Rootbound

Day 3

Seneca sat in the dimly lit canteen, her long white hair, now loosely tied back, framed her striking red eyes as she slumped forward in exhaustion. Across from her, Hitori—smaller in frame, younger, with a softness Seneca had long since lost—absently prodded at her plate with a fork, her short purple hair slightly disheveled.

The canteen was quiet except for the distant thrum of engines as they cruised back toward Jupiter Station under a constant one ’g’ deceleration. Walking around the deck of the Abysmal felt ‘normal’.

Except for the biological infection and the dead bodies everywhere.

Seneca lifted her fork, scrutinizing the small white cubes on her plate. She cautiously placed one in her mouth, chewing slowly.

“What am I eating?”

Hitori rested her chin on one hand, barely raising her gaze.

“Food.”

“What kind of food?”

“Edible food.”

Seneca exhaled sharply, rubbing her temples. “Hitori, after today, my patience is nonexistent.”

She jabbed a fork toward her plate.

“I just fought dog-sized nightmares that reeked of rotten meat and took way too many shots to kill. We are at threat level three, we have active free runners now.”

She paused, frowning slightly to herself.

“Why are we even doing these cleaning jobs at all...”

The answer was obvious, of course—Hitori needed the samples. And they needed the money. But even knowing that didn’t make the protein cubes taste any better.

Hitori sighed deeply, as though explanation itself was draining.

“The ship’s cargo consists entirely of a thousand tons of protein gels and ten tons of spices. Our little friend already ate the food, the entire front cargo bay, and converted it to biohazard. Snaps containers like candy.”

Seneca stared incredulously at her plate.

“So… these cubes are pure protein? Like… eggs?”

“Yes.”

“And the flavor?”

“Spices,” Hitori replied, finally popping a chili-laced cube into her mouth with complete indifference.

“It does not eat the spices. Avoids those crates carefully.”

Seneca picked up another cube, rolling it between her fingers.

“What if we added sugar?”

Hitori’s gaze flickered upward.

“Sugar?”

“We have sugar for coffee, right?” Seneca mused, already reaching toward the ration box.

Hitori groaned. “You’re desperate.”

“I'm creative.”

Seneca sprinkled sugar onto a cube, tossing it into her mouth. Her face contorted even further than before.

“Nope. Bad idea.”

Hitori chuckled. “At least it’s warm.”

Seneca prodded the cubes again.

“Maybe cold would taste better. Next time, I'll just eat straight from the container.”

Hitori shot Seneca a sharp look—like she should already know. “Only advisable if you want to get infected and turn into a little charm of horror. Multi-DNA organism infections are no joke. We couldn’t get that out of you. Not here.”

Seneca raised an eyebrow, the corner of her mouth twitching. “I’m a soldier, not a scientist. I trust your judgment on biological nightmares.”

Hitori smirked. “Glad we cleared that up.”

She leaned back, stretching tiredly.

“I boiled everything thoroughly. Ancient methods still hold up—at least for now.”

Seneca raised an eyebrow. “For now?”

“I still need to analyze recent samples,” Hitori said reluctantly.

“Make sure nothing's still... changing.”

Seneca grimaced. “Just what I wanted to hear mid-meal.”

Hitori sighed, her tone shifting.

“We're taking on jobs far above our level of preparation. We don’t even have a proper quarantine facility. If they find out we will be charged.”

Seneca nodded slightly.

They sat and ate in silence for a while, quietly considering everything Hitori had said.

Hitori broke the silence. “Don't worry, the food is edible."

Seneca's eyes narrowed. “I’m increasingly unsure about your definition of that word.”

She sighed softly, finally noticing the exhaustion shadowing Hitori’s features—dark circles beneath her purple eyes, her posture heavy with fatigue. Despite it all, Hitori had still taken the effort to prepare something to eat, however dubious it tasted.

Seneca’s voice softened. “Thanks for making this. I know we’re both exhausted.”

Caught off guard, Hitori blinked. “Well, we need to eat.”

“Yeah, but you prepared it, even after my miscalculations left us with nothing but coffee,” Seneca admitted sheepishly.

“Sorry about that.”

Hitori smirked gently, exchanging a tired yet sincere smile with Seneca.

“I wondered when you'd admit it.”

Seneca chuckled lightly. “Fine. I owe you a real meal once we’re back at Jupiter Station.”

“Just get the calculations right next time.”

“Deal,” Seneca replied, leaning back with a sigh.

