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Holden checked his air supply and saw that he had burned nearly half of it He was rapidly approaching the point of no return But soht his ear It was the way he said galley

“Is there soalley?”

Larson said, “I’ so to call people on the co do location checks on people I knew After a while, no alley’”

“So,” Holden said “There ht be upwards of a thousand infected Navy people cra barely visible in his environment suit “Maybe the monster killed them and put them there”

“Oh, I think that’s exactly what happened,” Holden said, taking out his gun and working the slide to chamber a round “But I seriously doubt they stayed dead”

Before Larson could ask what he meant, Holden had his suit unlock the hatch “When I open this door, you head to the elevator as fast as you can I’ll be right behind you Don’t stop no et me to that CIC Are we clear?”

Larson nodded inside his hel, one hand on the hatch, the other holding his gun When he hit three, he shoved the hatch open Larson put his feet against a bulkhead and pushed off down the corridor on the other side

Tiny blue flickers floated in the air around thehts Miller had reported when he was on Eros the second time The time he didn’t come back from The fireflies were here now too

At the end of the corridor, Holden could see the elevator door He began clunetic boots When Larson was halfway down the corridor, he passed an open hatch

The young sailor started screa

Holden ran as fast as the cluo Larson kept flying down the corridor, but he was screa to swi crawled out of it and into his path At first he thought it was the kind of vomit zombie he’d run into on Eros It moved slowly, and the front of its Navy uniform was covered in brown voloith a faint inner blue And there was an intelligence in them the Eros zombies hadn’t had

The protomolecule had learned some lessons on Eros This was the new, improved version of the vo to do Without slowing his pace, he raised his pistol and shot it in the head To his relief, the light went out of its eyes, and it spun away frooo in an arc as it rotated When he passed the open hatch, he risked a glance inside