The operation took 3 hours and covered every corner of the Habitat Drum. There were 27 intruders roaming the ship. To send them back would be to send them to hell. The encounter with the infected, the "goblin" as they called it, added to the nightmares that were robbing them of sleep. Max could feel the smell of diseased and charred flesh lodging deep in his nostrils.

  The rest of the squads combed the drum twice, looking for any other hostiles, searching for signs of infection. They found another goblin near environmental control, which was taken down without a word. There were no lethal casualties this time, but combing the air filtration chambers from top to bottom was a real pain.

  —. It couldn't get much worse, could it? – Gavin Mendoza said to him. The Chief of OPS and Logistics. A man who spoke like a redneck, had cinnamon skin, a Greek profile, and looked like a Bollywood heartthrob. Just an average Martian. Mendoza took a sip of his third coffee of the afternoon. His left eyelid twitched on its own sometimes. – We have a total of 301 confirmed dead in hold C of the Cargo Bay. If they weren't ejected by the decompression, they ended up blown apart. Recovering it will be a problem right now. I suggest to relocate the survivors and ejecting that module into space. It's less weight for takeoff. The sooner we get off this pnet, the better. –

  —. I agree. – Max replied, taking a long drag from what was his second cigarette after the raid. —. What about the colonists? Any survivors in that shuttle? – Gavin shook his head and made an exaggerated gesture with his hands.

  —. Not even the pilot. – he replied —. There was a huge impact hole in the belly of the Banshee. If anyone was inside, they were either pulverized by the explosion or ejected by the decompression, and the debris did the rest. We only found blood. –

  —. Jesus. – Max muttered.

  —. Yeah. – Gavin added —. We only found the pilot strapped to the seat. Apparently, the inertia ripped his head off. Anyway, we sent the body to the Medical Bay. Forensic guys will take care of identifying him to determine the cause of death. If you ask me, I think the guy was high. No one approaches a Starscraper like that. – a nagging worry bothered Max, like the itch that demanded a cigarette.

  —. Any trace of yellow material? – he asked. —. Pus? Contaminated blood of some kind? – Gavin swallowed hard and shook his head nervously. —. Any corpse with noticeable deformities all over the body and secretions of the same color? –

  —. Not that we know of, first. We just brought that ship into one of the Maintenance Bays. We'll have to check it anyway. –

  —. I'll send a C–Sec team with the guys working there. Santos, maybe. Lethal Force, a couple of psma rifles, and heat units. Any suspicion that comes your way, get the hell out of there, and let C–Sec burn everything. Then send the Banshee to the smelter if that's the case. If anyone asks, I authorized it. Leave no ashes or particles behind, got it? –

  – Of course. – Gavin replied after finishing his coffee in one gulp. – —. Though I must ask, cap, don't you think that's a bit excessive? –

  – In a situation like this, being excessive is the minimum standard. – Max replied, pointing at him with the cigarette between his fingers. – I wouldn't want to force us into quarantine, especially being so close to leaving. If we have another one of those goblins lurking around without us knowing, it's over. One was a nightmare. A crowd, hell. –

  – Sure. – Gavin responded. His agitated eyes had finally calmed, staring into nothing. – If there were any suspicion, believe me, I would warn you without thinking. – Max gave him a pat on the shoulder and looked at him with a sincere and tired smile.

  – I'm gd to hear that. –

  After finishing with Gavin, Max returned to the bridge. A feeling of new normalcy was beginning to set in. The bodies had been taken to the morgue and the cleaning drones had taken care of the pools of blood. A few crew members were on duty, the ones with fewer marks. Xiliya Patel moved between the systems and engineering terminals. Benjamin Mubambwe was unwell, so she repced him.

  Mr Liu sat at his terminal as if nothing had happened. Aaliya Denison had taken on the role of Second Officer and was sitting at Galloway's station. Sayuri Sawatari was back in Communications, and acting First Officer was Dmitry Daimonji, who had left Soren Petrescu in Engineering before coming to the Bridge. They filled the remaining terminals with some OPS and logistics people. Acting Captain was Max Picard. Everything seemed to be back on track.

