Ramirez needed to pee.

It was at least two in the morning and he lay on his bed cursing his single kidney and contemplating weather it was worth it to remain in such a state of urinary discomfort, or risk getting out of his nice warm bed and walking to the bathroom, and for about ten minutes, he got neither of those things as he sat simply in the darkness contemplating his discomfort.

Eventually there was nothing to do but to stand and waddle his way down the isle of sleeping marines and towards the bathroom. None of them would care or notice that he was up. The marines slept like rocks doused in Nyquil. Technically as their acting unit Sargent, he could have gotten a room all to himself, and he had certainly thought about asking the Admiral, but after so many years of sharing a room with other marines. He wasn't sure if he would be able to sleep without someone snoring like a lawnmower.

He had grown accustomed to it, and all of the crazy things that tended to happen when you spent so much time with a group of other people.

He inched into the bathroom, with the lights still off. The ambient glow from the keypad casting enough illumination into the room for him to see where he was. When you lived constantly with other people, a little courtesy went a long way, and he didn't want to wake anyone up.

He finished up relieving himself, keeping his eyes half closed in order to preserve the sleepiness, and wandered over to the sink and the mirror where he could wash his hands. He kept his head ducked down not allowing himself to look into the mirror. Ramirez wasn't a big fan of mirrors.

Or correction, he was a VERY, big fan of mirrors most of the time. In fact, he advocated that it was important everyone ogle themselves in the mirror for a good five minutes every morning. He found it boosted confidence in a way that no other activity did, but that was in the morning, when the lights were on.

Ramirez hated mirrors in the dark.

he had hated them since his childhood, when one of his sisters had dared him to do the Bloody marry challenge, and then locked him into the bathroom when he got scared sure that something was gong to crawl out of the mirror after him.

As a man in his mid to late twenties now he knew that wasn't a thing, but the thought of it still haunted him more than he would have liked to admit. He got done washing his hands, waving them dry and wiping the excess water on his shirt. He didn't want to use the hand dryer as it would be relatively loud. He still kept his head down to avoid seeing the mirror and paused.

This was stupid.

He was a grown ass man.

He wasn't a child anymore, and he didn't need to be afraid of dumb things. Besides, there was nowhere safer than where he was now, with eleven other marines in the room aside from him.

Taking a deep breath he forced himself to look up staring into the mirror and making eye contact with himself.

He sort of expected to see black eyes and a mouthful of impossibly sharp teeth staring back at him, but that wasn't the case. He just saw himself, lit from one side by the glowing blue light of the keypad, the other side of his face hidden in darkness. He reached a hand up to touch his cheek, running fingers over smooth skin.

He still looked pretty good.

And he planned on keeping it that way.

He turned his head this way and that admiring how the blue light of the keypad fell over his cheekbones, spilling over his skin like the cool rippling of water.

He was just turning his head to the side, when his eye caught something in the mirror.

It was a splash of black against one of the shower doors, or less of a splash and more of a streak, a thin black line that came from the edge of the door a few inches out onto the opaque bubbled glass. He frowned and stared at it for a long moment, trying to figure out what it was.

His brain, once occupied with his own reflection, wandered back to earlier thoughts.

It looked like a finger.

Or a claw.

But no, no, that could hardly be. Shiver ran up his spine.

He needed to stop psyching himself out.

He turned his eyes back to the mirror and jolted slightly.

There were two thin lines now, black and dark against the glittering glass. His heart sped up in his chest, hands gripping the sink, and he watched, as a third line slowly unfurled itself from the side of the shower, clutching around the edge of the glass to join the other two fingers. They were impossibly long, and impossibly thin. A fourth finger curled around the glass to join them tapping gently against the glass. His heart was pounding so loud and so hard that he couldn't hear the tapping.

Wasn't even sure if what he was seeing was real.

Dammit marine!
It was the stupid mirror, just turn around.

He stared at the hand as it tapped, tapped, tapped on the glass afraid of what he might see f he turned around.

It wouldn't be there.

He promised himself.

He was just tired and that was making him hallucinate or something.

He was just

Tired.

Taking a deep breath Ramirez whirled sharply hands gripping the sink as he stared back into the darkness his eyes catching up to his body and falling on the shower door behind him.

The hand was no longer tapping.

They were cold and still against the cool glass.

