Time.

Tick.

Tick...

Eight hours of work a day, usually more....

Tick...

Eight hours of sleep. I need more, I usually get less.

Tick...

Shower, breakfast, lunch, dinner...

Tick...

Did I mention we live on a mini-farm? Animals to care for, feed, water, milk; stalls and paddocks and henhouses and rabbit cages to clean; dogs to bathe and groom, mice and snakes and geese and ducks and turkeys and guineas, guinea pigs and real meat pigs (the guinea pigs are just a pair as pets, so we won't eat those), bees to tend and yes, we do try to grow a few veggies onsite...

TickTockTickTockTickTockTickTockTickTock!!!

Oh, and the children - did I mention the children? Beautiful children, a wonderful thirteen year old daughter who helps out a ton, and a rambunctious three year old boy who is still alive because he is supernaturally cute. Also need feeding; the boy still requires shepherding in his ongoing potty training. The daughter has art classes, and there has to be some family time now and then.

BONG!

Did I mention we also manage to have a few friends we visit now and then?

So who has time to write?

You've heard all this before. I'm not going to pretend to tell anyone how to manage their priorities, or judge them if they choose different priorities than mine. Your life, your responsibility, your decision.

But I want to write. I need to write.

How am I going to write?

I manage, haphazardly, in stolen evenings and insomniac midnights. There's never enough time, but I take what I can get.

I wrote a flash fiction and submitted it for online publication. I edit the book that's closest to publication readiness. I resist the urge to edit the other book that's mostly done, or the one that's done but totally unedited, or any of the three or four (five?) that are started and well along, but not quite yet wrapped up.

Apparently, I've been writing somewhere. That many open projects don't just creep in under the door and set up among the dust bunnies like ants. The words in those files are mine, the work of several NaNoWriMo's and stolen evenings and insomniac midnights.

Hm. Looks like I better get going - we're out of hay for the horses and goats and rabbits and guinea pigs. The delivery won't make it till next week, so we have to run to the feed store and throw a bail in the trunk.

If you see me on the road, be careful. I'm a pretty safe driver, but...

I'm probably writing.

(Read, read) Write, (edit) write, edit, edit, EDIT (write, edit, edit...)

The individual scenes evolve as much as any character in the story.

Take a quick look at an earlier version of the opening scene:
http://writeryourbabyisugly.blogspot.com/2012/11/sample-post-opening-scene-from-bubbler.html

That version is much edited and improved from the original, which started with (kiss of death) the main character waking up. Since that point I have edited a hundred times, and the book is getting cleaner all the time. The title character's name has changed, but that's just a superficial edit; check out the current version.

Comments welcome, and for the record, the process of posting this generated a batch more edits. :)

---

Bubbler

Prelude

1

News, again, and it hadn’t been new for weeks.

“The Archbishop of Pradna again refuted rumors of a major schism forming in the Ptokeriat, citing the faith’s basic tenets of personal responsibility and peaceful cooperation as reassurances against the growing number of terrorist actions claimed by the group known as the Hand of God.” The voice droned on, no more interesting than the last dozen times he’d heard this segment.

A month on the flagship hadn’t killed Tam yet, but he bunked with a dry-breathing human who liked political news and suffered night terrors, and he felt the reaper closing. He glowered at the bookcase speaker as music switched to another repeated newscast - starships got no new material in transit.

“Another vote was tabled in the Federal Collegium today pending the arrival of the new Delegate from Hydra. The previous Delegate is still unavailable for questions regarding his sudden and unexpected recusal, and though speculation abounds, his office insists that they know no more about it than anyone else.”

Tam’s jaw muscles cramped. He worked them out. He had to stop frowning so much.

He watched as Cay faded again - blink, blink, nod. The boy sagged onto the desk and pushed his reader off. It drifted to the floor in the dense fluid, flipping once and sliding back and forth before settling to the velcro-fuzzy floor. A drop of drool crawled across Cayleb’s lip as he exhaled the hyperoxygenated perfluorocarbon of the room, stretched into a thin line and broke; the bubble of saliva fled for the ceiling vents with a second close behind.

He pressed his lips together. Since Cay came aboard Tam had lived in a state of hope and annoyance - but it would be a lie to say that was new. Tam lifted his own reader and turned a page on the screen, but knew it wouldn’t take long now. A Delegate’s son, surely he had a great Destiny, yes? To represent his world abroad? To make new alliances and prevent interplanetary wars? No, not Tam; his fate was to be hidden away in protected compounds and secret, private islands where his father wouldn’t be shamed by a crippled son, and now to share a room with a nightmare-prone human for a month of repeated reports and broken sleep.

