The gunship lost its momentum as it drifted into the station's docking bay. In the camera views on either side of the windshield, a tunnel framed by gray columns and girders opened up onscreen, only faintly illuminated by the blue light from the front of the ship.

There had to be a landing pad somewhere. Samus kept the gunship coasting on what was left of the backup thrusters. The planet-strength gravity of the station kept the ship needing constant power to stay off the ground and moving.

Adam's dashboard light flashed. "This area doesn't appear as damaged as the outside. It's not guaranteed that there are living occupants, but it seems likely."

"Well, if anything is here, they don't seem to mind a strange craft flying straight into their turf," said Anthony. He tried to recline in his chair, but he kept leaning forward again and adjusting himself to get a better look at the sprawling industrial maze surrounding them.

It looked like a poor imitation of a Federation colony, its tangled jumble of charcoal-colored pipes and support beams in full view rather than tucked away behind cleaner sheets of metal. Samus could only guess what built this place, but she had a feeling they wouldn't be much safer here than in Janus Colony. "Once we land, our best course of action is to search the area for any humanoids or other intelligent life forms. There's a chance that they may be unaware of the interference and help us." She spotted a platform barely large enough to land on and activated the ship's landing protocol. "There's also a chance that they may be fully aware and intend to kill us."

Anthony extended a thumbs-down gesture toward Samus, attracting a confused head tilt from Madeline. "So we'll deal with that as it comes?"

"As we always have." Samus returned with a nod and a thumbs-up as the ship came to a rest, the tips of its wings hitting the platform with a thud. She crawled out of her seat and stood over the ship's lower hatch. "Adam, outside status."

"There are no toxic or mutagenic substances of significant concentration. Air is composed of 22.03 percent oxygen and breathable. The outside temperature is slightly above the freezing point of water, which hopefully won't conflict with your metroid DNA anymore," said Adam.

Samus looked back at the ship's dashboard with a raised eyebrow. "I think can handle it, Adam." She pushed the ship's door downward, detaching it and letting the ship's warm air out into the cool chamber around them. Even through her now fogged-up visor, she could see a thick layer of grime on the floor below – from the sharp acidic smell, probably burnt fuel gel. "Let's go, Anthony. Be careful, we still don't know what we'll find here."

"Wait, what about Doc and the Commander? And these little things?" Anthony gestured to the birds and raccoon-like creatures pacing across the ship's floor.

"Adam will stay here and check in with us periodically. The dachoras and etecoons know this ship, so they won't need much supervision." But what to do about Madeline? If Samus took her along, there'd be no guarantee that she would be able to protect her against anything that attacked them. No, she'd have to stay here. "Madeline, stay inside. We'll give you status updates every now and then via a communication line between our suits and the ship. The ship's windshield is tinted from the outside, so nothing should see you, but try to stay out of view just in case."

Madeline fidgeted subtly, tracing the grooves on her palm with her fingertip before looking up at Samus. "Okay," she murmured.

Samus's eyes met Madeline's for a few seconds. "I'll do everything I can to keep you safe. I promise." She grabbed the sides of the hatch and lowered herself out of the ship.

Anthony followed, giving one last smile to those remaining on the ship. "And keep the place clean while we're gone, will ya? Don't let the fuzzballs get in our food!" And the hatch closed behind him.

Except for the strange animals and the electronic ghost of a man, Madeline was alone.

She went to sit down behind her seat, carefully obscuring herself from the view of the windshield with the seat's back. Her arms wrapped around her knees and pulled them close to her chest. All of this felt uncomfortably familiar to her. Was this going to be her life from now on, running and hiding behind others stronger than her? This was nothing but an accidental detour from a course that should have killed her. She almost would have preferred if Samus never saved her back then.

"Dr. Bergman?"

She peeked out from behind the seat without a sound.

"I've just received word from Samus on what we can do. We should try to restore engine function despite the interference. See if you can bypass the lock on the ship's thrusters." Adam unlocked several control panels scattered across the ship, powering the ship down save for the dashboard hosting him. "Also, I have a few questions for you, if you don't mind."

