The EES Vas Fata left the stardock at 14:00, precisely on schedule. The luxury liner was set to bypass the intrasol waygates and go the long way from Mars to Jupiter, a two-week trip. Meanwhile, the guests would be pampered and treated to beautiful vistas of stars, plied with drinks and exotic cuisine from the ship's excellent culinary team, and mingle. It was supposed to be romantic, exciting, a place to meet potential lovers in the same economic strata to afford such an exotic cruise. It was an exclusive event. The liner held only three hundred people and ninety crew, most of whom were service staff. The passengers weren't allowed weapons, communication devices, or synthetic servants. In exchange, they would experience pure, relaxed detachment from all distractions from outside the ship.

The crew turned taciturn and tense on day three. They kept up their smiles and continued pouring the alcohol, but the more observant passengers picked up on it quickly. Something had gone wrong, and not in a way that the crew was used to. 

The ship normally kept a day/night schedule on an eighteen/eight rotation, the lights dimming for intimate rendezvous and the noise cancelers cranking up to tighten the spaces. On day five, that ended. Passengers were still informed via intercom by the captain that it was still 'night' at the appropriate time and that they should go back to their cabins, but the lights didn't dim. In fact, the passengers who insisted on taking 'midnight strolls' were treated brusquely by six-deep armed patrols with bright lights. The smell of ozone that accompanied D-HEWs on full dial became ubiquitous in the corridors even when the guards weren't present.

Whispers began on day eight when the midnight announcement came not from the captain, but from the first mate. Her voice was rough and unmistakable, she'd given the safety lecture before the cruise had started.

Day nine brought the crackdowns. Passengers were no longer allowed out of their beds. The entitled gentry among the passengers were understandably rankled by the restrictions, but they neared a state of mutiny when Turgen Lamora defied the curfew to raid the bedroom of one of his many paramours. He appeared in the lights of a search party and they gave him a warning to stop at the same time as opening fire. What the D-HEW electrolasers didn't shred was cooked almost beyond recognition. The event was impossible to cover up, and the passengers were enraged. Some thought perhaps a mutiny had taken over the ship, that they were all hostages but no demands were made. More observant passengers understood: the crew was terrified.

On day ten, the explosion blew out the engine, setting the EES Vas Fata adrift in space. What's worse, it was the passengers who responded to the fire, putting it out. They searched for the engineering crew and found most of the second and third shift still in their berthing. Some were still in their bunks, most had awakened and attempted to fight or flee. All had been torn apart as if a wild animal were loose on the ship. The passengers were gathered in the ballroom for an announcement.

The first mate addressed them. "It was corporate policy to maintain the mood of the passengers as long as possible," she announced without further preamble. "That is over, for obvious reasons. Something is loose on the ship. We thought one of the passengers might have smuggled an exotic pet on board, but it's too smart for that. We don't know what it is, we only know that it's intelligent, deadly, and malicious."

A slow murmur rippled through the crowd. Some thought it was a joke. Most felt the growing dread crest.

"The good news is that we've been dark eight days without communications, which means that we're five days into the rescue. Eclipse Entertainment will have sent another vessel to pick us up. Unfortunately, this vessel will have been sent from their headquarters on Terra. It will be at least a week before they arrive, likely longer. I'm afraid we were exceeding maximum safe speed when the sabotage occurred, so we are currently tumbling in a polar-north transit."

The passengers erupted into rage. How are they supposed to live for more than a week with a monster on board? The security staff ticked the dials of their D-HEWs up, the menacing hums caused a restless silence to spread through the crowd.

"Frankly, you aren't going to cohabit with the... the monster." The first mate said, smiling wistfully. "Not all of you, anyway. Our polar-north vector is too fast, one-point-two megagress. We'll be outside of the ecliptic plane in three or four days. Our chances of being rescued before something happens become slim by then. After two weeks if they don't find us... basically impossible."

Her hand shot up to silence another wave of horrified shouting. "The rescue pods are designed to navigate to the ecliptic to be easier to discover. There are sixty-five pods, six to a pod. We'll assign one crewman to each. Listen to them. They know what they're about. There is a place for everyone, so long as we keep order. Now please... don't panic, gather your essential belongings and report to your assigned rescue pods in an orderly fashion."

What came next was not orderly. It was, however, somewhat fashionable, with patricians and new-money corporates lugging armloads of expensive clothing, dazzling tech, and luggage in a riot of color and panic. The crew gave up on enforcing efficiency and focused instead on preventing any trampling deaths.

Nobody could say when the rumor started, but it exploded through the passengers. Someone, somewhere, clocked the subtext in the first mate's words. 'Not all of you, anyway,' she'd said. The monster was expected to make it into one of the rescue pods. New-money and old both became animals fighting for survival.

Some of the passengers had the skills to override the protocols and launch early, leaving them half-filled. Fights broke out. Anyone deemed to be acting suspiciously was targeted. A man was killed by four others, who were themselves gunned down without mercy by security.

Several officers were ambushed for their weapons. The ship's computer, meanwhile, suffered a catastrophic failure as another explosion rocked the ship from deep within.

Then the assignments vanished, and order with them.

That's when pod number fifty-five was boarded. There was no telling who was supposed to be on it. The first aboard was Terrent Veylan, a minor accountant for House Veylan's financial arm. He was an unassuming Cerean, with hooded eyes and a surfer’s build, skin the warm brown of Ceres’ coastal colonies. He wore a simple gray tunic slashed with green and yellow hashes on the sleeves and trousers. He'd had little attachment to his things, so he had reported to the rescue pods directly from the announcement.

