Nobody’s Home
by Michael J. D’Alfonsi
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Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3 |
part 2
They continued to the medical bay, where the sense of wrongness intensified. Unlike the orderly abandonment elsewhere, the infirmary showed signs of panic. Cabinets stood open, supplies scattered across the floor. Diagnostic equipment had been pushed against a wall, creating a barricade around the main treatment area.
“They were treating multiple patients,” Adelaide observed, counting the prepared but unused hypo sprays laid out on trays. “Preparing for more.”
Vinnie examined the medical logs at the central console. “Chief Medical Officer’s last entry reports ‘unexplained neurological symptoms affecting Mining Team Three.’” He scrolled through the data. “Hallucinations, paranoia, self-harm behaviors.” The final entry read simply: ‘It’s spreading faster than we can contain. Not contagion. Something else.’
Adelaide moved to the security terminal, hoping to access camera footage. The system responded to her commands, but the data was corrupted. Fragments of video showed normal station operations, then jumped to empty corridors. In one briefly clear segment, a group of miners ran past a camera, expressions of terror visible even in the grainy footage. The timestamp jumped forward six hours, showing the same corridor, now empty but with strange shadows dancing across the walls despite no visible source of movement.
“This doesn’t make sense,” Adelaide muttered, her fingers tapping navigation sequences against the console edge. “The corruption is selective, not systematic. It’s as if something deliberately removed specific moments.”
Vinnie had grown unusually quiet. When Adelaide turned to check on him, she found him staring into the darkened treatment room beyond the main infirmary.
“Addy,” he whispered, “did you see that?”
“See what?” She moved to his side, following his gaze into the shadows.
“I thought I saw...” he began, then shook his head. “Movement. Just for a second.”
Adelaide activated her wrist light, sending a beam cutting through the darkness. The treatment room was empty, save for an examination table with restraints that had been torn free from their moorings.
“Nothing there,” she said, but found herself speaking in a whisper.
As they turned to leave, the lights throughout the medical bay flickered violently. In the moment of darkness, both heard a sound like fingernails dragging across metal, moving through the ceiling above them. When the lights stabilized, they were standing closer together, not willing to acknowledge their accelerated breathing.
“Could be air in the cooling systems,” Adelaide offered weakly.
“Sure,” Vinnie agreed, not believing it any more than she did. “Just like the maintenance workers told that journalist.”
They made their way to the security office, where station-wide monitoring systems were housed. Adelaide’s military training reasserted itself in the familiar environment of surveillance equipment and weapons lockers. She began a systematic check of emergency protocols while Vinnie examined the communication logs.
“The last outgoing transmission was cut off mid-sentence,” he reported. “Security Chief was reporting ‘unusual activity in the lower mining levels’ and then nothing.”
Adelaide found herself checking the corners of the room more often, her methodical nature battling against growing irrationality. She couldn’t shake the feeling that something was just beyond her peripheral vision; watching, waiting.
“We need to check the lower levels,” she said finally, her voice steadier than she felt.
Vinnie nodded, his usual carefree demeanor subdued. “Where it all started.”
As they gathered supplies from the security lockers, a whisper of sound caught Adelaide’s attention: her name, spoken so softly she might have imagined it. She turned sharply, scanning the empty room.
“Did you say something?” she asked Vinnie.
He looked up from the weapon he was checking. “No. Why?”
Adelaide’s finger tapped against her thigh in an anxious rhythm. “Nothing,” she lied. “Let’s go.”
The feeling of being watched followed them as they headed toward the mining levels, where the answers to the station’s emptiness waited in the darkness below.
The maintenance shaft leading to the lower mining levels felt like a throat swallowing them into darkness. Adelaide’s wrist light cut a clinical path through the gloom, while Vinnie’s handheld beam swung in nervous arcs, creating phantoms from dust particles and steam vents. The temperature fluctuated wildly, patches of freezing air giving way to pockets of suffocating heat with no discernible pattern. Neither spoke of how the metal walls seemed to pulse occasionally, as if breathing, or how their comm units had begun picking up fragments of voices: snippets of pleading, of screaming, of laughter that belonged to no human throat.
“Environmental controls are non-functional in this sector,” Adelaide said, clinging to technical explanations like a lifeline. Her silver-streaked hair gleamed in the artificial light as she consulted her data pad. “Atmospheric sensors indicate normal composition but...” She hesitated, unusual for her. “The readings are inconsistent with observed conditions.”