Samus followed a hallway out from the docking bay, the path lit by luminescent strips along the bottom of the walls. She and Anthony had decided to split up to cover the most ground in the least time. Her scan visor recorded all the information it could gather, but that only included small additions to her provisional map of the area and the fact that the light panels contained xenon.

So far, it wasn't the most interesting station she'd been to. Still, she kept herself prepared for anything. She made sure that she'd never see a Space Pirate again when she wiped them out their leadership on Zebes, but there were still all kinds of threats to the peace, and any of them could be hiding in here. And, if they were the ones that obscured the station from her ship's radar and emitted a ship-stopping signal, they must have been a cut above the Space Pirates' research divisions.

Maybe I could stop wasting time and go right after them, save more people, she thought, if I weren't weighed down by the others. This is pointless, they're going to die anyway. They always do-

Samus clenched her fists. No. Not if I have a say in it.

Finally, an automatic door came up on her right, but it didn't budge when she approached it. She armed her cannon with a super missile and readied herself before unleashing it, blowing the door off of its track and revealing a decrepit laboratory on the other side.

She tapped a light switch to the side of the doorframe. A sudden crackling noise made her flinch for a second. There was a low buzz and a few sparks from the exposed wires lying about, but no lights came on. From the illumination of her visor, she could see that there was a thin film of dust covering the floor that kicked up with every step she took. Whoever originally used this facility must have left a long time ago.

Samus stopped in front of one of the lab tables. There were a few organic matter samples kept in small cylinders strewn across the tabletop. Her scanner honed in on each of them.

Logbook matches successful: Jelzap brain gray matter, Hopper exoskeleton, Petrasyl tendrils. Four more unidentified substances.

One of the tubes contained the largest sample of intact jelzap core tissue she'd ever seen. She picked it up and looked at the globule, gently waving the container to swirl the fluid inside. How many planets' species were brought here and then left behind? Unless she could find some more basic information about this place, perhaps she'd never know.

She set the tube down and went over to what looked like an operating table. Scraps of gauze littered the floor surrounding it. It clearly hadn't been sterilized after its last use, its surface slick with some dark coagulated substance that her visor couldn't identify. From the scratches running along the edge and torn straps hanging off the side, something put up a fight on that table.

Samus felt her breathing slow as she went to the other side of the table to look over a set of glass cases holding all kinds of boxes and bottles. There was a stillness to the air and it didn't quite smell right, like the room was a stagnant pool collecting filth that she couldn't see but knew was there. This was the kind of place that drove her mad as a teenager during her days in the Federation Police and even more so in the army. Now, it was just a relief there was nothing trying to cut her throat.

Then a tingle at the back of her neck jolted her back into the present.

CRAAAAASH!

Two long, scythe-like appendages shot out and scraped against her shoulder pads as she pulled herself away and ducked behind the table.

Looming over her was a tall insectoid creature with green liquid dripping from its fanged mouth, compound eyes the size of her helmet with a metallic sheen, and shards of glass rolling off its pitch black carapace. It hobbled from one foot to the other, its balance thrown off by its lunge at Samus.

She didn't recognize it, and scanning it didn't give her any answers. But it just attacked her without reason or warning, so she planned to respond in kind.

In a moment of inspiration, Samus charged at it. She slid under a slash of its spiked forelegs and swept the floor under its feet with a kick, toppling it over. But that accidentally made it fall on her leg, pinning her down. As it tried to claw open her suit, she shoved her arm cannon where its arm met its shoulder socket. She charged the cannon and fired a super missile that blasted part of its exoskeleton off.

Smooth black shards blew out from the solid piece that launched into the glass cases. The creature screeched and released its grip on Samus, bright purple blood oozing from its now-exposed tissue. With the smooth shell removed, its pulsating collage of mismatched flesh was revealed. A patch of small black bumps, another piece like a hunk of human flesh dipped in purple dye, all loosely held together by tendons and fat that struggled to contract with every movement.

That must be why it can barely walk, Samus thought.