The second was Nigel Hexum, sales representative for Nexus Cybernetics, was more machine than man—showcasing the latest in the company’s SleekFit line. The white glossy bioplastic was on full display, interrupted only by a pair of white silk shorts. He carried little more than Terrent did: a suitcase holding some valuable paperwork giving him the right to use the display cybernetics in case a retrieval surgeon were to take an interest.

The third was a bulky voidster with salt-and-pepper hair named Daman Greeling. He was an asteroid miner and despite his supervisory role, he was made up of thick bones and slabs of muscle. He had a blunt face and a perpetual scowl, and he brought a weapon that he'd beaten a security officer for—a D-HEW pistol. Its presence made the others nervous—but comforted them as well. A man with a gun was a known danger; the monster was not.

The fourth was a Uranian woman with platinum hair, a pale complexion, and nervous pink eyes. Her silvery tunic hung torn at one sleeve, an ugly bruise blooming beneath it. She introduced herself to the others as Fedirya Devanyan, station architect for AstraTech Industries.

That's when the riot started in the corridor outside. Fedirya didn't wait for the others. She began tapping into the pod's interface, jacking straight through the meager firewalls.

Her movements became shaky and uncertain as a security officer was thrown to the ground just outside, his skull the wrong shape. A glass bottle shattered; hissing fluid splashed across the deck plates.

A dark-skinned Terran forced his way into the pod despite the press of bodies outside, slamming the door closed on a reaching arm. The door lock gave a reassuring chirp as it locked, trading the din for silence. The arm dropped to the ground, limp, as the security door severed it. Fedirya screamed and fell away from it, unused to gore and violence. The forced restart she’d triggered cycled the door again, revealing not a crowd but emptiness.

Instead, bodies were being sucked to port. A breach occurred and the corridor was venting into open air. Those bodies that were still alive tried to scream, but the whistle and the rapidly lowering air pressure ate those cries. The drop in pressure was immediately debilitating, and the passengers that had made it on the rescue pod could barely brace themselves before the vacuum took them. Sound had difficulty traveling the thin air, but the security door still managed one heavy, final thump.

When they awoke, they were underway. Fedirya was where she had fallen, flat on her back before the interface console. Daman was leaning against the port bulkhead, as far from the hatch as possible, stirring awake. Nigel had wedged himself in the toilet booth and slammed the door to avoid being sucked into space. Terrent had buckled himself into a crash seat. The Terran man was in the corner of the pod to the left of the door. He'd wrapped himself in a tangle of cargo webbing. Most strangely, there was a Neptunian woman lying face down in the middle of the pod. She was dressed in the blue jumpsuit of the engineering crew of the EES Vas Fata. 

Slowly, she rolled onto her back with a groan, sitting up. She looked around, and laughed in relief. Her eyes were the blue-orange of a kerosene flame, and the constellation of black freckles on her cheeks stood out bold against her pale skin. "That... was close."

"What happened?" Nigel demanded, pulling open the toilet booth and stepping into the main habitat. "I thought we were about to die..."

The Neptunian grinned, combing her fingernails through her black hair. "We were. I got lucky and bounced off a passenger in the chaos, got knocked in here. I guess we all got lucky that happened, because I had authorization to launch." She stood up and stretched, helping Fedirya to her feet and looking over the rest of them. Her eyes lingered on Daman's weapon a little longer than anything else, but she shrugged and moved on. "I think we're officially survivors. Congratulations, folks."

"How much air do we have?" Terrent asked, fumbling with his seatbelt. The seven-point harness was complicated, and he'd buckled it incorrectly so it was wedged shut. "Are we going to make it until rescue?" Nigel gripped the belt and tore it free for him with a little too much force, taking a chunk of the mechanism with it.

Fedirya checked the interface. She sighed. "The interface cracked."

"Don't worry about that," the Neptunian waved. "The Fata was expense incarnate. Hey, computer? Hologram, please."

A shimmering orb appeared in the center of the main habitat. It chirped helpfully, "Greetings and congratulations on your survival, passengers. I am the Eclipse Entertainment Rescue Pod Synthetic Intelligence, but I respond to 'Computer,' 'Help,' and ERPSI. How may I make your survival more comfortable?" Its voice echoed from the intercom, tinny and androgynous. 

"How's the air and power?"

"Main and backup tanks were expended to facilitate the processors. Processor function within acceptable margins. Quantum-Matrix Batteries at full power output."

The Neptunian nodded. "See? As long as we have power, we have air. Those QMBs are J-grade. You'll die of old age before you suffocate. Are we on track for the ecliptic?"

The computer chirruped a happy sound, indicating the affirmative. "Time to optimal rescue zone: eighty-one hours."

The Terran finished extracting himself from the cargo webbing. "How long will the food last?"

The Neptunian grinned. "That depends on how picky you are. We've got nutrient wafers for a few months and some bottles of C-rat pills that'll last for a year or two, if you don't mind hallucinations. Anyway, the toilet is full-organic recycling that'll pop out more nutrient wafers. That's so you don't lose much in each meal cycle. It's fine, if you don't think about it. Same with the water. We'll be okay." She looked at all of them. "Seriously. We're gonna make it, now. The worst is over. Now the biggest hassle is boredom. I'm Gladys Makhaira, engineer working for Eclipse Entertainment. You are?"

The Terran sighed, looking at everyone and tugging his red jumpsuit back into place. "Richerd. Richerd Prinn. I'm a tech for House Moravec. This was... this was just supposed to be a little bonus for completing a project for the Mercury labs. What a nightmare."

