When Petra sat down with the laptop, electricity raced through her veins. It would take, at most, fifteen minutes for the Aranea to appear. Then she and everyone would strike the alien down and throw it into a cell.

  Fifteen minutes came and passed. The Aranea did not.

  Thirty minutes passed.

  Then an hour.

  Erika and Aymeric started alert too, but as the time ticked on, they deflated like balloons. Erika stared at the computer screen with a blank expression. She had jumped to every groan and squeal the Ark made, but now she was content to let the noises wash over her. Aymeric had put in his earbuds and listened to heavy metal. The volume was so high that everyone also listened to heavy metal.

  A noise.

  Petra straightened her posture.

  She stared at the laptop screen.

  This was it.

  The Aranea would scuttle out of some corner and paw at the food. When the scientists attacked, the alien would be caught by surprise. It would have nowhere to run.

  Petra wrapped one hand on a shock spear. Erika and Aymeric noticed. Erika leaned close to the laptop screen; Aymeric pulled out an earbud.

  The hallway didn’t change. But the alien was coming.

  Petra took deep breaths.

  The Aranea didn’t show.

  “False alarm,” Petra announced.

  Erika sighed through her teeth. Aymeric hung his head to the ceiling.

  “This is a waste of time,” Aymeric muttered.

  “No one said this would be fun, yeah?” Petra said. “We just gotta keep our chins up and we’ll get through this.”

  Neither Erika nor Aymeric looked convinced. Petra knew the Aranea would come, though; the trap was too good for the creature to ignore. The scientists simply had to be patient.

  ? ? ?

  “And one more thing!” Mi-Cha shouted at her imaginary version of Clive. She paused for a moment, unsure of what to say next. She liked adding ‘one more thing,’ because it gave her another opening for a jab she would have loved saying to the real deal.

  Mi-Cha looked her imaginary version of Clive over. This version still had all those pins on the chest of his jumpsuit.

  “Take off those pins; nobody understands them,” Mi-Cha finished. It was kind of weak, but oh well. One day, when she really did snap, she would yell some worse things at Clive and everyone else.

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  Mi-Cha stared at the metal wall and tried to think up some more to yell at the crew. When she couldn’t come up with anything off the top of her head, Mi-Cha checked the time on her IRIS. She’d spent almost an hour yelling at the void; it was time for her to get back to the pilot controls and pretend she could make the ship work.

  Mi-Cha weaved her way back through the waste treatment plant while keeping her eyes peeled for anyone else wondering through. She didn’t expect to run into anyone, but she still wanted to be careful. Theo or Clive might have come in for some repair, or Aymeric could have followed Mi-Cha in to search for her. They’d all ask questions, but Mi-Cha would tell them she just had some vague business. If anyone pushed her further, she’d tell them to fuck themselves with a rusty saw.

  Mi-Cha saw nothing, but she heard something.

  She paused.

  The Ark constantly bitched and moaned and wheezed, but this sound was new.

  Mi-Cha’s heart hammered against her ribs, and the scope of her situation came into crisp focus. Mi-Cha was trapped on a spaceship in the middle of Fuck-All, Nowhere. That ship was full of murder aliens, and as a bonus, someone was trying to kill the rest of the crew.

  Oh right, this is a horror movie.

  And in a horror movie, the girl hears a sound or sees something weird, and goes to investigate it. Then that stupid bitch gets pulled apart by a monster. Mi-Cha wasn’t a stupid bitch who got pulled apart by monsters.

  The noise came again from somewhere deep within the treatment plant.

  The Ark was also in a shit load of trouble, and that weird noise was probably another problem than needed to be reported. Mi-Cha had to figure out what that sound was so Theo and Clive could fix it.

  There are monsters running loose right now.

  Mi-Cha rolled her eyes. Yeah, sure, there were monsters and they could pull her apart, but she needed to know what that sound was. That didn’t make her an idiot in a horror movie; she was doing her job.

  Mi-Cha marched through the narrow corridors of the treatment plant, and found herself at a metal wall.

  The bang came again, and it was close this time. Something had dented the wall outward, and it was still hammering away.

  Mi-Cha huffed. She didn’t know exactly which alien was knocking around the hull, but it had to be one of the aliens. She’d report this shit, then–

  The metal tore open.

  A flabby, fleshy arm punched through and writhed through the air.

  Mi-Cha yelped.

  The alien groaned in response.

  “Oh fuck me and fuck my entire–” Mi-Cha stopped talking, and ran.

  The alien groaned. It wriggled out of the wall, metal giving birth to flesh. Mi-Cha didn’t see its eyes, but she knew damn well the alien saw her.

  She turned a corner.

  The alien stomped after her.

  Mi-Cha made as many twists and turns as she could. The stomping continued behind her.

  The exit came into sight.

  The alien screeched.

  Mi-Cha looked back, and saw a lump of flesh barreling toward her.

  Mi-Cha dropped to the ground.

  The appendage reached its end. It was an arm. At least, that’s what Mi-Cha thought. The arm came to an abrupt stop, then pulled back to the creature.

  Mi-Cha scrambled to her feet, then slammed through the exit.

  The scientists looked at her.

  “Evil alien! Run!” Mi-Cha didn’t wait for the scientists to process her; she jumped into the elevator and smacked the console.

  “Oh shit!” Aymeric shouted.

  The scientists piled into the elevator.

  The doors shut, and the elevator climbed. Mi-Cha leaned against the wall and took deep breaths into her burning lungs. She really needed to exercise more.

  “That was the Lamia. If it’s out of the lab…” Erika took a deep breath. Her face was pale, making her freckles stand out on her cheeks.

  “That thing killed Luther,” Aymeric said.

  “Oh. Oh fuck.” Mi-Cha pulled up her IRIS, and opened a channel to everyone on the ship. Giving PSAs wasn’t Mi-Cha’s thing, but if there was ever an exception, this was it.