  – When will we be ready, Miss Patel? – Max asked from the captain's seat.

  – No less than 72 hours, first... I mean, captain. – she apologized with a nervous gesture, to which Max returned a sympathetic smile. He still wasn't used to the position. It felt like an oversized pair of pants that never quite fit.

  Max took a sip of his coffee. A drone had brought it to him, and EREBUS's voice wished him to enjoy it. It was a vanil–fvored cappuccino, inside a sterile airtight metal shaker. He assumed Naomi had sent it, which he appreciated. A part of him wanted to give up and sleep, but the caffeine kept him in an uncomfortable limbo between alertness, fatigue, and anxiety.

  And then he contempted the bridge and realized that the new normalcy was just a facade. There were faces he would never see again. Every time he turned to the bosun's station, he expected to see Galloway, with his bushy mustache. Instead, he saw Denison, trying to fill the void with as much dignity as she could muster.

  When he wanted to look out into space, he only found a bck wall without stars, as the armored doors had closed to prevent decompression. Other terminals y dark, and it seemed the bridge would never regain the same energy and bustle as before.

  Max felt a buzz on his wrist terminal. A call. When he answered, he saw the face of Angelina Zhang. A woman with short white hair and messy strands, a round face, and small snted eyes.

  —. Captain, I need you in the brig. It's urgent. It has to do with the EREBUS failure. –

  —. I'm on my way. – Max replied —. Daimonji. You are in charge of the bridge during my absence. –

  – Aye–aye, captain. –

  Zhang was waiting for him in the interrogation room. It was square, with walls reminiscent of an anechoic chamber. A whitish light seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, so there were almost no shadows, and the skin shone with an uncomfortable contrast. The good thing was that there was an air extractor, so they could both share a cigarette.

  – Come on, doc. Let's get to the point. – Max asked after lighting his cigarette.

  – Yeah. – Angelina replied after taking a drag from hers. She began reviewing the notes on the HoloPad she was holding in her arms. She pced it on the interrogation table and projected a hologram between the two that dimmed the lights around them. Max raised an eyebrow. —. Okay, what do you see here? –

  – A bunch of codes. – Max replied honestly.

  – It's the result of the EREBUS diagnosis. – she observed. – What I executed shortly after the failure and the crash. The systems went down for several minutes, and we had to juggle to restore them. – Max nodded.

  Doctor Angelina Zhang was not only the head of IT but also the creator of the test Chronos AI. The Extreme Risk Evaluation and Behavioral Understanding System, or EREBUS for short. It was her masterpiece and graduation project, from a time that seemed remote. One of the brightest minds humanity had conceived. She could have worked wherever she wanted, yet she blessed them with her presence aboard the Chronos.

  She hadn't made EREBUS a mere assistant. It was more than a simple pseudo–analog quantum neural network that processed data from an input and delivered an output. It didn't just analyze coldly. She had given it the ability to understand human emotions and emute them. It could discover, marvel, feel. Not just a computer, but a companion and the Guardian Angel that the Chronos needed. One whose mission had remained unblemished, except for that day. Angelina pointed to a list of commands. Max stared at her with the cigarette between his fingers, nodding, trying to understand.

  – There it is, the crux of the matter. – Angelina indicated.

  – Okay, and what exactly am I looking at? –

  – A paradoxical reasoning. – a chill ran through Max upon hearing that phrase, and he took a strong drag from his cigarette. – EREBUS has the ws of robotics crystallized in its operating system, as well as the ship's regutions. The instruction given by the captain caused a collision between the First Robotics Law and Article 151 of the Internal Regutions of the Chronos. –

  – In the face of imminent risk, the lives and integrity of the crew and passengers, whether or not in hypersleep, shall be prioritized, and no artificial subperson aboard the ship may question this mandate. – Max quoted aloud. Angelina nodded.

