—. Impossible. — Max replied —. EREBUS can't have gone insane. — —. And there you have it. — Harding's voice resonated distorted from the other side of the communicator —. Protecting these monsters instead of the crew. The pns we had just went to hell. — a slight tremor seeped into his stoic facade. — —. They must have altered it. Given it an adverse instruction. — Max ventured —. EREBUS is a nerd of its own restrictions. — —. It's true. — Naomi added —. It gave us an ethical reading, and about how potentially harmful it would be to create artificial life every time we requested to print new organs. The protecting the creatures part is out of character. It wouldn't have done it on its own. — —. And neither would it have shut down the PDCs. — Murat pointed out —. Until before the incident, the crew always came first. If someone altered it, it happened when these things weren't even on board. They must have known what was happening below in the colony before we did, surely in the data filtering. Our takeoff was doomed. — —. Damn. — —. Yes. — Harding replied. The lines of his face on the holographic screen of the bracelet oozed urgency and resolve —. We're screwed, and with EREBUS and Mendoza dead, we’ve run out of options. Whatever we try will be desperate. — Max nodded with one hand and looked down. Harding's information was like hearing a death sentence. Ebisu was never really an option. But their success and survival depended on EREBUS. He wondered what the captain would do. But he was dead. The fireflies assimited it. They made him part of them, like the rest of the crew. He covered his mouth with his forearm when the reflux threatened to rise up his throat and vomit. That st scene repyed in his head over and over. The smell of pus and rotting flesh. Yellowish clumps in the tumor-ridden flesh. The sloshing sound of the arm coming off and the distant roar of his own death. —. Max, what do we do? — Naomi tried to bring him back. But the solutions became elusive, just like Lay's visions. At that moment, the runes glowed insidiously, offering themselves as the only viable alternative. Transform the ship into something, but into what? Max convinced himself that deep down, he didn't want to know. —. I don't know. — he finally replied —. I don't know, Naomi. I'm sorry. I let you down as captain. I wanted to save us and brought us to our own death, damn it. — —. You did what you could. — Yakiv offered him. —. I'm going to suggest something. As Chief of Security of the Chronos. — Harding added. Desperation became palpable in his words —. We'll record a message, warning what happened on board. We'll go to the crew's hypersleep section. We isote ourselves as much as we can and get into the freezer for 15 years, until we wake up and are found... — —. But what does it say? — Max interrupted him —. Harding, have you lost your mind? Do you want us to bring these monsters home? With us? — —. It's that or we destroy the ship, and we all die. Those are the only two options we have right now. — he decred —. The other is to go back to the shelter, get drunk one st time, and leave in peace before these things find us. That's how it all ends. — The fatality hit them like a whip. Max wanted to keep arguing, but he realized he had no arguments or words to respond. It would be a tantrum. The nail in the coffin for his reluctant role as captain. Instead, he just nodded silently. —. I have to be with the first here. — Yakiv came to his defense —. It's an absurd idea. What if they rescue us and ignore the warnings? There will be an outbreak throughout the sor system. And if hell broke loose in a remote colony and a Starscraper, I don't want to imagine what it would be like in civilization. We would condemn all of humanity trying to save ourselves. — Silence became tangible. That corridor had become oppressive, like a byrinth, and they had nowhere to go. Max locked eyes with Naomi, and her eyes seemed to plead for an answer, something that would bring them hope. No matter how hard he tried, he found nothing. And Harding was right. There were no options. Except one. The fireflies continued to murmur inside his mind, indicating instructions. Like with the Psma Saw, he just needed the courage for it. A pain manifested in his left eye for a fraction of a second. —. It's not advisable for prolonged hypersleep. — a man's voice, as familiar as it was unknown, told him indolently. Blood everywhere. Naomi on top of him trying to choke him. Himself floating in the cabin of the Atomic Crab. A knocking from the other side of the airlock, along with the muffled cries of his sister. Memories he had struggled to bury, and now they were surfacing into the light. All of them, along with the runes. —. Although we can make sure. — Murat's voice took them by surprise, and Max, Naomi, and Yakiv gathered around the hologram of the bracelet —. Anyway, there would only be one chance. — —. Spit it out. — Max ordered. The grimace of his companion seemed to turn into a suppressed ugh, as if he were about to crack an obscene joke. They knew him well enough to know that wasn't the case. Instead, something had occurred to him. —. Upon reaching the sor system, we wake up. We go down to engineering, and we remove the coont tanks. That will cause a cascading failure. The st one for the ship. We will have twenty minutes before the Chronos turns into a supernova. — —. We're still in the same situation as before. — Harding told him —. We don't have escape pods. Nor shuttles. — —. Not necessary. — Murat countered —. We'll use the module itself from