In an attempt to curb the physical problems Willem-Harcourt, a biotech supercompany, had been plying trillions of dollars into a drug that counteracted most of the common ailments of space flight. They insisted that tests proved muscles atrophied less, there was a definite strengthening of the internal membranes to hold organs stable in free-fall, and there was less chance of blood-related problems due to a special compound known only to a few as The Seed. All of this was theoretical, of course. No testing could commence without human subject who would be in space for a long period. So when the Space Station was due to be re-crewed before a eighteen month stint, they stepped in with the suggestion of testing the drug. Objections were raised, but the massive funds of the company silenced any dissent and the crew were administered the drug as part of a regular vitamin regime.

Now, six months later, in the cold dark corridors of the station, those vitamins held a horrible fascination for the few crew members left. They were huddled together, four in a space the size of a equipment locker. Their breath misted the rapidly chilling air in short, sharp clouds. A woman raised her head a fraction to look into the worried eyes of a shivering man.

‘Jack, we can’t stay in here forever. It’s getting freezing, and we’ve got no food. We have to move.’

He looked down at her, haunted eyes having trouble focussing. He grinned, his eyes weeping.

‘We can’t, Alice, we just can’t. They are out there. They’re waiting for us…’ He broke off, shivering and biting his lower lip. A voice close to her ear whispered in the gloom.

‘He’s right. He’s going mad, but he’s right. We move, we become whatever it is they are. That’s all there is to it.’

‘I don’t want to die in this box, Sam. I don’t want to die here, in space. Shit, this whole station’s one huge damn blasphemy against Gods creation! Why the hell did we think we could live in space? Stupid, stupid.’

Someone else shifted, banging the side of the box, the noise echoing through the dead silence.

‘Sophie is out there. She’s out there, all alone. We should go and help her. We should, or else we might as well dead. We can’t forget our friends.’

‘She’s dead, Chloe, she’s dead. Pray that she’s dead,’ muttered Sam.

‘If she’s not dead, then what is she?’

‘The same as those other things. Those monsters,’ Jack whimpered.

‘I can’t believe how quickly you can forget they used to be our friends.’

‘I see them covered in blood and enjoying it, I forget. Look, I don’t know what the hell has been happening up here the past couple of days. All I know is that there used to be twelve of us, and I know six are dead. Dead.’

Footsteps silenced the conversation. They silenced the people from life, driving them in fear from even breathing. On the metal floor of the station the running sound Dopplered past the room in which they were locked and away into the distance. Heartbeats hammered quick time from the silent air, all muscles locked in abject terror. After fear had run dry in their minds, and the need to reassert humanity surfaced, they spoke in near telepathic whispers.

‘We can’t move. We just can’t. Even if we get out of here, there’s no way off the station. We are, after all, in space,’ Sam said, snapping the fact out like a gunshot.

Alice drew a deep breath. She had done nothing but think of a way to get off the station during their uncomfortable sojourn in the locker. She thought she might have an idea.

‘Maybe that’s what can help us. We are, as you said, in space. Space that kills anything. I think we can kill those things by opening the air-lock and sucking the air from the station. It would take them with it.’

‘Yes, and us, along with any breathable atmosphere. And anyway, you don’t even know if they breath any more. Sure they walk, but they sure didn’t look alive to me. If we die, they are left up here to massacre the rescue mission which will be coming in two days. I say we wait for them.’

‘Wait? We have had nothing to eat or drink for thirty hours. Without water, we will not survive for another two days.’

‘And judging by the state of the atmosphere in here, we’d be lucky to find any liquid water even if we looked. Chances are we’ll freeze to death first,’ said Chloe.

‘Ha. Freeze, die thirsty or get sucked dry to keep them fed and watered. Not much of a choice,’ mumbled Jack. Sam snapped a glance at him, but sighed when he saw the spaced-out look in Jack’s eyes. He didn’t know what he was saying.

‘What about the space suites? We’re pretty sure they only want our blood, so why not seal ourselves up so they can’t get it, and make a run for it?’ said Alice, her voice dripping hope.

‘Because,’ Sam said, ‘the suites are too far away. We’d never get to them.’

‘It’s worth a try while we can still move, and Jack is really starting to worry me. Look at his eyes.’ Alice tried to edge away from Jack, who was clawing with limp hands at the door, head lolling to one side.

‘Is he turning? If he is, we run now. I don’t know what the hell these things are, but I do not want to be around another one.’

‘But if he can turn, we all can,’ whispered Chloe, looking into the eyes of Sam and Alice. The atmosphere dropped a couple of degrees.

‘That’s it,’ said Alice, making to move, ‘I’m going to get a suite. I’ll shut you two in here with him if you want, but I am not sitting still surrounded by death and doing nothing about it.’ She shoved the door, and it opened. She floated out into the room, oddly calm in the tense silence. Slowly Sam and Chloe swam out of the locker behind her. Jack lay curled in the remaining warmth, and one of his eyes danced in their direction. ‘Don’t you think it’s odd how we heard footsteps? We haven’t heard a footstep in six months.’ The three looked at each other, fear rising in their confused limbs, the adrenaline doing no good as they floated, impotent of a swift escape. Jack lay still, and they could see he would shiver himself to death.

‘We can’t leave him,’ said Chloe. ‘We can’t leave him when he’s alright. It’d be murder.’