A purple droplet hit a frayed wire on the floor and burst into a few embers before fizzling out, giving Samus a new idea. Its blood was flammable! She pushed the fingers of her right hand together and retracted her thumb to ready the arm cannon's plasma beam. She took aim at the wound and fired.

A regular beam shot came out. It briefly staggered her target, but the creature got back to hobbling toward her right away. She looked at her cannon in confusion. Why didn't the plasma beam activate? As she slipped past another stab of her foe's talons, she displayed her suit's status in the corner of her visor.

Her plasma beam was offline.

All of her weapons were offline.

"Dr. Bergman," said Adam.

Out of the corner of her eye, Madeline could see the purple light flickering and illuminating her corner of the ship. She was in the middle of tinkering with the thruster's magnetic circuit, kneeling beside the gearbox on the floor and accepting a wrench that one of the etecoons carried over to her. She hadn't worked with this kind of machinery since her time in the academy, and her hands shaking from lack of sleep made things harder, but the alternative was sleeping while Samus and Anthony went off to who-knows-where.

Adam continued without a response, speaking over the sounds of small metal parts clanging together. "Samus told me who you are on the way to the space colony, but I don't think you ever introduced yourself."

She looked at him and smiled weakly. "Hello, then. I'm Madeline. Madeline Bergman."

"And I'm Adam. It's a pleasure to meet you."

Madeline set down the wrench. "Nice to meet you, too." Her hand drifted to the side and idly petted the baby dachora huddled nearby, its feathers soft and warm from the still-cooling box. It nipped her hand a little with its sharp beak, but settled down once she started rubbing gently under its head.

"How do you know Samus and Anthony?"

Madeline's hands stilled. "They helped me."

"Did you meet on one of their missions?"

"That's right." Her body tensed even more. "They came to the Bottle Ship because of my distress call." She forced herself back to work, pushing memories of the worst few days of her life out of her head with every turn of the bolts. Not that it made much of a difference since the fuel injectors inside the ship looked normal. "There's nothing wrong with this cathode that I can see. You should check the main accelerators outside instead." Maybe that would take Adam's mind off those questions.

"The Bottle Ship. That was the location of my counterpart's final mission. Do you know what happened to him?"

Or maybe not. "He…" Then Madeline realized something. She may have referenced his reports constantly in her own work, but she never spoke to the flesh-and-blood Adam. She wouldn't even have an answer now if she hadn't been there when Samus reported in to the Supreme Council after that nightmare. "He died destroying an unstoppable bioweapon. I wasn't there personally. Samus told me."

"And if the information I've gathered about the incident is true… you were the primary director of that project, and therefore that bioweapon's creator, right?"

She slammed the box's lid shut and whirled around to face him with a glare. "Don't remind me!"

The etecoons and dachoras hid from the outburst, making the ship fall back into an uneasy quiet.

Something inside Madeline had snapped, leaving emotional shrapnel behind that weighed on her chest. "I'm… I'm…" Her body shuddered and messy tears pooled below her eyes. "I'm so sorry for yelling. But everything that happened there is my responsibility, including what happened to you, or who you used to be, or… or…" She wiped the tears from her face with her sleeve and breathed in sharply to clear her plugged-up nose. "You don't have to forgive me. I don't expect you to."

Adam didn't respond right away. Was he surprised? Offended that she just made his death all about her guilt? She could only guess what thoughts were running underneath that dashboard. "If it makes any difference," he said, his synthetic speech noticeably slower, "that means I owe my existence to you."

Madeline's face reddened as she looked down at the floor.

Then a low-pitched beeping noise came from the dashboard, ceasing at the sound of Adam's voice. "Hello, Anthony. Have you found something?"

"Sure have, Commander! There's a huge computer terminal here! Just downloaded something from it, but looks like it's encrypted. It could take a while to learn anything from this thing," said Anthony, his voice muffled and distorted with static from the onboard speaker.

Madeline pushed herself onto her feet and hurried to the dashboard, stumbling a few feet short of it and planting her damp hands on the central console to stabilize herself. "But that's fantastic!" Her voice cracked a little, still shaken from what just happened.