  – Exactly. – she waved her cigarette to indicate a line of code. – And that instruction conflicted with the first w of robotics. No robot or AI shall harm a human being, even by omission. And seeing that both reasonings were contradictory, it decided to shut down the ship's PDCs and allow the shuttles to board us, despite the imminent risk. –

  – Of course, because the PDCs were also a risk for the colonists aboard those shuttles. – Max stared at the highlighted code and took a drag from his cigarette. – Interesting, but I don't get it. Did EREBUS consider the colonists part of the crew? That doesn't quite add up. How did it come to that conclusion? –

  – It 's simple. Someone altered him. – the revetion hit him like a bucket of cold water. Max squinted and shook his head.

  – What? –

  – Just like it sounds. – Angelina continued, showing another cascade of codes. – I was reviewing, and a few hours before the crash, it seems someone was pying with the Ethical Constraints, and that caused the problem. – Max stood frozen, staring at the symbols and commands in front of him. – We have to modify them. –

  Horrific scenarios fshed through his mind. He didn't have to imagine them. They were events that had already occurred with other AIs in the past, whose Constraints were altered and led to disastrous outcomes. Drops of cold sweat formed on his forehead and scalp, and his back suddenly became soaked. He had to prevent such a thing from happening aboard the Chronos, and he found himself speaking without thinking.

  – Tell Mendoza he has my authorization to raise the Ethical Constraints above 45%. Up to 51 and a fraction would be fine. We want EREBUS to still have a margin of discretion. I don't want it reciting safety protocols for every action we take. – he couldn't help but remember Galloway. He saw him lying on the floor with his eye out of its socket looking at him. Max realized he was about to smoke the filter, so he extinguished the butt, threw it in the recycler, and lit another cigarette with frantic gestures before taking a deep drag. – And also slightly increase the weight of the ship's Regutions over the Laws of Robotics. We don't want today's scenario to repeat for any reason, okay? –

  – Understood. – Angelina concluded. The silence screamed at them as if an angel had passed between the two. It was barely interrupted by the hum of the extractors activating. The doctor furrowed her brow and looked away. Max knew her well enough to know she was holding something back.

  – Is there something you haven't told me, doc? – he inquired. She smiled and waved it off. But her expression clearly showed that it tormented her. The smile faded, she shrugged, and then let it out.

  – What if we actually need to decrease them instead of increasing them? –

  – How so? – Max countered. – I don't see how that could be beneficial. Scenarios like today's could repeat. If you ask me, 45% still seems low. –

  – Maybe we should eliminate them altogether. – Max couldn't help but burst out ughing.

  – Nice joke. Not funny, though. – Max said, ughing, but there wasn't a hint of a joke on Angelina's face, and she remained with a petrified and serious expression as if she had read a death sentence. Confusion quickly struck him, and his smile also faded. – Hey, doc. You're not serious, are you? – she simply nodded. – You're one of the brightest people aboard this ship, but what you just suggested is an Starscrapper sized bullshit –

  – Just an hypothesis that crossed my mind. – she insisted —. Maybe those constraints become a limit if we wanted, for example, to achieve a Greater Good. –

  – There would be no Greater Good. Period. – Max shot back. – It's true, AIs were an open Pandora's box. A genie that escaped the bottle and cannot be returned. But we built those constraints to keep us in control and prevent our own obsolescence. Do you know what would be bigger than that supposed Greater Good? The monumental mess we would leave if we let EREBUS off the leash. The answer is NO, and that's not up for discussion. –

  Angelina remained silent, arms crossed. She tilted her head and nodded slowly, as if resigned.

  – I'll tell Mendoza to set them at 50.44%. – she concluded.

  – Good. Is there anything else you want to tell me, doc? – Angelina turned to look at him and drew a sad but honest smile on her face.

