Time was running out.

  A quice at his oxygeer told Pv-tor-fel-mak that he had a little less than an hour of air left. His smaller body ailiaage made him use less air than his Terran colleagues—former colleagues, he corrected himself. Even so, it would not be enough. They were w their way through the bow of the ship now, but the bridge—from what he had seen from the outside before they started their expedition—was still an hour away. The best he could hope for was seeing it in the distance before death aernal darkness embraced him in their cold grip.

  “What will you do whe out of here?” Est-mar-kort asked, the ck of cheer in her voice betraying that the question was more for keeping morale up than actual curiosity.

  Pv-tor-fel-mak would have preferred not to ao be left aloh the dark thoughts eg through his mind.

  “Probably go back to Ker,” he replied, not wanting to go into detail about a make-believe future that would never e to pass. “I’ve had enough of deep space for a lifetime.”

  “I hear you,” Est-mar-kort said. After a short pause, she tinued. “I might resume my training for the priesthood when I get back,” she revealed.

  “Priesthood?” Pv-tor-fel-mak’s voice was steeped in surprise. “I didn’t know you were a believer. Were you an acolyte iemple before joining the crew?”

  “Yeah, it’s not something I talk about much,” she admitted, her toinged with shyness. “But you know how important faith is to our people. I never found it hard to believe.”

  Well, I did, Pv-tor-fel-mak thought, but didn’t say anything of the sort.

  They tinued in silence. Apparently, Est-mar-kort had picked up on his unwillio talk. The corridor ahead seemed endless, its shadows swallowing them whole, as if the ship itself sought to devour what remained of his life. The darkness seemed so tangible now, rahysical, as if he was wading through bck paint with every step he forced his tired body to take.

  In front of them, adjat to the passageway, was a rge room. Once upon a time, there had been a gss wall between it and the corridor. Now, most of the transparent panels were crushed, the crystals—dull with dust—floating in the vacuum.

  Pv-tor-fel-mak paused for a sed to peer into the room, letting the beam of his fshlight dance over the broken furniture inside. Est-mar-klided up beside him, lending him the assistance of her own light. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but something pelled him to iigate.

  He was just about to give up his seard tiheir journey when his fshlight suddenly illuminated something horrific.

  In the narrow beam, the face of First Mate Bouchard stared back at him, her face frozen in a scream of terror. Dead eyes, covered with ice crystals, seemed to watch him from ihe darkness.

  A shrill, shrieking sound found its way out of his throat before he bit his tongue. Screaming would not be anyone in their current situation.

  Looking at Est-mar-kort, the expression on her face told him she, too, had seen the gruesome remains of their first mate.

  No, she couldn’t have—the woman was looking in the wrong dire. Yet, her face was twisted into a mask of horror. Slowly, Pv-tor-fel-mak positioned himself to see the se from her perspective. What he saw ihe room made him wish he hadn’t.

  Hangio First Mate Bouchard was the bloodied torso of Mission Specialist Suwannarat. Both Terrans were strung up on sharp, serrated metal beams, impaled with extraordinary force, resemblihrust onto skewers. The beams eheir torsos through their severed waists aed them through their throats. Their arms were outstretched as if crucified, their hands pierced with metal shards to pio a sed beam, strung horizontally behind their shoulders.

  Angling his fshlight downward, he could see the lower parts of their bodies impaled on the same beams as their torsos.

  No, he corrected himself. Not the same beams. Whoever had strung up their sughtered teammates had exged Bouchard’s lower body for Suwannarat’s, and vice versa, like a paper doll flipbook of the damned.

  Aher of them was wearing their spacesuit.

  Leaving the gruesome se, the dark thoughts Pv-tor-fel-mak had eained for the past hour returned, strohan ever. It was as if the shadows surrounding the horrific dispy of their colleagues had ied him, like bck tendrils weaving their way through his nose and mouth into the deep recesses of his brain, whispering to him of forbidden deeds aing him with promises of riches, glory, and escape.

  Shaking his head in an attempt to clear his mind, he decided to focus on an intellectual exercise in an attempt to silehe grim ideas he had been pting. Something had been b him about the exhibit of death they had just witnessed—something more than just the grisly tent of the se.

  At first g had almost looked ritualistic, like the work of a deranged serial killer or perhaps some murderous cult. Such things were not unheard of. But in his mind, he could see the anomalous details that told him su expnation was much too na?ve.