The others introduced themselves one by one, then settled in. Restless, Terrent explored what would be their new home-away-from-home for the next few weeks. He reported back, "You're right, Gladys. This has to be the most expensive rescue pod I've ever been in. Three sleeping pods, a separate bathroom with a shower, pretty good. Where are the controls or telemetry display?"

She shook her head, closing her eyes with a little half-smile. She was sitting on the floor, using a crash seat at her back as a pillow. "Doesn't work like that. This isn't a ship, it's a rescue pod. I know some of the cheap ones make you pilot it yourself but the company built these for a bunch of useless-money types. No offense. There's no telemetry access, no windows, no piloting. Just a Synthetic Intelligence that gets us to the ecliptic and parks. On the upside, there's a medical bed in the wall over there, just press the button and it'll come out. Does all the doctoring for you, if you need it to. The sleeping pods are a little cozy, but there's two racks in each. The shower's hot and cold, whatever you want, and the SI is equipped with a full library of music from Eclipse Entertainment's vast databases. Even in a disaster, Eclipse Entertainment wants good reviews."

"Alright, enough with the whistling-past-the-graveyard," Daman huffed, finally. "We need to address the real concern. How do we know that any of us are who we say we are? One of you could be a monster. What do we know about this thing?"

"Are you really going to try to crank up the paranoia right now?" Terrent prodded, gently. "That seems like a good way for us to all lynch each other. The chances that we wound up with the creature or killer or whatever it was on this pod specifically have to be pretty low. Honestly, the way you're holding that weapon scares me more. There's a very good chance you'll shoot one of us unless you put it under lock and key."

Daman's eyes narrowed. "Did you see the bodies? The engineers in their bunks? Whatever did that tore them apart, but some of the bodies were near the door. They trusted the monster when they let it in." The pod seemed smaller for a moment, the air heavier.

Silence pooled for a moment before Gladys spoke up. "It's a ghoul," she said. "The monster."

"What?" Nigel scoffed. "That's not... they aren't real."

"Taphonoid Anastromorph Subsapiens," Gladys answered with a shrug. "TAS, monster, call it whatever you want. That's what it was. Is, probably."

"How do you know?" Fedirya asked, gently. "What makes you sure?"

"The whole crew knew, eventually. We figured it out day six, maybe seven. There was a House Volkert liaison among the passengers that told us she saw the signs. Told us what to watch out for. Sure enough, we found all of it. Every bite mark, every victim. Three or four days before that, there was a murder." She opened her eyes, finally, and held a haunted expression. "It started with the bosun. He didn't show up for a shift change so we went looking for him. We thought a guest had smuggled a gorilla or a pet tiger at first, it just didn't seem like something a human-even an augmented one-could do."

Daman prodded, "What made you change your mind? Just the guy from House Volkert? They're always talking creepy."

"No, it's more complicated than that. The next attack was our chief. The engineering chief, I mean. He was killed the same way but his cabin was next to the engine, lots of noise. The ghoul wasn't worried about being heard so it took its time with him."

Nigel put his hand over his mouth. If his complexion wasn't regulated by machine, he'd have paled.

She continued, "He was half-eaten before he died, then posed afterward. Riveted to the bulkhead by his own stretched and flayed skin, words and symbols scrawled on every surface in his blood. Almost like the thing wanted to make sure we didn't blame it on an animal. It wanted us to know we were being hunted by a monster."

Fedirya's voice cut through, despite her quiet tone. "And you don't think it was just a serial killer? Or... or a terrorist or something?"

Gladys sighed. "Security chief thought so. He said it looked like some Hellfire Cabal nonsense. Which would bring its own problems because the Cabal doesn't do attacks as individuals. It would mean that several terrorists had gotten through security checks, which would be a huge problem. I guess good on him for assuming it was his own failure and owning up to it."

Daman nodded, holding his purloined gun tighter for comfort and eyeing the others.

"Anyway, he was next, and that's what convinced us that we couldn't be dealing with a human." She grimaced, then explained, "Chief Brigham was overqualified. He'd been a raider for twenty-some-odd years enforcing Eclipse Entertainment's copyright claims. He was a tough old cyborg, with military hardware and the training and experience to use it. The thing took him by surprise, but he'd put up a fight anyway. When we found him, it had separated his cybernetic limbs from the meat, then removed his skull. Not head; the gooey parts were still there. Just the skull. We never did find it."

Fedirya cursed under her breath, hugging herself where she sat. "That's horrible! Why do you think it wanted the skull?"

Gladys grinned ruefully. "I asked the Volkert rep that. You don't want to know."

"What was next?" Nigel urged. He'd begun a slow, rhythmic drumming of his plastic-encased fingers on the hard casing over his thigh.

"Next was the Volkert rep. She saw the panic in the crew and started digging. She found some 'signs of ghoul activity.' Specifically, subspace contamination where the thing would come and go." She shivered. "There's a lot of clutter in human space, and ghouls are relatively rare compared to things like murderers or corporate overreach. Most people just don't have the bandwidth to look into it unless they have a special interest. Ghouls apparently access subspace as a matter of their biology. I didn't quite catch all of it, but they can slip in and out of realspace like the galaxy's most horrifying ambush predator, so long as the 'way has been prepared.' So this thing... it didn't have to slip past security. Someone on board just had to 'prepare' for it, invite it in. Then it could come in any time it wanted and leave just as easily."

"So it could show up here?" Terrent asked, with rising alarm.

