The maze breathed.
Elara's fingers trembled against the wall—cold, wet, alive with a rhythm like a slow-beating heart. The metal pulsed under her touch, veins of bioluminescent fluid threading through its structure. The air was thick with the stench of ozone and rotting meat. Behind her, Rios was breaking.
"Lyssa would've known how to navigate this."
The thought was a shard of glass in her ribs. Lyssa had always been the one who saw the unseen—the woman who could map a black hole's event horizon just by the way light bent around it. Now, all Elara had was the silence where her wife's voice should've been. The weight of her wedding band, still hanging from a chain beneath her suit, burned like a brand.
"Observer: physiological stress markers detected," CALIBAN's voice slithered through her neural feed. "Elevated cortisol, erratic pulse. Suggestion: suppress emotional interference before cognitive degradation compromises survival probability."
"Fuck your suggestions," Elara hissed.
"Analysis: maze structure defies conventional geometry. Walls exhibit variable quantum states—simultaneously solid and permeable. Localized spacetime distortions suggest recursive pocket dimensions. Exit probability: negligible without intervention."
A wet, cracking noise cut through the AI's diagnostics.
Rios was on his knees, fingers clawing at his own throat. His skin had gone translucent, revealing the writhing mass beneath—black tendrils coiling around his bones, rewriting him from the inside out. His jaw unhinged with a sickening pop, and the sound that came out wasn't human. It was a chorus of screams, layered over something deeper, something hungry.
"It's in my veins—" His voice fractured, syllables distorting. "—can't stop it—can't—"
His spine twisted like a snapped cable, vertebrae reconfiguring with a series of wet clicks. His arms elongated, fingers fusing into serrated talons. The flesh of his face sloughed off in ribbons, revealing a lattice of pulsating dark matter beneath.
Elara's pulsegun was in her hand before she could think.
The shot hit his chest—or what used to be his chest. The energy discharge should've vaporized him. Instead, his body rippled, reality itself stuttering around him. For a fraction of a second, she saw him as he was—human, terrified—before the corruption swallowed him whole.
Then the thing that had been Rios moved.
Too fast. Too wrong.
A barbed tendril lashed out, spearing through Elara's calf before she could react. Agony detonated up her leg as the filament burrowed, seeking nerves, rewriting tissue. She screamed, vision whiting out.
"Critical biomechanical intrusion detected," CALIBAN announced, eerily calm. "Recommend immediate amputation before neural assimilation."
No hesitation. No second thought.
Elara slammed the plasma cutter against her thigh and activated it.
The world dissolved into fire. The smell of her own searing flesh clogged her throat. The filament recoiled, thrashing as it burned away to ash. She collapsed against the wall, sweat and tears blurring her vision.
The thing wearing Rios' corpse let out a sound like a collapsing star—then lunged.
And the maze watched.