Vinnie nodded, not trusting his voice. He’d spent years teasing Addy about her reliance on data and regulations, but now found himself grateful for her steady, analytical presence. His own instincts — usually his most trusted tool — screamed contradictory warnings, leaving him unmoored.
They reached the main mining operations level and stepped into a cavernous space where massive drills had once chewed through asteroid rock. The machinery stood silent now, frozen in mid-operation. Their lights revealed what the station’s dimmed illumination had mercifully concealed.
The first body they found had been arranged with meticulous care. A miner, still in his protective gear, posed as if operating a drill. Only as they drew closer did the horror become apparent: his hands had been fused to the controls, flesh melded with metal in a way that defied physics and biology. His face, visible through the helmet visor, was locked in an expression of agony so profound it transcended into something almost ecstatic.
Adelaide approached clinically, though her face had gone pale. “Time of death impossible to determine through visual inspection alone.”
“Addy, he’s been turned into a statue,” Vinnie hissed, keeping his distance.
They found more such tableaus throughout the mining level. A technician transformed into a grotesque marionette, suspended from the ceiling by cables threaded through her joints, her body contorted into impossible angles. Two security officers posed in eternal combat, their weapons grown into their arms like mechanical cancers. Each scene more creative than the last, each victim’s face captured in that same moment of transcendent suffering.
“This isn’t random violence,” Adelaide whispered, her analytical mind struggling to process the methodical horror surrounding them. “There’s purpose here. Pattern.”
“Yeah,” Vinnie replied grimly. “Someone’s been enjoying themselves.”
As if in response to his observation, the lights throughout the level flickered violently. Their comm units erupted in a squeal of feedback that drove them both to their knees. Through the static came a voice smooth and precise, like liquid nitrogen poured over bare skin.
“Visitors,” it purred. “How delightful. New materials to work with.”
The air between them distorted, forming ripples like heat waves above hot pavement. Something began to take shape, not quite solid, not quite vapor. It borrowed elements from the humans it had consumed: here an eye, their fingers that were too long and jointed in too many places, a mouth that opened wider than any human mouth should.
Adelaide drew her sidearm. “Identify yourself,” she demanded, voice steady despite the impossibility before her.
The entity’s laugh scattered around the chamber like broken glass. “So formal,” it mused, its form shifting constantly. “The others asked different questions: ‘Why are you doing this?’ and ‘Please, God, make it stop.’” It moved closer to Adelaide, leaving a trail of frost on the metal floor. “But you want my name. How courteous.”
Vinnie had backed toward one of the mining control stations, his eyes never leaving the entity. “What happened to the crew?” he asked, his hand slowly reaching for a plasma cutter mounted on the wall.
The entity’s attention shifted, its form flowing like toxic smoke toward him. “They contributed to my artistic development,” it said. “Seventy-five different compositions, each one teaching me something new about the architecture of pain.” It gestured toward the displayed victims. “These were my early works. Primitive, really. I’ve refined my technique considerably.”
Adelaide fired her weapon. The energy bolt passed through the entity’s shifting form and struck a control panel behind it, showering the area with sparks. The creature seemed amused.
“Physical weapons,” it sighed. “So disappointing. Your kind always tries the same things first.”
It moved with sudden violence, its form splitting into tendrils that lashed out simultaneously toward both humans. Adelaide dove behind a mining cart, while Vinnie rolled beneath a drilling platform. The tendrils punched through the metal where they had stood moments before.
“It can affect physical matter,” Adelaide called to Vinnie, her mind racing through tactical options. “But its form is inconsistent. Possibly energy-based.”
“Thanks for the science lesson,” Vinnie shouted back, narrowly avoiding another tendril that snaked beneath the platform. “Any ideas how to kill it?”
The entity’s laughter echoed again. “You can’t kill what isn’t alive in any sense you understand,” it said, condensing its form back to a vaguely humanoid shape. “I existed in the void between stars long before your kind learned to make fire. I’ll exist long after your species is forgotten dust.”
It surged forward, moving like liquid shadow toward Adelaide’s position. She fired again and again, each shot passing harmlessly through its shifting mass. One tendril caught her ankle, sending a bolt of agony up her leg that nearly made her black out. The cold that spread from the contact point wasn’t the absence of heat, it was the presence of something else, something that fed on warmth and life and light.