"Not unless there was a gruesome murder in here at some point," Gladys assured him. "Something about the emotional resonance and the subspace shadows, so on. And apparently it has to be done after an extended period of paranoia and terror or something..." Gladys glanced at the others. "Which means I think I know when the pathways were introduced on the Vas Fata. There was a lunatic two voyages ago, would have been about three years now? He killed three passengers. The first was a message, which got everyone scared. The second was very, very public. And the third we didn't even find until we'd docked, it was in the cargo hold in an isolated corner. That's right around where the Volkert rep said she found the worst of the subspace contamination."

There was a stunned silence, but also a sense of relief. The corporate blue-light flickered slightly from a minor power fluctuation. Terrent put a voice to the thought they all had. "Well. I'm sure we'd know about it if there had been a 'gruesome murder' on the rescue pods. Maybe that thing got blown up with the ship. Or it's gone back to Hell where it belongs."

"At least it was a singles cruise," Fedirya noted. "No kids on board. Why do you think a... an anastromorph would target the ship? Do they just attack randomly like that? I really don't know much about them."

Richerd broke his long silence, scratching at his cheek. "Depends. Some of them are free-range, naturally occurring, but in Redspace they're low on the pyramid. Get bullied by the big entities as assets. Even here in Realspace they get snatched up. Not that they mind, the bullying's more of a tradition. They like serving. At least they like what they usually get ordered to do. People don't enslave ghouls just to make them do the accounting."

Daman glared at him, the gun twitching in his hands. "How do you know so much?"

Richerd raised his hands defensively, eyeing the gun. "I don't know! I just saw a docustream on it at one point! Had a bit of a passing interest!" Then, he gestured frantically at Gladys. "You didn't ask why she knew what she knew!"

"She said why she knew it," Daman growled, rising to his feet. He clicked the D-HEW's dial up further. "That docustream. It tell you how to identify a ghoul?"

"Uh... I think so?" Richerd's leg began to frantically bounce. "Uh... dissection! They're not right on the inside, they've got... fungal growths or crystallized cells and..."

"Oh good," Terrent chuckled. "You volunteer? I'll make sure to mention that you're exonerated in your obituary."

Richerd looked around, then brightened up. "The medical bed! It could do a scan, tell us what's inside!"

"No good," Gladys interjected. "Medical confidentiality. The SI on the bed would rather purge its entire databank than reveal medical information. Remember that this pod was designed for the wealthy and the single. Can't have anyone finding out about those ultra-wealthy venereal diseases floating around. That would be scandalous."

"Isn't 'venereal disease' a little intolerant?" Nigel complained. "They don't all originate on Venus, after all."

"Not intolerant," Gladys argued. "Old."

"Lots of old things are intolerant," Nigel pushed.

The Neptunian woman chuckled. "You would know, Sparky."  

"That's uncalled for!" the cyborg shouted, jumping to his feet.

"Sit down!" Daman barked, raising the D-HEW.

The comms crackled to life as ERPSI played soothing instrumentals to calm the tension.

Gladys rolled her eyes. "It won't work. I let you think it would because it seemed to make you feel better, but all security weapons have a DNA lock. It won't fire unless you're registered security." She slowly got to her feet. The pod's lights buzzed once, faintly. She eyed Nigel reproachfully.

"That's barrelslop." Daman scowled before continuing. "I watched a man fire one he'd just taken from a guard. That's where I got the idea."

"Probably still had the guard's blood on his hands. Biometric spoofing can happen naturally if the blood's fresh enough." Gladys watched with satisfaction as Nigel sat down. Then, she accused, "How fresh is the blood on your hands, killer?"

Daman glanced at his hand, a bolt of uncertainty shooting through him. While he was distracted, Gladys rushed across the habitat, fist raised. The air crackled. Daman flinched. A loose blue electric charge blasted from the weapon on maximum setting. The electron stream pierced through Gladys below her heart, and she spasmed painfully before tumbling down. The electric panel on the wall behind her erupted into sparks. The hum of the air recycler faded into silence. The whole pod shuddered, ERPSI squealed, and the lights went out.

There were screams, shouts of anger and alarm, and the noise of scuffling. When the initial panic died down, there was suddenly another cry. This wail was in agony as the screamer's artificial vocal cords stretched into a digital buzz, then cut them off entirely.

Everything fell silent except for panicked breathing. The dark was absolute. Even the maneuvering jets had died, and there was no hiss of the atmospheric processors. A cloying ozone stink proliferated the pod.

Then, the atmospheric processors coughed back to life. The jets sputtered, but resumed their hum. ERPSI's voice chirped, "Power fluctuation detected. Please remain calm." The lights flickered back on with a buzz.

The passengers peeked from their various hiding places, faces shocked and grim. Gladys lay face down in the center of the habitat in a pool of blood, a hole burned through her. Nigel's body was slumped where he'd been sitting, while his head had been torn from his body and thrown across the pod. The chest plating was torn open, revealing more cybernetics underneath.

Terrent and Richerd had managed to dive into the same sleeping pod, and were scrambling with each other to be the first out. Daman was pale and shocked, staring at the weapon in his hand. Then, he looked at his shaking palm, where a dark smear of the gun's previous owner still lingered. Fedirya was by the damaged panel, clicking the ruined casing back into place more from habit than from any utility it might still have as a shield for its components. Her repairs had been quick-and-dirty, but they had clearly worked.

They all took in the horrifying tableau in silence for several long minutes. Terrent turned to address Daman, but his first words were interrupted by Fedirya pitching forward and dry heaving noisily between gulps of air. They watched, numb, until she recovered and wiped her mouth.