‘Hm, it might be a favour,’ growled Sam, looking with wide eyes up and down the corridor. He froze as he saw something approaching slowly down the corridor. With skill developed over months in free-fall, he spun and dove under a table. The other scrambled to conceal themselves in the sparse room, each one knowing that their hiding places were a joke. The mass moved down the corridor. There were no footsteps, and they let themselves breath a little easier. All breathing stopped when what they feared drifted past the doorway.

***

The dark mass drifted past the doorway, watched in terrified silence by the four astronaughts. Chloe retched, bile spinning in tiny pearls through the air.

‘My God,’ said Sam.

Blood in a huge shifting bubble was floating sedately down the corridor, splattering the metal as it passed. There were pieces of hideous gristle orbiting the main body, visible as body parts. Alice screamed and hid her face as, from the dark side of the thing, a face curved into view. It was Sophie, contorted in pain. The metal door frame shielded them from further unexpected eruptions from the remains of their friend. Chloe was rocking under a table, banging the leg in a rhythm of madness. Alice floated over, wiping tears from her face. She tried to comfort Chloe, but she felt empty, with nothing to offer in hope. It had been obvious that Sophie had died a horrific death up here.

‘We have got to get out of here,’ said Sam, braving the doorway once again. Chloe, ashen faced, looked at him. She smiled wanly, and pulled her body along the floor. There was nothing left of her in her eyes. Alice followed, shaking from the shock and the cold.

They drifted in silence in the opposite direction to what was left of Sophie, trying not to put their hands in nay of stains left by the passing. None of them thought to get Jack, they all knew he was too far gone.

The lights in the corridor flickered for a second, causing them to freeze. Then, from far back along the passage, footsteps ringing out, coming towards them. Panic gripped the trio, and they pulled themselves through the air in desperation, looking for somewhere to hide. There was a doorway ahead, and as the footsteps gained on them they flew toward it. It hissed half way open and stuck. Sam pushed the women through the small gap, and followed them into the dark room. In the flickering strobe of the lights they watched as a figure ran past the door, covered from head to foot in blood as though it had run straight through the cloud. It didn’t seem to notice them, running of down the corridor impossibly fast.

Once more all was quiet, dn the three, in exhausted terror, slowly pushed their bodies on. Chloe started crying from tension. She was floating between Sam and Alice, and they pulled her along, further slowing them down.

Alice’s mind was silent and calm. She couldn’t form a thought, she didn’t wonder any more. She was driven by a cold power to get to the bridge, close the airlock, and blow the atmosphere.

Chloe’s thoughts were fractured, whirling a hurricane of fear. She had no control of herself, being pulled in insulated panic through the grave-silent station.

Sam was trying to work out what was going on. He had performed a skilful editing of what he had seen. No more than why his old crewmates were now killing people and drinking their blood. Just the science of it, he had cauterised his soul to feelings of loss for all those people. It must have something to do with the drugs. Non one had known they had been taking them until two months in, and a spokesman from Willem-Harcourt spoke to them from Earth. He wanted to know if coping with free-fall was easier than his previous missions. It had been, up until people started going mad. One by one they withdrew as changes were wrought in them, coming out the other side more and less than human. They craved blood for some chemical that the drugs must have created the desire for. Their bodies hardened, they became incredibly strong as their muscles strengthened. The change in their blood chemistry made everyone who fell to the drug deathly pale. It was terrible to behold. It was all the fault of Willem-Harcourt.

The three floated around a corridor and saw a long passage leading to a heavy looking door. The control room, with the air lock and atmosphere controls. They started the long, slow air swim to the door.

‘Hey!’ came a shout from behind them. They turned, and saw Jack following at a distance. He was grinning widely, running as though he was on elastic, taking huge sedate strides. Chloe smiled in relief that someone was still alive. Before Sam could catch her she started back along the passage.

‘Jack, we thought you were dead!’ she said, giving on final push to bump into him coming the other way. Jack caught her, and she gasped.

‘I am,’ he growled. Chloe started screaming a second after Sam turned and desperately tried to reach the door before Jack could finish with Chloe. Alice watched for a few seconds, what she saw shredding her sanity to its instinctive roots. She screamed with all her might, and thrashed her way after Sam.

Jack emerged from a cloud of blood, walking after the fleeing pair with a grin on his red face.

Sam flew through the door and started hammering the evacuation code into the consoles. At the other end of the station doors started opening, the atmosphere venting into cold space.

Alice pulled herself through and stood in stunned silence for a second. Sam yelled at her to shut to door, and she slapped the switch. The door ground back, and Jack roared, throwing himself forward to the rapidly closing gap. Alice looked out of the window, searching for Jack. He was lying on the floor, his hand trapped in the jaws of the door. As the atmosphere fled he was pulled with it, banging the floor like a rag doll in the sea. With a final growl his hand came away from his body, and he was flung, crashing and spinning, down the passage and into the void.

Alice sank down the door, mind reeling at what she had seen. Sam floated over to her, and they sat huddled together at the foot of the door. A red light was blinking on the console to tell the engineers that the airtight seal on the control room had been broken and they were losing air. Out of the window, Earth arced across view as the station spun wildly, thrown out of control by the impulse of the escaping atmosphere. The pair sat still, letting the universe fly on without them.

The executives of Willem-Harcourt received the same news as the rest of the world. The newest Space Station crashed into the sea, apparently through catastrophic malfunction. They shrugged, and sent the next batch of The Seed out to the Russian Space Agency. It wasn’t their fault.