Ramirez stared at the hand, his vocal cords frozen in fear.

And then the hand jolted, becoming a claw against the glass. Ramirez opened his mouth to scream, but the arm shot out straight towards him, impossibly long. He gasped and leapt to the side, slamming into the wall, further away from the door and closer to the opening of the dark bathroom stall where she stood.

A tall woman with long, dark hair, and impossibly long arms, her dress billowing white.

He let of a garbled choking sound

And she smiled

***

Narobi Held her back against the wall lips trembling legs aching, sitting I the darkness of the lowest most point of the ship. The fear for her life the only thing keeping her from falling over, as the writhing mass of snakes churned beneath her, so thick and so many that it looked as if a bowl of intestines writhed at her feet. She pressed her eyes shut and whimpered in terror at the soft hiss from below. She looked down watching slowly as the cobra's head rose, impossibly high, too high, higher than nay cobra had ever lifted its head, A black shadow against an even blacker background, leaning towards her face with glowing red eyes.

Until they were face to face.

***
Dr, Katie hurried down the hallway in which she had been trapped when the lockdown came. She hadn't noticed but there was another person here with her. She didn't recognize them as their hair was down in long black ringlets, and they wore a surgical mask over most of their face, a habit not uncommon when someone got sick on the ship, but now was not the time. Something was going on and she had to find out what.

"Are you alright?" She called, hurrying over towards thew woman, "I think soemthing happened with the ship. We need to call up to the Admiral, and-"

She stopped as the woman turned her eyes upon her. She had very beautiful eyes, slanted and dark, the color of sun warmed oak. Katie frowned in confusion. She had never seen this woman before, she was sure of it. If she had she certainly would have noted those eyes, as stunning as they were.

Maybe she was new?

The woman reached up hand passing to the mask over her face and slowly pealed it back.

Katie gasped and staggered away, the pale skin of the woman's face becoming even more pale as she stared wide eyed at the leering smile, a smile that cut from one ear to the other. A black slit I the woman's face torn and ragged through her cheeks under those beautiful oaken eyes.

"Do you think I'm pretty?"

***

"Admiral, Admiral!"

Conn couldn't shout, but the mental stimulation that he sent the Admiral's way should have had about the same effect. Despite all of his efforts the man's head was muddled and groggy sot through with fear so intense Conn could barely enter without falling to it himself. It was a worrying issue, as this particular man usually met fear with calm hysteria. Those two things might have seemed oxymoronic, but generally speaking when admiral Vir was frightened, he was frightened inside his own head while appearing calm on the outside. Action was his best tool, and he used it well.

The man lying before him on the metal flooring was a man to scared to even move, his eyes wide in horror, his limbs locked up, and trembling.

It was an unnatural sort of fear.

He knew human fear. For men like the admiral and his crew, fear was not paralysis. Fear was supposed to spur one to action. Perhaps his logic might have been flawed, but he knew that this was no normal human behavior, at least not for his humans, and he would be damned if he let the father of his child go insane by someone else's hand.

That was Conn's job.

Conn floated upright, leaving the Admiral curled up on the floor against the cold metal, and awkwardly patted the human on the arm, "Leave it up to old Conn to get the job done." Conn cracked his knuckle, or at least mimed the movement of cracking his knuckles. He couldn't actually preform the movement, but he felt that it fit the situation.

He adjusted himself and closed his eyes allowing his mind to open and feeling his way around the ship searching for the source.

And when he opened his mind it was like trying to hold back a flood gate. Fear came pouring into him like a burst damn, and he had to fight it back with every ounce of power he had. But Conn was good with his head, and he knew how to navigate the mind. He dodged the welling fear as much as he could stepping through shallow pools of the stuff on his way to the truth. Immediately he felt something strange, something he would liken to a solar system.

If you were to fly into a solar system and be able to sense every planet and object orbiting the star, you might be able to feel what he was feeling just then. There were many smaller things orbiting the star, spread out across the ship, and in the center of them all was the large thing drawing power from the smaller orbiting moons which it controlled.

He sensed it

And he knew it could sense him.

He felt it's malevolence in the air, and by the prodding tendrils which it sent to seek out his mind, which he blocked with impunity.

Conn frowned.

This ugly bastard needed to get gone.

And he needed to do it quick.