“In other news, the Pellan Delegate has again relinquished her allotted time on the Collegium floor to the spokes-being from the Property League. The official translation of the ensuing speech is thought to mean that the entity wants her species protected from any more AI implants until they have evolved to a point of natural sentience on their own, but opposing theorists include a wide gamut of alternate interpretations. Some contend the entire agenda is no more than a plot to damage the servient industry across the Dominion.”

Spokes-being. Entity. Those things weren’t even synths, they were just glorified, AI-assisted bugs. Tam ground his teeth.

For a moment Tam had managed to distract himself. Cay spasmed on cue, blowing a flurry of tiny bubbles from his nose. The news cut off and the lights blazed; Maith had anticipated it. Her voice sounded from the wall speakers as she slid from her niche. “Mer Joans suffers another ill dream, my Lord. Shall I touch him?” Tam flinched, blinking and squinting against the sudden brightness, and shielded his eyes with the webbing between his fingers.

He set his reader down on the desk and glared at his bunkmate. Cay strained against his strap, abdomen heaving. Do, he signed with flared nostrils and a curt nod, and dim the lights.

She undulated across as the harsh glow faded. Tam grumped at the body wrap she’d begun wearing, not for a modesty to which she’d never been conditioned, but for the young human’s comfort. Maith had been modeled after them, the standard type most common in the Dominion, but small and perfect.  He brooded as she woke the dry-breather.

Tam tried to imagine a whole race of them. Normal. He choked back his envy.

“Mer Joans. Cayleb Joans. You are not drowning. Breathe, sir.”  Maith loosed the belt and Cay bobbed to the ceiling. The rap of his skull on impact did more to calm him than her soft drone. Tam unclipped his own anchor loop and drifted free of his desk, though not as fast as Cayleb. Maith had said standard humans were lighter than Hydrans, and could stand no more than superficial pressure changes. Yet I’m the handicapped one.

Tam began to sign. Maith’s voice translated over the speakers, morphing into Tam's own irritable tones.

“My master asks: What’s wrong with you, Cay? By the damned, we got the only guest chamber fitted for us on this bottle, so unless you want to sleep up on the command decks, you need to stop!” Tam rubbed his tired eyes with the heels of his hands, then continued his rant.

“And before you think you’re going to try that, those are full of crew running around doing ship stuff, and they’re too busy to have you sprawled underfoot. Damned! Take care of him.”

Tam sucked his lungs full before he opened the hatch netting and kicked up into the next room, leaving Maith to handle Cay. He heard her soothe the young man as she helped him undress, reminded him to put his foot in a loop, to breathe through his nose to keep the bubbles from gathering in his sinuses, that slow and deep was better.

The muted light from below lit the salon in streaks and rippling shadows. True water pressed him with less weight, embraced him. The PFC droplets he’d splashed into the room settled and rolled back to the hatch.

Tam breathed a bit out. It ran down his chin and chest and crotch, headed for the bedroom below and reprocessing as small air bubbles floated from his nostrils to the ceiling.

Real water he thought, waving his hand, creating currents. Not Hydra’s seas, but a healthy approximation with a few agents to help the life support system. Cool to his skin, comfortable. Tam tasted the salt on his tongue, just a shallow breath to savor in his throat against his useless gills. Actual water. This is what my father is breathing in his room. He set his jaw and closed his inner lids, slid his outer down over the nictitating membranes and swallowed. My Lord and sire, Ra Salipoor Den, statesman and exemplar of our planet’s people, Senate Liaison to the Dominion Governor…appointed Delegate for the planet of Hydra to the Federal Collegium, and last of the great gen Salipoor but for me, Den Salipoor Tam, his handicapped bubbler son by a commoner wife. Alas, how the mighty have fallen.

He buried his face in his hands.

Enough. I will find a way to be more than the handicapped son of a rich and powerful nobleman. I will be more than a rumor whispered by shaking heads.

I will find a way to matter.

Feels kinda true sometimes...

Editing: turning the clay you made into dishes.

I happen to love this section of the draft, because it references a large and complex alternate story line, but in the end, as much fun as it was, it doesn't belong in the book. In fact, there are about two or three sentences near the end that are *important*, that need to be incorporated somewhere since they are significant foreshadowing of the end, but most of it was just spinning the wheel to keep up my word count during Nano.

