and the glowing blade passed inches beneath his floating body, close enough that he could feel his suit's fabric tighten from the radiant heat.

  Fighting her changed everything in ways he'd never anticipated, no clothing to grab, no fabric leverage, just slick skin that made every attempted hold nearly impossible.

  She phased invisible, leaving only the plasma dagger's deadly glow to track her position.

  The attack came from above. Luca activated [Combat Drift] just in time to twist away from the unseen strike, the dagger carving a line of superheated air where his kidney had been a split second before. Projectiles flew at him from the darkness. He dodged as debris crashed into the bulkheads around him.

  When she rematerialized to strike again, he lunged forward in the zero gravity and wrapped his arms around her legs, using momentum to drive his shoulder into her hips as they crashed together in a tangle of limbs and floating blood droplets from Chris's head wound. He twisted hard, trying to control her movements, but she drove her elbow into his ribs with hammer-blow force that sent air exploding from his lungs.

  The impact would have crippled him a year ago, but his enhanced body absorbed damage that baseline humans couldn't survive, even as pain flared through his nervous system like white-hot wire. Sweat from both their bodies made maintaining any hold nearly impossible in the weightless environment, and every time he thought he had a grip, she'd slip free or phase partially out of reality with that nauseating sensation of his hands sinking into cold static void.

  He could see exhaustion beginning to show in her movements though, the phasing was taking something out of her, burning through whatever was driving her abilities. Luca activated [Weak Point Focus] and shifted his tactics from joint locks to blood chokes, his enhanced perception highlighting the vulnerable arteries in her neck where he could cut off circulation to her brain.

  She twisted desperately in his grip and brought the dagger around in a wild slash that carved across his forearm, cauterizing the wound instantly and filling the air with the smell of burned flesh as blood droplets scattered in zero gravity like crimson pearls. But he kept fighting despite the pain, processing the damage as tactical information while he got his arm around her throat from behind and settled into a rear naked choke.

  His bicep pressed against one carotid artery while his forearm compressed the other, cutting off blood flow to her brain as she clawed at his arms and tried desperately to phase away from the hold that was slowly strangling her. Four years since Sandworth, four years of building this crew into something more than friends. He couldn't lose Zoe now, not when they were so close to saving everyone.

  The plasma dagger was still clutched in her hand, and in a final act of desperation she drove it backward toward his stomach with all her strength.

  Luca tried to shift away in the zero gravity but there wasn't enough room, and the superheated blade sliced across his belly from hip to hip in a white-hot line of agony that opened him like a zipper.

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  The wound was deep, way too deep, and he could feel his abdominal muscles parting as the blade burned through layers of skin and fat and muscle, releasing something warm and slick that began to float away from his body in the weightless environment.

  His intestines, uncoiling in zero gravity like alien serpents.

  With his free hand he pressed against the wound, trying to keep his guts from drifting away while pain beyond description tore through his nervous system like molten metal.

  His vision grayed at the edges and nausea surged, but he activated [Terminate Directive] and pushed through the agony with raw focus, his arm tightening around her throat like a steel cable as blood continued to seep between his fingers in floating globules that caught the emergency lighting like liquid rubies.

  Why am I not screaming?

  The thought cut through the combat haze as he looked down at his opened belly, intestines visible through the gaping wound. This should be incapacitating. This should have him writhing in shock, unable to think or move. But while the damage was horrific and the blood loss real, the overwhelming agony he expected wasn't reaching his brain the way it should.

  His body was doing something extraordinary, not healing the wound, but managing the trauma response, keeping him functional when baseline human physiology would have shut down entirely.

  He didn't let go of the choke, even as his body screamed at him to release her and deal with his injuries. She was weakening in his grip, her enhanced abilities finally hitting their limits as oxygen starvation shut down her brain, but she was also starting to fade again, her body becoming translucent as her abilities made one last desperate attempt to save her.

  Three decks above, Emily's eyes snapped open in the medical pod.

  Something was wrong. The ship felt different, emergency lighting casting everything in hellish red shadows. Her body ached from the treatment, muscles weak and coordination shot, but the green tendrils were gone from her skin and her mind was clear for the first time in hours.

