Chapter 3. Two Pods, One Problem

The first death happened off-screen.

This was important, because it meant no one noticed.

Captain Hayes ordered a sweep of Sublevel B despite no one being certain Sublevel B had existed prior to this scene.

Nova had said as much—quietly, with the careful tone people use when they are already being ignored by reality. According to the schematics, there was no reason for a second subterranean level beneath a facility built on permafrost and bad budgeting decisions. According to the lighting, however, Sublevel B was very real, very dim, and far too large for its own good.

The stairs descended longer than expected.

“Why are we going down?” Reed asked, breath fogging in the air despite the heaters still working.

Hayes did not look back. “Because the noise came from below.”

Mason nodded behind him. “Classic.”

Lin frowned. “Classic what?”

Mason shrugged. “Mistake.”

No one laughed. The sound carried poorly down here.

The walls of Sublevel B were bare concrete, scored with frost fractures that looked less like cracks and more like veins. Pipes ran overhead in dense clusters, vibrating faintly, as if something large had passed through recently and left agitation behind as a courtesy.

Nova slowed, checking her tablet. The map jittered, then corrected itself, then jittered again.

“This level is bigger than the entire facility footprint,” she said.

Hayes paused. “Could the map be wrong?”

Nova glanced up at the corridor stretching away into darkness. “Only if geometry is optional now.”

They passed a side corridor—narrow, unlit, branching away like a bad idea.

A scream echoed from it.

Short. Sharp. Cut off mid-breath.

Reed stopped walking.

“That—” His voice cracked. “That was a person.”

Hayes hesitated for half a second.

Just long enough for everyone to notice.

“Yes,” he said. “But we’re not splitting up.”

They kept moving.

No one said the name of the person who had screamed. Doing so would have made it real in a way none of them could afford.

The corridor widened abruptly, opening into a cavernous chamber that swallowed their lights. Something metallic loomed in the center, half-buried in frost and debris.

Lin stepped closer.

Her breath caught.

“It’s another pod.”

The structure was unmistakable now—smooth, angular, scorched along one side as if it had entered the atmosphere with far less dignity than its predecessor. Unlike the Amarok’s containment pod, this one radiated heat. Steam curled lazily from fractured seams.

The door hung open.

The interior was empty.

And something about the air felt… wrong. Not cold. Not exactly hot.

Cooked.

“This pod isn’t cryogenic,” Lin said slowly. “It’s thermal.”

Mason sniffed. “Smells like burned insulation. And meat.”

Reed shook his head. “Why would a meteor carry two organisms?”

Lin did not look at him. “Because redundancy is inefficient. Conflict isn’t.”

“That’s not how containment works,” Reed said weakly.

Lin finally met his gaze. “Neither do movies.”

The ceiling exploded.

Not collapsed—burst.

Panels shredded outward as something slammed through them from above, trailing sparks, insulation, and the sound of metal being murdered.

It hit the floor with enough force to knock everyone off their feet.

An Unidentified Creature announced itself screaming.

It was wrong in every way the Amarok had been precise.

Too many limbs. Too much motion. Heat bleeding visibly from its body in shimmering distortions that made the air ripple. Its form looked like evolution had been forced to work from corrupted schematics under a deadline.

Dr. Kessler, whose survival up to this point had been due entirely to standing near more important characters, did not even have time to react.

The creature grabbed him.

Pulled him upward.

There was a crunch that echoed longer than it should have.

Then silence.

Something wet fell from the ceiling.

Mason stared upward. “…Was Kessler with us?”

Lin blinked. “I think so.”

Nova’s tablet chimed softly. “He had a biometric tag.”

Reed gagged. “That’s how you know it counts.”

Panic arrived immediately.

Not the cinematic kind. The practical kind.

They ran.

Not together.

Not logically.

Just away.

“STAY TOGETHER!” Lin shouted, already being ignored by physics and fear.

Mason shouted back, “IT DOESN’T CARE ABOUT THAT!”

They split at the junction anyway.

Reed tripped first.

He hit the floor hard, tablet skidding away from him. He scrambled, heart hammering, breath coming in short, desperate gasps.

The creature landed in front of him.

It filled the corridor completely.

Reed raised his hands. “I’m unarmed!”

The creature screamed, unimpressed.

Reed’s scream ended abruptly.

Later, the report would describe his death as “traumatic.” This would feel insufficient.

Elsewhere, Lin and Nova barricaded themselves in a lab, slamming the door shut as something heavy hit it from the other side.

Nova locked it with shaking hands. “Okay. Okay. Okay.”

Lin panted. “That thing doesn’t follow the Amarok’s rules.”

Nova nodded rapidly. “It hunts momentum. Noise. Panic.”

The door dented inward.

Lin swallowed. “That’s worse.”

Mason found Hayes in the armory, hands steady as he reloaded.

“Sir,” Mason said, “we have a second alien.”

Hayes did not look surprised. “Define alien.”

“Loud. Angry. Doesn’t respect themes.”

Hayes sighed. “Of course.”

Screaming echoed over the intercom.

Then cut off.

Hayes paused. “We can’t save everyone.”

Mason nodded. “Statistically, we were never going to.”

The Amarok appeared briefly at the end of a corridor—silent, immense, its presence sucking warmth and sound from the air.

It watched.

It did not intervene as the second alien tore through another unnamed security officer just out of sight.

Lin, peering from cover, whispered, “Why isn’t it stopping this?”

Nova whispered back, “Because this isn’t its genre.”

They regrouped eventually.

Fewer than before.

Hayes. Mason. Lin. Nova.

Four survivors standing in the central hub, breathing hard, bloodied, painfully aware of the empty spaces where people used to be.

Ice crept closer along the walls, deliberate and calm.

Above them, the second alien screamed—triumphant, impatient.

Somewhere else, the Amarok howled once—long, cold, displeased.

Mason looked around at the others.

“So,” he said hoarsely, “anyone else notice we’re in a slasher now?”

No one argued.

The lights went out.

Leaving was, unanimously, the correct decision.

This was how everyone knew it would fail.

Captain Hayes said the word evacuate with the calm certainty of a man who had been trained to believe that saying something made it true. He did not raise his voice. He did not hesitate. He did not acknowledge the irony that evacuation protocols were designed for disasters that behaved predictably.

The facility responded by turning off most of the lights.

Not all of them. That would have been dramatic. Instead, emergency illumination flickered on in sullen red intervals, transforming the hallways into something that looked less like a research station and more like a blood pressure warning.

Nova stared at her tablet as if it had personally betrayed her.

“Primary grid is down,” she said.

Hayes nodded. “Redundancy.”

Nova winced. “Redundancy A was decommissioned.”

Mason frowned. “Decommissioned as in ‘replaced’ or decommissioned as in ‘forgotten’?”

Nova hesitated just long enough to answer the worse version.
“Budget.”

Lin sighed softly. “Redundancy B?”

Nova scrolled. Froze. Looked up.
“Scheduled.”

Mason nodded slowly. “Ah. Hypothetical electricity.”

Somewhere above them, metal screamed.

The sound was not subtle. It was not distant. It was the unmistakable noise of something large dragging itself through a space never meant to accommodate it. The Cutter alien was many things, but quiet was not one of them.

“Hangar C,” Hayes said. “We move now.”

They did.