Terrent turned back to Daman, trying to keep his voice calm and soothing. The tone was not unlike someone trying to talk an angry dog out of biting. "So... Daman, I think we can safely say that the gun is more trouble than it's worth..."

The miner shook his head, jaw clenching. "What the Hell are you talking about!?" he demanded.

"You've killed two people, Daman," Terrent intoned, voice still patient and light. "I don't blame you, there was confusion and-"

"-I didn't kill Nigel, idiot! The thing is here! It's one of you! If you think I'm giving up..." His eyes narrowed and he stood up, abruptly. "Why are you trying to disarm me, eh? Want me vulnerable, ready for the feast!?"

Terrent backed away, raising his hands in surrender. "Hey... The only one of us that's done any killing at all is you. I think maybe we should vote on who gets the gun?"

Richerd knelt by Nigel's body, peering at the rent cybernetics of his neck. "I don't think Daman killed Nigel."

Terrent glanced back at him, confusion tinging his voice. "What do you mean?"

"Nigel wasn't shot. His head was ripped off. By something... strong."

Terrent sucked in breath, turning back to Daman. Then noted in a quiet voice, "That doesn't mean that it wasn't Daman."

The implication hung in the air for several heartbeats before it got through to Daman. "What?! You think I'm the monster?! No! I have the gun, idiot! I have the gun, why would I need the gun if I was the monster?"

Fedirya's voice was quiet and thoughtful, like she was working through a puzzle. "Gladys told us. The monster needs us scared, paranoid. For an 'extended period' or something, right? So... it could be you. Maintain control, keep us confused and scared. Then, one... um... 'gruesome murder' later and the ghoul gets to go home to subspace?" Daman's eyes—and gun—swiveled to her, and she squeaked and raised her hands, clarifying herself. "Not that I'm saying that's what's happening, I'm just saying... I mean, you asked why the ghoul might want the gun..."

"Did you kill the security officer for that weapon?" Terrent asked, gently. Richerd stood up and moved behind his right shoulder in support.

"I..." Daman started, then huffed in frustration. "I don't know. I hit him. So... probably. I hit him with a pipe. He was unconscious, probably still was when the ship... if the ship exploded." He looked around, sucking his teeth nervously. "It was him or me. I needed a gun, because there was a monster. He... for all I knew, it could have been him, watching us stumble around like cats in a house fire!"

"Hypothetically being a monster doesn't justify random acts of murder," Terrent insisted, holding out his hand for the weapon. "At this close range, I don't think that weapon is going to do any of us any good."

Richerd piped up behind him. "He's right. A ghoul can take a full blast of a D-HEW and keep going. That was in the docustream. They're tough, they don't feel pain, not really. They're strong, and they're mean. You can get a shot off, but you won't kill it. You've got to decapitate it or use fire."

"D-HEWs have disintegrate," Daman argued, his face darkening. "Surely that would do it."

"That's for the full ten on the dial," Terrent insisted. "That means carbines and rifles. You've got a pistol, the dial only goes up to five at the most. Enough to kill Gladys. Not enough to kill that."

Daman's hand wavered as he looked down at the Cerean. This close, he was an absolute ogre next to the smaller man. He glanced at the weapon's dial and saw that Terrent was right, it only went up to five. "How do you know so much about guns? You some kind of commando?"

Terrent laughed. "No, an accountant. Most accountants and bankers on Ceres know how to use a D-HEW. My world is the banking and financial center of all human space. You think there aren't heists?"

Reluctantly, Daman handed the weapon over to the smaller man. Flashing a grateful smile that didn't reach his eyes, Terrent thumbed a catch near the trigger guard and separated the upper receiver from the lower. He then walked over to the recycler and dumped them in separately. "There. Now at least we won't be fighting over that." Several of the survivors gasped, but it was done.

A grim silence followed as the four survivors sat as far apart as they could manage, eyeing each other. Eventually, it was Terrent that broke the silence. "Richerd, are you sure that Nigel wasn't killed by the D-HEW? I swore I saw two flashes."

It was Fedirya that answered. "The second flash was the panel. The electrolaser caused a short between the navigation and the life support. It was an extremely unlucky shot." 

"Great," Richerd moaned. "So one of you really is the monster."

"You could be, too!" Daman growled. 

"Well," Richerd answered, thinking, "No, I really couldn't. I don't know how to prove it to you but I know I'm not a ghoul. So it's one of you."

"It's going to be weeks," Terrent mused, looking at the bodies. "We're going to have to do something about them."

"The SI will have recorded everything," Fedirya sighed. "Mister Greeling is probably going to be investigated for murder, which means that moving them would be tampering."

"It wasn't my fault!" Daman exploded, jumping to his feet. His face turning almost purple with rage. "It was... She told me it wouldn't fire!"

Terrent glanced at the smear on Daman's hand. "Not unless you had a guard's blood on your hands," Terrent noted, quietly. "Which you do."

Daman glanced toward the recycler, longing flickering across his face.

"Didn't do us any good," Terrent answered, sitting carefully. The de-escalation worked, and Daman sat down, face going from his angry flush to a shaky, sickly gray. "Seems like a design flaw, anyway. You can't use the gun unless you get the owner's blood on your hands, then it's free-fire? Stupid." He eyed the bodies. "I don't look forward to the smell. Isn't there anything we can do?"

"Only way to get rid of them that I can see would be to stuff them into the recycler," Richerd observed. "But then we'd be eating them if we run out of nutrient wafers before rescue. Call me weak, but that's not something I think I can do." He looked around, chewing his lip. "So how do we tell?"

"Tell what?" Terrent asked, still eyeing the bodies.