  By now, Pv-tor-fel-mak was certain the desiccated alien body parts they had found beloo the inal crew of the vessel. Those, and the remains of his own teammates, were the only corpses they had discovered, and they had all been cut into pieces the same way—a cut going through skin and bone alike.

  Whatever was out there hunting them was older than mankind, its patieretg aore tha million years between its first killing spree and its sed. That kind of timeline didn’t match the profile of any serial killer he’d ever heard of. If this was a ritual, it was absurdly slow. And who was it for? Rituals were meant to serve the ones perf them, to offer meaning or power. But the arra of the bodies suggested they had been strung up more for the be of him a-mar-kort than for whoever had itted the gruesome acts.

  Then there was the issue of the missing spacesuits…

  No, he thought, the remains had not bee random around the ship. They had been carefully arranged in locations the perpetrator khey would pass through, ensuring the crew would not miss the macabre exhibits. Even Sawhney’s body, stuffed deep into that access shaft, seemed to have beehere on purpose. Pv-tor-fel-mak remembered the blood smeared at the entrao the shaft, making sure they would not miss the body packed in there when they floated by.

  And the spacesuits… In his mind, he imagihe same ses they had entered, but with the bodies still iheir suits. While horrific, the dispys would have had signifitly less emotional impa their viewers, the helmets hiding the agony on the victims’ faces and the fabric of the suits c their wounds.

  The facts, taken together, poio a single chilling clusion: the grotesque dispys were meant to terrorize them as they ventured deeper into the derelict. The crucified bodies of Bouchard and Suwannarat had been a message directed at him, clear and unmistakable. This is what awaits you at the end of your path.

  So be it, Pv-tor-fel-mak thought, but I’m still alive—and I pn to stay that way for as long as possible.

  And with that, the dark thoughts he had struggled to banish from the forefront of his mind surged back with relentless force.

  He g his oxygeer again. Thirty minutes, and no more than that, before he would share Murray’s fate. With no additional spare isters, it would not be enough.

  But his was not the only oxygen ister they had.

  With greedy eyes, he stared at Est-mar-kort’s air der, mou the back of her spacesuit, tempting him with its sweet, life-giving molecules. Like his, it was nearly empty, but together… together, they would probably be enough.

  There was a good ce he would be able to reach the bridge.

  A quient of his left arm was all it took to seize her throat, preventing her from esg. Grunting with the effort, he pulled her toward him, holding his colleague in a vice-like grip, while his right hand unlocked her oxygen ister.

  The ehing took less than ten seds. Ten seds to n the young woman he had called a friend to death. Ten seds to lose what little was left of his soul.

  At first, Est-mar-kort did not uand what had happened. Frantically, she reached behind her back, trying to reattach the missing air der, but it was not there. As she turned around, she saw Pv-tor-fel-mak floating there, holding the st thirty minutes of her life in his hand, and she uood what had transpired.

  Panig, she shouted into her microphone.

  “Help me!” she screamed, her voice raw with desperation. “I ’t breathe! Please, give it back!” Her arms thrashed wildly, her legs kig in the weightlessness, struggling to close the distaween them.

  It was all in vain, of course, and she k. Taking her oxygen der had been a deliberate choice of his, not an act. If she didn’t get it back within the half-minute, she would learn firsthand what Murray had previously experie the moment of her death.

  Pv-tor-fel-mak started to drift away, using his maneuvering thrusters to increase the distaween them.

  “e back!” she shouted. “At least e back. You have the ister. Just don’t let me die alone!”

  But Pv-tor-fel-mak did not turn around.

  Est-mar-kort swallowed, feeling her life ebb out of her. Panic dissolved, repced by a newfound resolve. This was the hardest thing she would ever say.

  "I…" She swallowed again, struggling to get the words past her dry throat. "I five you."

  The wave her little peace, but that was not their purpose. Peace would e soon, anyway. No, she said them not for her own sake, but for his. She meant them, and saying them was the right thing to do.

  She coughed and started gasping for air as the st of the life-giving oxygen in her suit was repced by carbon dioxide.

  In the distance, Pv-tor-fel-mak vanished into the darkness of the corridor ahead. For the sed time that day, he wished the system had a mute fun.

  MvonStz