Something thumps against Cira's visor. Heat immediately floods her body. It feels like every hair in her body is pulled through her skin. It doesn't hurt, but it's bizarre. She blinks grit out of her eyes. All she sees is light. And that prompts a whole bunch of memories she would have gladly dismissed as a nightmare. Another tap. Something round blocks the light for a second. Something's actually tapping against her helmet. The light abruptly falls away and she can get a good look.

Two people stand upside down. Their suits are compact and bright. Definitely not military. One steps forward and gives her another poke with what looks like a rifle. Asshole.

She bats the rifle away and has the satisfaction of seeing him jump. He hits the ceiling (or floor) and the two aim at her. One gets the stance right. The other one has their elbows out like the only time they've seen a gun is in simulations. That worries her more than anything else.

"I don't know who you are," she croaks, "but you better point that somewhere else."

They don't move or respond. She resorts to hand signs. Open freq.

Even if she can't hear them, their body language says a lot. They lean towards one another. They look scared. Why they boarded a military station without monitoring military frequencies is beyond her. Commander Sarwana's stare abruptly comes back to her. She turns away as if that will block the memory out, but it doesn't. He's nowhere to be seen. Everything looks charred and neglected like a burnt out building. What little atmosphere remains is depleted of oxygen.

A loud buzzing sound saws into Cira's ears. "...Hear me?"

The voice is masculine. Tears suddenly sting her eyes. It feels like an age since she had contact with another human being. She sniffs louder than she likes. "I hear you."

"Holy shit," the poker says, another masculine voice. "Holy shit!"

"I hear that, too."

He goes silent as if he really didn't expect her to respond. She looks down at her boots and realizes they're neatly tucked against the ceiling. Burns spread out from underneath her feet in fractals. It looks like a lightning flower.

"Who are you?" The first speaker asks.

"Lieutenant Vega."

"I'm Gunther. This is Bracken. Gun and Brakes for short."

"Wait, wait, wait." Brakes jabs his rifle in her direction like it has a bayonet. "You served here? In this place?"

"No, I just thought I'd hang around for a while."

"Oh."

"Idiot. Of course I serve here." Cira carefully grasps one of the twisted ceiling panels and rights herself. "Those suits better have a purple rating."

"There's no radiation," Gun says tightly. "Not yet."

Cira replays the last few minutes over in her head. Had the haiks reading been an error? Gun trades his rifle for a device she doesn't recognize. He waves it in the air like he can't find reception. The screen's light flashes red then grey. Her skin tingles. A familiar prickling sensation spreads through her body. It's one of many things she can't deal with right now so she shoves it aside to scream about later.

Brakes lets out a low whistle. "You've got a higher thread count than my great great grandpappy's bedsheets."

"Thread?"

"That thing." He makes a vague gesture in her direction. "It's growing on you like grass."

Threads and grass are much nicer visuals than horsehair worms. If only he hadn't had said growing. Because that nearly pops the lid off everything she's feeling and if that happens, she's going to lose it. So she puts all those feelings back in the box, shelves them somewhere safe, and focuses on the problems at hand.

"I'm fine. I'll help with your medevac." Cira lands on the floor and squares herself up. "Have you cleared the floor?"

"What?" He turns away from the screen. "Medevac?"

"Yes, idiot." She points at her suit's nameplate and patches as an excuse to read them herself. "Combat Surgical Technician. Have you cleared this floor?"

They regard her silently. Finally, Gun says, "No one's left."

"You finished on the 37th level? What kind of search pattern is—"

"Everybody's dead," Brakes blurts out. "Everybody's been dead for years."

A lot of different thoughts vie for space, but what she says is, "I'm not."

He snorts. "Probably because you killed them."

Commander Sarwana's face flashes in her mind again. And that's it. Cira doesn't remember moving, but she bats the rifle out of her way. It splits in half with a gout of bright blue fire. Both men shout. She grabs hold of Brakes and shoves his sun visor back. A grubby middle-aged man stares back at her with big scared eyes.

"Don't you bullshit me." She gives him a good shake. He feels as light and flimsy as a piece of paper. "Don't you fucking bullshit me like that."

His shout becomes a scream. Red lights flash inside his helmet. Cira let's go, but when he drifts back, his suit has two hand-shaped burns. Each with fine little fractals spidering away from them. The trefoil briefly flashes ons her screen. A spike of 190 Hk. Then nothing. No secondary splash. No next wave. Nothing. She looks down at her hands. The gloves are melted. Each finger sticks together. Her suit has a purple rating, but it's melting. Just like this whole station.

The screaming brings her back. Brakes bumps against the floor, curled into fetal position. The burns certainly damaged his suit and Grenadier Station is enormous. There may be pockets of breathable atmosphere left, but that's a big gamble. Cira gives herself three seconds to get herself together and flips up her visor.