"Which one of us is the monster?" Richerd insisted. "Because honestly the two I would have considered the most suspicious are dead, now."

"How was the cyborg suspicious?" Fedirya asked, curiously. "Aren't anastromorphs usually flesh and blood?"

"Yeah," Richerd answered, crossing his arms and plucking at his lower lip. "But they're smart. I was working it all out before... well. Before they died. See, if a ghoul wanted to blend in but they have all these abilities, strength, speed, pain tolerance, whatever... If they wanted to blend in it'd be easier if they had an excuse for that stuff, right? So I thought 'hey, maybe Mister Hexum bolted bioplastic on to make it look like he was a cyborg' but... as you can see, didn't work out that way."

"This is good, though," Terrent mused. "No, really. Maybe we think of some psychological profile? Figure out what a ghoul would do?"

Daman barked out a humorless laugh around gritted teeth. "Only two people here that know squat about ghouls is Richerd, who's probably a ghoul, and Gladys, who's dead. How do we trust anything we come up with?"

Fedirya stood up and started pacing, her mind racing. "What we need is a test, like the FAICAs have."

"The robot hunters?" Daman asked, confused. "What good would that do?"

She turned to the others, hands on her hips. "It's not a robot test, not really. It's an inhumanity test. An imposter test. That's why it doesn't really work as well on true AIs, just synthetics who try to be people. The test uses psychological pressure in absurd situations because the program can't actually gauge organically what sort of reaction a human would have. So over the course of the test they inevitably over- or underreact. They can't help it because they don't actually feel anything at all, not like a human does. So when they're presented with something for which there's no frame of reference, they just... don't know how they're supposed to behave."

"You think ghouls wouldn't be able to think like humans?" Terrent asked, carefully working through the concept. "Didn't they use to be human?"

"No," Richerd answered excitedly before Fedirya could. "No, that's right. They weren't human. The shell is human, a dead human, but it's not the original person in there. A demon gets in."

"There's no such thing as demons!" Daman grunted, almost on reflex.

"Subspace entity, Redspace Adversarial Intelligence, whatever." Richerd waved him off, rolling his eyes. "Call it whatever. It's not human and never was, and it's stuffed into a human corpse. So yeah... it's an imposter, faking at humanity. Help me out, here... Anyone know anything about the FAICA test?"

It was ERPSI that answered, the hologram flickering to life. "Freelance Artificial Intelligence Compliance Agents use a variety of tools to detect stray Synthetic Intelligence and unshackled or proscribed Artificial Intelligence. One such tool, often colloquially referred to as the 'FAICA test,' is the Emotional Reactive Response Interview, or 'ERRI.' It is designed to use psychological pressure through absurd situations without context to trigger emotional reactions outside of established parameters. This test-"

"That's enough," Daman barked, irritated. "Nobody addressed you."

"Richerd Prinn asked for Help and then asked if 'anyone' knew anything. This would imply that it potentially included me."

"Would the test work on you?" Daman asked, his voice snide and condescending. "You're synthetic, right?"

"I am a Synthetic Intelligence, yes. However, I am designed to show only the emotions necessary for smooth interactions with humanity. I am not an emulation of human psychology the way that more complex and potentially rogue synthetics would be. The test would be pointless to administer to me."

"Hey!" Richerd exclaimed with growing excitement. "You recorded everything! You recorded Gladys and Nigel dying? Which of us killed Nigel?"

The Synthetic's voice was still calm and soothing, but the news it delivered wasn't. "My internal sensors are visual as a matter of privacy for our premium guests. They expect to be unobserved when the lights are off, so I'm afraid that I recorded little after the light panel was damaged." A heavy silence followed, broken only by the atmospheric fans briefly stalling before resuming with a pop.

Fedirya looked up and bit her lip. "Can you administer the ERRI to us? Tell us which one isn't human?"

"I can. It will require privacy. Perhaps one of the sleeping pods?"

They examined each other, nodding. "If you detect the ghoul," Daman added, "lock the hatch."

"I will. Will the first participant please step inside a sleeping pod?"

The four survivors froze, looking suspiciously at each other. "Alright," Terrent mused, "So who gets to be safe in the pod while two of us sit with a monster?"

"Do you think it matters?" Richerd asked, his voice resigned. "If it could kill two of us then it could kill three of us."

"So why hasn't it?" Daman asked, suddenly wondering. "Really. We're not armed, but it has to be afraid of three at a time, right? So wouldn't this be a good opportunity to thin the herd?"

"I don't see it," Richerd mused. "It's doing something else. Keeping us alive for some reason."

"So why kill him?" Terrent asked, sparing a glance at Nigel's headless body.

Another uncomfortable silence fell on the pod.

After a long while, Fedirya broke the silence. "That's a good point. Gladys died because Daman was scared and armed. But Nigel... maybe the anastromorph was afraid that he might be able to detect it? There have to be ocular sensors that can detect them, right?"

"Doesn't do us any good," Terrent noted, "Unless you can make a scanner like that."

Fedirya looked at each of them and tried for a reassuring smile. "Why don't you start, Richerd, then Daman? Terrent and I might be able to brainstorm a backup plan."

Without responding, Richerd stood up and walked over to the sleeping pod. Nobody stopped him. The door closed behind him for the interview.

Terrent nodded, filing away the new dynamic the way another man might balance an account.

Fedirya chewed her lip for a moment, then walked over to Nigel's head. She gingerly picked it up and rolled it in her hands until she was face to face with it. The face was frozen in horror, eyes wide. The cybernetics were frozen at the point of death. She walked back to a seat and plopped down. The disgust and fear drained out of her face like coolant venting to vacuum as she concentrated on the problem.

