It is dark, eerily illuminated by the ship's task lighting. Here, the cast is green.
It has been long hours since she took up this position, waiting in silence and stillness for the moment she will be needed. She has had to demorph and was nearly caught twice now; she trembles to think that her dreaded order might not be coming.
But then-- Ah, but then. Her cousin, the one she knows she must destroy, is here at the bridge. Screaming commands, cackling at his own wit. He's double-crossed his superior. They'd suspected this might happen.
The thought-speak is distant, a tenuous connection only made possible by the ship's comm system. Her distorted view of the pool ship beyond the life-forms around her lets her see a blurred, fuzzy mess. But she has been a roach enough times to understand.
One of those forms jerks as she begins to grow larger. It is green-yellow and purple-orange, but her human mind can look past that, knows that it is brown and russet red. The fact that he is here, watching this unfold, nearly prevents her from morphing at all.
Still, she is growing. And now he is speaking, fervent and fearful. And now she is committed, as she was from the start.
Her delicate human features have emerged, but she is more focused on strength and power, on the black nose that precedes the rolling pounds of flesh and muscle the polar bear possesses. On the clear fur and brute strength and complete willingness to see everything as prey.
He calls her name, and she does not falter. Enemies around her have begun to melt and shift, but oh, she is ever faster.
But oh, the taste of victory, the crunch and whine of teeth-on-bone, the tearing gurgle of cartilage, the blessed stench of death. Roaring, she overestimates her ability, and is blinded for her efforts.
And now he helps her, as her teeth close over a screaming, sniveling snake's head. Knowing both of whom she is killing. Knowing that her time is soon at hand.
'He's all that's keeping me together', she thinks, as time begins to slow. The paw in front of her moves forward with liquid grace and deadly accuracy, and this thought of him is the one that undoes her.