Day 48. The central mass is now the size of a shuttle. It has grown up through the main concourse. It is not destroying the walls; it is replacing them. I watched it absorb a pillar. The metal didn’t buckle. It just… softened, flowed, and became part of the smooth, gray surface. The surface is no longer featureless. It has patterns. Faces. Elara’s face, serene and asleep, half-emerged from the wall near Hydroponics Bay 3. Shen’s hand, fingers slightly curled, protruding from the floor of the mess hall. They are not dead. They are not alive. They are… solid.
The first missing person was a sanitation worker named Elara. She was last seen near the storage bay. They found her pressure suit, neatly folded, empty of its occupant, with a single, coin-sized lump of smooth, warm stone resting inside the helmet. The lump had a faint, whorled pattern on its surface—a pattern that, under magnification, looked exactly like a human fingerprint.
Panic, slow and cold, began to seep through Terminus.
Zalo