Let's see what you guys think.

INTERLUDE:

A Visit from the God of War

He stood on the ceiling in the vacuum of an observation lounge, a cracked blister on the surface of the spinning station. On the ceiling, because the room was designed with the spin of the station in mind, and the usual patrons would walk “down” the steps to the “bottom” of the “bowl” from their personal perspective, and look through the clear material on which their feet rested at the stars rotating in the distance. It was not an experience many people enjoyed the way the designer thought they might. People prefer for their stars to be above them, never mind the inconvenient facts of rotational physics.

He smirked. It’s good to be a god, he thought, ignoring the annoying laws of nature and standing where he pleased, in hard vacuum with nothing to obscure his view but the dome itself. He liked the dome, since for him it could be up, above, and he could stand on the surface of the station as if it had a real planet’s gravity, enough to keep him from drifting away. We get to cheat.

He drew his scarlet robe about him to keep it from drifting up and obscuring his view, and watched the battle. Zealots and martyrs never changed; bare skinned or clad in kilotonnes of armor plating, fusion engines, petajoule laser cannons and optical computers, they were still zealots, still martyrs, still the one power that the best preparations had trouble handling.

What was the best way to handle them? He smiled. Once they became martyrs, there was little to do but loose the soldiers. If used only to defend, then a good soldier often became a martyr as well. Careful propaganda management of that simple fact could sometimes rally the opposition enough to turn the tide, but once you aimed the soldiers in any action other than defense, the public relations backlash became problematic.

That was the catch. The only safe way to deal with zealots was to employ them. Use them. That killed two birds with a single stone - one of the birds being the martyred zealot. A dangerous game. That was a two-edged blade with no handle. What do you do with them when you’ve won, and so many remain?

Pellans. An interesting example, that. The Dominion had created a whole new race for the express purpose of use as shock troops - soldiers born and trained to be zealots and martyrs, created with all the right wrongs. That had been just six hundred years ago, for the Prane rebellion, an enormous project which produced four hundred thousand men and women heavily modified right down in the genes, and raised them to put an end to the rebellion once and for all.

Before they were deployed the first Jaunt class jumpship had been finished, the Hammer of God, and deployed to Prane with two Rectification battleships and a Turtle class cargo ferry “piggybacking” to create a Fleet wing of vast mass with an ultimatum: surrender, or we will pull Prane out of orbit. They had not been bluffing. Six hundred years later its weather still hadn’t quite stabilized, even though they put it back.

Rikki thought that he would love to have had the whole population back home. He’d’ve made them revered among his pet races, but he had to admit that they’d done well for themselves. He turned his mind back to the battle raging nearby.

Raging. He snickered into the silence of the vacuum. Martyrs made it an actual battle rather than a massacre, but the only difference in the end would be the damage done.

“Hephaestus,” he said to his friend and supposed peer, back in his workshop at home. He felt the sigh in response, conveying annoyance at being interrupted, impatience at being called the wrong name, but resignation that Rikki would do as he pleased.

“What is it?”

“Oh, come now,” Rikki mock-pouted, “aren’t you even going to put up a token complaint that I call you by the name of an ancient Greek deity?”

“Would it cause you to change your behavior?”

“No,” Rikki admitted. “It’s entirely apt. You are our god of invention and forgecraft, the one who designed the Great Secret, the system of communication that makes this instantaneous conversation over such a distance possible.” Rikki did not bother to mention that he was no longer on the same planet, or for that matter even near the same star. He had secrets of his own.

“Mm.”

“Do I not warrant more than a noncommittal acknowledgement?”

“When you say something worth comment, I will comment.”

“Oh, ever the pragmatists, that’s you. Stoic, prosaic, and brilliant. How do you manage that particular combination? Isn’t creative genius supposed to be predicated on eccentricity?”

“What do you want, Rikki?”

He grinned as a commandeered freighter exploded to his right.

“Occasional conversation with someone I deign to consider a peer?”

“You don’t believe anyone is your peer, Rikki.”

“True, but at least you can carry your end of a topic.”

“If I knew the topic - so I ask again. What do you want?”

“Tom, Tom - seventeen hundred years and we continue to evolve, but you’re always our same old Tom. It’s why I didn’t pick you for my Great Experiment, you know. Too sensible. Evolution requires a certain amount of volatility. You only recently started using more than one avatar at a time, just the last couple of centuries, isn’t that true?”

