AT FIRST STELLA THOUGHT it was a cave. She came to the opening at the foot of the hills and the cracked dark walls and animal droppings reminded her of the system she and her brother had explored on another world so many years ago. But this wasn’t Earth and she wasn’t a kid anymore.

Snow whirled outside, a storm brewing fast and strong. She was thankful for the shelter, but feared that she might be stuck here far longer than she intended. And that she might be too far away from the crash for help to find her.

It only took her a few hours to reach the hills, so she knew they couldn’t be that many kilometers away. She’d found a stream on her way and had drunk deep of the frigid water when the pocket chemical sensor she’d found clinging to one of her candy bars confirmed that the liquid was safe for human consumption. The water here tasted sweet. She’d wished that she had a canteen or something to take it with her.

As she walked into the cave, Stella immediately rethought her assessment. Yes, the entrance and outside wall were carved from the hills, but not so deep that she couldn’t see a completely flat floor and straight walls that seemed to lead along a defined path somewhere further into the hill. This wasn’t a cave, it was a tunnel, and a man—well, alien—made one at that. It smelled a little musty, but she was still relatively close to the water and the walls of the cave provided some shelter from the cold.

Stella shivered. She needed to find an ignitor or something else that she could use to start a fire. She doubted her chances of finding a warming brick or even a blanket were very good, not if she didn’t go deeper into the tunnels. Stella wasn’t quite ready for that, not yet. Exhaustion beat down at her and she burrowed into a small indent near the floor, a good way in from the entrance to the cave. It didn’t look like anything had made a home in there, which was good for her. She didn’t want to fight this planet’s equivalent of bears or wolves for the right to sleep here.

Especially since she doubted she could win.

But once she stopped moving, the cold seeped into her bones and her teeth clattered as the rest of her shivered. Clenching her jaw did nothing but make her head hurt. Her stomach growled and she could feel those candy bars sitting heavily in her pocket. But she wouldn’t eat them yet. She’d had a meal on the ship not long before the crash, though she’d probably vomited most of that up. She didn’t know how long she’d be stuck here and she didn’t want to waste those calories on a night time meal when sleep would do away with most of the hunger pangs.

No, they had to keep until morning. Once it was daylight again she could climb further up the hill and see the extent of the damage to the ship and find out if there was civilization around here. She hoped these tunnels were a relatively recent addition and that she hadn’t stumbled onto ruins of a long dead civilization. Wherever she was didn’t seem like a dead planet, but she hadn’t seen anything but wildlife and trees, so if there was intelligent life, it wasn’t coming out to play.

Then again, if some huge ship had crashed in the middle of Los Angeles, or even out in the hills, she probably would have run in the other direction until she knew it was safe to offer help.

The sun was starting to set outside and the dying light slowly filtered out until there was nothing but darkness and the sound of her breathing in her little hideaway. Stella wished she had a torch or something that would give her a bit of light. She’d started to worry about stray animals and the threat they might pose if they reached her. Her thoughts had already grown slow and her limbs heavy, and even if she had second thoughts about the tunnel, there was no way she was leaving it now.

Her eyes drooped closed and she drifted off on hard dirt, shivering from the cold and huddled in on herself to somehow sate her growling stomach. But the terror and horror of the day crushed down on her and dragged her into a dark and dreamless sleep.

Until she heard the clang.

Stella shot up, banging her head against a piece of stone overhang that she couldn’t see. She couldn’t see anything. And the only thing she could hear was the echo of her breathing, the sound bouncing strangely off the walls all around her.

What was going on?

She looked towards the tunnel opening, but where she’d been able to glimpse the sky before she went to sleep, now all she saw was darkness. She could have poked her own eye out and still not seen her finger.

“Hello?” she called out, though she didn’t know whether she wanted anyone to respond. Her voice echoed away from her, spinning down the hallway she could recall seeing before she fell asleep. She couldn’t have been asleep for long. Her bones still ached with the weight of all she’d been through and her stomach was a knot of hunger. And worry.

Actually, mostly worry at this moment.

She trailed her fingers along the wall she’d just banged into and took cautious steps toward where she knew the opening to the woods must be. Perhaps the nights on this planet plunged into total darkness, the sun failing to illuminate any moon. But that didn’t seem right to Stella, not that she was any planetary expert.

Even though she couldn’t see, her other senses were in perfect working order, and she was almost certain that where there’d been an opening a few hours ago, now there was nothing but solid wall. Thus the clang. A door slamming shut.

Why?

Her fingers traced a curve in the wall and she turned, following down on careful feet. The ground had seemed mostly level earlier, but she couldn’t risk getting hurt when she had no supplies to fix herself back up and no light to see by. She walked for what felt like hours but couldn’t have been more than a few minutes, and at the pace she was moving, she doubted she’d covered more than twenty meters. But there should have been an opening, and all she felt was the wall.

