A Door Made of Bone

The filament had reached Vey’s leg.

It wound around the joint above her injured foot, thin as a hair and slick with clear fluid. She had one hand braced against the wall and the other holding a sliver of rib. She kept the sliver still instead of tearing at the filament.

“Don’t pull,” I said. “It has hooks.”

“I noticed.” Her voice stayed steady. Her leg did not. “Can you cut it?”

I eased closer across the marrow-lined floor. More pale threads pressed through the gel-silk barrier behind her. Each flexed in short, regular pulses. They were following warmth and moisture. Vey’s wound had given them both.

The storm-mutant outside had been pinned under the rib shard, but it had not stopped feeding. I could see the filament on Vey’s leg tighten whenever the barrier shivered. If I cut the strand here, the rest would keep reaching.

“Hold your leg still,” I said.

She planted her rib sliver against the wall and gripped it until her forelimbs shook. I took a thin splinter and slid it under the filament at the edge of her shell. The hooked end had already pierced the soft seam near her joint. I cut the strand on the far side of the puncture, then again close to the wound.

Vey flinched at the second cut. The filament’s loose end curled around my splinter and squeezed.

“Still attached?” she asked.

“No. It’s trying to pull itself in.”

I pinched the strand with the splinter and drew it free in small increments. The hooks dragged against the wound. Vey’s jaw clenched; she made no sound until the last inch came out, and then she sucked in a sharp breath.

The other threads snapped taut.

One of the refugees backed away from the barrier. The other had a strip of gel silk in both hands, ready to patch the slit. Neither could hold it closed while those threads kept probing through.

I laid the severed filament on the floor. Its tip curled toward Vey’s leg, sensing the warmth there even without a body behind it.

“They’re following the same signal,” I said. “We need to stop the source.”

Vey pressed a wad of clean silk against her wound. “The shard is still holding it.”

“Barely.”

A tremor ran along the barrier. The rib shard shifted a fraction, grinding against the bone lip outside. In the gap beneath it, filaments flexed in a pale knot. They converged there, beneath the mutant’s body.

I watched their pulses. Each one began with a faint contraction at the knot and spread outward along the strands. The mutant’s feeding organ was still working. The shard had pinned its body without crushing that part.