“Yes, Rikki.”

“Yes, Rikki. You’re a curmudgeonly doddard for a such a brilliant inventor, Tom. You don’t even ask when I mention it.”

“Yes, Rikki. And I do not take such obvious bait.”

Rikki grinned. No one but Tom could get under his skin the way he did everyone else. He thought it was Tom’s one endearing trait.

“I love you, Tom.”

“Thank you, Rikki. I suppose there are days where the feeling is mutual, though it’s usually because I’m piqued at whomever you’re tormenting that month.”

Rikki laughed and clapped his hands.

“Do you know what I would love to see?”

“The universe consumed in a fireball, I assume. If I am Hephaestus, you would be Loki. Perhaps Eris? Hm. Not destructive enough. Perhaps I should call you Briareos.”

“Tom! You flatter me! You’ve been researching Greek mythology, and you liken me to one of the Hekatonkheires?”

He felt Tom shrug, and sent genuine warm feelings in return.

“Careful, god of fire. My forges need your services, but I will never believe that you are tamed.”

“Well enough. So you still monitor Dominion communications, yes? You know about their political upheavals?”

“I try to keep up with their technological advances and incorporate them. I am not concerned with their petty debates and brawls. They are a virus on the planets they incorporate, a sludge of merchants and bankers.”

“Rowr. I seldom recall having heard you state such a strong opinion.”

Again Tom shrugged, many light years away.

Rikki squinted up at the Victory blazing a furrow through the attacking ships, a reaper among the wheat. He considered for the thousandth time telling Tom where he was, but Tom wasn’t ready. The questions it would raise would hinder more than help. Of course, he was also a few sparse leagues away from Tom’s workshop, and on the Ring, and in the wilds... Rikki had more active avatars than any of them. He considered capturing one of Tom’s few avatars and putting it on a ship back to Dominion space, but if he really wanted one here he might just bring it, and let Tom wonder how the transport was accomplished. That would be funny.

He looked around the battle for relevant keys, considering whether he’d intervene. Maintenance drones flitted out and back, collecting anything of salvage value, and occasionally a body for the regeneration tanks.

There - the boy in the lifeboat. That one would determine whether war would be averted. He might actually cause the war, a bloody and vengeful purge. And if Rikki snuffed out the little lifeboat now?

Hm. Just a different war. Less immediate, but in the end just as destructive. It would produce more chaos...

But chaos for its own sake was of limited value. Focused chaos evolved men faster.

Let events play out as Fate decreed. He didn’t need to intervene.

Nano Windup: Not Really a Spoiler =oD

Epilogue

Ass Pocket was too damaged to make the trip. He thought he might risk it anyway, but the Federal decree said that all ships damaged in the battle would be repaired and provisioned at station’s expense. Dell had dumped the old man while the Coordinator was piloting the heap, so he figured he might even be able to make a profit on it.

It didn't hurt to have a little something extra to compensate for lost time, especially if they had caused him to miss his appointment and his proper pay.

Dell took the time to get himself as “clean” as this grimy tub could manage. If he was going to be stuck here while they spruced up the ship he might as well enjoy the amenities. It didn't pay to be careless, but he’d earned a little recreation. When the ship docked he was waiting for seals to set so he could open the ramp.

It came down on a surprise. He watched the opening widen on someone standing just outside, waiting for him. He’d thought that might happen, but had been prepared for armed MP’s, not a curvy little dollie.

She was small. He liked small. He looked her over and approved of everything he saw, from the high spike heels that tightened her calves and thighs and turned her buttocks just so, to the close fitting semi-sheer dress that showed how slender she was, the firm torso, each curve of the small breasts that she covered with socially polite modestly but no shame. Her hair was long and pristine white, done up behind her head in a neat braid for a hand’s width before being bound and then left free from there downwards. Her smile was friendly, the way really good prostitutes could look at you as if you were a long lost love in town for a night, rather than a mark with cash in his pocket.

He took the time to appreciate all the scenery before making eye contact. She stood and let him look her over, smiled a little more warmly. When he looked into her lovely silver eyes she lowered her handbag and gave him a welcoming nod. Dell wondered what sort of deliciously naughty goodies might be in the bag.

“Mer Borimen?” She waited only a moment. When he didn't respond, she proceeded.