“Honestly, I could survive on coffee alone. Or we could use the sustainment beds.”

She paused, eyes glinting playfully.

“They’re pretty comfortable for two people, after all.”

Hitori stared, deadpan.

“Now, you’ve officially lost it. We have two week's worth of cleanup ahead. We can't just lounge around in sus-beds.”

Seneca groaned, dropping her head onto the table dramatically.

“This sucks.”

She didn’t lift her head. Voice muffled. “I just... miss sleeping near someone.”

Hitori glanced up from her coffee.

Seneca exhaled against the table. “Just—someone to curl against. Hear them breathe. Smell their hair. Know I’m not alone.”

A beat.

“It’s stupid.”

Hitori looked away.

“Yoshiki’s probably still waiting for you back at Jupstat.”

“That’s cruel.”

Hitori yawned. “Or maybe not. Hard to say. We don’t have the word count to unpack all that.”

Seneca gave a slow, faint smile. “You’re the worst.”

Hitori was quiet for a long moment.

Then, finally: “My hair smells like decon soap and recycled air.”

Seneca cracked a lopsided grin at the tabletop.

“Perfect.”

Day 7

The cubes hadn’t improved. Neither had the free runners.

Seneca dropped into her seat with a grunt. A faint red mark along her jaw suggested she’d taken a glancing hit from something with too many limbs.

Across from her, Hitori looked marginally more alive than yesterday. Her fingers were slightly reddened—from too many hours in rubber gloves.

Seneca stabbed a protein cube with more force than necessary.

“I kept shooting those little bitches. And they kept moving.”

Hitori raised an eyebrow. “Did you try shooting them harder?”

“I emptied a full mag into one. It blinked at me. Then ran under a floor panel and vanished. I suppose a shotgun would work better.”

Hitori looked at her, scolding. “You can’t shred the ship.”

A breath. “You know they track heat, right? Maybe stop yelling while sweating.”

Seneca sighed. “I’m too tired to feel insulted.”

She paused. “Wait. No, I’m insulted. Just... too tired to fight about it.”

There was a long silence. The kind only shared by two people with aching limbs and four hours of sleep.

Then Seneca glanced up mischievously, trying to inject some levity into the fatigue.

“But hey—once we’re done, let’s hit the hot springs on Europa.”

Hitori let out an amused huff. “Ah, yes. The mines on Europa. Jupstat's sleazy cousin.”

“Last time you managed to locate the lowest-class bar on the deepest level, where the clientele exhibited truly fascinating examples of maladaptive social behaviors.”

Seneca briefly chuckled, the memory of that chaotic night on Europa surfacing with unexpected clarity, particularly the image of one miner inexplicably beating several of his own, for reasons still unknown to her.

“They started it. Started complaining because I'd bought every last drop of whisky in the bar—the only place on the entire station that had any left. I'd already paid for the whole package, then had to pay the same amount again as compensation for the inconvenience to the miners. Their inconvenience.”

She added with a grin, “Next time, I should really find that guy. Seemed like he was on my side. Chivalry might not be entirely dead after all.”

Hitori shared Seneca's amusement. “Maybe he was just defending the free market.”

She met Seneca’s eyes with a knowing smile as their laughter faded—then paused, concern flickering across her face.

“By the way, how’s your hand?” she asked, glancing down at Seneca’s bandaged fingers.

Seneca didn’t answer immediately. Her expression shifted—the humor drained from her eyes.

“I don’t know, sis.” Her voice was quieter now. “Things are getting more aggressive.”

Hitori straightened slightly. “You need help killing them?”

“No.” Seneca shook her head. “I need you to keep cleaning up after me properly. If I clear a hallway and bio-load reforms behind me, we’re just walking in circles.”

Seneca stared at the table.

“They’re getting stronger.”

A pause.

“It’s not intelligent, right? That thing we’re dealing with?”

“No,” Hitori replied slowly. “They’re like animals. Reflexive behavior. Instinct, not planning.”

“Right.” Seneca leaned back, glancing toward the bulkhead.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Silence stretched between them.

Seneca rubbed her bandaged hand unconsciously, eyes still distant.

“Hey.” Hitori’s voice was soft but firm. “We’ve handled worse.”

She offered Seneca a gentle smile. "Now, let's get some rest."

Seneca didn’t respond immediately. When she did, it was a near-whisper.

“I’m not sure we have.”

Day 13

The days dragged on, uneventful but heavy. The silence between them thickened, shaped more by exhaustion than words.