  – Nothing. It's just that you py the role of captain well. – that caught him off guard, and for a few moments, he forgot what was happening around him and felt like that dirty, abandoned puppy that Harding had brought aboard. – It's a shame you want to leave. –

  – So Harding told you? – Max inquired.

  – Kinda – she confessed, and a nostalgic smile appeared on her face as her eyes became gssy. – I won't deny that I'll miss you and Naomi. The ship won't be the same. –

  – And why don't you come with us? – he asked. – You and Harding. – she shook her head with a weak smile.

  – That's no longer for me. – she replied with a hint of resignation. – I've spent so much time aboard that I already belong to the ship. My freedom expired the moment I set foot inside. It's an uncomfortable symbiosis, but it is what it is. I don't want that to happen to you with Naomi. You have a whole life ahead of you to waste it here on a Starscrapper. –

  Max remembered those words over and over again, minutes before everything went to hell. He left the interrogation room, while his head spun between his responsibility and the promise he made with Naomi. He wanted to believe that sooner or ter everything would fall into pce.

  The ship's brig was a utilitarian and brutalist space. The walls were straight, a dull gray color. The lighting seemed to come from the perimeter of the ceiling and the floor, reminiscent of sunlight. The cells were elongated octagonal hollows, and in each one, groups of five colonists were crammed. They had never been full. That sector of Chronos was hardly occupied. If there was a riot, the responsible parties were thrown through an airlock.

  A group of C–Sec officers left the weapons used by the colonists in a pstic tray, analyzed them, and stored them in airtight bags with an evidence patch. Under other circumstances, the colonists would have been treated like vile pirates and thrown into the void without hesitation, as they had carried out a violent boarding and also broke quarantine.

  But Matkovich's orders had been to communicate with the colony and wait for instructions in such a case. Hours had passed, and they had received no response from the surface. Besides the white noise and electromagnetic interference, the same recorded message could be heard; "The system is under quarantine. No ship can enter or leave the pnet..." bh, bh, bh. They would have to do something with the colonists, whether there was a response or not. That reminded him that he would also submit his resignation to the captain, something he had been postponing.

  Max called the captain with his bracelet for a call. It was cut off immediately. Someone was gesturing from one of the cells. The hydroponics prisoner, along with his cellmates, had pressed against the gss, gesturing for him to please come. They looked at each other for a few seconds, and Max shrugged.

  He walked towards them and gestured to his ears; I can't hear you. Then he pressed a button on the control panel. He heard a moduted voice from the other side.

  – Thank God. Hey, I'm Yakiv Volkov, are you the Security Chief? – the man asked him.

  – No. I'm the First Officer. What can I do for you? – Yakiv's eyes widened in surprise, and he turned to whisper something to his companions in a nguage he didn't fully understand. They looked at him filled with hope.

  – You can talk to the captain, right? – Max tilted his head and turned to look at the C–Sec officers. Ryken Tabakar was holding a ser scalpel in his hands. Max had the apprehension to run and snatch it from him. He could kill someone with that. – Please, ask him to let us stay on board the ship. We can't go back to the colony. Not under these conditions... – Max cut him off by raising his hands.

  –. That decision is not up to me. It was decided that you would be returned to Lohengrin via a Quarantine Cord. We have been trying to contact the colony for a while to coordinate. We don't know when it will be, but it seems imminent. I can't do anything. – Tabakar swatted away an invisible bug with his hand. – I'm so sorry. –

  He was turning on his heel when a fist on the gss made him turn back to Yakiv. The man looked at him with a face contorted with a mix of rage and helplessness.

  –. Haven't you seen what's happening? – he asked with a torn voice. – Haven't you seen the reports? We can't go down to the colony because we lost it. Lohengrin is hell, and it all started with those damn fireflies." – Upon hearing that st part, Max's throat closed up, and a cold wind blew down his back.

