Pirra wondered if the Hev in here would be hostile to her; sometimes, beings altered were hostile to anything and everything, according to old spacers's stories. She'd never known if there was any truth to them and she had hoped never to learn.

Thousands had been trapped in here, they'd said, but those few she saw were in corners, facing the bulkheads. One was gnashing his teeth furiously, but biting nothing. Others were pulling their fur out in clumps like rad-victims. All of them showed heavy signs of alteration, elements of their bodies changed in ways that defied description.

She tried not to look at them. She had a mission to accomplish . . . and she felt a fear of looking at them that bordered on superstitious.

Two lefts . . . She took them and then took the right. Looking up at the ceiling for the hole upwards, she began to see the corruption in the ship itself.

The walls were beaded with strange bumps that she felt a sudden fear would open and look at her with metallic eyes. Nothing happened, but she took every effort to not touch any surface.

"Drone 2, where are you?" she asked, looking around. It wasn't here, and they were not supposed to stray far unless ordered.

A beep from behind alerted her and she looked back.

The drone was struggling to keep up. She wasn't sure why, until it began to spin.

One of its side thrusters had altered. It flowed like a liquid, sloshing back and forth, and each time it sloshed away from the main body it seemed to strain, as if trying to pull itself free.

The liquid took a form, like limbs trying to grasp for something, anything.

Before she could give it an order, the liquid seemed to crystallize and shot out to adhere to a bulkhead like a web. It began to pull the doomed drone towards the surface.

Electronic alerts flashed in her vision, telling her the myriad malfunctions the drone was suffering.

She felt like she was watching something die.

But she couldn't spare the time.

"Third hole in the ceiling," she muttered, consciously wiping out all the alerts and removing the drone from her system. It shut down behind her.

Seeing the hole, and how corrupted it was, she was dismayed at its narrowness. Could she even get through that without touching anything?

"Drone 1, go through and confirm there's a path. Do not touch any surfaces."

The drone began towards the entrance, and she saw that it could no longer fly straight.

It was the air in here, she realized. It wasn't as bad as being in contact with a solid, but it wasn't helping. And the deeper they went, the worse the effect was getting.

Looking down the hall, she realized it extended on and on in a way that was not right. It twisted and turned. No ship corridor did that, and no ship had a reason to even have a corridor this long.

Was it already affecting her? She couldn't know, not yet.

The drone went up into the hole and beeped that it was clear.

Looking up, she thought that if she tucked her arms and legs she could clear it. Holding her breath, she jetted up as straight as she could.

It was only three meters, but it felt like a kilometer.

As her head came out the other side, she saw the door to the computer room - closed. But it didn't matter, as it had turned into a web of frail-looking strands that outlined every shape of the old door. They had the color of old dried bones.

She'd have to break it.

"Drone 1, cutting laser. Take this down."

The drone went at it, keeping back and using jets of air to push each piece of loose debris away from itself and her.

A crackle came on her comm. It was distorted. But she could hear two words clearly;

"Pirra . . . hurry . . ."

Her heart fluttered faster in her chest. "Drone 1, ram the door and break it," she ordered.

The drone obeyed without question, but she still didn't feel good about it.

Moving back to avoid the debris, the drone obediently smashed through the door - it was as dry and weak as it looked. After the first few hits the drone seemed unharmed, but she realized that it was slowly turning the same color as the webs. Its shape was changing, becoming pointed and slowly swelling at the end until it looked almost like a femur.

Then it shattered on the door.

Letting out a curse, she jetted back to dodge the chunks of door and drone that scattered away from the area.

She felt something hit her boot, but didn't see damage. But it might be enough to start to alter it.

Shooting forward, she saw that a hole just large enough had been created. Tucking her limbs, she ducked through into the room.

The room was an unnatural horror, and even looking at it made her eyes hurt. She felt tears well in them, and she tried to focus on the computer core itself.

It was hardly any better to look at; it was a mass of flesh where it had once been metal. Bulges that pulsed unnaturally covered it, like some sort of organ system. Liquid moved through arteries that she thought might have once carried coolant.

Looking quickly through the instructions for purging the core, she let out another curse.

"Useless!" she hissed.

There was no interface left, she couldn't possibly begin a safe shutdown! There wasn't even a hard-eject button.

Her comm crackled again, and she listened for anything important, but what she did hear curdled her blood.

It was moaning, it was sobbing. It was white noise that her brain nonetheless imagined were sounds of pain. There was no intelligence in it, but somehow she felt like she was hearing pain. A loss, ending in a quiet whimper.

"It's just white noise," she bit out, to hear something in contrast to that horrible sound.

Or was it just noise?

She looked around and saw that there were windows in the room that were intact. Standing in stark contrast to the metal that had succumbed to the unnatural changes, the windows seemed near perfect.

She moved nearer one, and saw that they were pitted and had large cracks, but appeared otherwise unaltered.

And behind that window she found out where the missing Hev had gone.

The room below was some kind of subsidiary server station, and among the racks of add-on processing units she saw the Hev. They were arranged in rows. Each one had clung to the floor, it having taken on a surface not unlike roots. Growing out from the computer core room itself.

This was ground zero, she realized. But they had come here. It had to be thousands of them in the room below.