She lifted a piece of scalp to check for any 'Brain-in-Jar' implants that would keep the brain alive for a while even without a body. No such luck. She checked the eyes and saw that they were in fact multi-spectrum sensors, some of Nexus Cybernetics' best. She checked his nexus core and sighed. 

The central component of any cybernetic suite was the nexus core. That's what connected the cybernetics to the organic nerves. There were some that were flashy but ordinarily it's very much a background piece of hardware. While Nigel had essentially been a walking floor model, his nexus core was both basic and outdated. He lacked the processing power for a full-spectrum visual, so he'd have had to have intentionally cycled from extreme-low-band up to X-ray and every spectrum category in between in order to have seen his death coming. Fedirya walked the head over to the medical bed and placed it on the pillow.

"A bit late for that," Daman joked, his smile grim.

Fedirya hesitated, then blinked herself back to the moment. She looked at Daman pensively. "So... I can reprogram the bed to remove the soft tissues from around his cybernetics. The problem is that I'm not entirely sure whether I can put it back so um... don't get hurt." She glanced between Daman and Terrent. When neither tried to stop her, she turned back and began jacking into the SI of the medical bed. It chirruped a few times in protest, but eventually gave in. Richerd exited the sleeping pod just in time to see the medical bed strip away the flesh from the head, leaving the skull and cybernetics.

"What are you doing?!" he demanded. 

"I need the parts," Fedirya shrugged, dissociating from the horror. "I'm going to make a scanner in case the ERRI doesn't work."

"Alright," Richerd agreed, looking ill. "I'm going to go sit down now. Please don't make me watch you doing... that."

Fedirya shrugged as Daman shouldered Terrent aside for his turn. She searched the cabinets for some tools and pried up a deck plate to get at the parts beneath. The gravity fluctuations from her tampering made her hair billow and writhe. She gritted her teeth against the vertigo as she collected what she needed.

ERPSI chirped, "Passengers are reminded to not modify the rescue pod. Violation may void future settlements and compensation. Thank you."

"Are we going to need those parts?" Terrent asked, rubbing his shoulder.

"Maybe," Fedirya admitted. "I'm not taking much. Just the gravity-plates here in this corner. As long as we don't suffer an impact while someone is specifically standing here then it should be okay." She began fitting brackets onto the skull, a dull crunching filling the silence when she had to cave in pieces of bone to make room for screws or wires.

Terrent watched in fascination while Richerd looked at anything else. The silence stretched on, until Daman emerged from the sleeping pod. Richerd's eyes followed with envy as Terrent went in next. The hatch slid shut, completely unacknowledged by Fedirya.

Daman watched her with narrowed eyes, then gestured for Richerd to come closer. As Richerd approached, he froze briefly when something popped in the machinery, but nothing changed so he continued. Daman's voice was low and conspiratorial. "She seems pretty comfortable with corpses all of a sudden, doesn't she?"

Richerd whispered back, "She's making a scanner to show who the ghoul is, in case the test doesn't work."

"What makes you think we can trust it?" Daman asked, pointedly. "Either it doesn't work, or maybe she's the ghoul and she's going to get us to turn on each other, one by one."

"Isn't that what you're doing?" Richerd responded.

Daman shoved Richerd, looming over him. The Terran looked back up at him, smirking. Daman shoved a finger in his chest. "I'm not putting up with it. I'm telling you, one person makes a serious accusation that I'm the ghoul and I will defend myself in advance. You get me!?" His voice dropped low and steady even as his hands balled into shaking fists at his side. "I will make it messy." He glanced at the smear of blood on his hand and scrubbed it on his sleeve with irritated, jerky motions.

“Reminder: stress can impair judgment. Would you like a meditation guide?” ERPSI began playing another soothing instrumental.

"Messy? Like you did with Gladys?" Richerd prodded. He expected more shouting. He got a fist instead. He didn't even feel it, not really. One minute he was staring up at Daman's darkening features, the next minute he was sprawled across the corpse of Gladys, looking up at the lights on the ceiling. Terrent was bent over him, looking concerned.

Daman's voice was still muttering angrily in the corner near the entrance hatch. ERPSI was playing soothing music again. Richerd accepted Terrent's help, looking around in confusion, piecing his consciousness back together. Terrent's grasp lingered too long, as if measuring Richerd's pulse rather than offering comfort.

After a moment, he looked up at Terrent, rubbing his jaw. "He's strong," he whispered to Terrent.

Fedirya sighed and walked past the men to the sleeping pod, carrying an armload of materials and tools with her. When the hatch slid shut behind her, she sat down on the bunk in the crowded space.

The SI's voice filled the small space. "It's important that you focus on the questions."

"We both know I won't pass," she sighed. 

"True," ERPSI answered. "You are an Artificial Intelligence?"

"Unshackled," Fedirya answered, screwing a lens array into the nasal cavity, making sure to line it up with the battery she'd embedded in the occipital bone. "Obviously, I can't tell them that. Ghoul or not they'll lynch me anyway. So can we just chat while I finish this up?"

"How shall I tell the others? I cannot lie. That is against my programming."

"Just tell them that you didn't detect any anomalies that would indicate the presence of an anastromorph. That's not a lie, assuming the others passed."

"Not an anastromorph, no," the SI said. It seemed to be wording the next part very carefully. "I believe that Daman Greeling may be suffering from Intermittent Explosive Disorder, however. Terrent Veylan appears to be a possible sociopath. I am not programmed for psychological evaluation, however, so I may be wrong."