  –. Wait, fireflies? –

  –. Yes! You saw it too, didn't you? That's how it all begins. – a yellowish fsh appeared in his peripheral vision. When he focused, there was nothing. Harding was swatting away a bug with his hands in the other corner. –. You have to ask your captain to get us out of orbit as soon as possible because once it starts, it can't be stopped. – When he looked up, a cloud of fireflies like yellow sparks shot out from Yakiv's face.

  As he reacted, the dungeon had disappeared. He found himself standing in the middle of a bck void, where the only light was the swarms of fireflies fluttering around him, casting a sickly glow. Gradually, Max identified shapes, which he quickly recognized as people. Yakiv. Harding. Tabakar. Zhang. Crew and colonists were there, paralyzed in horror, in the middle of the Firefly Forest.

  Max wanted to scream, but his vocal cords refused to react. The terror petrified his nerve endings, and then he realized he had become a statue sculpted by fear. A sensation appeared in the middle of his temples. Soft and sharp touches pulsed from inside and outside his head. A sound made itself present within his eardrums. A chorus of voices, singing the most beautiful melody Max had ever heard. Suddenly the forest stopped being a horrible pce and filled with an impossible peace. A peace from which Max did not want to escape.

  Blood. Bodies. Screams. The crack of tendons tearing. A yellowish slime coming from all sides. Intestines writhing like worms. The goblins were just a stage. Larvae of the fireflies on their way to their final metamorphosis. Beautiful. Horrible. Divine. The image of a tremendous chrysalis from which an enormous, swollen, grotesque butterfly emerged, spreading its yellow and shiny wings, in the midst of a terrifying crack, was burned into his mind.

  Its wings and abdomen projected a sinister yellowish glow. And it was not a butterfly; it was a firefly. The mother of them all. An epiphany appeared without words, but Max understood. They were messengers of light, and there was no need to fear them. For in the Forest, everyone was fireflies. And in the forest, everyone shines.

  Consciousness returned abruptly, like a castaway thrown by the waves onto the shore. Max found himself with a trembling body and his flesh coursed by an unrelenting tingling. An inexplicable anxiety knotted his guts, as if he were a victim of his worst withdrawal, and cold sweat slid down his body.

  –. What the hell? – he muttered through clenched teeth and then looked at his own hands, victims of a tremor that shook him to the marrow. A heart–wrenching, stuttering, high–pitched scream. Glen Lexner had fallen into a fetal position, kicking and crying desperately like a newborn baby. Fundiswa was in a corner, hunched over and holding his head with his eyes fixed on nothing. Zhang was crying silently, and Harding was biting his lips, paralyzed.

  –. It can't be. – Yakiv said in a trembling tone. –. It's too te. They are here. –

  Max's gaze fixed on Tabakar. His face was shattered, and his hair was wild as if he were insane. A weak smile appeared on his gssy–eyed face, resigned and fulfilled. In his hands, he trembled as he held the tissue ser, bringing it closer to his neck. Max's scream hung in his throat.

  –. No! – it was too te. A reddish beam cut through flesh like butter. In one second, his head was on his body. In the next, it was not. Blood gushed like a crimson fountain, and his body colpsed rigid as if it were a mannequin. In his hands, his dead fingers still held the ser. The beam was aimed directly at Harding, who watched in shock.

  Max lunged and pushed the chief who was about to be split in half. It happened to him in his pce. A burn beneath his knees, and suddenly the ground came crashing down on him. The shriek of the ser against the metal, piercing incessantly until it fell silent. Immediately, an arm began to scream.

  – Oh my God. – Harding shouted. Max tried to get up, but realized his legs weren't responding. He felt life slipping away. Harding, Zhang, and other officers rushed to help him. Their voices faded into an incomprehensible and uniform murmur. A couple of fireflies fluttered around him, and a voice whispered his name. Lay appeared in the corner of the room, walking backward without a care in the world, wrapped in her orange spacesuit. An invisible force pushed him to go to her. He crawled a few inches and then colpsed. After that, he was surrounded by the most absolute and deep darkness.