Three days left. Only one cargo hold remained.

The heart of it.

No more runners now, just the core. And it was ugly. Defensive. Spikes, teeth, claws—raw adaptations stitched from thousands of generations of stolen DNA. Evolution, pressed into violence.

Seneca burned her way forward. Heat and flame.

Hitori followed, methodical, quiet, chemicals in hand.

They were halfway through dinner when a sharp clunk echoed from the direction of the airlock between the living quarters and the rest of the ship.

Seneca stood slowly. Crossed the room. Looked at the screen.

And froze.

Hitori stood on the other side of the sealed airlock.

Standard vac suit. Standard stance. Every detail right.

She was gesturing urgently at the camera, motioning to be let in.

Seneca didn’t move for a long moment.

Then, without a word, she turned and walked back to the canteen.

Sat.

The other Hitori was still at the table.

“What was that?” she asked, casually.

Seneca looked at her. Something cold slid down her spine.

“Nothing.”

Her voice was steady.

“So, Europa,” Seneca began. “We still on for the hot springs?”

Hitori gave a nod, didn’t look up. “Sure. Why not. Think we earned it.”

“I need to find those guys. The ones I drank with.”

Hitori’s eyes flicked up briefly, then back down to her plate.

“That’s your business. I’m there for hot water. You can have your chaos.”

She picked up another protein cube.

No spices.

The cubes were plain.

Hitori always used chili.

Seneca moved. Fast. Fluid. She stood. One motion—clean, practiced—drew the sidearm silent from her hip.

The barrel settled on Hitori.

Hitori froze mid-bite.

“What the hell?”

Seneca’s voice was low.

“Get up. Move to the locker. Now.”

She gestured with the pistol to one of the thick, empty food lockers in the wall. Originally meant to preserve food. Just as good at holding something alive. Or dead. Not unintentionally.

Hitori stared at her, incredulous. “You’ve lost it.”

But Seneca didn’t blink.

Slowly, Hitori backed away. Opened the locker. Stepped inside. Seneca slammed the door shut and twisted the seal.

She turned and walked quickly back to the airlock.

The other Hitori was still there.

Seneca opened it.

The vac-suited Hitori stepped inside and began the decon cycle. She moved with weary precision. Just the same as always.

The inside airlock door hissed open, and Hitori—now stripped of the vac suit—stepped into the room, rubbing her eyes.

And that’s when Seneca saw it.

Movement.

On the airlock monitor.

Her blood went cold.

A third Hitori.

Walking down the corridor.

Toward the airlock.

Again.

Seneca raised her pistol.

The second Hitori stepped back, slowly, eyes locked on hers—then paused as a dull thud echoed from the food locker.

She turned and opened it.

Now they stood side by side.

Identical.

Two eggs from the same shell. Same face. Same eyes. Same uniform—brown engineer’s jacket, the Abysmal’s standard. No necklace. No watch. No pin.

Hitori never wore anything unique.

Damn it.

Seneca’s breath felt shallow.

“She wants to meet you,” one of them said.

Then together, in eerie synchrony: “She is waiting for you.”

The voice was perfect. Too perfect.

Behind Seneca, the third arrived and began banging on the airlock door.

Seneca didn’t hesitate now.

Across the room in two strides, grabbing the shotgun and flamethrower in practiced motions. She sealed the vac suit, locked the helmet into place. The fuel tank settled on her back with a hiss.

She crossed to the control panel, overrode the warnings, and opened both airlock doors at once.

Containment was already broken.

No more games.

She stepped out—big, heavy strides—moving toward the heart of the infection, passing the third Hitori, who stood motionless in the corridor, watching her with a gaze too still to be human.

The last corridor felt stretched, longer than before. Threads of dark biomass webbed the floor like veins, like roots, pulsing faintly, guiding her forward.

Sometimes they draped over bodies, growing on them like fungus on tree trunks—slow, possessive, almost tender.

Movement.

Ahead, dog-sized things unfurled from the darkness. Too many limbs. Nothing symmetrical. Bone and sinew and heat.

The first charged.

She fired the shotgun point-blank. The front limbs disintegrated, and the thing collapsed headfirst into the deck with a wet, bone-splitting crunch—still alive.

The others didn’t move.

They watched her, silent, breathing, keeping their distance.

She didn’t slow. The Marsec semi-automatic still held twenty-nine shells in the drum. Plenty to make a point.

