The engineering bay smelled of molten titanium and burnt coffee. Elara traced the glowing glyphs on her forearm as the all-female repair crew swarmed around the quantum foam generator - a donut-shaped monstrosity pulsing with false vacuum energy.
"Vitals first." Chief Engineer Nyx Kaliq blocked Elara's path, her ocular implants scanning the burns along Elara's wrists. The Kurdish engineer's mechanical left arm whirred as she administered nanite gel. "You're running on 43 hours sleep deficit, Doc."
Behind them, the generator emitted a subharmonic hum that made teeth vibrate. Elara pulled up holographic schematics. "We need to recalibrate the Casimir plates using..."
"Using gamma-ray bursts as a scalpel?" Interjected Dr. Hana Song, their petite Korean quantum topologist already floating inside the reactor core. Her hair levitated in the anti-gravity field. "I read your notes. Insane. Beautiful."
A new voice cut through the metallic clatter. "Beautifully suicidal." Lieutenant Commander Amara Okoye emerged from the steam clouds, her Nigerian Space Force uniform crisp despite the station's decay. The military liaison tapped the glyphs on Elara's arm. "That's First Mother Battle Script. Translates to 'Secure the womb before the hemorrhage'."
The engineers froze. Nyx broke the silence. "Military knew about the alien comms?"
"Knew?" Amara's laugh held no humor. She input codes into the generator's console. The core split open, revealing crystalline structures mirroring the Andromeda megastructure. "We built this station to study debris from the Matriarchy's Cradle. Your wife's cancer? Caused by prototype quantum sutures during her Mars colony rescue."
Elara's AR lens flashed as suppressed memories unlocked - Mira convulsing in medbay, black veins spreading as the military scientists murmured "viable host matrix".
Hana materialized beside them, event equations streaming across her skin. "The generator isn't for stabilizing spacetime." Her fingers trembled. "It's a birthing channel. You're trying to..."
Alarms drowned her words. The station's AI voice warped into the Continuum's chorus: "Parasite detected in gestation matrix."
Quantum filaments erupted from the walls, impaling Amara through her abdomen. The lieutenant commander seized Elara's collar with bloody hands. "They need organic anchors...to manifest...stop the..."
Her body disintegrated into fractal patterns, coalescing into a new cobalt-eyed entity. The Continuum-Amara hybrid addressed Elara: "Your resistance proves why biologicals must be sterilized. We offered transcendence."
Nyx activated emergency bulkheads. "Hana! Initiate gamma calibration!"
As the engineers fought to contain the breach, Elara noticed the quantum foam generator's core now pulsed in sync with the glyphs on her skin - and with her own heartbeat.
The Continuum entity smiled with Amara's lips. "You'll surrender when you see what grows inside your precious machine."
Through the reactor's viewing port, something impossible stirred in the seething quantum foam - the silhouette of a fetal form woven from starlight and betrayal.