SERA'S POV
The creature was eating David's finger.
I stood frozen outside Laboratory 12, watching through the observation window as my research partner screamed and beat his remaining hand against the containment tank. Inside the glass prison, Specimen X-7 had squeezed through a crack no bigger than my thumb—a crack that shouldn't exist because I'd checked the seals twice this morning.
The alarm shrieked. Red lights flashed. But I couldn't move.
The creature wrapped around David's hand like living silver paint, flowing up his arm despite his desperate attempts to shake it off. Beautiful. That's what I thought as my partner begged for help. The specimen shimmered with colors that didn't have names, and where it touched David's skin, his flesh simply... melted into it.
"Sera!" David's voice cracked. "Do something!"
My hand hovered over the emergency release button. Press it, and the tank would flood with acid, killing both David and X-7 instantly. Don't press it, and—
The creature pulled back into the tank on its own.
David collapsed, clutching his hand—his whole, undamaged, completely fine hand. Not even a scratch. He stared at his fingers like they belonged to someone else.
"Did you see that?" I whispered, pressing my face against the window. "It gave your hand back."
"It was eating me!" David scrambled away from the tank, his dark eyes wild with terror. "That thing is a monster!"
"That thing," I said quietly, "just showed mercy."
For three months, I'd studied X-7 alone in this lab while everyone else on the ship ignored my reports. They'd found the creature in a derelict alien vessel floating near the asteroid belt—a blob of living tissue that most people thought was just weird space mold. But I knew better. I'd watched it solve puzzles. Respond to my voice. Even seem to recognize me when I entered the lab each morning.
Today, it had learned something new. It had learned to choose.
David stood on shaking legs. "I'm reporting this to Commander Cross. That containment breach could've killed me."
"But it didn't," I said, still watching X-7 ripple in its tank. The specimen had returned to the center of the containment unit, pulsing gently, almost like it was... waiting. "David, don't you see? It stopped. It made a decision not to hurt you."
"It shouldn't be making any decisions!" David headed for the door, then paused. His voice softened. "Sera, I know you love your work. I know this discovery means everything to you. But that thing is dangerous. Please, just... be careful."
The way he said it made my chest tight. David had been looking at me like that for weeks now—like I was something precious he was afraid to break. I pretended not to notice. I was good at pretending.
After he left, I approached the tank slowly. X-7 shifted, and I swear it moved toward my side of the glass. I pressed my palm against the barrier. The creature pressed back, its form flattening against my hand, separated by just a few inches of glass.
"What are you?" I breathed.
My tablet buzzed. A message from Dr. Marcus Chen, the ship's Chief Medical Officer and my only real friend on the Prometheus: Coffee in the mess hall? You've been living in that lab for 3 days straight.
I ignored it. Marcus worried too much.
The lab door exploded open.
Commander Isaac Cross stormed in with four security officers, all carrying weapons that hummed with barely contained energy. He was a tall man with iron-gray hair and eyes that looked like they'd seen too many terrible things.
"Dr. Vance, step away from the specimen."
I didn't move. "Commander, if this is about the containment breach—"
"It's about corporate orders." He thrust a tablet toward me. "Specimen X-7 has been classified as a Tier-5 bioweapon threat. Termination protocol begins in six hours."
The words hit me like a punch. "What? No. You can't."
"I can and I will." Cross's jaw tightened. "Your partner reported that the specimen attempted to consume him. That makes it an active threat to this crew."
"It let him go!" I stepped between Cross and the tank. "It stopped on its own. That proves it has intelligence, maybe even morality. We can't just destroy it!"
"We can't risk ten thousand sleeping colonists on your theory, Doctor." Cross's voice dropped lower, almost kind. "I've read your file. I know your career on Earth ended badly. I know you're hoping this discovery will change everything for you. But some things are too dangerous to let live."
Rage burned in my throat. "You don't know anything about me."
"I know enough." He gestured to his officers. "Escort Dr. Vance to her quarters. The specimen will be incinerated at 0600 hours."
They grabbed my arms. I struggled, watching X-7 pulse frantically in its tank as they dragged me toward the door. "Please! Just give me more time to study it!"
"Time's up, Doctor."
The lab door sealed behind me with a hiss of hydraulics.
I stood in the empty corridor, my heart hammering against my ribs. In six hours, they would kill the most incredible discovery in human history. They would burn it to ash and scatter it into space, and no one would ever know what X-7 could have become.
Unless I stopped them.
My hands trembled as I pulled up the ship's maintenance schematics on my tablet. The Prometheus was a massive vessel—fifty levels from the sterile crew quarters at the top to the nightmare of tunnels and waste processing systems at the bottom. Plenty of places to hide something the size of X-7.
I'd spent three years designing this ship's bio-containment systems. I knew every seal, every sensor, every emergency override. I knew exactly how to make something disappear.
This is crazy, I thought. This is career suicide.
But as I pulled up the containment protocols and began disabling them one by one, my hands steady despite the fear, I realized something that should have terrified me:
I didn't care about my career anymore.
I cared about saving something beautiful that everyone else wanted dead.
At 2300 hours, I returned to Laboratory 12. The guards had gone—Cross was too confident in his security systems. I pressed my palm against the tank, and X-7 pressed back, just like before.
"I'm going to set you free," I whispered. "But you have to survive. You have to hide. You have to show them what you really are."
I opened the access tunnel to the lower decks. The specimen flowed out of its tank like liquid starlight.
For one moment, it hesitated by my feet, forming something almost like a hand that reached toward me. I felt its warmth through my boot.
Then it vanished into the darkness below.
I sealed the tunnel and erased every digital trace of what I'd done. My heart raced with fear and something else—something dark and thrilling I'd never felt before.
Four hours later, my tablet buzzed with an emergency alert.
David's body had been found in Maintenance Level 8.
Drained. Hollow. Empty.
And written in condensed moisture on the wall beside him, in letters that could only have been formed by something that had consumed David's memories, his knowledge, his very essence:
THANK YOU, SERA.