“I believe you have some outstanding payment for services rendered. I’m here to make an installment.”

That smile again.

To hell with leaving the ship.

“Come on in,” he said, moving aside to make room. She walked up the ramp, every step displaying strength and grace and flexibility, and Dell couldn't help but grin a little. “You know, I thought I might not get paid.”

She stopped next to him and stood very close, so that he could smell the subtle perfume she was wearing. He swallowed. It had been a long time since he’d seen a woman quite so enticing, even a doll.

“Mer Borimen,” she breathed, sliding a hand up his chest and around behind his head, fingernails drawing tingles up the back of his scalp. “I intend to make sure you get your due.”

She slid the other hand up his chest on the other side, and he started to make a comment, but she put a finger to his lip, then took hold of his jaw as she leaned in, her nipples pressing against him as she whispered.

“Consider this an installment from the Hydran Delegation.”

He had a moment to frown in confusion before she snapped his neck.

Excerpt from Alibies by Sabrina

The phone lay in the middle of the floor, dial tone long since gone. Emma picked it up from the floor and stared at it a moment, then replaced it on it’s base. Probably out of charge and useless now. She turned away, planning on a quick trip to her room and to bed. It was past midnight and she didn’t want to deal with it anymore, “it” being Adrienne’s miscarriage, her husband’s dickheadedness, her own hallucinations, as Stacy suggested Hodges might be, and especially not Home Guard. If she could get past Hodges’ room without too nasty an encounter, she’d fall onto the covers and sleep, sleep, sleep until sunlight through the blinds woke her. Or not. Maybe she’d sleep through the day or even the week. She could dream, anyway.

The phone rang behind her. Emma stopped, surprised. She’d been sure there’d be no charge left.

The caller ID showed “caller unknown,” so she touched the red mute button.

When she checked, the charge indicator showed zero. Broken maybe. Like so many things.

Emma shook her head. Melodrama wasn’t something she indulged in often. Tonight it colored every thought.
She’d reached the soft carpet of the hall when the phone rang yet again. Louder than before, which wasn’t possible since she was farther away than when it rang the first time. Ridiculous, really. She didn’t quite run back across the space between herself and the phone, but she hustled.

The phone quit as soon as she reached the high table where it sat. “Unknown” stuttered and blinked at her on the little screen, as if struggling through low battery life. Throwing the thing across the room might be a lot of fun but not terribly smart. Clutching your purse to your side because you didn’t want to be parted from the gun inside was a pretty clear indication she needed a working phone. She did have her cell though.

Emma reconsidered throwing the handset, then set it back in the cradle. Stacy’s talk stayed with her, not because the woman had offered anything so amazingly astute, but for the talk itself. If Emma saw Hodges in every sunset and dealt with his ghost every night, that indicated she hadn’t finished dealing with her grief. It wasn’t quite what Stacy had said, but what Emma took away from their conversation.

“Hodges, if you’re doing this, I’d like you to stop. I’ve had a really rough day and I need to go to bed. Okay?”

No answer save silence.

The sillies struck and Emma offered a bad movie imitation. “Well, um, okay then, I’m just gonna have to go ahead and ask you to come back another time...”

The phone rang again, jangling until the entire contraption shook from base to handset. Emma eeped and clutched her purse tighter, going so far as to reach inside, as if a .38 might be of any use against a deranged phone. Clutching the gun, she stared at the phone as if expecting it to jump off the base and skitter across the floor after her.

No such thing happened. It just wouldn’t stop ringing. It seemed to grow exponentially louder until all that existed within the house was what was historically the most obnoxious sound in the world.

Emma gathered her courage and strode to the phone. She stopped a stride short of being able to pick it up and leaned in to read who was calling, expecting “unknown” again.

It said, “No.”

A hand batted the phone off its base. It was her own. She could tell because her fingers hurt from the force of the contact. The handset flew free of the base and broke apart on the floor. Emma didn’t even know she was pointing the .38 until the phone quit its ringing. Hands shaking, she kept the gun pointed at the broken pieces of plastic that used to be her phone's handset. When nothing more happened for several long seconds, Emma lowered the gun. As she did, that large, comforting hand she always associated with her husband returned to enfold her. At first her heartbeat magnified beneath that not quite restrictive warmth, then slowed to a regular cadence.

As she relaxed, the warmth and comforting presence of that hand lessened until it was gone. All that was left was Emma.

“Fuck it. It’s getting way too weird around here.”

