"No, that is not furniture moving music. Housebot, switch to Rey's Work Playlist." On Rey's command, the Module's speakers transitioned seamlessly from an intense classic rock ballad to an upbeat pop anthem.

"You act like we're... just doing a bit of... spring cleaning." Ten spoke in short bursts, struggling to catch his breath as he pushed two couches together. "We're literally building a trench. We're preparing for war. You don't do that to Yara Sumpton. Housebot, switch to Ten's Mega Boss Playlist."

"Housebot, mute!" Rey shouted, squeezing her eyes shut. "This isn't war. Not even close."

"Hey." The room went silent as Ten stopped pushing furniture around, turning his full attention to Rey. "You remember?"

"Not exactly..." Rey trailed off and leaned against the nearest couch, struggling to put what she felt into words. "It's weird. I don't remember where I was or what I did. But I remember how it felt to sit in a dud spaceship, just waiting to die. I remember how it felt to be a hero one second and a loser the next. I remember how it felt to... lose people."

"So you remember the parts that matter," Ten nodded solemnly. "The Circle didn't want you to go to war, but as usual, you didn't listen. You knew they were planning to negotiate with the winner, and that they were betting against Argon."

"I thought I was a member of the Circle."

"Yeah, but you were a princess of Argon first. You always made that part really clear."

"Yeah." Rey crouched down behind a couch and mounted her long, black railgun on top of it. She could never quite figure out what to make of the Circle. Sometimes, it seemed like a uniting force that worked outside the confines of government to provide justice where no legal system could, and other times, it operated as a crooked shadow organization that influenced wars and created unnatural beasts of consumption. A small part of her was glad she was stuck down here, even with the Aggregate. At least 'kill the monster before it eats you' was simple. The outside world seemed like it was anything but.

"You want to go get the food?"

"One plate of bait, coming right up." Ten walked over to the kitchen and dispensed a ration. A white cardboard box plopped out of the rectangular meal chute onto the counter and Ten's stomach tightened at the sight of the day number printed on its side. 335. The Module was only equipped to feed one person for a year. Assuming they successfully destroyed the Aggregate, Ten only had fifteen days to make Rey remember her portion of the sequence, or the Circle was back to square one.

First problems first, he reminded himself as he grabbed a syringe filled with synthetic Aggregin and punctured the top of the container, injecting it into the food. Rey and Ten's watches beeped to life, displaying an even 10:00 as the nanobots in the Aggregin were activated. Ten had programmed them to track the Aggregin's metabolism inside the Aggregate's cells, letting them know how much time they had left until it disaggregated.

"Do you think the Aggregate is smart enough to sense a trap?" Rey asked as Ten placed the drugged food on a wooden table in front of their couch barrier.

"Absolutely not." Ten walked back around the couches to join Rey. "It's pretty stupid, all things considered. It doesn't even have specialized cell types, let alone a brain. The only thing it knows how to do is eat as efficiently as possible. That's how we know it'll go for the bait and not the food in the kitchen."

"Let's hope you're right." Rey spoke without turning her head away from the doorway. She knew the Aggregate could be all around them at any time, but her instincts were still trained to watch entrances and exits.

"What are you talking about?"

"Well, you know... every time I ask you a question about the Aggregate, I'm half-expecting you to say something like 'I don't know. My lab blew up before I could figure that out.'"

"For the thousandth time, blowing up the lab was your idea," Ten said in an exasperated tone before a serious look dawned in his eye. "Wait... what is this really about?"

"We've been so focused on trying to fix the Aggregate problem that we haven't really talked about why it exists in the first place. What were you thinking, Ten? How could you let them use your invention to create something like that?"

"Why did you lead five gunships to the Jutsun Border, knowing that people were going to die because of your choice?"

The horrified look on Rey's face told Ten that she didn't remember as much about the war as she thought.

"We're the same, Rey. We're idealists. We think we can save the world - me with my lab and you with your sword. And when we inevitably fail, we just double down and try harder. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it... really doesn't. That's how we end up in situations like this."

"You really thought you were doing something good." Rey gave Ten an inscrutable look.

"The God Sequence was going to slow aging and make us immune to disease. I could program in the ability to survive in low-oxygen environments and extreme temperatures to make space travel easier than ever, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. As long as there have been humans, we've been fighting over resources, and the Sequence was going to make it so that we wouldn't have to anymore. I wanted to create an era of true abundance, but the Circle had other plans."

"Sounds like the Circle corrupted your mission," Rey offered. "Maybe that means you don't need to be working with them anymore."

"You think working with the Circle makes us corrupt," Ten laughed. "You should really see the other options."

"I'd rather work alone than with people who'd make something like the Aggregate." Rey closed off her posture and curled up around her gun as if to illustrate her point.

"You've spent a lot of time in my lab recently. It's pretty neat, isn't it? Well, the equipment in there costs upwards of a million Standard, and my lab back at the Circle was more than twice the size of this one. The kind of work I do can't be done without outside support. As a matter of fact, neither can the kind of work you do."