Conn floated over the Admiral's curled form and down the hall, heading towards the closed hatch which block his path. It wasn't much of an obstacle to him, considering he knew all of the Admiral's codes, and using those authorization passwords, he passed through the door and made his way up towards the medical bay, where the creature had made it's nest. It was a quick working thing, Conn could give it that, but just because he admired its swiftness didn't mean he was going to allow it to stay.

Conn floated up through the stairwell and out into the hallway, which was dimly lit down its entire length by every other light flipped on for the night shift. The creature knew he was coming, and he felt a rumbling as it did. He watched down the hallway as a specter appeared, a tall human woman with her neck cricked at the wrong angle. As Conn moved forward, she dropped to her hands and feet and ran at him on all fours, scuttling across the ground like a spider.

Conn ignored her.

He could see through the illusion of what she was and let her pass around him clawing at him and seeking his flesh.

But no, that would not do.

He was not so easily scared as all of that.

He continued forward, as other sectors appeared, every last one of them more grotesque than the last. Most of them pulled from the human's minds where monsters his in droves. The ship moaned and creaked, and the lights flickered overhead. Somewhere in the distance, he heard the bellowing of a great monster that must have been hundreds of times larger than that of the ship.

He snorted

Not impressed.

Not nearly considering that sound could not travel in the vacuum of space, and since he could not see the ancient eldritch being out I the vastness of space, he was hardly going to be afraid of it. The doors to the medical bay were approaching, and he floated nonchalantly forward, lights flickering around him. He did not worry as he approached the doors, and pressed his hand into the keypad, waiting patiently.

Before him, the door opened to reveal a roiling black mass of tentacles, which reached out to grapple him as he came close.

He batted them aside as he stepped into the room walking through the illusion which disappeared as soon as it had appeared.

Not that the scene beyond was much better.

He stepped into a room lit by the dim blue light, and spattered with orange icor turned green in the dim blue lighting. On the nearby bed, the corpse of an exceedingly dead Drev lay with one arm dangling over the edge, her mouth open in a silent scream. Her belly had been pulled wide at some point, revealing an open cavity covered in a filmy white/yellow ooze. Conn grimaced as he looked into that cavity nothing the little black leach-like creatures, throbbing and pulsing as they sucked away at whatever remained of her life force. Light glittered of the Drev's wide, dead eyes as she stared up at the ceiling. Around the room it was clear that the creature was already making itself at home.

Beds and tables had been overturned and covered I the opaque white slime. Little clusters of the small, black pulsing creatures sat churning and writhing all around their feet.

And at the far end of the room, the creature stood, in its true form.

The creature was tall almost brushing the ceiling with its curved and jutting spine. Its limbs were long and angular, tipped with large spiked points on which it crawled like a spide, there were four of those limbs all together, two like legs and two like arms. Its skin was a pallid grey caught here and there by tufts of course dark hair.

It was painfully thin,, and had a long undulating neck, which it turned to look at con as he stepped into the room.

The neck was long, and the fact at it's end was flat. It had no eyes to speak o, but rather a flap of skin that came down over the front of it's face before a small pink mouth lined with razor white teeth. Below it, lay a body.

Dr Krill lay sprawled on the floor his helium sack deflated his amber eyes wide and glassy . All over his body the tiny pulsing leaches wriggled and squirmed though his limbs were pinned to the floor by way of the stick white glue.

As Conn entered, he could feel the creature as it assaulted him with telepathic energy, waves of fear crashing over and around him. A few of the small suckers leaped up towards him, at trying to attach themselves to him, but he batted them away with impunity, just like he batted away the fear which their leader tried to fell on him.

But it didn't work.

He could see the creature grow agitated as he resisted it's attacks, and it turned on him, raising its front legs and brandishing its pointed feet.

Conn examined his nails, or he would have had he had nails, "I don't think you quite understand what you have done, you ugly fuck."

He knew the creature understood him.

They had a mutual understanding like that.

It readied itself to rush him. He could feel it in the creature's mind, but it was Conn's turn now. He raised himself on his ribbons holding his hands out to either side as the lights around them flickered and trembled, "You have entered the wrong ship!"

And with that Conn Reversed the field, turning it back on the source of fear.

