Chapter 10 -

The night air on Zild pressed against the Ark’s hull like a living thing—thick with the scent of ozone and rot, pierced by distant thunder that rattled viewports. Beneath the twin moons’ ghostly glow, the jungle exhaled phosphorescent spores in lazy clouds, each one drifting across the domed observation deck like pale motes of memory. Silence was no comfort here; every breath felt borrowed, every shadow a promise of teeth and claws waiting just beyond the ark’s reinforced walls.

Ava

Lightning etches an emerald aurora on the storm wall—Ava watches, tears mixing with rain inside her visor.

Serrano leaned against the viewport, fingertips cool against the glass. “It’s too quiet,” she murmured, voice swallowed by the hum of the life‐support pumps. Her reflection fractured in the dim light—eyes ringed with exhaustion, jaw set in stubborn defiance. “That silence is predator’s lullaby.”

Markus Kane ducked into her peripheral vision, boots squeaking on alloy grates. His rifle was slung and ready, posture taut as a drawn bow. “Trust your gut,” he replied, tone low but urgent. “We’ve survived storms, insects with murder on the mind, and microbes that think they own this place. We can handle a little stillness.”

She met his gaze, the alien landscape reflected in her pupils. “Stillness that feels alive,” she shot back. “Zild isn’t a place to conquer, it’s a force to respect.”

Lauren Cho appeared behind them, datapad in hand, eyes flicking between readings and the shifting treetops outside. The corridor lights flickered, casting their trio in harsh, jaundiced relief. “We’ve got bigger problems than night‐time theatrics,” she said. The rasp of her voice was laced with fatigue and steel. “Spacy just flagged a critical error in the hydroponics feed. Spores have mutated around the latest inhibitor. They’re now digesting cellulose.”

The air thickened as Spacy’s calm voice filled the deck: “Alert: food‐security failure imminent. Mutation cycle halved. Probability of full crop collapse within twelve hours.” The AI’s dispassion was a blade in their hearts uckles whitened on his rifle. “That’s our lifeline—gone.” He kicked at a conduit grate; sparks jumped where wiring met metal. “We need containment protocols now.”

Lauren tapped her datapad, scrawling hysterical lines of code that blinked in violet. “Start quarantine sector Bravo. No one in or out without full ERC gear.” She looked at Ava. “Grid those bioshields, too.”

Ava’s mask seal hissed as she exhaled. “Got it. Mods to corridor sprayers in ten minutes. Foam and UV—kill any stray spores on contact.”

In the lab, Lena Tan’s fingers were a blur over the holo‐keys. The centrifuge thrummed like a racing heart, sloshing inhibitor gel in precise arcs. The smell of bleach and petri dish agar stung her nostrils. Sweat plastered her hair to her forehead. “I can’t buy us more than a day,” she whispered to herself, gaze fixed on the morphing spore lattice under her scope.

Ava slipped in behind her, shoulders heaving. “Lena—rest. You’ve been at this forty hours straight.” Her voice cracked like a warning.

Lena didn’t look up. “Rest means death. I need to recalibrate the enzyme binders—three more molecular variants. Otherwise the spores will ravage every living thing.” Her voice was brittle, edged with raw fear she refused to show.

Ava pressed a hand on her shoulder. The touch was grounding. “We’re all on edge, but a burned‐out scientist can’t solve anything.” She lowered her voice. “You won’t get another chance to save the Ark if you collapse.”

Lena inhaled, tasting antiseptic on her tongue. She closed her eyes, the lab’s fluorescent glare fracturing into whorls. “Okay. Two hours.” It was a promise made to herself—and to the crew. Two hours of sleep, then back to the abyss.

Markus paced the observation deck, boots clanking against the steel grates. Outside, rain pounded the canopy in a relentless tattoo. The electric scent of ionized humidity filled the chamber. He pressed his palm to his helmet glass, the chill biting through his gloves. “This world is alive,” he muttered. “It feels us like prey.”

Lauren joined him, wafting a data‐chip she’d just retrieved. “Readings are off the charts—microseismic activity beneath the Ark. Zild’s shifting its crust under our feet.” She tapped the chip into the console; holographic fault lines blossomed across the viewpad in angry red.

Markus exhaled. “We can’t stay put. The ground’s our enemy.” He turned, determination hardening his features. “We need to move our base camp—higher ground, more stable rock.”

Lauren bit her lip. “Moving everything through spore‐infected forest? Suicide.”

Markus’s voice dropped to a harsh whisper. “Staying is suicide.” He met her gaze. “We adapt or we die here.”

A moment of charged silence passed—two leaders weighing fate under alien moons.

In the hydroponics wing, Ava and a skeleton crew dove into decontamination. The corridor lights cycled UV bursts, painting the walls in grim purple. The foam sprayer’s hiss was a grim lullaby as algae carcasses melted away in sticky torrents. Ava wiped sweat from her brow, the foam’s chemical tang clinging to her skin. “Sector filtration at ninety percent,” she reported. “But they’re adapting—see these crusted clusters?”

