THE TITAN EXPERIMENT

CHAPTER 42 - Animalistic End

"Go," Sarah said, a command, not a suggestion. Her weapon roasted a rat-a-tat-tat line of single bursts across the floor on a direct path to Sergov. The creature jumped to avoid the balls of electricity, bouncing off the walls and ceiling. Sarah's aim proved she had used a Viper before, years ago, when Arcturus was a functional station.

A waft of smoldering flesh drifted through the corridor.

Sergov's flesh.

Phoenix stared at Sarah, and then reluctantly ducked into the airlock. As he entered the ship, he glanced back to see her retreating into the station's hatchway, tossing her Viper toward the ship, and reaching to shut the airlock door.

All was well until the hatch failed to seal shut... because Sergov's clawed hand shot through the gap.

Sarah slammed the door on his hairy wrist and held on with every ounce of strength she could muster—strength that might not be enough to save the day.

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The airlock hatch jolted against Sarah, propelling her body backwards, whirling her around, knocking her to the floor of the passageway, face down... landing on her weapon.

She rolled onto her back and brought the Viper up as Sergov pounced on top of her. His savage teeth crunched down on the rifle barrel, blood and drool dripping onto Sarah's face. His breath reeked—thirty years frozen solid on the space station after devouring tons of human flesh. Fortunately, his claws had embedded into the metal floor on each side of her.

In Sarah's ninety plus years, she had imagined a thousand ways to die—none of them like this—not this close to seeing Jake again.

The fang-like incisors inched closer, demon yellow eyes bulging with bloodshot veins... Sarah's strength waning.

The years. Her life. Her love. Lost now to a science project gone awry.

It was inevitable. She couldn't hold up forever under the weight of the creature's onslaught. Eventually, it would overcome her and kill her like it had so many other people.

She would not fight death anymore.

She would surrender.

Finally.

Sarah relinquished her grip on the weapon in order to allow herself to die.

She would not see Jake again. It wasn't meant to be.

A ball of light illuminated the narrow interior of the airlock passage. It was as if someone had answered her final desperate prayer when she had given up all hope. The flaming bullet was a supercharged current of electricity—from the Viper in Phoenix's hands, who was crouched in the open hatch of the Titan X spacecraft.

The electrical discharge drilled Sergov right in the snout, sending the creature the scientist had become tumbling back into the corridor of the space station.

Sarah scrambled over on all fours and stretched her arm out to Phoenix, who yanked her entire body into the ship. They landed on the floor near one of the hibernation units.

Now, with a moderate amount of gravity from the rotating station, Sarah pushed to her feet, shoving Phoenix aside. She looked up through the hatch to see Sergov barreling toward them.

Ten feet away, closing fast.

Out of pure instinct, she lurched toward the side wall of the spacecraft and slapped a large red emergency button.

Sergov stretched a clawed hand through the doorway.

The hatch above sprung shut with a blast of air; the hairy hand, fingers, and claws—severed at the wrist—fell to the floor with a light thump. Simultaneously, thrusters blasted the ship away from the airlock, separating from Arcturus, launching Sergov into the vacuum of space.

————

That's one way to die, Sarah had thought of Sergov moments before succumbing to cryogenic hibernation.

It had all happened in the blink of an eye. Sarah having drugged the Titan X crew on Earth, their oblivious journey to the space station, awaking from cryogenic hibernation onboard a ship and completing their mission afterwards, and finally, escaping the clutches of a monster.

The crew of the Titan X spacecraft lay once again in cryo sleep. After being guided away from Arcturus by Phoenix, the space station soon became a faint glare in the sun's distant light, autopilot now controlling the ship for its two-and-a-half-year journey to Titan.

Phoenix Drake, the naval officer and commander, lay with his prosthetic hand folded over his good hand. Dr. Ariel Fairhaven, once assigned to the mega-carrier U.S.S. Fortitude, rested, strapped at the waist and chest, her flaxen braid floating in zero gravity. Callisto Tenzing, a dark wreck of a soul, his hair a shade blacker in the dim auxiliary lighting, slept a dreadful sleep. Luna Skye, healed of her wounds suffered from the monstrous Vladimir Sergov, still possessed her father's gold pocket watch, stored in her personal item locker below her sleep unit. And finally, Dr. Sarah Lawson, a woman of many years, heart and determination waited for her chance to reunite with her long-lost love, a husband she had shared many adventures with, and would hopefully share at least one more on the surface of a frozen moon.

As for Nova Kailani, lieutenant commander and copilot, her duty had ended in a tragic and horrible way, her memory still resonating in Phoenix's mind.

But also, in a cargo hold near the rear of the ship, close to the pod bay, another cryo unit set undisturbed and unbeknownst to the rest of the Titan X crew. The unknown stowaway was none other than a man called Wolf, also known by the name, Xavier Reynolds, the man who purposely rigged Jake Soloman's escape pod to depart for Titan in the year 2052, all because he harbored a secret love for his wife, Sarah.