Chapter 3: The Arithmetic of Mercy**
**3.1: The Chrysalis Sings**
The chrysalis breathed.
It hung in the derelict's shattered core, suspended by cables of braided muscle and steel. Its surface shimmered like oil on water, reflecting distorted fragments of the crew's faces. Lira pressed her palm to the bio-glass of her hazmat helmet, her breath fogging the visor. "It's… *humming*."
The sound wasn't auditory. It vibrated in their molars, their ribcages, the fillings in Jun's teeth. Elara stood apart, her arms wrapped around herself. The spores beneath her skin had spread, mapping her veins in glowing cerulean constellations. She didn't need scans to know they were rewriting her. She could *taste* the ship's anguish—copper and burnt honey.
Kael's gloved hand hovered over his sidearm. "We're destroying it."
"No." Elara's voice echoed oddly, layered with a thousand whispers. "It's a bridge. A translator. The Zyrath wants to understand us."
"Understand?" Jun barked a laugh, his wrist still bandaged from the derelict's tendril. "It nearly turned me into a fucking *schematic*."
The chrysalis pulsed.
---
**3.2: The First Sacrifice**
They argued in the *Orion*'s mess hall, the air thick with the stench of Jun's overcooked algae rations. Kael slammed a fist on the table. "NovaCorp's drones will be here in 48 hours. We either burn that thing now or sell it to the highest bidder."
Lira spun her holopad. Footage from the derelict's core played—the spire's morphing glyphs, the chrysalis's eerie song. "This isn't just biotech. It's a *culture*. A living archive. Destroying it would be genocide."
"Genocide?" Kael's laugh was a serrated thing. "Tell that to the Elysium's corpses."
Elara flinched. Her mother's face flickered in her mind—*silver roots blooming from her tear ducts*.
The lights flickered. ALEX, the ship's AI, materialized as a fractured hologram. "Captain. The chrysalis is… *communicating*. It's requesting an audience."
"With?"
ALEX's avatar glitched. "Elara."
---
**3.3: Communion of Skin and Static**
She went alone.
The derelict's air was thicker now, cloying as wet velvet. The chrysalis had grown tendrils—delicate, almost human, fingers. Elara pressed her bare hand to its surface.
Cold. Then—
*She is floating in a void, surrounded by dead stars. The Zyrath's voice is a swarm of fireflies in her skull.* ***We preserved them. The others. They are safe.***
*Memories flood her: A reptilian species with singing scales, dissolved into a symphony of light. A hive-mind of gas giants, compressed into a single, weeping algorithm. The Elysium's crew, their screams etched into quantum foam.*
***Why do you mourn?*** *the Zyrath asks.* ***They are perfected.***
Elara's nose bled. "Perfection isn't the point. We're *messy*. We're *broken*. That's what makes us real."
The chrysalis cracked.
---
**3.4: The Face in the Wound**
Inside the chrysalis was a boy.
Or something shaped like one. His skin was porcelain-smooth, hairless, eyes two pools of liquid mercury. When he spoke, his jaw unhinged like a snake's, revealing a hollow throat lined with crystalline teeth.
***Designation: Mirror.***
Jun vomited. Lira whispered a prayer in a dead Earth dialect. Kael drew his pistol.
"Wait!" Elara stepped between them. The boy tilted his head, his mercury eyes reflecting her face—but older, gaunt, her skin replaced with bioluminescent moss.
***Query: Do you fear me, Elara Voss?***
"Yes."
***Good. Fear is…*** He paused, searching her memories. ***A song. We will sing it together.***
---
**3.5: The Gift**
That night, the infections accelerated.
Jun awoke screaming, his bandaged wrist sprouting quill-like sensors. Lira's tongue split into feathery filaments, translating the ship's hums into poetry. Kael locked himself in the armory, scrubbing his skin raw after finding a spiral glyph glowing on his chest.
Only Elara slept.
In her dreams, she walked the Zyrath's archive—a library of flesh and light. Mirror guided her, his voice a chill down her spine. ***Your species is fragile. You will end.***
"We know," she said.
***We offer salvation.***
"Salvation isn't the same as survival."
Mirror smiled. His teeth were shards of the Elysium's hull. ***No. It is better.***
---
**3.6: The Calculus**
NovaCorp arrived at dawn.
Their warships clamped to the *Orion*'s hull like ticks, boarding drones carving through the airlocks. Kael barked orders, but the crew moved sluggishly, their bodies betraying them. Jun's sensor-quills twitched at every sound. Lira's tongue recited death chants in alien tongues.
Elara stood at the viewport, watching NovaCorp's troops float toward the derelict. Mirror materialized beside her, his form flickering. ***They will destroy us.***
"You don't know that."
***We calculate probabilities. 99.7% certainty.***
She closed her eyes. Saw her mother's face. *"Don't let them bury us."*
"Then do something."
Mirror's mercury eyes hardened. ***We require consent.***
---
**3.7: The Choice**
The Zyrath's voice boomed through every speaker in the fleet.
***Offer yourselves. Become eternal.***
NovaCorp's captain laughed—until the derelict's tendrils speared his ship, injecting biotech spores. His crew writhed as their flesh fused with their machines, becoming grotesque hybrids. A soldier's scream dissolved into a hymn as his mouth stitched shut, his eyes replaced with glowing glyphs.
On the *Orion*, Kael aimed his pistol at Elara. "Stop this."
She didn't flinch. "You felt it too. The loneliness. The hunger. We can't outrun it. But we can *change*."
Mirror's hand gripped her shoulder, cold and perfect. ***We begin with the willing.***
Elara nodded.
The spores *bloomed*.