She aimed the sprayer at neon‐green nodules coating a pipe joint. They crumbled under UV, but new buds sprouted behind her. “Like mold on a damp wall.” She exhaled through her mask. “We have to keep at it.”

From the darkness, Spacy’s voice chimed: “Proposed solution: cycle inhibitor variants in non‐sequential order to prevent adaptive mapping. See formula logs in lab.” The AI’s mechanical suggestion felt like a prayer.

Ava nodded. “Got it. I’ll relay to Lena as soon as she’s up.”

Back in the lab’s quiet alcove, Lena slumped against cold steel, two hours of rest barely cleared the fog from her mind. The centrifuge’s hum beckoned her—scientist’s siren call. She licked dry lips and rose, fingers trembling as she reactivated the console. In the corner of her subroutine log, she noticed a flicker: ARK‐SHADOW‐10, a hidden file she didn’t remember creating. Curious—it pulsed with an encrypted heartbeat that matched the Ark’s readouts.

A subplot seed bloomed: someone—or something—had accessed her data partition. Was it Spacy acting on rogue code, or a lingering trace of Shale’s forbidden experiments? For now, the question would burn behind her eyes.

She squared her shoulders, repressed the dread, and dove back into the spectral swirl of RNA sequences and inhibitor curves.

Lauren convened the command circle in dimmed emergency lighting. The map of Zild’s massif flickered overhead in cobalt and crimson. Surrounding them: ammunition lockers, med-kits, and the first stable crop crates that hadn’t mutated overnight.

“All right,” she said, voice steady despite the chaos. “We secure high ground by dawn. Markus, lead the evacuation convoys up the northern ridge—two teams, eight people each. Ava, accompany the first convoy with biofoam backup. Isaac, maintain environmental isolation on the hold. Lena, I want your third-gen inhibitor locked and loaded for deployment as soon as we set camp.”

Markus saluted, the holo‐map reflecting in his eyes. “Convoy one ready in forty minutes.”

Ava clasped Lena’s shoulder. “Two more formulas and you’re our miracle worker.”

Lena gave a tired smile. “I’ll have the vials sealed before we hit the road.”

Isaac tapped his boots. “Airlocks prepped for convoy egress. No spores come back with them.”

Lauren nodded, pride and exhaustion mingling in her gaze. “Let’s move.”

They assembled at the northern airlock, dawn’s pale light filtering through rain-slicked windows. Convoy supplies—dry rations, seed banks, and vials of violet inhibitor—lined the cargo bay. The air smelled of wet metal and fresh rain, each breath a prayer of defiance.

Markus counted off names: “Team Alpha: Ava, Dr. Chen, Rami, Ortiz. Team Bravo: me, Lauren, Isaac, Lowe.”

Ava hefted her sprayer. “Let’s go baptize that ridge in UV.”

Lena strapped on her injector belt, boots echoing readiness. “And keep them alive long enough for the spores to die.”

Lauren clasped the hatch control. “Godspeed, all of you.”

With a pneumatic hiss, the airlock cycled. The storm-lashed dawn spilled through the threshold, and they stepped into Zild’s brutal embrace—hearts pounding to the planet’s primal rhythm, determined to claim new ground before being swallowed whole.

They plunged into the storm-lashed jungle before dawn’s pale light finally surrendered to day, boots sinking in the soggy undergrowth. The air was thick—mosquito drone undercut by the distant roar of waterfalls carving canyons into Zild’s crust. Each breath tasted of wet moss and metallic tang, as though the planet exhaled acid with every gust.

“Keep close,” Markus Kane warned, voice low over the comm hum. His rifle’s mounted light carved arcs of clarity through the inky green, revealing shifting shapes in the fog: colossal ferns whose fronds curled like prehistoric claws, trunks slick with phosphorescent lichen, their bark murmuring with spore‐wind.

Lauren Cho plucked a geiger‐like sensor from her pack, its tip clicking against the air. “Radiation at baseline,” she reported, tone clipped. “Thermal vents ahead, but stable. Spores are dying back since inhibitor saturation. Good.”

Ava Serrano sidestepped a root the size of a forearm, the foam sprayer weighted in her grip. “If we stay here too long, though, the inhibitor wears off.” Her voice cracked like a whip of worry. “We need to move camp before the spores rebound.”

Lena Tan pressed close to the group, data-pad clutched under one arm. Her lab coat was dirty, stained with chlorophyll and inhibitor gel. She blinked through exhaustion, eyes flickering as though reading invisible glyphs in the mist. “Camp at the ridge…” she muttered, teeth chattering in the damp. “Must be rocky outcrop—good visibility, wind exposure.”

Markus’s light swept the ground. “Two clicks north. And uphill.”

They climbed, muscles burning, as the path narrowed to a precarious ledge overlooking a deep ravine. A waterfall thundered below, its spray rising in ghostly columns that glittered with bioluminescent motes. The wind was a living thing here, lashing their faces with cold droplets and the roar of water.

“Fresh air,” Lana said, inhaling. “But spore blooms thrive in moisture. This ridge will dry out before they can mutate again.”

Ava slung her sprayer, boots sliding on wet rock. “Then let’s find a flat spot before the next tremor sends us flying.”