"Send it to us and we'll handle it," said Adam. After a loading screen played on the console's screen for a few seconds, a file with a random string of characters for a filename popped up. "Without a decryption key, our only chance is if I can generate and try possibilities until something works."

"Brute force, then. Could have it in minutes or days, then, or longer," Madeline murmured to herself. She wondered how taxing it would be on the onboard computer and the brain emulator contained within. Hopefully it wouldn't force him offline, since she was running low on companionship as it was.

Adam minimized the window. "We've received your file, Anthony. Have you found anything else?"

There was no response.

"Anthony? Come in, Anthony. Are you still there?"

Samus bounded out of the way of the monstrosity's counterattack, charging a massive energy blast and firing at its exposed flesh before hitting the ground again. Whatever this thing was, she was going to have to take it down without any augmentations to her power beam.

She checked her system status. Normal missiles and the default charge beam still responded as normal. She could work with that.

The beast kept itself moving and jumped side to side as it approached Samus for another jab at her armor. It anticipated Samus's attempt to step out of the way and reached out to strike her right in the chest.

Samus clutched the aching spot where the hit made contact with one hand and fired a charge shot at the creature's face. It reflected off the monster's eyes and bounced away when it hit the glass doors. Maybe a few concussive blasts from her missiles would be enough to subdue the creature, but it probably wouldn't stay still enough for a series of good shots. That is, unless she forced it to.

She jumped out of the way of another slash and went over to the wall with glass cases, with only a few inches between her and the glass and table on either side. As she increased the distance between herself and the creature, she drew one of the cases' doors open with her foot. Come on, she thought, bracing herself.

As she expected, the beast approached her by cutting between the operating table and the cases. She fired a missile at its side, failing to do much damage but knocking it off balance and into the case.

That was her chance. She threw all of her weight against the door and slammed it shut on the creature's torso, prompting a piercing shriek of pain and trapping it against the wall. She jumped on top of the immobile beast, pinned it down, and unloaded her supply of ammo straight into the exposed underside of the creature's shell left by its earlier wound. The barrage of missile blasts etched cracks into the monster's exoskeleton that spread from the points of impact. Samus felt its movements slow under her foot. Within seconds, the creature stopped completely.

She generated another missile and fired it into the monster's now-exposed head to be sure. Now, the purple blood dripping down the shelves into a pool below the case, the dark clouds of smoke wafting from the missiles' impact points, and the rise and fall of Samus's breath were the only movement left in the room.

No time to rest. She opened her communication line to the ship and Anthony's suit. "Anthony, Adam, I found an empty laboratory over a hundred meters from where I entered," she said in between heavy breaths that heated up the inside of her helmet. "Something attacked me there, something I've never seen before and my scanner couldn't identify. I think this facility may have been abandoned with its research subjects still inside. What have your findings been?"

Dead air.

"Adam? Anthony? Why aren't you responding? Madeline?"

Something happened to them. Like it always does. Her pupils shrank. She sprinted at full speed down the hall, trying and failing to activate her suit's speed booster but going back to running without missing a step. A missile from her cannon burst the door to the hangar right open, and she hurried to the ship. She opened the hatch to see Madeline at the main console talking to Adam.

Madeline jolted upright in surprise. "Oh, Samus! We've been trying to contact you–"

"Where's Anthony?"

Adam chimed in. "We haven't been able to contact him, either. He sent us this file, but we can't bypass its–"

Samus ducked back out of the ship and walked away with heavy, firm footsteps.

"W-wait, where are you going?" Madeline peeked out from the ship's hatch.

"Where he went when we split up," said Samus, "that's my best chance to find him."

Madeline slid out of the bottom of the ship and followed behind her. "You…" Her words caught in her throat like a painful lump and she shrank back reflexively. Was she really trying to tell the Hunter what to do? "…These restraints on our equipment are in flux, blocking features as we use them, so the source… Something must know we're here! You could be in greater danger now!" She grabbed onto Samus's forearm.

Samus gasped and pulled her arm away. "I can't rest while he's still out there." She passed over the threshold to the corridor where Anthony had gone, looking back at Madeline as the door closed between them.

"I'm sorry."