ATLAS'S POV
The thermal sensor screamed to life at 0347 hours.
"Contact! Sector 7, storage area!" I shouted, already running. My team of twelve armed guards thundered behind me, plasma rifles charged and ready. "All units, converge on target. This is not a drill!"
After three days of hunting, we finally had her cornered. The creature—Kira, I had to remember it was Kira—had been spotted on security cameras moving through the maintenance corridors. Right into the trap I'd spent eighteen hours setting up.
Electrified nets hidden in the ceiling. Pressure plates that would seal bulkheads. Thermal imaging so sensitive it could track her even with that chameleonic skin. And motion sensors programmed to recognize her specific movement patterns.
I'd studied every second of footage. Knew how she moved, how she thought, how she avoided danger. Because I'd loved her for two years and knew her better than anyone.
That's your advantage. You know Kira. The creature doesn't know you know.
Marcus ran beside me, checking his weapon. "Commander, are you sure about this? If it really is Dr. Chen—"
"That's exactly why we need to capture her alive," I interrupted. "Captain Cross wants her dead. We save her first, figure out the rest later."
We burst into the storage area. A massive space filled with supply crates stacked to the ceiling. A thousand places to hide. But my thermal sensors showed a heat signature thirty feet up, clinging to the ceiling like a spider.
"There," I whispered, pointing. "Remember—non-lethal only. We need her alive."
My team spread out, forming a perimeter. I raised my weapon, targeting the heat signature. "Kira? I know you can hear me. We're not here to hurt you. We want to help."
The signature didn't move. Didn't react.
"We know about the baby," I continued, my voice cracking. "We know Captain Cross did this to you on purpose. You're not a monster. You're a victim. And I'm not letting her take our child."
Still nothing.
Come on, Kira. Show me you're still in there. Give me a sign.
I signaled Marcus. He activated the ceiling nets. They dropped with a mechanical whir, electrified mesh spreading wide.
The heat signature vanished.
Not moved—vanished. One second it was there, the next it was gone like a ghost.
"What the hell?" Marcus stared at his scanner. "Where did it—"
A blur of motion to my left. I spun, raising my rifle, and caught a glimpse of something massive and black launching off a crate. Four arms spread wide. Eyes like midnight reflecting our flashlight beams.
"FIRE!" someone shouted.
Plasma bolts lit up the storage area. But the creature—Kira—moved like liquid, flowing between the shots. She bounded off walls, ceiling, floor, never staying in one place long enough to target.
"CEASE FIRE!" I roared. "You'll hit each other!"
She dropped to the floor fifteen feet away, landing in a crouch. This close, I could see her clearly. Black carapace covering her body. Four arms ending in claws that could tear through steel. But her face—distorted and alien as it was—still had Kira's eyes. Desperate. Terrified. Pleading.
She raised one hand slowly. Palm out. The same gesture she used to make when asking me to wait, to listen, to trust her.
"Don't shoot," I ordered my team. "Nobody moves."
Kira's mouth opened. I braced for that clicking, hissing sound. Instead, she forced out garbled words: "At...las... trap... wrong... trap..."
My blood froze. "What?"
"Not... me... you... trapped..." She pointed behind us with two hands.
I spun around just as the storage area doors slammed shut. Emergency bulkheads dropped like guillotines, sealing every exit. Red emergency lights bathed everything in blood-colored darkness.
"What's happening?" Marcus shouted. "Who triggered the lockdown?"
Captain Cross's voice crackled over the comms. "Thank you for cornering the specimen, Commander Vance. My team will take it from here."
No. No, no, NO!
Gas started pouring from the ventilation system. Not normal air—something thick and yellow that burned my throat.
"GAS MASKS!" I screamed, but half my team didn't have them. They dropped immediately, choking.
Kira shrieked—that multi-voiced sound of rage and fear. She leaped at me, and my instincts screamed to shoot. But instead of attacking, she grabbed me with two arms and Marcus with the other two, then jumped straight up.
Her claws punched into the ceiling, holding all three of us thirty feet in the air while the gas filled the floor below. My team collapsed one by one, unconscious but breathing.
"Hold still," Kira rasped in my ear, her breath hot and acidic. "Save... you... Save... baby..."