"It's burning," Brakes wails. "It's burning me up."

She curls her lip. "You got a whiff of the beating you deserve. Now quit whining."

Gun puts himself between them, rifle raised. His hands are shaking. "Touch him again. Go on. Touch him again and see what happens."

They both know he doesn't have it in him to shoot. Brakes is pale and sweaty. Going into shock. There's no way to judge how severe the burns are without removing his suit. She looks down the corridor, which is a lot narrower than she remembers. "The lifepods will have a medical kit."

He stares at her like she grew another head. "I'm not a doctor."

"I am."

"You're not touching him."

"I'll guide you through it."

Brakes' breath is loud and laboured. "I can't feel.... My fingers.... Why m'fingers...?"

That bright blue flame is front and centre in Cira's mind. She glances down at Brakes' rifle. Cleaved clean through. All she did was touch it. That's all it took. A transference of that kind of energy is catastrophic. That's the territory of fourth degree burns. Complete destruction of tissues right down to the bone.

"Gunther?" She waits until he looks her in the eye. "Move."

Something about her face transfixes him. It takes visible effort for him to rip his eyes away and grab hold of Brakes. One of the blessings of weightlessness is that whatever clothes Brakes has on underneath, they'll make minimal contact with his wounds.

"Careful," she snaps and pushes herself down the corridor. "Does his suit have a brace?"

"I think so?"

"Activate it."

It's dark so she switches on her lights. The heavy-duty coils flicker on and off. Neglect, possibly. The implications of which she really doesn't have time to think on. One of the lifepod bays is tucked into an alcove. The massive door slowly materializes out of the gloom. It's covered in scorch marks. She wipes one of the keypads clean and her glove leaves a thin smear, but the screen is dead. Each of these pod clusters have emergency backups in case of a station-wide blackout. It should be active. Unless it really has been years.

"Shit." She kicks the door.

"Am I going to die?" Brakes asks faintly.

Nobody answers him.

Cira leans her helmet against the door. Her boots are blackened and ragged. Part of the floor has been burned through to expose pipes and wires and the level below. It's then that she catches a faint glint of something wet. Something very much like a human eye. Peering up at her. Watching her without blinking. The suggestion of a body is tucked against the main power cable. Infinitesimally small white streams begin to glint in and out of sight.

"Gunther, how far away is your ship?"

"Why?"

"Because you need to get there as fast as you can."

"Why?"

She slowly unholsters her sidearm. "Just do as you're goddamned told."

The G-90 is one of the last pistols to use solid shot. A real slugger. For once, she's glad. It may not be the pick of the litter, but she doubts light-based ammunition would do much good. Gun inhales sharply behind her. There's a small tremor. He must have hit the wall to change his direction. She can feel it up through her boots. The eye immediately swivels toward him. Something in there, something not a person, quickens with interest.

"Go!" She aims at the eye and fires.

A flash of white light. Blinding. Beyond blinding. Cira holds her hand up out of instinct and she can see her bones. X-rays. The floor ripples underneath her like it's water. A tremendous explosion nearly squeezes her into paste. And she's flung upwards. She should hit the ceiling. Something solid. She doesn't. A sense of space yawns open all around her. Her eyes are open, but all she can see are spidery flicks and motes of colour. They coalesce. Clump together like dust. As she spins, smushed to one side of her suit, those motes start to reform a picture. And as that picture forms, her sense of speed diminishes. Pressure eases. The roll slows to a relatively pleasant tumble. Then disappears altogether.

When her vision returns, Cira sees nothing but starry darkness. She turns her head and gets her first look at Grenadier Station. Most of it has fragmented into pieces to form a long chain of debris. White fingerlings pierce each piece and hold them in place. Threaded is an accurate word. The station looks like it has been sutured with light.

It should be a beautiful sight. Or a terrifying one. Or both. It's getting smaller. Cira engages her suit's emergency propulsion, but nothing happens. No alarms sound in response. All this should scare her, but she doesn't feel much of anything. The outcome of this scenario is simple: she will die. Gossamer blue tendrils stream all around her. They slowly undulate like siphonophores, visible only at certain angles. And because she's going to die, she doesn't have to stray very far into her feelings. She can just be an observer.

As if sensing her scrutiny, a few threads curl around her. Reacting to her like a living thing. Are they? There'll be hell to pay for a first contact like this. She holds out her finger to touch one and a frond uncurls out of that glove, as well. Her skin tingles. It can't be pure plasma because that would cook her inside out. She's inhabited by something, but instead of exploding out of her corpse, it grows and splits like a living fractal. Sedate compared to the nightmare she just ejected from.

A deep calm spirals all around her that can't be pierced by fear or grief or rage. Hypoxia? Probably. It's a much nicer way to die than burning alive. So she drifts and listens to the tide of her breath.