XENOSIS

Final Transmission – Marshall Briggs

"If anyone finds this…"

Marshall Briggs’s hands trembled as he activated the emergency distress beacon. The pod’s oxygen levels were critical. Every muscle in his body felt torn, every nerve frayed. His vision blurred—sometimes he saw his own hands, sometimes… something else.

"Caduceus is gone. The crew is gone. The experiment failed. Or maybe it worked too well."

He glanced at his arm. Black, writhing tendrils pulsed beneath his skin, moving independently of his will. They flexed when he clenched his fist, slithering beneath his flesh like living veins.

"X-9… it wasn’t a cure. It wasn’t medicine. It was something else. And now it’s in me."

Through the viewport, Earth loomed—a blue-green sphere impossibly distant, impossibly safe. He could end it here. Let the pod burn up on reentry. Let the infection die with him.

He inhaled. Something else inhaled with him.

"But I won’t. Because I need to warn you."

His fingers curled into clawed, jagged shapes before he forced them back to normal. His voice wavered.

"You can still fight it. I did. You just have to keep moving forward."

The recorder continued to run.

And from deep within Marshall’s throat, a second voice whispered.

"We are coming."

The transmission ended.

Six Days Earlier – A Second Chance

Marshall stepped through the airlock, his stomach tightening at the artificial gravity shift. The station’s air was clinical, metallic, tinged with the faint bite of disinfectant. It reminded him of rehab.

He carried three things in his duffel bag:

• A worn leather journal, pages filled with reflections from rehab.

• A photograph of his mother, taken before his descent into addiction.

• A letter from his brother, written shortly before his fatal overdose.

A second chance, he reminded himself.

Dr. Lenora Vasquez awaited him in the corridor, clipboard in hand. Her dark eyes, sharp as a scalpel, flicked over him.

"Marshall Briggs. Former dealer, former addict. Six months sober."

His jaw tightened. "You don’t have to remind me."

She smirked. "I do, actually."

He swallowed his irritation and followed her down pristine corridors. Inside the briefing room, six other test subjects were waiting. He scanned them, already noting who might crack first.

• Eddie "Specter" Keane — jittery hacker, too many implants, too little sleep.

• Reed "Wreck" Carter — tattooed ex-street racer, still twitching from recent highs.

• Mira Ellis — former black-market surgeon, cold and unreadable.

All addicts. All broken. Clinging to the hope that X-9 would save them.

Dr. Vasquez held up a syringe filled with a black, viscous liquid.

"X-9 doesn’t just treat addiction," she announced, her smile unnerving. "It removes it."

Marshall stared at the needle.

He had no way of knowing that in six days, everyone in this room would be dead.

The First Mutation

The injections burned. A wildfire beneath the skin.

Marshall clenched his fists. Then—clarity. The static in his mind? Gone. The cravings? Erased. His past—his brother’s lifeless body—felt distant.

For the first time in years, he felt free.

Then came the screaming.

Reed Carter convulsed violently in his chair, his muscles seizing, eyes rolling back.

Then—his spine split open.

A black, glistening mass erupted from his back, wrapping around his ribs like exposed muscle and twitching nerves. Reed’s body melted into something else, something wrong.

The first death took less than ten seconds.

A med-tech tried to run.

Reed—or what was left of him—moved faster.

A blur of bone-sharpened fingers. A wet, tearing sound.

The tech collapsed, gurgling. Blood splattered against the white walls.

Panic detonated.

Dr. Vasquez lunged for the emergency override panel.

Lockdown initiated.

Doors sealed.

Lights cut out.

And in the darkness…

A voice whispered over the intercom.

"It doesn’t erase addiction… it feeds on it."

The Last Stand

The reactor chamber was infested. Fleshy growths spread across the walls, pulsing like organic circuitry.

At the center stood XENOSIS PRIME.

A shifting mass of flesh and bone, countless faces frozen in silent screams. Not one entity. Many.

It whispered.

"You are already one of us."

Marshall clenched his brother’s letter in his trembling fingers. He remembered every overdose, every funeral, every time he swore he’d stop and didn’t.

He remembered his first night in rehab—screaming into a pillow, sweating, shaking, thinking he was going to die.

And then he remembered something else.

The first time he looked in a mirror and saw himself again.

His grip tightened. His jaw set. He activated the plasma torch.

"Not yet, motherfucker."

He threw the torch into the open fuel lines.

The explosion tore through the station.

The Final Message

Marshall barely made it to the last escape pod.

Fire roared through the station. Heat blistered his skin.

The pod launched.

He collapsed against the cold metal walls, gasping. He was alive.

But then he looked down at his arm.

His veins pulsed black.

The infection had survived. It was in him.

Through the viewport, Earth glowed—a beacon of life.

Marshall pressed record on the distress beacon. His voice was hoarse but steady.

"I don’t know if I’ll make it. I don’t know if I can fight this thing forever."

"But I know this: Recovery is a fight. Every single day."

"If you’re out there—if you’re struggling—if you think you can’t win…"

"You can."

"Just keep moving forward."

The recorder continued to run.

And from deep within Marshall’s throat, a second voice whispered.

"We are coming."

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Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. The themes of addiction and recovery are inspired by real experiences but are dramatized for storytelling purposes. If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction, help is available.