And they were unmoving. A reddish mist seemed to hang in the air, and red droplets covered most surfaces.

The sidearms floating through the air gave testament as to why.

But there were the cries; it was being broadcast on open air and she'd picked it up.

"Who's alive down there?" she called on the same frequency.

One of the Hev moved. They looked almost unchanged, but she knew on some level that they had been the most altered of all. But his changes were all on the inside. His head whipped around, and he finally looked up towards her.

The sound he let out wasn't a sound any living being should make. She jetted back in fear, and just in time - the shot of a pistol rang out, and the window broke. Shattered pieces flew past her, hitting her suit, but not penetrating.

He kept firing, a dozen times, but she was away. The rounds didn't seem to be able to penetrate whatever the walls had become, but he had actually helped her.

A long shard of window floated past her, one of the least-altered things in the room, and she reached out and grabbed it.

Looking to the computer core, she jetted forward. There was no way to remove it properly and she had nothing else that would do the job.

She stabbed the shard into the flesh that had once been the AI core.

Wrenching it, she saw black and greenish fluids ooze up, and she shoved it even harder, digging it in as deep as she could, towards where the bottom of the core should be. Putting her weight into it, she tried to pry the thing loose.

Liquid spattered against her suit, and she knew that it had to be affected by now. But that didn't mean she was - the suits they wore were proof against almost anything for at least a time.

If she could just get the goddamn thing out!

Something snapped - for a moment she feared it was the shard, but then the entire crusted core shifted in its socket.

She had little else she could spare, but taking a spare propellant unit from her belt, she shoved it into the hole. These units were under a lot of pressure, and if she set it to discharge all at once . . .

She jetted back and sent the remote command.

Nothing happened, and she feared that it had become corrupted too quickly.

Then it exploded.

The core was sent careening out of its socket, and immediately a few dim red lights came on, providing only the vaguest of illumination, as the emergency systems kicked in.

That was it! The AI was no longer forcing the whole system into a shutdown state.

The AI core rebounded off a wall and came at her. It seemed almost like it wanted to come at her, and the loose, flapping fleshy bits seemed to reach for her.

Eyes widening, Pirra activated her jets and escaped through the narrow hole in the door she'd come through.

She had to leave - immediately.

Letting the shard drift away, she dove down into the narrow tunnel.

Her heart thudded in her chest, and she set her system to automatically repeat a signal to the commander that she had completed her task. Hopefully it would get through.

The job was done; all she could think now was that she wanted out. Dying for your mission was one thing, something she didn't want to do, but she was prepared for.

But once she had finished it, all that was left was trying to survive.

The halls seemed more confused than before, and she tried to follow her course.

Her system seemed to be getting more dim by the moment. She might have been imagining that, but then her air recycler clicked off. A strained whirring sound told her it wasn't just her imagination.

Turning a light to her boot, she saw that the outside was beginning to change color. It was becoming a dark red, nearly black, the color of Hev blood.

Other spots on her uniform had started to change color - spots where she could recall drops of fluid from the computer core touching.

Had it gotten through her whole suit? Was she changing?

Fear took over, and she reached down and tore off the boot. Her underlayer would protect all but her head, and she'd rather brave the air than have an altered object hugging her body.

Throwing off other parts of her suit, she kept hold of only the thrusters. They looked mostly intact, and were her only method of moving without touching a surface.

She was almost back to the door! Turning into the corridor that led to it, she tried to see if anyone was watching for her through the window, but saw nothing.

This area was far less corrupted, but even her helmet visor was starting to look different; the window was turning yellowish at the edges, like aged plastic.

Holding her breath, she took it off and threw it away.

She was at the door, and jetted to a stop. Taking the jets, she pounded at the window.

"Let me in!" she finally yelled, feeling grateful that Hev breathed an atmosphere she could at least tolerate.

A face appeared in the hole, startling her. It was the Hev captain, K'Raaiia.

He stared at her. His eyes were cold. And then he looked away.

Her heart pounded as she realized he was going to leave her in here. To die, or worse, become something other than herself.

Would she know who or what she was? Would she have any mind left?

A thousand thoughts and fears she'd never been willing to give voice to before ran through her mind.

There was a sound on the other side. It sounded like Hev arguing, but with her suit gone she could no longer understand them.

Then she heard a gunshot.

Ducking down, she was shocked when the door opened.

"Take my hand!"

It was N'Keeea, the ambassador. He had his hand out to her.

She took it, and he pulled her through.

He slammed the door shut, panting with exertion.

"Are you all right?" he whistled in her tongue. "Are you affected?"

She saw the fear in his eyes, and she knew the risk he had just taken.

"I . . . I think I'm okay," she replied, finally taking the time to look over her undersuit.

There was no red on it. No color changes. No alterations of any kind that she could tell.

N'Keeea had a sidearm in his hand. He hadn't had that before. She looked around.

Five meters down the hall she saw the Captain. He was unhurt, his expression one of sullen anger - and his holster was empty.

He chittered to her and N'Keeea, and she looked to the ambassador.

"He felt it was too much risk to let you back in," the ambassador said. "I disagreed. We got your alert and the power has come back on. You may have saved us all."

Pirra hoped that he had been right. She didn't feel any different, but she knew that she could not be sure.

"Glad I could help," she said weakly.