“I can taste your fear,” the entity whispered directly into her mind. “So regimented, so controlled. Breaking you will be exquisite.”
Across the chamber, Vinnie had managed to activate the plasma cutter. Its blue-white arc illuminated his face in harsh relief as he slashed at a tendril that had nearly enveloped his arm. The entity recoiled, its form rippling with what might have been pain.
“Light,” Adelaide gasped, her analytical mind seizing on the reaction. “Vinnie, it’s vulnerable to high-energy light!”
The entity hissed, withdrawing slightly from the plasma cutter’s glow. “Clever little soldier,” it said, its voice hardening. “But this chamber is very dark, and your little torch will run out of fuel eventually.”
Adelaide’s fingers tapped against her thigh in rapid sequences as she calculated possibilities. “The main drilling lasers,” she called to Vinnie. “They operate at twenty thousand Kelvin. If we can reroute power—”
“On it,” Vinnie interrupted, already moving toward the main control panel. He had an intuitive understanding of machinery that complemented Adelaide’s theoretical knowledge. “Keep it busy!”
The entity seemed to understand their plan. It abandoned its leisurely torment and surged toward Vinnie with predatory focus. Adelaide, seeing her partner in danger, did something entirely uncharacteristic of her methodical nature, she charged directly at the creature, firing her weapon not at its body but at the ceiling above it. Superheated debris rained down, momentarily disrupting its form.
“Fourteen seconds,” she shouted to Vinnie, who was bypassing safety protocols with reckless speed. “That’s how long my distraction will be effective based on its reconstitution rate.”
“Need twenty,” he grunted, fingers flying across the controls.
The entity reformed faster than Adelaide had calculated, its mass swelling with rage. Tendrils shot out in all directions, some punching through solid metal, others weaving complex patterns in the air that hurt the human eye to follow. One wrapped around Adelaide’s waist, lifting her from the ground. The cold penetrated her flight suit instantly, seeping into her body like liquid nitrogen.
“I planned to take my time with you,” the entity said, its voice both inside and outside her head, “but plans change.”
Through a haze of pain, Adelaide saw Vinnie complete the final override. The massive drilling laser began to power up, its capacitors whining as they charged. The entity sensed the danger too late. As it turned to strike at Vinnie, Adelaide used her remaining strength to plant a small explosive charge, one intended for mining operations, directly into the creature’s shifting mass.
“Adapt to this,” she gasped, triggering the detonator.
The explosion wasn’t large, but it disrupted the entity’s cohesion at the precise moment the drilling laser fired. A beam of light hot enough to melt through asteroid rock lanced through the chamber, catching the creature at its most vulnerable condition. Its scream emitted on frequencies that made blood vessels rupture and electronic systems fail throughout the level. The humans covered their ears, but nothing could block the psychic component of its death cry.
The light seemed to fold the entity in upon itself, compressing its impossible geometry into an ever-shrinking point of absolute darkness. For a moment, reality itself appeared to bend around that point, then with a thunderclap of imploding air, it vanished.
Silence fell across the mining level. The emergency lights flickered back to steady illumination. Vinnie staggered to Adelaide’s side, helping her to her feet. The cold where the entity had touched her was already fading, though she suspected the memory of it would linger in her nightmares for years to come.
“Did we kill it?” Vinnie asked, his voice hoarse.
Adelaide ran a shaking hand through her silver-streaked hair. “Difficult to determine without proper instrumentation. The energy discharge was sufficient to disrupt its cohesion beyond observable parameters.” She paused, then added with uncharacteristic uncertainty, “I think so.”
They surveyed the chamber, now illuminated enough to see the full extent of the entity’s “art gallery.” Dozens of crew members preserved in poses of agony. Adelaide activated her data pad, forcing her mind back to protocol.
“We need to document this,” she said quietly, “then sterilize the station.”
Vinnie nodded grimly. “Torch the whole rock?”
“Affirmative. Nothing can remain.” She began recording the scene with mechanical precision, though her hands trembled slightly. “The entity’s capabilities were beyond anything in known science. We can’t risk any trace surviving.”
Copyright © 2026 by Michael J. D’Alfonsi
