Vasti woke to a star-shattering howl.

Something was wrong.

The thought pervaded her mind like an insect, its legs sticking in every crevice.

Something was wrong. Something was wrong.

She looked out the window. Her stomach lurched.

The howling had stopped. It was quiet now, too quiet for a space station packed with restless crewmen.

She threw a cloak on and pushed the door open, her mind scuttling with insect legs.

The hallway was empty. She knocked on Captain Ceres's door, but there was no answer. The mess hall was empty too.

Still avoiding the window, Vasti hurried to the docking bay.

Her worst fears were confirmed.

The Cypod was gone.

*

The shuttle door slammed shut. Vasti took the helm, tentacles bristling.

She didn't know what she was going to do when she got there. But she had to get there. Phaedra was out there, Amphibius help her.

Of course Ceres had been lying. How could she have been so naive? He was never going to inform her of the decision before taking off. He'd probably contacted Commander Pallades last night, and left with the Cypod crew while Vasti was still in her immersion pod. She was only a lowly caretaker to him. He didn't have to keep promises to her. And Commander Pallades didn't care any more for her ocean-blooming sentiments than Captain Ceres did.

It was a good thing Vasti had acted quickly. She'd taken the Cypod's weapons offline last night. If there was one thing she'd learned from life, it was to plant your coral early. Don't wait for the suckerfish to move in first.

When she neared the debris field, the air in her gills froze solid. She knew what she'd find, she'd seen it from the window at the station, but still. She'd hoped she was mistaken. She'd hoped it was some cruel trick of the space morning, light working in strange ways in this nest of darkness.

She'd hoped in vain.

Only a few broken shards of crystal remained, scattered throughout the once-luminous field.

They were fireless.

Cold.

Fists of blackness tore at their insides. And the blackness crawled. Winged insects, like the one Phaedra had smiled at and called her soul, writhed like possessed shadows. They were not bright blue, but black, blacker than the deepest hole in space.

"Phaedra?"

The maimed crystals didn't answer.

Vasti had to find Phaedra. The Cypod couldn't fire, thanks to her sabotage last night, but they could still do damage to the ethereal entity. It was bad enough that they'd drained the stones, leaving Phaedra with nothing to sustain herself with.

The Cypod was nowhere in sight. Surely it couldn't have reached Vortexia already. There was still time to salvage the stones.

Vasti scoured the area, but couldn't locate Phaedra.

The Cypod, she did locate.

She wished she hadn't.

Sitting silently in space like the corpse of some giant metal creature, the Cypod was no more. The same fist of blackness that had torn the fire from the stones had punched into the Cypod's gut, leaving a rotting hole that oozed black pus. And the winged insects, black as creeping death, were everywhere.

Captain Ceres, all the men on board...Vasti's mind couldn't digest it. How could they all be dead? How? Why?

She didn't – couldn't – understand. Was Phaedra also...? She had to return to the station. She had to speak to Commander Pallades.

Pallades was waiting for her on the station's big screen. Vasti opened her mouth to let out the rush of words she'd been holding in, but Pallades cut her off.

"What do you have to say for yourself, Caretaker?" He spat the last word out as if it were sea glass he'd accidentally swallowed.

"Commander, the captain...the Cypod...I found...they're dead. They're all dead."

The commander was silent. When he finally spoke, his voice was venomously soft. "I know that, Caretaker. I watched them die."

It was Vasti's turn to be silent. What horror had befallen the Cypod? Was it still out there, waiting to breathe death over the rest of them?

"There was a two-way transmission open between myself and Captain Ceres for the duration of the journey," the commander continued quietly. "I had full visuals. Do you know what it was they saw last?"

Vasti's tentacles prickled.

"It was a female with stardust for hair and water falling from her hips. Alone in space. No vessel, no bubble helmet. Her eyes were black insects."

"No, that's not right," Vasti said without thinking. "Her eyes were blue."

Commander Pallades only gave her a cold look. "Her skin was crumbling and something black was writhing in her veins. She was decaying."

No, Vasti thought. She was dying. The stones were gone, and she was dying.

"The very space around her was disappearing. Its fabric was being sucked into a vortex in her abdomen, along with asteroids and other space matter. Rotting black holes had started to appear in the Cypod's hull. They were full of insects."

Vasti didn't know if she was getting enough air. She couldn't be, because her lungs has frozen over and her gills felt like they were full of noxious gas. She didn't want to hear what came next.

"Of course, the appropriate response was to fire in self-defense before the entire ship was destroyed. But you see, when they tried to fire, something very curious happened. Do you know what happened, Caretaker?"

Vasti couldn't move to shake her head. Dread locked her muscles in place.

"Nothing," the commander answered his own question. "Nothing happened. You see, for some strange reason, their weapons system was offline."

No.

"Someone had tampered with the ship –"

No.

" – and in their final moments, the Cypod crew were defenseless. They could only scream as a rotting blackness tore through the ship, stealing their faces and cremating their bodies."

No.

This was not what was supposed to happen. Vasti acted to preserve life, not take it away. They were dead because of her. An entire ship full of people, dead because of her.

No, no, no.

"Most would assume a mere caretaker such as yourself couldn't pull off such a stunt, but I know better. You've been meddling since the day you washed onshore."

Yes.

She was a killer.

She'd killed them, all to save a woman who would die anyway. If she hadn't sabotaged the ship, at least the Vortexians might have survived. Thanks to her, they died helpless.

"So I repeat, Commander – what do you have to say for yourself?"

Nothing.

She had nothing to say for herself.

The rest of the conversation passed by like the memory of a nightmare. Her mind was still miles away in space, at the site of the Cypod's last battle.

She did what she knew to be right. Is this what right looked like? A ship, rotting in space?

Should she have left Phaedra defenseless instead?

She wouldn't fight her own execution, if that's what they gave her. She couldn't outrun them, not in a shuttle, and she had no desire to. She did what she knew to be right, and swathes of people died as a result. Maybe she didn't know what was right after all.

She took the shuttle back to Vortexia, just as Commander Pallades planned, resigned to her fate.

But when she got there, Vortexia looked the same as the Cypod.

Her home was gone.