Stella traced her steps back and sat down near where she’d slept, hands shaking. Okay, she thought to herself, scared to speak out loud again. This is not great. But maybe it’s on a timer. Maybe they close them at night and open them at sunrise.

If she’d been asleep for hours, that could be any time now. But it was the sound of the doors closing that woke her up, which meant she might have hours and hours of darkness until the doors opened again.

If they opened again.

No, she couldn’t think like that. That way lay despair, and once she gave into despair, she might as well sit down and rot. And Stella was scared, but she wasn’t ready to die. She was going to make it out of this tunnel, off of this planet, and back to the civilian fleet, and she was going to do it in time to watch the basketball final back home.

The decision to survive did little to stop her hands from shaking, but at least her teeth didn’t chatter any more. The closed door made the room a bit warmer—not quite pleasant, but she doubted she was at risk of freezing to death. At least she wouldn’t freeze quickly.

Shut up, she told her thoughts. If her brain wasn’t going to help, she needed to ignore it. Humans had survived through much worse conditions than a single cold, dark night. She could handle this.

Somewhere ahead of her, rocks tumbled to the ground and Stella froze.

She wasn’t alone.

***

AREST LEFT THE GIRL sleeping by the entrance to the cave alone. She was huddled in close to the wall, her skin glowing from the bright moonlight. Unlike the man back at the ship, he felt no threat from her, and when he paused to look at her, the swirling void in his head calmed into a fist of ordered chaos for a moment.

Woman.

He’d known women before, and not all of them were friends. But he wanted to lie down next to this one and give her some of his warmth, to hold her close and keep her safe. She smelled of the same wreckage he’d escaped from, but her walk through the forest to get here had overlaid her scent with something woodsy and ancient. He breathed deep, drinking in the smell of her along with the musty scent of the cave.

Bad.

He jerked back as something foul tickled his nose. Not the woman. This smell was old and deep and dangerous. This was something that fed on the creatures in the bowels of these caves and spit out bones and blood. Something that this woman needed protection from.

Arest moved on, running deep into the system, his eyes adjusting to the encroaching darkness. But every step he took away from her tried to pull him back. He blocked that out. Danger lurked and he needed to find it, needed to end it so that she was safe, so that he could find her once more and show her that nothing here would harm her.

He hadn’t left the chamber when the air changed. Rotten fish and oil tickled his nose and something scratched along the floor on the other side of the chamber.

Near the woman.

It hadn’t been there only moments before, but Arest didn’t take time to think. Instinct crashed over him, sublimating all thought until he was nothing but furor and death. He sprang across the distance, rolling into an open space and staying crouched low. His senses were open, waiting. The woman still huddled in her corner, her body stiff with fear. But the sound from whatever monster lurked in the dark hovered just this side of silent, barely louder than a rat’s scurry.

The air moved, a whisper against his skin, but Arest flowed with it, following the currents with a predator’s silence. His claws connected with a scrap of flesh and it tore, his prey letting out a belabored bellow, but bounding back before Arest’s claws could sink deep and do damage.

No light shone here and whatever Arest fought used that to its advantage, blending into the deepest shadows where not even a hint of movement could be seen.

Arest knew that he’d fought blind before, though he didn’t know how he knew that. The past was too much of a blur.

The stench shifted, and Arest’s gaze narrowed in on another corner. His prey had moved silently, but nothing was silent enough to evade him for long. His lips drew up in a sharp facsimile of a smile and his blood sang. The woman was out of danger for the moment.

Now he didn’t need to play nice.

His ears found the creature and tracked it as if by sight. The thing was trying to scurry into the wall, into a crack that Arest hadn’t seen. But he would not let this creature get away. Especially not when it might summon more and put the woman and Arest in danger. No, this ended now.

Using a trick he’d learned long ago and ultra-light feet, Arest crept up on his enemy and finished it in swift movements, killing it before it knew that it was dead. The only evidence of the violence was Arest’s own heavy breathing, the thump of the body against the floor, and the putrid smell of the blood that poured out of the thing’s wounds.

A slip of movement behind him alerted Arest that the woman was getting up, but he remained over the creature and investigated the little hole. Was that how he’d entered this chamber? He hadn’t come in through the hallway. There were no sounds or scents coming from there. That didn’t make it safe, but for the moment it posed no threat.

The thing beneath him was mostly naked, covered in scraps that might have once been clothes. Whether it’d worn them for so long that they’d rotted off, or it’d scavenged them from its victims, Arest couldn’t know. He felt around the hole in the wall and was satisfied that not much could get through. As an extra precaution, he wedged his victim into it and blocked it off as best he could. Rocks might have made a better boundary, but he’d need to see to do that work.

Footsteps pounded behind him and Arest turned. The woman was gone.