"Of course it can."

"I don't see a navy in your back pocket."

"Point taken," Rey sighed, sitting back onto her heels. "It just sucks that we live in a system where we have to keep choosing the lesser of two evils."

"The system sucks," Ten nodded in agreement. "But if there's one thing my father's taught me, it's that the system can be useful. He's more powerful now as Circle Alpha than he ever would've been as King of Xenon."

"True... but what is he doing with that pow-"

Rey's jaw fell slack as she stared ahead, unable to comprehend what she was seeing. There was no doubt in her mind that it was never meant to exist. The thing standing over the coffee table had no face, arms, or legs, existing instead as a seven-foot-tall mass of pink, sinewy muscle and sickeningly gooey cartilage. Stumps of tissue stretched out from its body to form makeshift limbs before being sucked back into it at staggered intervals. The box of food they'd placed as bait was already nowhere to be seen. The Aggregate vibrated furiously before howling at the realization that it couldn't disaggregate. It had no specific vocal cords, so the unnatural, droning sound seemed to echo from every part of its body.

After what felt like an eternity, Rey came to her senses and grabbed the railgun, firing a series of metal projectiles straight into what would be the Aggregate's chest, if it had one. It droned angrily but seemed entirely unaffected, lumbering toward the couches in an uncoordinated fashion.

"Come! On!" Rey let out a savage yell as she held down the trigger. The bullets blasted a hole the size of a dinner plate in the Aggregate's midsection, but more tissue simply oozed in to fill the gap.

"Okay, new plan. Run!"

Rey grabbed Ten's wrist and the two of them vaulted over their row of couches, running out of the living room and down the sterile, white hallway that led to the rest of the Module. They could hear the Aggregate's unsettling, wet footsteps behind them, but neither of them dared look and see where it was.

Rey pulled open the first door she saw and stumbled frantically into the meditation room, slamming the door shut and locking it as soon as Ten was inside.

"Oh, crap. Crap, crap, crap, crap." Ten pressed his back to the door and sunk down to the floor in defeat.

"Hey!" Rey crouched down and slapped him in an effort to bring him back to his senses before he went into full meltdown mode. "You know more about this thing than anyone, so talk to me. Tell me how we defeat it."

Ten's eyes widened as the Aggregate's squelching footsteps grew louder outside the door and he quickly pressed his hand to Rey's mouth. Rey felt Ten's hand tremble as the footsteps came to an abrupt halt. She could picture the Aggregate towering over the door, seconds away from smashing it in and ripping them to shreds. Her eyes traveled upward to the sword mounted on the wall, but Ten shook his head no.

Trust me, he mouthed when she knitted her brows in confusion. Great. Rey liked Ten, but she wasn't quite sure if she trusted him yet. She did, however, trust that he would act to minimize his own chances of being eaten, and that was enough for now. For a few agonizing seconds, the hallway was totally silent. Rey found herself squeezing Ten's free hand as if to shove her heart back down into her chest.

And then, miraculously, the footsteps came back. The Aggregate was walking away.

"Oh God," Rey let out a breath she didn't know she was holding and melted into Ten's arms like a rag doll as soon as he released his hand. "What in the living hell is that thing?"

"Its DNA is derived from several species of sporogenous slime mold and regenerative-"

"That was a... that was a rhetorical question." Rey put up one finger, her chest still heaving with adrenaline.

"It doesn't have eyes - or any complex sensory organs, really," Ten explained as Rey realized she was practically laying on him and shakily pulled herself back up into a sitting position. "It experiences the world by sensing vibrations from sound and movement. As long as you stay perfectly silent and still, you should be able to avoid detection."

"Like the t-rex in Jurassic Park," Rey nodded with understanding.

"Actually, Tyrannosaurus Rex had excellent vision."

"It's an old movie. A classic. Have you never seen... never mind," Rey trailed off. They had more pressing things to discuss. "So, it's blind. That's good. We can use that. What else?"

"They use that railgun to blast holes in the hulls of ships, and the Agg walked away from it like it was nothing. We're not going to be able to kill it with anything we have down here... but wait!" Ten pointed at nothing in particular like he often did when he had a revolutionary new idea. "Maybe we don't have to. Maybe we can trap it!"

"How?" Rey sighed in defeat, looking down at the countdown timer on her watch. "In five minutes, the Aggregin will wear off, it'll disaggregate, and we'll be back to square one."

"Not necessarily," Ten grinned. "My lab's got a bio-lock system for cell culture. If I can get the Aggregate in there and turn on the seal, all of its cells will be stuck inside. We'd lose the lab, but that's a small price to pay to save ourselves and probably Argon, too."

"That actually makes sense." Rey stood up, ready for action, but stalled at the door. "Wait... how are we going to get it in the lab?"

"Well, you can't kill it with that," Ten's eyes rose to Rey's sword. "But you sure can piss it off."