Anna tumbled and fell, bouncing off the sides of a steep tunnel. Smooth edges stopped the fall from tearing her skin, but the hits and bumps of her descent felt like smacking off glass. She threw out her arms to try and slow her speed, but her fingers skidded uselessly against the smooth surface.

Then blackness.

Pain filled her every sense. A pounding, throbbing pain that screamed awake jangled every nerve in her body and mind. She tried to go back to sleep to escape it. Asleep was good. Then she didn’t have to think about the pain. Chittrix. There was a Chittrix.

Was it still there?

God, I need to open my eyes. I can’t fight like this.

Something in her left shoulder shifted unnaturally. Her sleeve was wet. She’d landed on her injured arm. Waves of nausea pulsed through her body and she twisted to sideways to catch her breath. Her eyes streamed from the pain. Now is a good time to die.

Fuck that, screamed her subconscious. You’re not dying here. She opened her eyes.

She was no longer on the hillside outside the base.

Where was Garrick?

Disjointed images scattered through her memory. Garrick’s hands cupping the base of her skull. The Chittrix. Her own screams.

Garrick lying motionless on the grass.

She stretched out her hands. Blank smoothness extended under her fingertips in all directions. Her vision wavered, then settled. Garrick wasn’t here. Was he dead? Nausea lanced through her belly, forcing her to curl at the waist and catch her breath. She shuttered the thought away. He was alive and she would find him.

Methodically she counted her breaths, imposing self-control as she studied the space she had fallen into.

She was alone in a dim room, crowded with alien shadows she didn’t recognise. With an effort she pulled herself onto wobbly hands and knees. Taking care not to put any weight on her left arm, she wiggled her fingers, grateful they were still moving. She peered at her wrist. The tracker bracelet Garrick had given her was gone. Where the hell was it? She fumbled desperately in the dull light.

Relief flooded through her as her hand closed on the strap. It winked a reassuring flash of blue but the strap was torn. Thankful, she stuffed it into her back pocket, the rapid movement nearly making her fall over with dizziness.

Slowly, she brought her knees together and stood, waiting till the world stopped swimming in and out of focus. Under her feet, the floor was malleable and organic, subtly moving and shifting with her weight. She splayed her hands out to the side to keep her balance; fearing the world could tip sideways at any moment. All her weapons were gone, except the small knife she had tucked inside her boot. Her fingers closed over the handle with relief.

“The floor’s moving.” Her voice sounded strained but if she was talking, she was still alive. “No shit. You’re dizzy. Breathe, Anna.”

She closed her eyes trying to slow her erratic pulse only to be interrupted by her feet suddenly shifting out from under her. Her arms windmilled wildly struggling to regain her balance.

“Torch, Anna. Torch.” She patted her cargo trousers, feeling for her pocket torch. She clicked it on and directed the insipid beam of yellow light at her feet. It illuminated a small circle of black, reminiscent of polished rubber. She cast the beam forwards and backwards, revealing she was standing on a slick shiny platform raised three feet above the floor.

This isn’t good.

Something jerked violently under her feet, throwing her head first to the floor. She hit the ground hard, pain punishing her left hip. Shards of agony lanced through her injured shoulder, adding to the party.

She lay motionless, gathering her reserves to move again. Around her the light was changing. The dimness eased as soft phosphorescence emanated from the walls, illuminating a long, sleek, ebony pod. The pod shook with increasing agitation.

Anna scooted backwards on her backside, her good hand scrabbling at the floor, her heels digging for any kind of purchase. The middle of the pod began to bulge, rising as whatever was inside sought to free itself.

Her back connected with the wall behind her. How the hell did she come to be here? There must be a way out.

I fell.

She looked up. There was an opening in the ceiling, barely discernible, six feet above her head. That was the way in and out, but she wasn’t going that way, especially with her busted shoulder.

A wet cracking noise snapped her attention back to the pod-thing in front of her. The top surface split open with a ripping that scratched and tore at her ear drums.

Two long, black insect legs flailed out into the humid air. They were nearly five feet long.

She blinked. It’s a chrysalis. It’s a Chittrix chrysalis.

But it wasn’t.

Not possible, her mind screamed.

Blake’s head emerged from the opening, following the black alien limbs. His hair clung to his skull, slick with alien vernix to ease his passage into this new world. Gelatinous fluid stretched back from his face and dangled from his skull in pendulous rivulets.

The rest of his upper body followed, first his chest, then his arms. When his fingers emerged, they were dripping with viscous gunk. He flexed and bent them in the yellow torchlight. The long alien legs stretched high above his head.

Anna’s mouth was dry, her tongue heavy and useless in her mouth.

“Blake?” The words hung in the air between them.

Blake was dead. The Chittrix had obliterated the labs. He was dead. No one could have survived that.

