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“What happened?” Garret asked.

“Don’t know,” Morse said.

“It was here.” Dani looked around, even up at the ceiling. No sign of it.

“What was?”

She looked back at Garret, frowning. “The monster.”

He let her go. She and Morse stayed by the door as he searched around—and came back with nothing.

“I’ll get the others,” he said, leading them back through the door. “Lock yourselves back into the room with the rest of the team, and don’t come out until we tell you.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Dani

Hours. They’d lost hours of time. She wanted to pace, to leave the room, to get the power back on, or maybe just punch a wall or scream. So much time wasted all because of that…that spinybastard.

She sat against a wall near the door, listening. Sometimes there was gunfire and sometimes it was quiet. They may never get back out there at this rate.

The others sat nearby, their suit lights and a glowstick the only things illuminating the room. They talked softly while Morse lay in a corner. She’d braved leaving the room again to grab a first aid kit with a medi-scanner to assess his injury. Based off the scanner, he only had a minor head wound. She gave him some medicine and let him rest.

She sat with them in the beginning, talking sparingly, until she eventually found herself by the door with a wrench she’d found under a seat gripped in one hand. Sheek sat near her with a knife.

Not long after they had locked themselves in the room, they caught the sound of something shuffling around outside the door. It sounded like a blade sliding against metal. Or nails grating against the walls. The crew had gone quiet then, and Dani had slipped by the door to listen closer.

“Hello?” she’d called out.

There had been no answer.

She had backed away until the shuffling stopped beside the door.

“Dani,” said Garret, from behind the door.

“Is that one of the security team?” Lex asked.

“Maybe it’s safe now,” Phen said excitedly.

“Don’t!” Dani ordered as she heard them get up behind her. “It’s not him.”

Sheek had come up beside her to stare at the door, sniffing at it. Dani turned to her. “It’snothim,” she repeated.

Sheek studied her then dipped her head. “I believe you.”

From there, they had guarded the door. The shuffling had ceased some hours ago. Her garometer had quieted some, the energy levels back down to normal, but she still couldn’t help wondering if it was close by, waiting.

Now she sat by the door, anger simmering.

Since she had nothing else she could do, she ran through the details she did know. Whatever it was, it was intelligent enough to learn the insides of their ship. It either knew or learned very quickly how to disable the power and the systems. It could mimic voices, but it didn’t know their language, hence why it only said her name or repeated her words. It must have heard her and Garret speaking before to learn what it did. It probably knew a lot about the workings of the city. It could move quietly and not be seen, and she suspected it could somehow hide its energy levels or make them seem weaker or it was just very goodat keeping far enough from the radius of her garometer’s reach to mess with the data.

It was smart. Possibly smarter than them. That was certain.

There was only one thing that puzzled her. It could have killed her and her crew in an instant. Her, multiple times, and Morse that time in the engine room. But it hadn’t. The only explanation she had for that was it liked to play with its food, and it wanted to enjoy them slowly.

The memory of its tongues on her neck certainly made that suspicion noteworthy. She shuddered just remembering it. She also didn’t like thinking about how it had pinned her and how her whole body was throbbing as Garret brought her back to the room and the adrenaline wore off. Must have just been a side effect of the insane terror coursing through her veins.

No. She was done being messed with by this creepy sonofabitch.