🔦The faint, azure emergency light flickered and sizzled down the corridor of the derelict Federation starship “Anvil.” Marine Corporal Raymond’s boots crunched over shattered optical panels, while the hilt of his “Star Wolf” combat dagger dug painfully into the palm of his hand 💀. He had seized this blade during the Battle of Icarus from the commander of a renegade special forces squad; its blade was forged from the cooling alloy used in the ship’s reactor, with serrated edges capable of slicing through 3-centimeter-thick blast-proof bulkhead doors. At the pommel, a bottle opener bore the former owner’s codename, “Mad Dog”—no one knew that this seemingly useless feature would prove invaluable when the carbon-recycling system failed, allowing him to pry open the sealed canisters of emergency rations. At that very moment, a slimy, crawling sound echoed from the far end of the corridor: it was a comrade infected by a ship-borne parasitic organism. Their bones had already transformed into an alloy-like texture, impervious to ordinary bullets. Raymond tightened his grip on the dagger, his fingertips brushing against the hexagonal bolt pattern etched along the handle—19 kill marks left by the previous owner. Suddenly, an encrypted signal from command crackled through his comm device, but it was laced with the low-frequency static characteristic of the parasites 😱. He spun around abruptly, pressing the blade’s serrated edge against the maintenance hatch in the bulkhead. The sharp crunch of the serrations biting into the brittle alloy reverberated through the dead silence. He had no idea whether, once he slipped inside, he would manage to reach the escape pod—or fall straight into the parasite’s lair.