But before the words could finish echoing through the transformed theater, the wall behind them began to ripple like disturbed water. The cheerful wallpaper with its dancing toys and smiling faces warped and stretched, and something began to push through from the other side.
"What is that?" Pip whispered, her voice barely audible over the orchestral music that had suddenly turned discordant.
A hand emerged first—pale, impossibly long fingers that bent at too many joints, each digit ending in a black nail that curved like a talon. Then an arm, stretched and elongated beyond human proportion, the skin mottled with patterns that hurt to look at directly. The wallpaper tore with a sound like screaming children as more of the figure pressed through the dimensional barrier.
The face that emerged was the worst part. It was undeniably human in its basic structure—two eyes, a nose, a mouth—but wrong in every conceivable way. The features were too large, too sharp, arranged with an asymmetry that suggested intelligence but not sanity. His eyes were black pits; when they landed on us, I felt as if my chest had been inverted and pried open.
"Oh God," Zozo breathed, trying to back away but held fast by her spotlight. "Oh God, what is that thing?"
The Man—for lack of a better word—smiled, revealing teeth like broken glass arranged in too many rows. When he spoke, his voice was the sound of reality grinding against itself.
"Ah—fresh material. Perfect. How... delicious."
The nightmare audience of transformed crew members turned in their seats to stare at the emerging horror, their various eyes and appendages focusing with sudden, terrible attention. Even Dr. Martinez's undulating form seemed to recoil from the presence now filling the dimensional breach.
The Man began to pull more of himself through the wall, his torso appearing like a magician's trick in reverse—elongated, wearing what might once have been a suit but was now something that seemed to be cut from the fabric of space itself. As more of him emerged, reality around the breach began to fray at the edges, colors bleeding into impossible spectrums.
"No," Lacey gasped, struggling against her spotlight prison. "No, we're not staying here. We're not—"
But then the theater exploded with color and sound.
Rainbow lights strobed across the space, accompanied by a carnival melody played on what sounded like a thousand toy pianos. The Man in the wall let out a shriek of frustration as the dimensional breach began to seal itself, his half-emerged form being forced back through the rippling barrier.
"NOT YET!" he howled, his terrible voice doppling away as he was pushed back into whatever realm he'd tried to enter from.
Then came another voice, layered and electronic it boomed through the Meridian Edge. It sounded like a bell struck inside a metal throat.
"THE CHILDREN ARE MINE!"
The wall snapped back to its cheerful wallpaper pattern with a sound like a rubber band, leaving no trace of the breach except for the lingering cold and the echo of cosmic rage.
Before any of them could process what they'd just witnessed, the stage beneath their feet tilted violently. The spotlights flickered out, releasing them from their paralysis just as the floor opened like a trapdoor. They tumbled through swirling colors and carnival music, the nightmare theater disappearing above them as they fell through what felt like liquid rainbow.
They landed with soft thwumps on something that felt like oversized cushions. The air smelled of crayons and graham crackers, with an underlying scent of something artificial and sweet. Slowly, they picked themselves up and looked around at their new prison.
The space was impossible—a living room that belonged in no ship ever built, with dimensions that defied architectural logic. Enormous furniture dominated the area: chairs that could seat giants, a coffee table the size of a small car, a couch that stretched along one wall like a fabric mountain. Everything was rendered in bright primary colors with that slightly too-vivid saturation of children's television.
The walls were lined with shelves containing toys of every description—building blocks the size of filing cabinets, stuffed animals that could serve as beds, board games with pieces larger than dinner plates. A toy chest in one corner was big enough to hold a small car, its lid decorated with a painted rainbow that seemed to move when viewed peripherally.
Windows lined the far wall, but instead of showing the twisted space outside the ship, they displayed a perfectly blue sky with puffy white clouds that drifted lazily past. It was like being inside a children's show set, designed for actors much larger than human scale.
"Where... where are we now?" Hexi asked, adjusting her glasses as she took in the impossible architecture.
"Still on the ship," Tumbler said grimly, running his hand along what appeared to be a wooden coffee table but felt warm and slightly soft to the touch. "But this isn't our ship anymore. This is something else."
Bunk was staring at a rocking horse that stood taller than he did, its painted mane flowing in a nonexistent breeze. "Did you see that thing? That... Man in the wall?"
The question hung heavy in the air. They had all seen it—the horrible, elongated figure that had tried to claw its way into their reality. The memory of those black pit eyes and that too-wide smile made them instinctively cluster together in the center of the oversized living room.
"His eyes," Pip whispered, clutching her book tighter. "They weren't just looking at us. They were looking through us. Like we were... like we were transparent."
"He knew us," Lacey said quietly, her artistic eye having caught details the others missed. "When he looked at us, there was recognition. Like he'd been waiting for us specifically."
Zozo shuddered, wrapping her arms around herself. "And the way he said 'fresh material.' What did that mean? Material for what?"
"The performance," Hexi said, her analytical mind working despite her fear. "He mentioned a performance. The same thing the voices in the theater were talking about."
They stood in a rough circle among the giant children's furniture, six young people trying to make sense of a reality that had abandoned all pretense of logic. The cheerful setting around them felt like a mockery—bright colors and childhood comforts twisted into something that felt like a trap.
"What saved us?" Tumbler asked, voicing the question they'd all been avoiding. "Something pulled us out of there before he could... before whatever he was planning could happen."
The answer came not in words but in the subtle shift of shadows across the oversized playroom, and the faint sound of music that seemed to come from the toys themselves—a lullaby played on music boxes hidden throughout the impossible space.
Something was watching them.
Something that had claimed them first.