the section as a lifeboat. The rotation of the habitat will throw us like a bo straight into nothingness when I disarm the drum while spinning. Although we will have to endure some good G's. — —. And if we activate the thrusters, burning like there's no tomorrow, we will reach the minimum safe distance, and maybe even with a few minutes to spare. — Max completed for him. —. Then we go back to the freezer, with a radio beacon transmitting everywhere. The module's own transmitter. Besides, the sor system is full of routes. Hopefully, someone will rescue us. — Naomi concluded. Suddenly, they found hope again. For Max, it seemed possible to get out of the Chronos alive. The promise he made with Naomi was at the end of the road. Also the one he made to Lay. No one would separate them again. —. Alright. Harding. See you at the Transport Node. — he ordered resolutely —. Record that message, and then to the meeting point. — —. Count on it, Max. — —. And Murat. — he added —. When this goes well, remind me to buy you some beers. You got us out of the jam. — his friend's grimace turned into a sincere smile for a few seconds. —. Dude. This still has to work. — he replied modestly —. But if it does, I will remember. Let it be a barrel. A sip to the ground for all the fallen. For the crew. — —. So it shall be. — he said goodbye —. See you there. —***For centuries, there was certainty that emotions were nothing more than a series of chemical reactions in the brain. Therefore, they could be artificially altered. The key to happiness was inside a box of Gumotanol pills, combined with endless hours of VR saturating the dopamine receptors in the brain, giving the illusion of a reward never obtained. This is how a significant percentage of humanity lived in the 27th century, intoxicated by false positive emotions. Why feel hate, rage, or sadness if a pill can make them disappear? Why seek a goal if I can obtain the satisfaction of an achievement with just the push of a button? Why seek emotional connections? Why seek my own sustenance if I can get food from waste? If historians had to name this era, it would be the Era of Falsehood. Everything can be imitated, even human essence. However, hope could not be imitated. And the hope that Max and the crew of the Chronos felt was real. As they ran through the maintenance ducts, clutching their weapons, they could almost feel that there was light at the end of the tunnel. Hope, combined with desperation, formed an atomic bomb of adrenaline and cortisol in the body, boiling in the bloodstream. The nervous system recognized the existence of an overwhelming difficulty and tried to find a solution. If it weren't for her, humanity would have given up as soon as their ancestors came down from the treetops and walked through sub-Saharan Africa. A hostile environment, full of predators. Why survive another day if we will die anyway? In addition to hope, obstinacy was added. Harding and Murat's pn was a mix of the three. Desperation, obstinacy, and hope. Desperation to find a way to survive. All the variables against them. The ship invaded by a hostile and fickle form of alien life. The crew assimited by the creatures. Humanity transformed into a resource, an instrument. The fear of not ending up like those unfortunate souls pushed them forward. Obstinacy to want to live another day, even if their time was borrowed. A relentless struggle that would take fifteen years to reach a conclusion. And hope that once they were on the other side and saw the Chronos transform into a miniature supernova, they could sigh and realize that they had survived. With all those emotions, Max and Naomi had painted a picture in their heads. The future they imagined remained sacred, like a certainty. No matter how random fate was. They ended up living that image, sooner or ter. They imagined it in great detail. The petrichor after the rain. The reddish sand and soil of Lake Galle, contrasting with its deep blue waters, green valleys, and snow-capped mountains. The sun shining on their faces. The air of a resurrected world, where there had once only been dunes, dust, and carbon dioxide. If they wanted to live that future, they had to survive that day and the days to come. But the problem with hope is how quickly it fades. And the fireflies, hope is foreign to them. A voracious and insatiable hunger, along with a desire to incorporate mass, flesh, bones, tendons, and tissues into their bodies. Any resistance is futile. Little does it matter the technology of their hosts, like the endless arsenal aboard the Chronos. The Forest of Fireflies, the collective consciousness of the creatures, knew they could not use it against them. It is because the fireflies first go for the head. How can there be resistance when everyone has bugs eating their brains? Projecting illusions of a reunion, of fulfilling an unspoken apology, of ending a remorse. False emotions, like those humanity consumes. And faced with the harsh reality of a cruel and twisted hell, they prefer the illusion of a non-existent paradise. This is how the fireflies triumph. Any feeling of determination, obstinacy, or hope hits a wall. A mosquito against a windshield. A speck of dust against a Starscraper . The will of those who resisted them ended up shattered, and that insidious glow burned them, reducing them to less than ashes. Max and his fledgling crew were about to experience it firsthand. The safest path was through the maintenance ducts of the magnetic rail, and then through the Water Treatment Pnt. A spacewalk was ruled out. There weren't