The creature laughed.
It crouched down, bending its stolen knees, coiling its stolen muscles. The grey dust puffed up around its feet as it gathered itself. It looked up at the orbiting spacecraft, calculated the trajectory with a precision that no human mind could achieve, and adjusted its position slightly.
Then it jumped.
---
The Main Spacecraft — Lena's Last Stand
Lena Petrova had watched everything.
She had watched Chen and Thorne run for the lander, their boots kicking up grey dust in the low gravity. She had watched the creature walk slowly after them, unhurried, patient, savoring their terror. She had watched it pick up the American flag—the flag they had planted together, the flag that symbolized their mission and their achievement—and throw it with impossible force.
She had watched the lander break open like a tin can.
She had watched the creature tear the hatch away and throw her crewmates out onto the lunar surface. She had watched Thorne crawl desperately, pointlessly, trying to escape the inevitable. She had watched Chen pinned to the ground by the flag pole, bleeding and freezing and dying.
She had watched Thorne die. His head bitten off by a mouth that opened too wide, filled with teeth that shouldn't exist. His blood spraying into the void, freezing into red crystals that glittered in the sunlight. His headless body tossed aside like garbage.
She had watched Chen die. Beaten to death with their own flag pole. His head reduced to nothing by blow after blow after blow. The creature swinging the pole like a farmer threshing wheat, mechanical and patient and thorough.
And through it all, she had been screaming.
"Control! Control, they're dead! Both of them! It killed them! It f**king killed them! Thorne is dead! Chen is dead! The Commander is dead! Everyone is dead except me!"
Maria's voice came back, strained and breaking. Lena could hear the tears in her Flight Director's voice, could hear the barely controlled terror. "Lena, listen to me. You need to leave. Right now. Initiate emergency departure sequence. Get away from the moon and come home. That's an order."
"I can't just leave them! Their bodies are down there! I can see them! I can see Thorne's body! I can see Chen's body! I can't just leave them on the moon!"
"They're gone, Lena. There's nothing you can do for them now. Nothing. But you can save yourself. You can warn Earth what's coming. Get out of there. That's an order. That's a direct order from your Flight Director."
Lena's hands were shaking so badly she could barely grip the controls. Through the main viewport, she could see the lunar surface below. The tiny figures of the lander and the bodies beside it. And one figure standing among the carnage, looking up at her.
She saw its head twist.
She saw it happen in less than a millisecond. One moment the creature was facing forward. The next its head was twisted completely backward, facing the opposite direction from its body. Then it twisted back just as fast, the motion too quick for her eyes to follow.
"What the fk," she whispered. "What the fk is that thing?"
Then the creature crouched.
And it jumped.
It shouldn't have been possible. The moon's gravity was one-sixth of Earth's, but that wasn't enough to jump into orbit. No human could achieve escape velocity with muscle power alone. No human could survive the forces involved. But the thing wearing Evans' face wasn't human. It had never been human. It was something ancient and terrible that had been waiting in the dark for billions of years.
And it was coming for her.
Lena saw it rising from the surface, a tiny speck growing larger by the second. It was jumping. Actually jumping from the moon to the orbiting spacecraft. Its trajectory was perfect, calculated with a precision that no computer could match. It would intercept the main ship in less than thirty seconds.
"No," Lena breathed. "No, no, no, no—"
She slammed the throttle to maximum. The main engines roared to life, pushing the spacecraft forward, away from the moon, away from that rising speck of death. The acceleration pressed her back into her seat, making her vision blur at the edges, making her bones ache with the strain.
On her screens, she watched the creature's trajectory adjust.
It was following her.
Somehow, impossibly, it was changing direction mid-flight. Its body shifted and contorted, arms and legs spreading to catch the faint solar wind, altering its course to match hers. It was going to catch her. No matter how fast she flew, no matter how hard she burned the engines, it was going to catch her.
"Control!" she screamed. "It's following me! It jumped from the surface and it's following me! It's changing direction in flight! It's going to reach the ship!"
"Lena, what? That's impossible. Nothing can—"
"I don't care what's impossible! It's coming! It's going to reach the ship! It's going to kill me like it killed the others!"
She pushed the throttle harder. Warning lights flashed across her console. Engine temperature critical. Structural stress approaching maximum. Fuel consumption exceeding safe limits. She ignored them all. She had to get away. She had to survive. She had to warn Earth what was coming.
A soft thump echoed through the hull.
Lena froze.
The creature was on the ship.
She could hear it. Moving across the outer hull. Its hands—claws, talons, whatever they had become—scraping against the metal. It was looking for a way in. It was searching for the hatch, the airlock, any opening that would let it inside. The sound was like fingernails on a chalkboard, magnified a thousand times, transmitted through the metal skin of the spacecraft.
Lena unstrapped from her seat and floated toward the equipment locker. Her hands found a heavy wrench—standard issue for emergency repairs. It wasn't much of a weapon, but it was all she had. She gripped it with both hands and floated in the center of the cabin, waiting.
The scraping stopped.
Silence.
Lena floated there, the wrench raised, her heart pounding so hard she could hear it in her ears. Every shadow seemed alive. Every creak of the hull seemed like footsteps. She turned slowly, scanning every corner, every hatch, every possible entry point. The cabin was small. There was nowhere to hide. Nowhere to run. Just her and the wrench and the thing outside.
The main airlock exploded inward.
Metal screamed and tore. The reinforced door, designed to withstand the pressure differential between the cabin and the void, folded inward like paper. The creature stepped through the wreckage, its stolen face still smiling, still wrong.
It was wearing Evans' suit. Or what remained of it. The fabric was torn and burned from its impossible jump through space. Patches of red flesh showed through the gaps, glistening wetly in the cabin lights. Its helmet was gone, exposing Evans' face to the cabin atmosphere. The familiar features were all there—the jaw, the cheekbones, the slight grey at the temples.
But the eyes were still red. Still glowing. Still ancient and hungry.
"Hello, Lena," it said in Evans' voice. The tone was almost gentle. Almost kind. "We've been waiting to meet you properly. We watched you from the moon. We felt your fear. It smells delicious."
Lena swung the wrench.
It struck the creature's head with a wet, meaty thunk. The impact should have cracked a human skull. Should have stunned or killed. The creature's head barely moved. It just absorbed the blow like a stone absorbing a raindrop.
It looked at her and smiled wider.
"That was brave," it said. "We like bravery. It gives the meat a pleasant heat. But it won't save you. Nothing will save you now."