But Blake had survived. He was here, half-naked in the fading light of her torch, shiny and gleaming with alien slime.

His head turned, and their eyes met. His were completely black, no longer any definition between the irises and the whites. His jaw cracked open. Strange guttural clicks emanated from deep in his throat.

He rose further out of the pod, raising himself up, using his hands for leverage as his lower body emerged. Slowly he twisted, and she took in the terrible beauty of the Chittrix legs emerging from the iridescent patch of grey scales just under his shoulder blades. Long, sharp pincers flexed and snapped in the warm air. Layers of scales continued to his belly and extended downwards.

She pushed back against the wall desperate to increase the distance between them.

“Anna,” he said.

Anna. The edges of her name sounded blurred in his mouth.

She froze, horrified, as Blake continued to hatch. A terrible sucking noise assailed her ears as the lower part of his body emerged, jellied liquid hanging in long loops from his abdomen.

He has two legs now. The words echoed in her empty mind.

His prosthesis was gone. But so was his remaining human leg. Two long, angular thighs emerged, sheathed in opaque shell-like material. There were nodules and bumps in serrated lines from the top of his thighs to where his knees should be. Below these joints, a second set of knees flexed in the opposite direction, descending to clawed arthropod feet that stepped out of the chrysalis in one elegant motion. His legs trembled for a moment then he straightened to his full height. He was easily eight feet tall. Blake threw his head back, and a terrible, inhuman wet rattle resonated in his chest.

He looked directly at her.

When he spoke, his words were muted and slurred.

“You.” He pointed at her with his still-human hand, while his Chittrix limbs continued their dark dance of sharp claws above his shoulders.

“Blake, what have they done to you?”

He shook his head. His mouth stretched in a dark slash of a smile.

“My choice.” His words were stretched, a sibilant hiss. “They came for me. For us.”

Her jaw dropped, her hand flying to cover her mouth. “Oh God.”

Blake was the reason the Chittrix had been at Magdon Down. They had come for him. For her and Julia. He jerked at the movement of her arm, his claws digging into the jellied rubbery floor. His head twitched to one side, assessing her.

“My choice,” he repeated. His face dipped for a moment, lost in thought. God. All the days he’d spent in the labs listening to the Chittrix. Had he been communicating with them?

“Blake, I know what happened to your family. But this?” She raised her palms upwards in disbelief, gesturing at what he had become. “This is not an answer. I can’t believe you wanted this. You chose this?”

Blake’s head snapped up, unblinking eyes sliding over her. His claws snapped and clicked. “Better.”

Anna’s thighs flexed as she stood, holding her injured arm against her body with her good hand. Her mind reeled. He’d chosen to become part alien?

A wet grinding emanated from his chest, as if his bones and internal organs were rearranging themselves. The noise grated as an acrid smell burned her nostrils.

Before her, Blake swayed from side to side, flexing his new insect arms in a weird, hypnotic dance. Moving closer to Anna, his tongue, newly black and serrated, slipped out from between his lips, tasting the air. Anna was mesmerised by its dark beauty even though a faraway part of her wanted to stop and squeeze her eyes shut.

He gestured to her right, compelling her to look. Beside her, another pod cracked open with a crunching tear. Blake gestured with his human hand in the direction of the sleek interior.

He wants me to get in there.

Adrenalin exploded throughout her body. She jerked backwards in horror.

“I’m not getting in there.”

He tipped his head as if listening to a stroppy child. “Not a choice.” Then he stepped forward. There was barely an arm’s reach between them.

There was no option but to go through him.

“No!” she shouted and leapt at him, sheer terror propelling her. Guessing that his arthropod legs were still new and unstable, she collided violently with his faceted abdomen, and they hit the floor together in a confusion of limbs. The force of the fall knocked the air from her lungs in a grunt, while firing white-hot pain through her left arm and shoulder.

Red, black, and orange light danced in front of Anna’s eyes in a nauseating kaleidoscope. She rolled away from him onto her damaged side, wrenching a scream from her lips. The edges of her vision danced, unstable and grainy. Smooth constriction pressed her belly and spine as curved, glossy pincers clasped her waist in an unyielding grip, dragging her in the direction of the pod.

She tried to dig her fingers into the floor but her fingers failed to gain any purchase. Instead they slid across the warm jellied surface as she was pulled inexorably towards the pod.

He’s going to put me in there.

She kicked at him, but his new limbs were longer than her legs, and her blows fell short of connecting. His pincer-grip contracted painfully, compressing her ribcage. Breath hissed from her lungs.

“No!”

Blake’s face loomed closer, his attack relentless. Lifting her from the floor by her waist, he threw her full force against the wall of the chamber. Anna’s teeth snapped in her skull as her forehead hit solid scales. Agony exploded in her shoulder, and finally, the grey edges rushed in and took her away from the madness.