enough suits for everyone, and besides, a disturbance in the rotation had occurred. A heavy mass had struck the hull, and the systems of the ship that still survived struggled to regain stability. —. Could it have been an asteroid? — Yakiv asked. —. No, we would all be floating in the void if that were the case. — Max replied. A slight tremor of doubt filtered into his voice —. There was no perforation. It sounded fleshy, almost organic. — —. That tumor that was above the Waste Treatment. — Naomi said under her breath —. The one we detached from the hull, could it have come back? — —. We saw it disappear into space. — Harding replied —. That thing must be on a collision course with Lohengrin. It will burn up in the atmosphere, along with all the debris from the Chronos. It has no way to return. — —. What if it did? — Yakiv questioned. —. As I said, it has no way. — Harding insisted. —. It didn't sound like an impact to me. — Ayna's voice tried to break through, and all eyes turned to her —. The crack came from inside. It's something making its way through. — —. Whatever it is, I wouldn't want to see it. — Murat added. They stopped, and an insidious thought crossed Max's mind. What if it was really the forest of fireflies coming for them? That thing would soon wreak havoc on the ship. No matter how much it expanded, it would reach critical mass. The cascading failure would be imminent, and the ship would colpse with them inside. Maybe they didn't have the time they thought. Murat's solution was very long-term. What should they do then? —. You have to take charge. — the captain's voice told him inside his head, with its aged but authoritative tone. —. But how? — he wanted to ask. There was no answer, and he could only remember the st moments of Matkovich. Sick. Twisted. Subsumed by the pgue. Assimited by the fireflies, falling to his death. For a few seconds, he believed they were walking toward their death. —. Max, where are we going? — Naomi asked him. Doubt assailed him, and when he wanted to open his mouth, he couldn't say anything. The weight of responsibility and the gazes suffocated him. A yellow glow made him turn his head. For a fraction of a second, he thought he saw the captain standing in the back. Behind him, runes seemed to invite him to read. When he blinked, he was gone, and the scream of a Fairy in the distance made him react. They could no longer go back. —. Through the Water Treatment Pnt. — that was their downfall. They entered through the stairs parallel to a cargo elevator. Darkness greeted them, along with a caustic smell that permeated the air. The pnt's storage was filled with acids, alkalis, algaecides, bactericides, and crifiers of all kinds, in order to maintain the pH of the water of a small city in a healthy manner. All those toxins at the concentrations they were in. But the smell didn't come from the pnt's chemicals. The air was humid, like inside a sauna. As they ventured deeper, they realized that something was wrong. Cautiously, they advanced, and then a crack was heard further ahead. They stopped instantly. Almost expecting something to jump out of the darkness. The lights cut through the darkness, and they moved deeper in. A corpse appeared before them, and the scream got stuck in their throats. —. Oh my God... — Max muttered. Ayna covered her mouth, and Naomi's eyes were fixed, caught between horror and morbid fascination. The hands were twisted, and the mouth was wide open, perpetuating a silent scream and a dying death. The stench was of putrefaction and corrosion, and a mist emanated from the body. The skin had melted like wax, and the living flesh and bones were exposed. The blood mixed with fat in a viscous slime, and the clothing seemed to have stuck between the fabrics in a repugnant manner. On a bel, one could read her name: Seraphina Starling. Suddenly, she was gone. Something dragged her into the darkness. Max took a few steps back and was tempted to turn on his heels and run. But those people were his responsibility. He was the captain of a half-crew. They needed a leader. Swallowing his fear and a string of curses, he pointed the fshlight ahead. They were greeted by a nightmarish scene. A mountain of melted corpses piled up in the midst of machinery and pipes. The creatures dragged them and pced them as part of a senseless task, but executed mechanically, like cells in an organism. It was true that the dead were corroded. But it was not the result of the Muriatic Acid ponds that something crushed effortlessly like beer cans. They were being digested, and an intense smell of shit and gastric juices only confirmed it. And then, they saw them. Surrounding that pit of tortured souls, the creatures swarmed. The white lights of the fshlights fell on their deformed bodies, revealing grotesque aberrations of twisted flesh. Larval fusions between human and alien tissue, crawling and writhing, as if agonizing for the fact of existing. Horrible cracks could be heard, like sudden breaks, along with whimpers and howls, as if, suddenly, the Chronos had transformed into hell. And then, one by one, they turned. They revealed their human faces dissolved in the midst of corruption, disfigured by jagged jaws, suckers, and sharp teeth. Growls, screams, and amorphous howls began to be heard in crescendo. The fury of the Forest of Fireflies against the intruders could be heard. They realized they had fallen from the frying pan into the fire. They were not in the wolf's mouth, but in the very stomach of the beast. In a frenzy, the creatures charged. —. Open