A New Shape (Delo)
You'd think that space would be too cold for fire. You'd think that a state of the art ship would have better anti-fire measures. You would think a shit ton of things, but you would be wrong.
He didn't like having to leave B-19, but when they started smelling smoke, it was the only option. If a fire got out of control, if it reached engineering or life support… then them having a little barricaded room wouldn't matter. Because they would die in that barricaded room. No amount of weird eldritch powers, no promises from warped mirror twins, would protect them.
So they sprinted to the dormizone section, following the smell of smoke. Found the fire. Fought it. Won. It wasn't his first time putting out a surprise industrial fire.
Standing across from him, shaking like a leaf, Shay shoved her hair back away from her face. She hadn't looked quite right since… what happened to Sharabi. Her face didn't look like a face. It was more like a mask.
Delo had never been more glad in his life that he was an only child.
As if losing Sharabi hadn't felt like losing a little sister. As if he didn't still have Shay and Callist to lose, too.
“It's out,” Sumiru gasped. They dropped the half-empty sandbag they had torn open and been dumping over the flames. “It's out.”
Delo dropped his own mostly empty sandbag, panting to catch his breath in the smoky air. Sumiru was a farm kid used to slinging around heavy bags of animal feed or whatever it was they did on farms, and they didn't seem nearly as winded. Delo was no push over, but he was ultimately a street rat. He could run forever and a day but lifting heavy shit would eventually tire him out.
His best friend was a street rat too, but she couldn't run forever. Shay had dropped the emergency hose, was shaking even worse now, and her whole body was wracked with coughs. Delo had known Shay since they were babies, and he knew what she looked like when she was about to fall.
He caught her before she could hit the floor.
“Hey,” he said, aiming for neutral but coming out more like the mother hen she often called him. “You good?”
Slowly she got her feet under her again. The shaking didn't slow down even a bit, but she could hold her own weight.
“I'm okay.” She cleared her throat and spat on the floor. “Thanks for catching me.”
Back out in the hallway, someone screamed. Not one of those metal monster screams. A person, a regular person.
“What the fuck is it now,” Sumiru hissed. Their eyes roiled with color. Usually Sumiru's big eyes were dark black-brown, but ever since Delo shook the hand of whatever that thing was, that thing that looked and sounded like him but nothing at all like him, their eyes frequently turned an eerie yellow. Shay's eyes had gone from their usual bluey-gray to painfully bright sapphire blue. It seemed permanent on Shay, but it came and went with Sumiru.
Delo hadn't looked at himself in the mirror yet to see if his eyes had changed. He didn't want to know.
The three of them ran out of the room where the fire started and blazed right past a shrieking, wailing group of kids about their age. Delo skidded to a halt and spun around, just in time to bodily tackle the man who had his hand around Kendra’s throat. He only recognized him after a few seconds of staring at his face, as they fell.
His face had gone all wrong. It started from his mouth and spidered out. His skin was turning to some horrible, skin-crawling textured metal. Just like the monster that killed Saurlin and Sharabi back in the ath-ed room.
Was this happening to all the adults? So far they hadn't seen a single person over the age of nineteen who wasn't turning metal.
“Mister Carril!” Delo shouted as they hit the floor. “Mister Carril, snap out of it!”
“Dad,” Kendra wheezed.
Sumiru stomped hard on Carril’s wrist, and he let go of his daughter's neck. Shay grabbed Kendra by the arm and drug her backwards, away from her father’s mutating hands.
“Run!” Sumiru shouted. “There are more coming!”
“Mom!” Sirafin was staring down the hallway, and she took a step in that direction.
Shay grabbed her by the back of her jacket and shook her. “Those things aren't our parents!” She shouted, yanking her hard. “Come on!”
The six of them ran. Sirafin must have come to her senses because she didn't even look back. They ran, and ran, and ran all the way back to classroom B-19. Their new stronghold.
B-19 was nicely situated in a corner, with only one entrance, and with thicker walls than most classrooms. The single door was easier to barricade.
It was why so many kids ended up there, even if they weren't originally from class B-19. Delo, Shay, Annily, and Kendra were from B-19, but Sumiru and several others were from B-18. So was poor Chaliez, who they never managed to get to the lorists.
And there were plenty of others, too, even some who were from different class segments altogether. Ven was two years older and from class A-2. Zacani was from class AA-1, and so far was the oldest person anyone had seen who wasn't turning metal. Callist, Morril, Sereci, and Lumin were all from D-18, the class that fell into B-18 when the roof collapsed. The same class Sharabi had been in.
“It's us, let us in!” Shay shouted, ramming into the door of classroom B-19 at full speed and bouncing off.
On the other side of the door, there was frantic shuffling and scuffling. Leiya, Annily, Tranla, and the others trying to remove the barricade.
From down the hall, back the way they came, something shrieked. Metallic, hollow, hurting. Enraged.
“Hurry up!” Sumiru snarled.
It would take them too long to remove everything, he knew that now. At the end of the hallway, a group of shambling shapes poured into view, their faces twisted from the mouth.
They were coming, and they had nowhere to run.