My arm aches. Shy drags me along dark corridors. Cations push sluggishly though my neurons like treacle, and I manage to slur, "Shiro." Shy pays me no heed.

Waves of unconsciousness lap at my grey matter. Four sols without feeding and I'm sipping the final dregs of my energy reserves. I expect Shy to lead me back through endless labs into the bowels of the building, but she ingeniously gestures to me to hunker down onto a lab trolley. Dizziness almost sends me toppling as I crouch. Shy stacks boxes and pipette trays over me before trundling the loaded trolley towards a lift.

Through the gaps between stalagmites of glassware and trays I spy automata milling to and fro around us. A guard passes, and I hold my breath. The trolley speeds up almost imperceptibly as Shy steers us away from the open lab spaces patrolled by azalea-uniformed guards. The lift arrives with a shrill ping, and Shy wheels me inside.

Close air and darkness enclose me. My guts drop with inertia as the lift ascends, then the grind of wheels resumes as my trolley moves out into light and air. Shy peels boxes and trays off me and I stagger against a steel-pannelled corridor. Through my creeping starvation I can make out that we're somewhere on the ground floor of the Kida building, close to the elegant living room where Shiro and I had met Meg. Only a maze of corridors separates us from Eris-1's market.

Shy signs a brisk "OK?" but I can't reply. My vision slips. I'm close to blacking out. I need to feed.

Shy hovers before each iris scanner as we stalk towards the curved glass atrium. Each activation of the iris scanner must be recording Shy's movements across the building; we have precious minutes before Meg realises that Shy is trying to get me out. My mind reels in panic but my limbs are too leaden to sign to her.

I feel Shy's shoulder slipping under my arm, taking enough of my weight for us to limp through labyrinthine corridors. Blackness flits at the edges of my vision, but I somehow keep conscious by focussing on the bright singularity at the centre of the pressing darkness: Shiro. He's the sun shining on Eris. He may be the cognitive phantom of his former self, but he's everything. I can't leave him here with Meg.

As his presence on the 'porter gave me hope in the storm, so the thought of getting him to safety galvanises me. If I can take Shiro and Shy to Pluto with me we could claim refugee status. With time perhaps Shy could devise a method to get nematodes out of Shiro's head. Out of my head. Out of the heads of everyone on Eris. At the end of the winding corridor is the foyer, and beyond that the vends and shops of Eris-1's market. Hope drives me. Shiro and Shy need me.

The corridor seems interminable. Dread for Shy's unborn baby grips me; I need to get her out of this coffin of brick and glass. Black wisps dance in my eyes, the single bright spot at the centre of my vision flickering against the eternal night of Eris. The spot of light winks out for a moment before winking alight again. 

My energy reserves sputter. It's not much further. I must keep going, for Shiro. For Shy. For Daiyu.

A figure glides towards us from the other end of the corridor. I blink in horror. At first I think I've fainted from hunger and that I'm trapped in a nightmare. The willowy figure advances, her head tilted with that 'keep warm' look of sisterly concern. Meg.

Shy shrinks against the corridor, her arms flailing to sign apologies and pleas that my lenses can't translate, but Meg only has eyes for me. She doubles her pace, a shield of azalea-pink guards around her.

I curl against the wall. My flat-lining energy reserves send black ribbons racing in, obscuring a sudden movement in the corner of my vision. A dark opening appears in the pannelled wall of the corridor opposite us. A hidden door.

An apparition in soft pink stretches a long leg out of the opening. Locks of hair with a slight wave obscure the beautiful creature's eyes. A ruined ankle trails behind.

I whisper, "No, my love," but my breaths are too weak to propel the words from my throat.

Meg marches towards me but despite his mangled ankle the apparition is faster.

He stumbles across the corridor muttering a single word over and over again. "Smile."

No.

He mustn't.

Like a white dwarf, a ghostly stellar remnant of his former self, Shiro reaches for me with both hands, his eyes dead and glazed. "Smile."

I can't shrink away. Terror and fatigue have frozen me against the wall. "No, Shiro," I breathe.

He mustn't touch me. He'll die. I'll kill him.

"Smile."

I try to murmur, "No, Shiro," but he steals the words from my lips with a kiss. 

Cold fingers find their way to my cheeks. Too much skin on skin. I struggle, but the effort to push him off me is too great.

No bliss. No ecstasy.

My limbs my buzz with renewed vitality, but I can't feel the usual heady pleasure of feeding. This time, terror suffuses my bones. That terror that made me weep long into the night when I was four years old. That same terror that gripped my heart when I awoke to find Ying kissing me.

My efforts to force Shiro away are useless; he's locked his arms around my neck and won't let go. Every second that his lips are pressed against mine saps more of his energy. I'm taking his life force. I'm murdering the man I love.

My brain and my muscles pump with glorious vibrant energy, and Shiro's grip finally wanes. His strength is now inside me. I wrench Shiro's lips from mine. Frozen fingers slip from my neck, but it's too late. His unconscious body slithers down my stolen soft-pink uniform.

Shy rushes to cradle him, sending the two of them crashing to the floor with a thud. With the amount of skin contact Shiro forced on me, I know that it's more than a brief faint. I've put him into a coma.

I stare up at Meg. Fury rips through me just as her azalea guards crowd us. I coil my body, fists clenched and my stance wide to shield Shy and Shiro behind me. The rage takes me quickly.

I'm a monster. I'm destruction. I'll feed on them all.

The first guard reaches for a pulser. I leap forward and grind my palm into their face. They drop to the floor. I take a step towards Meg, my teeth gnashing.

A second guard ushers Meg behind them and reaches for me. I lunge at their outstretched hand, catching their wrist before they can spring away. They fall.

Three guards now stand between me and Megumi Kida. They don gloves and masks, shielding their precious skin from me. Their pulsers rise. 

They can't stop me. I'll evade pulser waves. I'll tear off their masks and feed off them all. Then I'll get to her. I'll show her what it feels like to have parasitic worms in her head. I'll show her what it feels like to have the one she loves taken away from her.

My foot brushes against a lump below me, and I stumble. Shy's hand is gripping my trousers. Her eyes are streaming with tears. She whips her hand in a frantic "Go!"

Shiro needs me alive. I throw myself through the hidden door in the corridor. It snaps shut behind me with the weight of Shy and Shiro's bodies slamming against it. 

I dart through the dim tunnel, lit only by slits of light streaming in from wall vents, dread rising at the thought that the corridor will take me deeper into the labs where Megumi will implant me with the worker colony. 

The corridor forks, but a green indicator light in the distance guides me to my left, eventually bringing me to a steel door. The deafening wail of sirens and shouts ring out on the other side. Eris-1 market. This is the tunnel that Shiro used to navigate the Kida Building unnoticed. 

The door opens out onto the reinforced steel perimeter wall behind the Kida Biotech building, the very same door that I'd seen Shiro slink out of sols earlier.

A scream echoes around the corner, and I dive behind a nearby hov. I've emerged straight into a riot. I peep out towards the market at a wall of armoured hovs. Wardens swing batons and rioters scream, the air heavy with the smell of ammonia and pulsed flesh.

I curl up in an alleyway scattered with boxes and sob into my soft-pink uniform. Implanting him with a worker colony didn't stop Shiro from loving me. Even when reduced to a cognitive phantasm, Shiro still understood that I was dying, and he sacrificed everything for me. Meg will likely put an end to both of her disobedient siblings' misery as their punishment for helping me to escape.

I may have just killed the man I love.