fire!! — Max's shout came from the depths of his soul, and then chaos erupted. The sub-deck of the Water Treatment transformed into a war zone.The bursts from the Pulse Rifles. The crackling of the psma pistols. The burning rays from the Heat Projectors. All of them rang out in unison in a symphony of death. The explosions created an annoying strobe effect, and it seemed as if the creatures were straight out of a crude stop-motion film. Daimonji's advice fell on deaf ears. One by one they were falling, and it didn't matter if they died forever. They just had to get out of there. But the bullets didn't seem enough, and for every creature that fell, two seemed to take its pce. They weren't even sure what to call them. Some were sculptures of mutated and sick flesh that didn't even deserve a name. One of them burned upon the impact of a hyperdiamond jet with white phosphorus. The blood of Satan, piercing the flesh like a swarm of furious termites bathed in fire on a rotten log. Harding pushed an empty pond, and for a moment, it served as an attempt at a barricade. —. Over here! — his voice barely made its way through the din, which showed no signs of letting up. Max jumped behind, while changing a cartridge in the pulse rifle. He realized that no weapon would be enough for the nightmare unfolding around him. The pn that was the st option had failed. Lay looked at him with disappointment and sadness, behind some pipes, unflinching in the face of the monsters charging toward them. —. Forgive me, sister. — Max said in his head —. I couldn't keep my promise. Not even to Naomi. — —. Max, watch out!! — Naomi's desperate voice brought him back to himself. Just after, everything went to hell. A loud bang, and then he was sent flying through the air. Silence. When he opened his eyes, he was gasping for air. Fireflies fluttered around him, and his sister was still there, looking at him with a sorrowful expression. His brain was still trying to discern what had just happened, while a buzzing drowned out the sounds. He wanted to warn Murat. There was something behind him. To call it a creature was an understatement. It was questionable how that abomination could even be alive. A balloon of flesh and tendons, with barely any feet, crawling like a sinister penguin. With a tense tearing crack, it swelled to twice its size, and the sack that made up its body glowed as if it had fire in its guts. Then it exploded, with a dull roar. He came out unscathed. Murat did not. The explosion tore off an arm and a leg. The memories of how they were blown away repeated over and over, along with the ammunition backpack ejected far from his reach. Now it y on the ground, about ten meters away, face down, while a pool of blood quickly formed. —...Murat. — Max managed to say as he stood up. Gradually, the sounds began to return, and he heard the whimpers of the wounded beasts around him. A badly injured fairy crawled with just one arm toward his friend. He aimed, pulled the trigger, and a burst from the pulse rifle obliterated her. The projectiles tore off the limb and disintegrated the head with a torrent of brown and dark red blood. A jolt shook the module completely. Max lost his bance and stumbled. His sister was still watching, right next to Murat. It was like a foreboding, as if she were indicating to him that he would die. His friend stretched out an arm. In its pce, he found a bleeding stump, and the grimace on his face took on an expression of weariness rather than pain. He managed to crawl toward him a few meters.—. Take my hand! — was the st thing Max could say to him. A tackle made Max fall face down amid the sudden shaking of the module. It seemed to happen in slow motion. A tentacle shattered the ground with a thunderous crack as the beams twisted with apparent slowness. It coiled around a pond, and the pipes burst. With nguid force, the tendril retracted, and gripping Murat, it pulled him along. Fate seemed to mock him as it passed less than a meter from Max. He couldn't let out a scream as it crushed him, and his own ribs pierced his lungs. A jet of blood erupted from his throat, and his body went limp as the tentacle dragged him into the darkness —. Murat, no! — Naomi had reached him and was trying to say something to Max when a second tackle occurred. So strong that it made both of them fall. Suddenly, the ground colpsed beneath their feet, swallowing so much machinery, ponds, and creatures still crawling, an impious aberration erupted. Huge tentacles, like those of a kraken, shot out trying to grasp hold. A behemoth of twisted, putrid flesh rose before them, dragging its body outward and whipping its tentacles like enormous whips. Its snout appeared, enormous, like an escape capsule and shaped like a flower of flesh. With a fleshy crack, like a colossal watermelon splitting, it opened, revealing petals filled with enormous teeth. Immediately, the scream of a million tortured souls struck their eardrums. Max wanted to flee. He wanted to scream. He could do neither as he watched. Merged with the flesh of that greater god, which was being born before them, were pieces of the ship. Among them, clusters of hypersleep beds. He could distinguish clumps that he discovered had been human beings, and now formed part of that sinister leviathan. With the monster's second scream, and taking advantage of the module falling apart, they managed to escape. And as they distanced themselves from that hellish scene, Max concluded that even his backup pn had been doomed from the start. They would never be able to leave Chronos.