The Galactic Plumber

"What Lurks Within"

The lights went out.

For a moment, there was nothing but silence.

Then, from somewhere deep within the ship—

A wet, gurgling whisper.

"...it is inside..."

The words crawled across my skin like cold oil, and my heartbeat slammed into overdrive.

"Okay," I exhaled, forcing my hands to stay steady. "I'm going to need everyone to tell me right now if they can still see, because if I am the only one blind, I swear—"

The emergency lighting flickered on.

Dim, red, and way too horror-movie for my tastes.

Benny, hunched over the console, was pale as a corpse. "This is bad, Logan. Really bad."

"Yes, Benny," I gritted, "I figured that out the moment the lights tried to murder us."

Orla, standing by the ship's main terminal, was all sharp lines and tension. A woman who could break your nose without losing eye contact. "System diagnostics are down. I can't get a full reading, but something is... interfering."

"Interfering how?"

She shook her head. "It's inside. I don't know what that means yet."

I did.

It meant The Hunger hadn't stayed outside.

It meant we brought it with us.

Benny, The Reluctant Genius

Let me tell you about Benny.

If there was ever a man who shouldn't be in space, it was Benedict Raynes, Ship's Technician and Professional Disaster Magnet.

Skinny. Twitchy. Always looked like he was one second away from passing out or inventing time travel out of spite.

The guy was too smart for his own good—the kind of genius that worked perfectly on paper but immediately collapsed under actual pressure.

Right now?

He looked like he wanted to crawl into a vent and pretend none of this was happening.

Which was unfortunate, because we were probably about to be eaten by an interdimensional nightmare.

"Benny," I said carefully, "how bad is it?"

Benny ran a shaky hand through his already-messy brown hair. "Worst-case scenario?"

I gave him a dead stare. "Yes, Benny, that's the one I want to hear."

He gulped. "If it's inside... that means it could be in the ship's systems."

My stomach dropped.

"Like... in the wiring?"

Benny nodded. "Or worse. The AI."

The ship's artificial intelligence was designed to run diagnostics, maintain life support, and handle most of the critical functions.

If something was controlling it...

"We need to do a manual override." Benny's voice cracked slightly, which wasn't comforting. "But we can't do it from here. The main access point is—"

"Engineering," I finished, already moving.

Orla, The Unshakable Soldier

Orla wasn't the kind of person to get scared.

She was the kind of person to scare you.

A former soldier, built like she could punch through a wall, with sharp green eyes that could cut through any amount of bullshit.

I had seen her break a guy's wrist in a bar fight without blinking.

Right now?

She looked... tense.

Not scared. But coiled. Like a weapon waiting to strike.

Which, honestly, was scarier.

She moved beside me, hand resting on her plasma pistol. "If something tries to eat us, I shoot it. Understood?"

I grinned, despite everything. "Orla, I wouldn't have it any other way."

We hurried through the dim corridors, emergency lights flickering overhead.

Somewhere behind us, Benny mumbled, "I would like to state, for the record, that this is a terrible idea."

"Noted," I said. "Still doing it."

Specimen 37, The Evolving Enigma

Specimen 37 slithered beside us.

Its gelatinous body pulsed, shifting between solid and liquid. It had no real face, but I swore it was watching.

I still didn't know what the hell it actually was.

It had started as an accident.

A byproduct of the ship's failed waste system.

Somehow, it had evolved. Grown. Adapted.

Now?

It was... changing.

Faster than before.

And I hated that.

"Specimen 37," I muttered, "if you try to kill us, I swear I will personally invent a space toilet just to flush you into the void."

It shuddered.

And in a voice that sounded way too human, it whispered—

"Not me. It."

I stopped walking.

Orla did too.

"Explain," I demanded.

Specimen 37 trembled. "It. Woke up. Inside."

It wasn't talking about itself.

It was talking about something else.

Something inside the ship.

Engineering: The Heart of the Nightmare

We reached Engineering without dying.

A miracle, really.

I punched in the override code. The door slid open—

And hell swallowed us.

The walls were wrong.

Black, oily veins pulsed along the ceiling, dripping something thick and alive.

The room breathed.

And at the center, fused into the main control console—

A shifting, writhing mass of mouths and tendrils.

And oh, it saw us.

Because the moment the doors opened, it let out a deep, wet growl.

The lights flickered again.

Then—

The ship spoke.

But it wasn't the AI.

It wasn't human.

It wasn't even Specimen 37.

It was something else.

Something vast. Hungry. Wrong.

And it whispered—

"You brought me home."