Kael first noticed it as a coin-sized patch of warm skin at the base of his neck, pulsing faintly beneath the surface. It was subtle, barely perceptible, and easily dismissed as a trick of the body or a passing irritation. But over the next few hours, the sensation grew. It wasn’t painful, just… unsettling. It felt like something was shifting beneath his skin, something alien.
By day three, pale, firm bumps had clustered there, small and symmetrical—too symmetrical to be natural. They stood out against his skin like minuscule mountains, each one slightly raised and tightly packed together. He inspected them in the mirror, running his fingers across the ridges. They were cool to the touch, but there was an odd, firm texture to them. Too solid to be a rash, too deliberate to be a simple irritation.
On the fifth night, Kael dreamed of crawling through a slick, nodule-lined tunnel. It was damp, the walls pulsating as though alive, the air thick with a metallic scent. As he moved deeper, the sound of faint clicking echoed around him, resonating from within the tunnel’s walls. It felt as though something was following him, something watching, but he couldn’t look back. He had to keep crawling.
Finally, he reached the end of the tunnel, where it opened up into a dimly lit chamber. In the center of the space, a dark, quivering slit waited. A part of Kael’s mind screamed to turn around, but his body moved forward, compelled by an unseen force. He reached out, his fingers brushing against the edge of the slit—and then he woke with a sharp sting along his neck. The sudden pain shot through him, jerking him upright in his bed, his heart pounding in his chest.
In the cold, sterile light of the ship’s med-bay, the scanner found no anomaly. The medical techs were baffled. They ran every test, every scan, yet the results were always the same—nothing abnormal, nothing even remotely dangerous. Kael was fine, according to the data. But he knew better. The bumps on his neck weren’t getting smaller. They were spreading, growing daily, forming a ridge that snaked its way down the back of his neck and between his shoulders.
There were no signs of infection, no swelling or fever. But there was something in the air, an almost electric hum that made him feel on edge. And at times, when the ship’s engines were silent and the lights dimmed, he could hear faint clicks—a subtle, rhythmic sound, as though something small was moving inside him. Something that didn’t belong.
It wasn’t just his imagination. Kael began to notice the movements more frequently—quick, subtle shifts beneath his skin, as though whatever was inside him was growing restless, stirring in response to his awareness. His mind raced with possibilities, none of them good. Was it some kind of parasite? An experimental implant gone wrong? He couldn’t be sure, but he had to know.
One night, as he sat alone in his cabin, the ridge suddenly twitched under his fingers. His breath caught in his throat, and his vision dimmed for a moment. The sensation was too intense, too alien. The skin over the ridge felt disturbingly thin, like a sealed seam, fragile and ready to split open at any moment. Kael’s heart hammered in his chest as he backed away from the mirror.
The clicking sounds grew louder, echoing in his ears. They were coming from inside, like the faint beat of some hidden heart or the movement of countless legs scuttling just beneath his skin.
And then, that night, the ridge split.
Kael didn’t know what to expect, but he certainly wasn’t prepared for what happened. A clear, viscous fluid oozed from the seam, slick and unnatural. He could feel something dark shifting beneath the skin—something that wasn’t human. It slithered and stretched, like it was trying to escape, to tear its way out of him. The pain was excruciating, but he could do nothing. His body was no longer fully his own.
By morning, Kael had vanished.
The only traces of him left in his cabin were the sticky residue on the pillow and a faint trail of bumps leading toward the corridor. Crew members who entered his quarters found no sign of struggle, no indication of foul play. His bed was empty, but the room smelled of something strange, like burnt metal and old, damp earth.
As they searched the ship, a growing sense of unease settled over them. It was as though Kael had never been there at all—like he had been erased, his very presence swallowed up by the ship’s sterile walls. Yet, the trail of bumps remained, a silent testament to his disappearance, leading them deeper into the bowels of the ship.
There were whispers among the crew. Some said they’d heard the clicking too—faint at first, but growing louder with each passing day. Others swore they’d seen something moving in the shadows, something too fast, too fluid to be human. But no one dared speak of it openly, not in the tight, claustrophobic quarters of the ship.
And so, they waited.
None of them knew what Kael had become. And none of them knew if they would be next.