  Luca.

  She'd heard his voice over the comm earlier, calling Chris, but then nothing. Radio silence in the middle of a crisis, and that wasn't like him. Emily forced herself to sit up despite the weakness in her limbs, the pod's medical gel still dripping from her hair as she looked around the infirmary.

  Ryan and Joey were still unconscious in their beds, stable but unresponsive. Danny floated in his healing pod, cellular reconstruction continuing at an accelerated pace. But Chris's pod was empty, the lid open, and she could see blood on the floor where he'd been helped out.

  Where are they?

  Emily climbed out of her pod on unsteady legs, her bare feet slipping on the deck plating as she grabbed a medical kit from the emergency supplies. Sedatives, stimulants, surgical tools, she didn't know what she'd need, but Luca's silence told her it was bad.

  She made her way through the ship, following instinct and the faint smell of burned ozone that led her toward engineering. Her body protested every step, muscles still recovering from the alien infection, but she pushed through the weakness with pure determination.

  She found them in the environmental control room.

  Luca was floating in zero gravity with his arm wrapped around Zoe's throat, blood streaming from a horrific belly wound as he tried to hold his intestines inside his body with one trembling hand. Zoe's skin was translucent as she phased in and out of reality, the plasma dagger still clutched in her grip as she fought against the chokehold.

  Chris lay unconscious against the control console, blood trickling from his temple.

  And Emily felt something primal and fierce surge through her chest, a fury that burned away her weakness and flooded her system with adrenaline.

  He's mine.

  She grabbed the sedative injector from the floor and pushed off from the doorway, floating toward them through the blood-filled air with murder in her eyes. Luca saw her coming and managed to gasp out a warning through gritted teeth, his words slurring.

  "She's... phasin'... do it... now..."

  Emily reached Zoe just as her body started to fade completely, jamming the injector into the side of her neck where the carotid artery pulsed. The midazolam flooded into Zoe's bloodstream as Emily pressed the trigger and snarled.

  "He's mine, bitch."

  Zoe's body solidified immediately as the sedative trapped her in normal physics, her purple-tinted eyes rolling back as she went completely limp in Luca's arms. The plasma dagger drifted away from her relaxed fingers, its deadly glow finally extinguished.

  Luca's arm released from around Zoe's throat, his movements uncoordinated as he tried to push her toward Emily. Blood continued to seep between the fingers pressed against his belly wound; there was too much blood, forming a grotesque cloud of floating droplets around them.

  "Luca, stay with me!" Emily caught Zoe's drifting form with one hand while reaching for him with the other.

  His eyes were unfocused, pupils dilated. He tried to say something, lips moving, but only a wet exhale escaped. Then his hand slipped away from his wound, intestines beginning to drift free, and his eyes rolled back.

  He went completely limp.

  "No, no, no—" Emily grabbed for him, but his body was already floating away, leaving a trail of blood globules in the zero gravity. She had Zoe in one arm, unconscious and still infected, and now Luca was unconscious too, bleeding out in front of her.

  Chris groaned from where he floated near the console, slowly regaining consciousness as the medical stimulants in his system countered the head trauma. He opened his eyes and looked around in confusion, taking in the blood-filled air.

  "Emily...?" His voice was weak, disoriented.

  "Chris! I need you—Luca's hurt bad, I need—"

  But Chris's eyes were already closing again, consciousness slipping away.

  Emily floated there in the environmental control room, alone. Three unconscious crew members drifted around her in zero gravity: Zoe naked and infected with alien circuitry pulsing under her skin, Chris with a head injury, and Luca with his intestines floating free from a gaping belly wound, leaving trails of blood that caught the emergency lighting like ruby constellations.

  Her body was still weak from her own infection, barely minutes out of the medical pod. But she was the only one conscious, which meant she was the only one who could save them.

  From somewhere in the floating debris, Pixel appeared and settled gently on Zoe's chest, purring softly.

  The sedative would keep Zoe unconscious for two, maybe three hours. Long enough to get her cured.

  Somewhere in the darkness ahead, an asteroid waited with answers they weren't sure they were ready to find.