Hours spent sealed up in a stuffy data processing lab had worn Odie’s mental faculties down to a slurry. Nine hours had sluggishly passed since he and Nell returned from their space walk. Odie had toiled behind a desk which was shoved into a cramped room with no windows. A dim green-grey light washed the walls and server racks with a ghoulish hue that leeched away his energy. He plucked away at his keyboard which clicked like a piercing bell in his ear, slowly driving him to the edge of his sanity. He felt a noose tightening about his soul with each keystroke.

What had started as a simple repair report had been dragged out by a multitude of analyses requested by the engineering board, which amounted to basically nothing but a way for them to pat themselves on the back for not replacing old equipment.

The final table in his report sat depressingly empty at the bottom of its page. He began copying data cell by cell. Many laborious hours had crescendoed in the anticlimax of pasting numbers into boxes.

Upon the report’s completion, Odie hurriedly sent it off and within seconds he slid out of his chair and slumped into a ball under the desk. The few moments of consciousness before he slipped into numbing sleep were blissfully brief.

He awoke to pitch blackness. He wasn’t sure how long he had been asleep. Minutes? Hours? It must have been long enough for the section to have been put into unoccupied mode. What had woken him? It had been sudden, some noise he had heard. Then, he heard it again. There was a hydronic hissing followed by an echoing metallic thud.

He sat up. BANG! His forehead bounced off the underside of the desk. Cursing, he scrambled to his feet and shuffled towards the door, guiding himself with a hand against the wall. 

A muted mechanical hum vibrated through the wall. Odie knew the sound well - there was a vessel docking.

As his hand touched the door, he heard footsteps approaching outside. A few muffled voices came into earshot. There was an air vent at the bottom of the door. Odie knelt and peered through the slats in the vent.

“- cleared it an hour ago. Nobody has come or gone since,” a woman’s voice said. 

“Good. Just make sure nobody is in the corridors leading back to the bridge before we leave,” a man responded.

Two pairs of black security uniform boots marched past Odie’s peephole. The room beyond was seeped in shadow, lit only by the harsh emergency lights which followed the egress path to the exit door.

Odie waited a moment, listening for more footsteps. When none came, he gently turned the doorknob and cracked the door. Through the opening, he could see the observation window which faced the antechamber connected to the airlock and docking port. 

Seems like you’re not supposed to be here… he thought, don’t do anything that will get you in trouble. 

Just then, the lights on the other side of the window flashed red, rhythmically pulsing on and off. There was a hissing sound as air evacuated the antechamber and an alarm began to sound. It was a depressurization warning. Odie found it odd, as usually the only reason the chamber would be depressurized was for the airlock to be opened.

Or if the docking vessel isn’t pressurized, he thought. Maybe there was an accident on one of the miners, and they are trying to keep it quiet?

It was the only explanation Odie could think of that made any sense. For a moment, he debated whether he should investigate further. He quickly decided it was worth looking into.

Gently pushing open the door, Odie kept low to the floor as he crept closer to the observation window. He took up position in an unlit corner of the room where he could easily duck behind a console to hide if needed.

Peaking over the main control board in front of the window, he had a direct line of sight to the sealed door which would open to the docked port.

As the hissing of the vacuum chamber dulled, a metallic groan echoed through the hull. The ship rumbled like a slumbering giant sighing in its sleep. Then there was silence. The antechamber lights stopped flashing and switched to a solid red, indicating complete depressurization.

The port gate silently slid up, revealing a round opening three feet in diameter. What Odie expected to see in this opening was the white-handled port hatch of a mining vessel. But that was not what he saw.

A chill ran up his back and his neck hairs stood on end. He began to shake as his stomach turned, warning him to leave before he could see anything else. He steeled himself, pushing down the urge to hide. If what was happening was what he thought was happening, he knew that he needed to watch.

When the gate had opened, Odie had seen a pitch black material in place of the white port hatch.

Nothing from our ship looks like that, he thought. He was afraid of what he thought it could be.

There was motion in the shadow of the port opening as the material twisted open like an elastic shutter - like skin pulling away from a wound.

Something stirred within the hole. It was a mix of strange shapes which Odie could not make out at first. He thought it looked like a bowl of fleshy eels, but after a few seconds realized that he was looking at a mix of limbs folded over each other. He saw a kneecap, a forearm, a shin, an elbow, and eventually picked out a pinkish foot folded up under a thigh. The flesh was pale - paler than any he had ever seen.

Then, the limbs began to unfold. It appeared that it may have been several people squished together, as the arrangement of limbs did not seem to fit the human anatomy. But as the limbs shifted positions, they revealed themselves to be only a single set of limbs connected to one human shaped torso.

Slowly, the arms and legs extended through the port opening into the docking bay. With limbs outstretched, the body looked like it had been wedged tightly into place behind them. As more of the vessel beyond the opening was revealed, Odie realized it could not have been more than a few feet wide in any direction.

Despite the tightness of the opening, the figure moved effortlessly through the port hole in a slow, fluid motion. As knees and elbows extended past the lip of the port, the legs bent downward and arms upward, as if the shoulders had been twisted completely around in their sockets. Then the body was pulled through the opening.

As the full figure emerged into the space, Odie reminded himself that the port chamber had been depressurized. It was abundantly clear that Odie’s instinct upon seeing the port opening was correct - this was not human.

The figure had been strangely contorted to fit through the opening, and now untwisted itself like a marionette lifted up by its strings from the floor. Its anatomy appeared externally human, even more so as it untwisted itself. As it rose, its human face was revealed - high cheekbones, thin jawline, and a sharp chin.

Such perfect imitation, Odie thought, I would have no reason to question its authenticity if I had not just seen it twisted up like a knot on the floor.

As Odie had been watching from his hiding place, one word cycled through his head over and over. Now it found its way to his lips, and he silently mouthed it to himself - Andromech.