He took all of the human's fear and anger and hate, and funneled it through himself like collecting electricity. The process was painful, and it felt as if his mind and body were about to explode as he turned all of that fear back on the ugly creature allowing the energy to release when it was almost too much, blasting it with a wave of psychic energy that had it howling and thrashing around the room legs flailing.

It staggered to the side, trading on a cluster of its own offspring, painting the walls black with their blood.

It staggered to the other side, feet slamming into the ground as spikes howling and waving its long thin neck as Conn raised his hands even wider to either side of him. Fear rushed around him like flood waters as he poured it down onto this sniveling creature.

Conn stood on a raised island in the middle of that river of fear, his hands held out to either side to control the flow.

Somewhere in that moment, he caught the creature's attention.

And in the silence he said.

"They

Are

MINE"

The creature screamed, thrashing, throwing itself to the ground and clawing at its own face with its large pointed limbs. Conn watched passively as the creature stabbed itself to death with it's own limbs until it was nothing more than a twitching pile against the floor. As it took its last breath , the small black leaches squealed in pain writhing around in confusion and fear.

Conn leaned down, picking up a silver bedpan contemplatively looking at it once before turning and smashing it against the nearest pile of the creatures, sending a wave of black icor up and around the room.

The screaming stopped.

He continued his way around the room, murdering the creatures with impunity before coming to the Doctor, who lay prone o the ground at the epicenter of this mess. Gently, conn began peeling the little leaches from his body, and squishing them as he did.

The doctor was still alive, though it was a close thing.

He finished off the last leach and stood turning towards the door.

He had a lot of work to do.

***

Admiral vir woke on the floor of the ship his body cold, his spine locked into a rictus of fear and pain. He could barely remember what happened, only the scuttling shape of a creature that was not a Vrul racing after him. He remembered grappling against a creature that seemed far bigger, and only escaping as the creature had grabbed his leg, adam managing to rip the leg off at the last moment and crawl away through one of the vents where it could not reach him.

He sat up grimacing. The side of his neck throbbing in pain.

He reached up a hand to rub it, and flinched back as he found something moist and pulsing under his hand.

He yelped and clawed at the item, throwing it away from him as it ripped from his neck.

The pulsing black creature lay on the floor throbbing and shedding little drops of his blood onto the floor.

Grimacing, adam reached out and squished the creature with his shoe with a wet squelch.

***

All across the ship others were doing the same, waking from their confusion and fear, ripping parasitic leaches from their skin and throwing them to the floor to crush them. Ramirez stood in the showers of the marine's quarters surrounded by black slime, the only scared face reflected in the mirror. Katie stood alone in a long hallway. Narobi was not harassed by snakes as she stepped down from her hiding spot.

Sunny leaned against the sink hands shaking as she stared at her carapace, intact and still connected to her. The floor was devoid of blood. Maverick sat in the front pew of the chapel, her hands shaking her eyes closed, the little black body of a leach resting below the front cover of a hymnal. The lockdown was disengaged, and humans began nervously appearing from their rooms congregating in the rec room as Katie answered Conn's call to help with Krill.

He was alive, and he seemed to be stable, though they were still cautious.

Adam crawled his way up the hallway until someone found him and helped him to his feet, limping to find his leg before going around the ship and taking stock of what had happened. He checked on Krill and came back to the crew, ordering that one of them keep watch at every entrance while the rest of them subsided into a fitful sleep in the rec room, piled together for safety.

Adam took first watch, and was there as Conn floated up the hallway covered in black icor and grime.

He stopped before the Admiral, his wide back eyes unreadable.

"Are they all dead?" The admiral asked.

Conn lifted his head, "I do not sense any more on this ship.

Admiral Vir shifted, "You were the on to kill the creature.'

"I was." He shrugged, "It was rather easy once I found him."

The Admiral stared at him, and then to Conn's utter shock and surprise, the man stepped forward wrapping the Starborn in a crushing hug, a sensation that Conn had never experienced before accept through the memories of others, "You glorious rat bastard." The human muttered, patting Conn on the back.

"Are you thanking me?"

The human squeezed tighter, and Conn wasn't sure if that was an acknowledgement or a threat, before pulling back. The two made eye contact, and the human opened his mouth to say soemthing.

He didn't get anything out but Conn knew what he wanted to say.

He could read it in the human's mind.

"Anything for the crew." He said softly before turning away and floating back into the depths of the ship.