Margaret is on her way to work, walking instead of flying today so she can drink her coffee without spilling it, when she sees the cryptid. She's a truly far-out one, no limbs to speak of, just a long snaky body with a mirror for a face. Margaret smiles at her and goes to walk on by, but the cryptid slithers right at her all of a sudden and--hits?--Margaret with the giant mirror. Except she doesn't experience getting whacked with a sheet of glass.
It doesn't have the texture of a swarm, no. The new hazard bears the lifeless taste of environmental peril but it clings and flits and skitters down corridors in the way a swarm would.
Closer.
It's in the hallway where she first saw the alien stars. It's in the room where she found the laptop. And then in that room it blooms again, redoubling its rate of expansion as though a second breach had occurred.
"We found Gliese 581. Just twenty light-years from earth, a red dwarf star system with three visible planets... and two less visible ones, whose attributes our royal astronomers painstakingly determined through chartered use of corporate AI."
Leon's voice continues to play from the closed computer.
"One of those planets, they discovered, was an oasis ripe for human habitation."
"The royal families pooled their resources, and built a vessel that could weather the eons between my birthplace and the ground upon which you now stand."
"The road ahead may challenge us, but it'll be worth it for the splendor you now enjoy. Worth it for the continuation of our line."
"Be brave. Be proud. Vivat Heptaria."
"I'll be brave," she murmurs. "I'll be proud. I'll be brave, I'll be proud." She replaces the metal sphere with a tower shield that wraps most of the way around her and shuffles to the door to look out into the hallway.
A thud, a cry, and then one of the monsters rounds the corner.
It doesn't register to her danger sense. It doesn't even seem to see her. It doesn't even seem to have eyes. It has lots of pieces missing.
It shudders and coughs up a slurry of blood and organ meat.
The bigger hazard she's sensing hasn't reached her yet, but it has reached the monster. And the monster is dying. Not just dying, decomposing right there in front of her.
Oh no that's disgusting ew ew ew, she should not vomit that will not help anything. She steps well back, opens her mouth to avoid breathing through her nose, and says, "This was not natural; humans did this."
Her mind races at the implications of the prophecy. If humans made the danger swarming through the station, they might be near it themselves. They might have a way to turn it off. She dodges the monster and sets off in the direction it came from, calling "Is anyone there?" in the language of the videos.
It doesn't feel like anything, at first, when she passes into the space occupied by the invisible hazard.
The halls remain weightless, dark, and quiet apart from the fading sounds of the monster she darted past.
Then bits of her start to itch.
Then sting.
Then burn.
Ow ow crap it must be in the air. It's getting inside her, attacking the flesh under her titanium scales. She seals bejeweled goggles over her eyes and a gorgeously embroidered filter mask over her mouth, replaces her scales with new identical scales everywhere the pain underneath them is especially bad, and breaks into a run. Maybe she can get out the far side of it, maybe she can find something to counter it, maybe she can just drown out the horror with the thudding of her footsteps. None of those seem very likely.
She rebounds from wall to wall, retracing her steps from who knows how many days before as she seeks to cross the hazard's centerpoint.
She passes the room where she found the laptop. The monstrous corpse she left there has vanished. As has all the blood staining its walls and ceiling. No sign remains of the mortal struggle that occurred there, as though time had been rewound and it never happened in the first place.
She reaches the hallway with the wide window gazing out into space. There's something new there. Outside. A titanic outline, looming off to one side and eclipsing the pinprick stars that ought to shine there. A persistent hiss breaks the silence of the enclosure, emanating from a fist-sized patch of window that looks to have been broken open and then plugged with rigid foam.
The burning sensation persists, though seems not to be radiating to her core. Her wings feel like molten metal courses through their insides. Her vision becomes increasingly blurry.
On top of everything else, she's losing air now too? She stares at the patch in the window but she can't do anything for it without staying next to it and she sure as hell can't stay here. She deletes her wings and puts them back on, for a minute's relief from the pain, and if she was brave enough she would do the same thing to her eyes but she doesn't know she can put them back right and anyway she can't, she just can't, it's all she can do to keep moving into the next room.
The next room is the one where she first appeared in this place. The big, damaged cube is still suspended in its center. The passages that were obstructed before remain obstructed, and most of the passages that were dark remain dark.
One of the passages, though, shines. Beams of light sweep back and forth against its walls, conical like searchlights.
A voice carries through the stillness--small, alert, human: "Ma'am, I hear something coming..."
She can't be sure she's actually hearing a voice and not just imagining things, hope was overtaking reality in her beliefs even before her mind was fogged with pain, but hope is reason enough to shout "Hello? Help!" and stumble half-blindly toward the voice.
Two armed figures float in the passage, bracing themselves against protrusions on opposite walls. It’s hard to make out their features: they’re backlit by an open airlock and they both have flashlights slung under their rifles.
“It’s big!” The nearer of the figures takes aim at Margaret as she tumbles into the open. “Make your shots count!”
Margaret puts her hands up. Empty palms don't mean as much from a magical girl as they would from someone else, but it's the clearest gesture she's got, and she means it quite sincerely. "I surrender! Don't shoot!"
The closer figure hears Margaret clearly this time.
She takes her finger off the trigger.
“What are you?”
"Magical girl--is there a doctor, please, it hurts--" she flickers her wings out of existence and back again, temporarily whole. A drop of blood leaks out from under her goggles.
The further figure starts to draw closer, slinging her weapon over her shoulder and reaching for a case at her hip.
"I've got a medkit, but..."
The nearer figure holds up a hand to halt her comrade's advance.
"It's going gray. Medkit won't fix that."
"Yes, the sterilization agent deployed successfully."
The soldier carrying the medkit answers the radio.
"Yes, we're past the window for full saturation of the facility."
Only one half of the conversation is legible to those nearby.
"No, there's something here." She speaks urgently into the device on her shoulder. "Something's still alive. I don't know. I don't know how but it is..."
(The airlock behind the two soldiers begins to cycle as this exchange takes place.)
(When it opens again, a third new arrival emerges onto the scene.)
Are they talking about her? They didn't answer her, maybe they can't help. At least she's not alone.
Margaret can pretty much only see dim shapes at this point. She pulls off her useless goggles, grits her teeth, and tries starscaping her eyes back how they were, silver irises and slit pupils and all. This takes a lot longer than it should, because fixing her eyes involves looking at them with the starscape's magical third-person vision and she keeps flinching away.
The two figures that Margaret has been speaking to have dark skin and soft features. They both wear contoured bodysuits, with intricately supported joints and tactical gear clipped all over the less mobile stretches of fabric. Their faces, though, are exposed. The invisible Hazard swarms around them yet they show no apparent harm.
The smaller of the pair, with the slim box she called a medkit clutched in one tight fist, has short cropped and intricately patterned hair. She glances rapidly between the others present, searching for some cue as to how to proceed.
The larger of the pair, with her rifle still at the ready, has long unkempt hair and fierce eyes. She does not look to others for guidance, she speaks with a tone of command even when her words acknowledge the presence of superior.
"I advise caution, Founder O'Cuana." She gestures for the newcomer who just entered the hallway from the airlock to maintain distance from Margaret. "We don't know what we're dealing with here. We can't risk your life. If you need samples taken while it's still alive, send me or Trinket instead."