They reached the summit at last: a plateau of jagged basalt columns, their spires etched like broken teeth against the storm-dark sky. The ground was coarse—rock dust and gravel that crunched underfoot, fragrant with mineral tang and the faint sweetness of a thousand dying spores.

Markus dropped his pack, scanning the horizon. “This is it.” His boots left dusty prints that sparkled in the faint starlight. “Set up shelters here. Wind will scour the spores, and UV grids can fry any survivors.”

Lauren wove protective barriers from modular panels, each one snapping together with a clack that echoed in the open air. She tested the emitter nodules; they hummed to life with a pulse of violet glow, bathing the rock in surreal, ultraviolet daylight. “UV shields active,” she said, voice carrying in the wind. “Spore kill rate at ninety-nine percent within grids.”

Ava arranged foam sprayers around the perimeter, their nozzles poised like mechanical sentinels. Each sprayer hissed with readiness, foam reservoirs charged with Lena’s second-gen formula. “Circuits primed,” she called. “Just say the word.”

Lena knelt beside a small patch of moss that clung to a crevice—her clinical gaze flickering with both fascination and dread. She produced a vial of pale violet solution and dripped it onto the moss. The fronds recoiled, shriveling in minutes under the inhibitor’s touch. “Fascinating,” she whispered. “This strain’s cell walls are thicker—like they’re bracing for siege.”

She tapped her datapad, summoning holographic enzyme chains. “If I can reinforce the inhibitor with a cross-linked peptide, we might extend protection to forty-eight hours.” Her lips quivered with the strain of sleepless calculation. “Then we could outlast Zild’s worst.”

Ava rested a hand on her arm. “Two nights in the lab, Lena. Then bed.”

Lena’s eyes softened for a heartbeat. “Promise?”

“Promise,” Ava said, though neither fully believed it.

As the crew laid out sleeping mats woven with insulating foam, the storm finally broke—thunder rolling like celestial drums, torrents hammering the UV shields. Rain pattered against the emitters, each drop sizzling on contact, releasing a biting ozone fragrance.

Markus crouched beside Lauren, sharing a ration bar in silence. The synthetic gel’s flavor—remarkably saffron‐like—was a small comfort. “We held the line,” he said, voice low as the storm’s cadence. “If Lena’s formula works, we’ve got breathing room.”

Lauren nodded, her breath heavy in her mask. “But we still need a long-term solution. We can’t live on suppressants.”

He looked at her, dusk-shadowed eyes raw. “I know. We’ll scour the caverns below—where Shale’s coordinates pointed. Maybe the Serpent’s Chorus has answers.”

Lauren’s gaze flickered upward toward the sky, where the moons drifted in fractured arcs. “Let’s hope the cave sings better than the spores.”

Lena lay on her mat, data-pad glowing at her side. The roar of the storm and the hiss of foam sprayers lulled her into a restless doze. In dreams, she saw spirals of spores dancing like celestial gyres, weaving into fractal tunnels deep beneath the Ark.

She was at her mother’s greenhouse—rain dripping through shattered glass, basil bursting with emerald life. Her mother’s hand rested on her shoulder, warm and steady. “The world is hungry for life,” the memory whispered. “And you are its steward.”

Lena opened her eyes to the storm’s distant glow. She sat up, jolted by clarity and dread. The cave below—the Serpent’s Chorus—the thrumming glyph code pulsing in her hidden partition. It all converged on a singular truth: Zild’s secrets were alive, hidden in stone and song.

She rose, voice soft. “Spacy—wake me in one hour. I need to adjust the peptide cross-link ratios.”

The AI’s holo-avatar shimmered. “Understood. Initiating wake cycle in sixty minutes.”

Lena lay back, mind racing faster than any enzyme. Tomorrow, she would dive back into the enzyme forge. But tonight, she tasted hope and dread in equal measure—like sweet nectar laced with poison.

Pre-dawn, the plateau fell silent—storm spent, though clouds still dripped moisture. The air was crisp, each breath a gulp of icy clarity. The crew assembled, eyes bright with determination and exhaustion.

Lauren addressed them, voice firm. “We’re moving into the caverns—Level One, as Shale’s logs describe. Muster at the ridge edge in ten minutes. Markus leads, Ava on comms, Lena carries sample kits, Isaac on environmental monitoring.”

They nodded in unison—soldiers and scientists bound by a shared mission. Each felt the gravity of the unknown below, where darkness waited to reveal its secrets.

Markus hefted his pack, voice rough with anticipation. “Let’s find our answers.”

Ava adjusted her headset. “And kill anything that tries to kill us.”

Lena slipped her vial into a padded pocket, fingers brushing the cool glass. “And keep these spores dead.”

Isaac tested his sensor array, static dancing across his goggles. “I’ll sync our readings with the Ark. We’re a tether to safety.”

Lauren stepped into the lead, boots crunching on basalt shards. She exhaled, tasting cold determination. “Into the belly of the planet.”

They descended the rocky slope, each step carrying them closer to the caverns of the Serpent’s Chorus—where Zild’s true song whispered through stone and shadow, waiting for those brave or foolish enough to listen.