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Certainly sorant money to study what had happened, but Prax’s ouldn’t wait for hione on It hadn’t been an obsession, just a well-known conundru weightless at an unused station in ops and watched the security camera feed The creature reached out for Captain Holden, and Holden shot it and shot it and shot it Prax watched the filae from the creature’s back That was familiar, certainly It had been one of the hallan to tuically, it wasn’t very far off fros No autonoes repurposed to soasped It was odd, hearing it only through the actual air they shared and not through the comm channel It seemed intimate in a way that left hi , like his head was full of cotton ticking He recognized the sensation He was thinking so that he wasn’t yet aware of

“I’s on this crate”

The creature was at the far end of the cargo bay As Ae crate with the other Even in the poor-quality feed, Prax could see its ed to a freakish degree And yet not particularly relocated So the proto under constraints Whatever the creature was, it wasn’t doing what the Eros sao bay was unquestionably the say, but harnessed for so shifted

“No! Stop opening the daoddamn crates now”

The creature moved back to the bulkhead, near where it had first been at rest It huddled there, the wounds in its body pulsing visibly But it hadn’t settled there With the engines off-line, there wasn’t even a trace of gravity to pull it back in place If it was comfortable there, there had to be a reason

“No!” Naos by the controls Her face had an ashy color “No Look where Holden is under those crates If we go high g, it’ll break every bone in his body, even if he soht,” Amos said He sounded tired Maybe that was how he expressed sorrow “That plan’ll kill the captain It’s off the table”

“Well A high-g burn would alht now But that doesn’t necessarily take it off the table”

On the bulkhead, the creature moved It wasn’t much, but it was there Prax zoomed in on it as best he could One ers and a thumb—braced it, and the other tore at the bulkhead The first layer was fabric and insulation and it caone, the creature attacked the armored steel underneath Tiny curls of ht like little stars Noas it doing that? If it was trying to do structural dae, there was any nuh the bulkhead, trying to reach so disappeared, resolving into the i fro

“What is, Doc?” Amos asked Prax realized he ather the words that would explain what he’d seen “It’s trying to radient I mean … the version of the protoy, and so I guess it makes sense that this one would too—”

“This one?” Alex asked “What one?”

“This version I ineered to repress ed the host body at all There have to be novel constraints on it, but it still seems to need a source of radiation”

“Why, Doc?” A to be patient “Why do we think it needs radiation?”