The Entanglement

1

Cira wakes up to pain so profound, she nearly vomits. Something crawls inside her. Searing hot. Branching. It perforates her intestines, her lungs, even her brain. The smells of burnt flesh and hair cloys her suit. It's cooking her from the inside out.

Her lungs fully expand for the first time. She screams. The branching accelerates. Thin scalding filaments fork through her body until every capillary and nerve ending is alight. Muscles flex involuntarily, cramp and spasm. Icy sweat pours down her face, stings her eyes, and fogs up her helmet. Tears blind her. It's not one type of pain. It's all of them. Burning, aching, stabbing, throbbing, bursts, and waves.

Above her is nothing but blue-tinged light. It dims and brightens again. Smearing through the fog on her visor. It finally drills into her bones. Her left iliac crest. Her right. Her pelvis ignites, followed by both femurs and lumbar vertebrae. Spreading up and down. She vomits. Swallows. Starts choking. The acrid smell stings her nose and mouth. Thoughts swarm around her skull, but one breaks free: pulmonary aspiration.

She tries to move. Nothing happens. She tries again. Something hooks under her skin and wrenches her whole body until she lays on her left side. Cira coughs until her innards clench together. Finally, air. She gulps deep breaths and watches condensation ebb and flow along her visor.

Everything dims. It feels like she's falling through the floor. Her arm abruptly contracts. The muscles in her face twist. Even her eyes roll up and to the right. Pushing against bone; ready to capsize in their sockets like ancient Terran boats. Her whole body suddenly twists and jerks. Even her vocal chords. She grunts while her throat opens and closes like a fist. Spittle wets her chin.

Seizure. The word slithers around her mind until it connects with a concept. She's having a seizure.

The violence eases as if naming her condition is enough to ward it away. An alarm beeps in her ear. It pauses and a rising electronic whine fills her helmet. Her scalp tingles. It's not quite painful. Nothing compared to before. Cira gasps for breath and finally blinks of her own volition.

It takes time for her head to clear. The pain and heat are echoes of their former intensity. She slowly opens her eyes. Vomit stings her nostrils. Her skull feels ready to split open. It's only made worse by the station klaxon. Data flashes across the bottom of her visor. It's legible now. The atmosphere is stable. She disengages the lock on her helmet and doffs it. The air is cool and fresh in comparison, but the smell of burnt plastic is everywhere. Lights flicker on the brink of failure. The hallway is scorched. It looks like someone graffitied the walls with a blowtorch.

The temptation to sleep is nearly irresistible. She wipes her mouth with the back of her glove and rolls onto her back. The ceiling is ripped open. A severed cable hangs down overhead. Another coughing fit wracks her body. Fire races through high-oxygen atmospheres like this one. There's no dying of smoke inhalation. It's either escape or burn.

Cira clenches her teeth and grabs her helmet. Each movement is clumsy and delayed. A pricking sensation ripples underneath her skin. Something is inside her. Wriggling like a horsehair worm inside a cricket. She shuts her eyes for a heartbeat, but the image won't go away. It's the sort of tall story people tell in bars. The horrors of alien biologies meeting for the first time. Being digested, rotted, or parasitized; equal parts brutal and bizarre.

Except those are stories. It's impossible. But the image of a horsehair worm keeps coming back. She shakes her helmet until the sick is gone and dons it again. Every contraction of her muscles brings on a prickling sensation. Something crawling. She shoves her feelings into a box and imagines herself closing the lid. It helps.

The smell of burning plastic still stings her nose. Fire is the biggest threat. The second is another seizure: helpless on the floor, bent at odd angles, while she roasts inside her spacesuit. Cira pushes herself upright and is hit by a wave of dizziness. The corridor seems to stretch and bend. She shuts her eyes and presses the comm speaker under the lip of her helmet. It takes a few tries to get her tongue into the right shapes.

"This is Lieutenant Vega," she slurs, "to anyone on station."

Nothing.

"Lieutenant Cira Vega, Grenadier? Anyone?"

Again, nothing.

Cira opens her eyes. The corridor no longer warps in front of her, but acrid grey smoke curdles up through vents near the floor. Something inside of her draws tight like a corset. She gasps and braces herself against the wall just as an explosion thunders underneath her. The lights and klaxon abruptly go out. All sense of weight vanishes. Her head bumps the ceiling. A brightening glow shines through the damaged floor ahead of her. Another series of smaller explosions shake the station, but she feels them only as vibrations.

A radiation trefoil blinks at the bottom of Cira's visor, along with a measurement that jumps from 31 haiks to 257. The lethal dose is 600 Hk. She turns on her suit's lights and orients herself in the corridor. The life rafts are just down the hall to the right. She inhales deeply and pulls herself along the ceiling. Every move is exhausting. The prickling under her skin only gets worse. She has to pause, shut her eyes for a few seconds, and control the awareness of invasion. It takes three tries before she can move again.

Another shudder through the corridor. Cira struggles to turn the corner, but bumps into the wall and that sends her drifting in the opposite direction. It puts her in a perfect position to see a section of the floor change colour. It goes from dull red to bright red to white within seconds. She twists helplessly in midair as a burst of light blinds her. The radiation alarm wails in her ears. Her helmet bumps against what she assumes is the ceiling. She blinks tears out of her eyes and brushes her gloves against the surface. Familiar metal grating. The floor, then. Even with her eyes closed, the light is punishing. She pulls her sun visor down and dares to look.

It looks like a lightning bolt. A rope of white plasma that sprouts from Commander Sarwana's broken skull. It splits into incandescent fingerlings that stretch into the air as if the current can't find a way to ground. Sarwana's arm twitches in sympathy. But the moment the bolt touches metal, it sinks right through. Bright flames erupt on contact. Cira's commander smacks against the floor with an ignoble thud that she feels in her gut. That's when she can see his face. One eye is still intact. It swivels to look at her. The plasma withdraws from the wall and swings in her direction.

It's impossible. It must be. But every hair on Cira's neck stands on end. Commander Sarwana is most certainly dead, but he's looking at her. She pushes herself off the floor and belatedly realizes she should be electrocuted. But she's not. The extended fingerlings curl inwards and flick against one another. Little white stars blink in and out of existence. Sarwana's fingers twitch in time like he's listening to a catchy song.

Large red text flashes across Cira's central visor. IONIZING RADIATION! Each flick makes the haiks leap higher: 307 Hk ... 924 Hk ... 3038 Hk ... 7362 Hk ...

Cira's skin burns. A sharp spike of nausea upends her stomach. The floor falls out from under her. Everything goes fuzzy and dim. It's like her first solo flight all over again, except every muscle in her body is winched to the breaking point. Her vision does a slow roll and fades at the edges. She locks eyes with Sarwana. He's dead. He's dead and he's looking at her. She grunts against her will. Everything fades from view until all she can see is a tunnel of colour with Sarwana at the centre.

Blood dribbles into his eye, but he doesn't blink. He just keeps watching.