The corridor ended at the final bulkhead. The front cargo room.

The door was consumed by black growth. Alive. Throbbing. Arms shifted across its surface—some tipped with claws, others ending in teeth.

As Seneca approached, the limbs moved aside.

Peeling back like curtains.

And the door began to open.

Rootbound

Seneca stepped inside.

The room was clean.

No containers. Just black—crawling, pulsing, living—spread across every surface like moss from a place that had never known light.

To her left, Hitori sat slumped in her vac suit, legs folded strangely beneath her. Thin, sinewy tendrils wound up around her thighs and calves like leeches mimicking affection. She just nodded once, as if nodding was all she was still allowed to do.

Her radio was gone.

Behind her, in the gloom, the dog-like things waited. She couldn’t count them now.

And in the center, rising like a tree from some long-buried hell, was the thing.

It stood thick and high, trunk-like, formed of shifting black tissue. Arms, tendrils, ribs—parts of things that never should have met—coiled together and pulsed.

And then it opened.

A split, slow and silent, formed near its base. Wet light shimmered behind the peeling skin, and from it, another Hitori stepped forward.

She wasn’t newborn.

Hair dry and brushed. Nails clean. Face expressionless.

Perfect.

Her voice was steady. Hitori’s voice, but not her words.

“You came to kill Her.”

She stepped closer. Smooth, fluid motion. Not quite human.

“And yet… She offers you a deal. She needs land. Space to grow. A moon. Io, perhaps. Still uninhabited, isn’t it?”

She turned, placing a gentle hand on the head of one of the creatures. It leaned into her palm with something like loyalty. Or worship.

“Direct the ship. Give Her a place. And then you may leave.”

Seneca didn’t move. Her eyes moved, slow and precise, from the clone, to the tree, to Hitori, to the creatures behind.

“That would be the end of mankind,” she said.

The creature tilted its head.

“She will grow. Reshape the moon as She did the deep places before your world had names.”

Seneca saw it—Io twisted open, pulsing with breath. No weapon could reach it.

“She is life. Older than the stars. What you would call a primordial being—one who remembers when flesh was still a whisper. A womb that holds everything: light and dark, form and formlessness.”

Seneca’s jaw tightened.

“She promises,” the clone continued, “not to harm your kind. She only needs silence. Solitude. A chance to bloom again.”

“Promises,” Seneca echoed.

She felt it watching her. The root-mind behind it all. Vast. Patient. Waiting.

The clone stepped forward again, and her tone sharpened.

“She offers you eternity. Knowledge. Transcendence. You stand at the threshold of divinity.”

And now the edge cut through.

“And still, you hesitate.”

The creature’s eyes darkened, face unchanging.

“She offers you escape from death, from time, from meaninglessness. And you choose fear?”

The voice twisted slightly now, more like a chorus than a person—as if a thousand mouths behind the wall of biomass were whispering through her lungs.

“How pathetic.”

Seneca stared back.

The clone did not flinch as Seneca’s fingers brushed the grip of her sidearm.

Then, softly, almost kindly: “She does not trust you.”

A long pause.

“She has watched your kind make promises with weapons behind your backs. Build sanctuaries that are research labs. You will not destroy Her.”

Her head tilted, just slightly. Like listening to something only she could hear.

“You’ll study Her. Cut Her into pieces. And then build Her again under your command.”

“She knows what comes next. You won’t kill Her.”

Her voice lowered.

“You’ll kill yourself.”

Seneca said nothing.

The clone stepped closer.

“You will remain on board. Until Her roots touch soil.”

Seneca’s eyes flicked to Hitori, still bound, but breathing, then gave a single nod.

The tendrils peeled back like wet silk, loosening from Hitori’s legs one by one—not with reluctance, but with something worse.

Permission.

Seneca crouched beside her.

Her vac suit was intact, but her limbs wouldn’t move right.

Seneca caught her before she hit the floor.

Together, they stood.

Seneca took the first step. Hitori limped beside her, each movement stiff, untrusting of her own body.

Behind them, the room breathed.

Seneca didn’t look back. But just before the corridor swallowed them, she saw something move.

Something large. Shifting in the dark.

Not the dogs.

Something new.

Hitori followed her glance. Said nothing.

Their helmets touched. Hitori’s voice came through, slow and breaking: “She has the hunter-killers now.”

Seneca didn’t answer.

Hitori kept walking.

“It was never threat level three.”

The corridor sealed behind them with a soft hiss.