Elias felt a cold sweat break out. "A host? Like... a person?"
Suddenly, the ship's alarms blared—a hull breach in the docking bay. But as Elias turned to run, he realized the sound wasn't coming from the speakers. It was coming from inside the crate. The "silent" cargo was no longer silent; it was screaming in a thousand different voices, all of them his own. Silent.Cargo.S01E04.PL.720p.AMZN.WEB-DL.H264.DD...
"Just checking a vibration in the floor plates, Commander," Elias lied, his heart hammering against his ribs. Elias felt a cold sweat break out
Vane stepped into the light. She looked tired, her eyes rimmed with red. She gestured toward the crate. "It’s not a vibration. It’s a heartbeat. Or the closest thing to one that the Union wants to acknowledge." a person
Vane didn't answer. Instead, she tapped a command into the crate's keypad. The seals hissed, venting a cloud of frigid, white vapor. As the lid slid back, a soft, bioluminescent blue light spilled out, illuminating the narrow room.
"The reason we’re flying with the transponder off," Vane replied. "The reason we aren't stopping at the Port Authority for inspection. This 'silent cargo' is a prototype—a biological processor capable of terraforming a dead moon in forty-eight hours. But it needs a host to stabilize the initial reaction."
Elias leaned in, driven by a terrifying curiosity. He expected to see a machine or a terrifying creature. Instead, he saw a swirling, viscous liquid that seemed to reach toward the edges of the container, mimicking the shape of the hands he held against his chest. "It's learning," Vane whispered. "And it’s hungry."