She was protecting us. While Cross was trying to kill everyone to get to her, Kira was saving our lives.
"I'm sorry," I whispered. "God, Kira, I'm so sorry. I led you right into her trap."
Her grip tightened. Not painful—careful. Like she was afraid of hurting me with her strength.
The ceiling vent above us exploded inward. Grappling hooks shot out, wrapping around Kira's legs and arms. She screamed as electricity coursed through the cables, making her body convulse.
"NO!" I grabbed onto her, trying to pull the hooks free. "LET HER GO!"
But she was losing her grip. The electricity was too much. She couldn't hold on.
We fell together, down into the gas cloud. I held my breath, held onto Kira, both of us plummeting toward the floor.
We hit hard. My vision went black at the edges. The gas was burning my lungs, my eyes, my skin. Kira's body shielded mine from the worst of it, curled protectively around me even as the hooks dragged her away.
Through the yellow fog, I saw Captain Cross's soldiers in full environmental suits. They surrounded Kira, prodding her with electrified batons. She tried to fight but the hooks held her down, electricity making her movements jerky and weak.
"Specimen secured," one soldier reported. "Beginning transport to medical bay for extraction."
"NO!" I tried to stand but my legs wouldn't work. "You can't! The baby—our baby—you can't—"
Captain Cross stepped through the gas, her environmental suit pristine. She looked down at me with cold satisfaction. "The hybrid will be extracted and studied. The host body will be terminated. This is for the future of humanity, Commander. Try to see the bigger picture."
"The bigger picture is that you MURDERED my fiancée!" I crawled toward Kira, but two soldiers grabbed me. "You turned her into this! You deliberately destroyed her life!"
"I gave humanity hope," Cross said simply. "And you're too emotionally compromised to understand that."
Kira was fighting the soldiers, even weakened. She reached toward me with one clawed hand, black blood dripping from where the hooks had torn her flesh. Her mouth formed words I couldn't hear through the gas mask radios.
But I could read her lips: "Save baby. Please."
Then they dragged her through the bulkhead door and sealed it behind them.
The gas started clearing, ventilation fans kicking in. My team was waking up, coughing and disoriented. Marcus crawled over to me, blood running from a cut on his head.
"They took her," he said. "Cross played us."
I stared at the black blood on the floor—Kira's blood—and felt something inside me snap. The part that followed orders. The part that believed in the chain of command. The part that trusted authority to do the right thing.
All of it died in that moment.
"Gather the team," I said quietly. "Everyone who's loyal to me, not Cross. We're staging a mutiny."
"Commander—"
"They have my fiancée. They're going to cut our baby out of her and kill her. I don't care if it costs me my rank, my career, my life." I picked up my plasma rifle. "I'm getting them back. Who's with me?"
Marcus grinned despite the blood on his face. "Always, sir. What's the plan?"
I looked at the door where they'd taken Kira. Behind it, in the medical bay, Captain Cross was preparing to murder the woman I loved.
"We storm the medical bay. We save Kira and our child. And we make Captain Cross answer for what she's done."
"That's treason," Marcus said.
"I know." I checked my rifle's charge. Full power. "Get everyone armed and ready. We move in ten minutes."
As Marcus gathered our team, I knelt beside the pool of black blood. Kira's blood. In it, mixed with the alien DNA, I could see traces of something else. Something that glowed faintly in the dim light.
Human DNA. Kira's original genetic code, fighting to survive inside her transformed body.
She's still human. Still fighting. Still Kira.
And she'd saved my life instead of escaping. Had shielded me with her own body. Had begged me to save our baby, not herself.
My comm crackled. Dr. Tanaka's voice, frantic: "Commander! I hacked into the medical bay feeds. You need to see this. Captain Cross isn't just extracting the fetus. She's—oh God, she's dissecting Kira while she's still conscious. She's alive in there, Atlas. She's awake and she's screaming and—"
The comm cut off. But I'd heard enough.
I stood, rage burning hotter than any plasma weapon. My team assembled around me—eight loyal guards willing to commit treason for what was right.
"Let's go save my family," I said. "And if Captain Cross gets in our way, I'm putting her down like the monster she is."