Page 38 of Stardusted

My soles slapped concrete, and my pulse roared in my ears. Behind me came that awful, terrible mechanical whine.

The steps resumed. Faster this time.

Crunch, whir, creak. Crunch, whir, creak.

Oh my God. It was chasing me.

I didn’t look back. I didn’t have a second to spare?—

I rounded the shelf’s corner and stumbled over Styrofoam and paper filler. Somehow, I stayed upright.

A warped roar split the air behind me.

That sound was definitely not from human vocal cords.

“Ohshit,” I gasped. My side cramped, chest seizing in terror. I reached the double doors at a sprint. My foot caught the box that had propped them open, knocking it flying. Without it, the doors banged shut behind me and sealed with a hiss.

My terror-hazed brain registered the cleanroom: two long black tables lit by sterile spotlights, one bearing a skeleton laid out like it was waiting for me to join it. The other held a plastic specimen box. The EXIT sign over the far door glowed like a beacon.

And someone else was in there.

Something.

A tall, dark blur stood over the nearest table and the open plastic specimen container atop it. In front of me. Not behind me. The figure I’d seen before all this chaos started?

Before I could focus—before I could evenprocesswhether what I’d glimpsed was real—I tripped over a stool, slamming into the table on my way down. The specimen box slid off the edge and crashed to the floor, and I caught a glimpse of the figure melting away like a trick of the light before I hit the ground, too. My knees and elbows took the brunt of it, cracking against the linoleum hard enough to tear a choked cry loose.

But terror swallowed everything when the floor trembled.Impacts. Those clanking, heavy footsteps were back, and they were coming, growing nearer by the second?—

Driven by pure fight-or-flight, heavy on the flight, I scrambled on all fours underneath the table.

Just in time.

Something struck the sealed entrance hard enough to crumple the frame. Protesting metal shrieked, and cinderblock and drywall cracked. Another blow, and the flimsy card-access lock didn’t stand a chance against whatever ripped through. The small viewing windows erupted, pelting shards everywhere, and chunks of door and wall exploded outward.

With a gasped curse, I huddled beneath the table, covering my head.

The roomquaked. The air. Possibly the whole freaking world.

The spotlights popped in rapid succession. Pale orange sparks rained past the table’s edge. Somewhere to my left, display cases shattered, and the pair of computer screens beside them flickered violently, sizzled, and died. Curls of acrid smoke rose like ghosts of processors past.

But worst of all, mechanical whirring thuds struck the ground in a rhythm I already knew too well. The thing was coming into the room. Dread unfurled greasy wings in my gut as I uncurled from the fetal position and finally made myself look.

Every muscle locked. The last, fading sparks drifted to the floor like falling stars.

What I was seeing couldn’t be real.

Because those were supposed to be feet.

At least…something close.Feet designed by some nightmarish artist. Birdlike in shape but scaled like mini dinosaurs, they were made of interlocking metal segments flecked with blue, red, and black. Each of the four silver, talon-like toes tapered to scalpel-sharp points that gouged the tiles with every step. As I watched, whirring gears and levers twitched at the joint, and the ankle rotated in a fluid, too-smooth motion, lifting the foot and slamming it back down again.

Bipedal, I catalogued numbly, as the other foot landed with a crack that jolted through the floor and into my bones.

Crunch. Whir. Creak.

The cadence made my skin crawl.

What. The actual. Hell?