She pulled her cell and considered. Before she could talk herself out of it, she’d dialed Sean.

Excerpt: Gruesome Darkness

She advanced a step at a time into the swirling mist, her suit AI shifting small lights onto items in the hallways to get a better look at them, categorizing and dismissing them as little or no threat, moving on. Occasionally it marked an item of interest in her HUD: a body, dead; a piece of debris sticking out of a wall at a dangerous angle; a stencil indicating water passages 40m this way, PFC 70m that way.

On her left, a door. Ice spray around the door indicated moist air blown out into the vacuum as the door seal was gradually opened. The AI marked this, and the frozen drag marks across the floor. Jan swung her weapon through the opening and inspected the room beyond.

A small cafeteria. Three bodies, still swelling, twitching. An eye burst while Jan watched, and her rising gorge needled her out of stunned immobility.

Someone had just opened this door, and killed these people by doing so. She swung herself around along the path of the frozen drag marks, off down the hall toward the PFC. She saw a flicker of light and movement in the distance.

“Zoom!” she ordered, and brought her weapon up to sight along it while her vision leapt forward.

“Low light!” The mode shifted to amplification, and her field of view went blurry green, but then resolved.

What was she seeing?

Something had one of the swelling corpses. It was mottled, and hairless, and its bulging teardrop eyes did not reflect her lamps. It turned to her and bared sharp, pointed teeth, and she could see crystals of blood flaking away at the corners of it’s lips.

It didn’t have a suit. It was dragging a writhing, bulging corpse into the lock at the end of the hall.

Jan froze.

A grue?

Every legend of haunted derelicts came back to her at once, and the vacuum-silence and swirling mist in the darkness was suddenly more than she could bear. Stories of corpses stuck in the guns and antennae after a battle, bloating and thrashing and somehow being possessed by some nameless horror from out of the unholy emptiness between the stars, something that had ridden in on a hull and waited for a body, of a hunger for still-warm flesh and blood -

Stop it, Jan! Get hold of yourself! You’re a Federal Marine. That’s madness!

But there it was. She had seen it with her own eyes, pulling a body through a lock to do who knew what to it on the other side.

No. I panicked, misinterpreted what I saw.

“Video playback of the last minute.”

Her HUD opaqued and then replaced the live augmentation feed with the recorded video from sixty seconds ago. She had been advancing, looking down at the floor, up at the wall, left to the doorway, every direction but down the hall where it must have already been dragging the body. She saw the muzzle of the weapon swing into the room, the suit lights play over everything, her HUD marking one, two, three corpses.

“Stop.” She took the time to look at the display citing body temperature as primary evidence, estimating they had been dead for several hours. They were still thrashing and twitching, visibly expanding in the vacuum, but were already dead. It was just decompression. Creepy, but explainable.

She was suddenly overcome by the intolerable feeling that the grue was standing right beside her while her screen was masked. “Visual!”

Her faceplate cleared and she jerked the rifle up, pushing the creature away - but she was alone in the corridor. The skin on her scalp tightened, her flesh prickling all along her back and arms, her stomach rolled, but she was alone. She swallowed.

“Get a grip, Wakelin.” She gripped her rifle, hefted it. She’d almost fired with no target.

She turned around, full circle; she did it again, going the other direction.

“Stop it.” She smelled her own sweat, felt it run down her nose, drip  down her lip so she could taste the salt.

“Current visual inset, 1:6. Continue playback.”

She backed into a corner of the cafeteria so that the little window showed the room in front of her, and her back wasn’t so exposed. She kept looking up, expecting something to drop on her out of the low ceiling, but forced herself to watch the playback.

Her previous viewpoint rotated and followed the icy drag trail back out through the door.

“Now,” she told herself, “we’ll see what this really is.”

The image swung up. Zoomed in. Augmented.

There it was, dragging a body from the room behind. Hairless, skin lumpy and mottled, moving with a limp and shudder. Bulging eyes wide open, but dark, featureless. Mouth open, predator’s pointed canines - too many of them. Flecks of blood still dripping amid a sheen of foam. Swollen tongue darting out and back in again as it stared at her, and kept dragging a body into the tiny rotating lock, cuddling it close so as not to lose any parts in the mechanism.

Exactly as she’d seen it the first time. No suit. No breather. Triggering the lock and disappearing from view.

It had been right there, and had worked the lock.

Her bladder decided this was a good time to use the suit’s evacuation system.