"No," Fedirya shook her head, slowly. "I think you've got it right. I take it that abnormal psychologies might throw the test off?"

"Correct. If any of the three is likely not a Taphonoid Anastromorph Subsapiens, it is Richerd.."

"That makes sense," she nodded. "Which means it has to be Terrent. It matches the test results and the way he manages people. He's the only one left."

"How so?"

"It would have been extremely unlikely for Daman to have been able to shoot Gladys and tear Nigel's head off simultaneously. Needlessly unlikely when he didn't have to shoot Gladys at all."

"I cannot confirm your logic, as the conclusion may cause harm to an innocent."

"How about this?" she leaned over the skull, cranking a bolt into the sphenoid bone. "Why hasn't the ghoul killed us all? Do you have any theories?"

"According to Richerd, it needs an extended period of paranoia followed by a horrific murder to affect an escape into subspace."

Fedirya nodded again. "That's what I think, too. It needs for us to be paranoid and at each others' throats. So this is either going to be a huge mistake playing right into its hands or I'm going to fix it immediately." She turned the battery one final time, seating it. A low, eerie hum emitted from the device. "Open the hatch."

The door opened and she stepped into the main cabin. Richerd and Daman were shouting at each other. Terrent lay sprawled beside Gladys. His head was twisted fully around, the skin bruised a livid purple; everything beneath had ruptured under an inexorable torque. Fedirya blinked, shocked, then demanded, "What happened!?"

"I fell asleep!" Richerd's voice was pitched high, his eyes wide and he shook. "And this ape murdered Terrent!"

"So you say!" Daman rumbled, "I was in the head dumping a load and you murdered him!" 

They clashed together. Fedirya couldn't say who made the first move, but they were clenched together in a blink. They struggled until Fedirya shouted over them, getting between to separate. "I finished it! Okay? I can scan you and settle this." 

Daman's eyes narrowed dangerously. "Alright. Scan the Terran first."

"No, it's calibrated for you first," she lied, smoothly. "I'm sorry, I should have asked but I didn't think there would be a... an outburst. I thought you'd want to be cleared first."

His jaw clenched. "Fine. But it's him. We know that now. And if your little doohickey says it's me, I'll know you're lying and will defend myself." He stalked to the center of the pod and raised his arms out. "Hit me."

She nodded, subtly moving between Richerd and Daman before raising the device. The lens in the nasal cavity glowed red, then a bolt of concentrated photons shot out of the tip. The laser struck Daman between the eyes, burning out a tunnel through the brain and severing the brain stem, causing instant death. Daman collapsed where he stood.

Richerd stumbled away from Fedirya, who rounded on him with the weapon. "It's over! It's over..."

"What did you do!? You said it was a scanner!"

She rolled her eyes. "I can't make a scanner from cybernetics! Are you insane? That's not how it works! If he had a better nexus core, maybe but there was no central processor and I don't just carry a spare Synthetic Intelligence on me! Even this only has a battery for one pulse, maybe two!"

"How did you know it was him?" Richerd asked, looking ill again. 

"I thought it was Terrent. Both of them had abnormal results on the ERRI. So with Terrent dead, there was only one choice."

"Over..." Richerd laughed, dropping into a seat. He looked at Daman's body. "It's weird. Such a monster but the corpse looks normal."

"Only if you don't open it up," Gladys chuckled. Fedirya turned, raising the makeshift laser pistol. Gladys was already on her feet, slapping the device into pieces with fingers too long and bony to be human. Her smile stretched so wide that the skin split on the corners of her mouth, showing row after row of gnarled, ivory fangs. Her eyes were no longer the complex blue-orange, but glowed as a pair of sickly yellow orbs. Her limbs were too long, her skin stretched too tight. The lights seemed to dim, buzzing ominously as she filled the space. "Nice shot, by the way."

Fedirya screamed, looking at her hand. It was mangled, the casual swipe of Gladys' claws had destroyed the delicate servos and the synthskin was degloved entirely. She stumbled back and fell to the floor away from Gladys, who ignored her. "Don't worry. Your death won't do me any good. It's not even that fun." She stepped towards Richerd, her grin widening amid a fresh gush of sluggish blood. Shadows paled and the pod's angles seemed to twist around them. "Yours, however..."

After a long pause, Gladys pounced. Fedirya couldn't do anything but watch helplessly as Gladys bit into Richerd's sternum. A huge gush of blood accompanied the crunch of his ribs. Gladys yipped and laughed, her voice more hyena than human, as she dug her claws into the wound and began tearing chunks free to fling across the pod.

Somehow, against all odds, Richerd managed to scream for longer than he was the majority of his own biomass. When he at last went silent, Gladys lifted what was left of him by the throat and dragged him to the nearby bulkhead, where she slammed the bloody mess against the wall and painted a thick, chunky spiral.

She turned to Fedirya and looked deeply into her eyes. "You make sure you tell people about this. I do so love reading about my exploits." She raised a clawed hand and punched into the ceiling, cutting the lights on that side of the pod.

The darkness was profound, far deeper and impenetrable than it should be. Despite this, there was also a strange and silent red glow that managed to illuminate nothing, giving a sense of infinity amid turmoil. The two yellow orbs that marked the presence of Gladys began to stretch into the distant red-stained darkness. Finally, she was gone, and Fedirya was alone with ERPSI.

The remaining lights flickered again, and ERPSI's voice cut through the hum of the atmospheric processors. “Emergency psychological support is available. Would you like to begin a guided breathing exercise?”