Inside a broken cargo ring, boarding-salvage infantry searches for a black-tag container from an old cargo record.

Then the dead machinery wakes up like something stitched together from cutters, clamps, panels, and ducts. It cuts tethers and drags soldiers into the ring’s walls one by one.

Comms are dead, gravity keeps shifting, coolant mist blinds the corridors, and every man depends on the line clipped to the next.

This is “Taken One by One” by Sascha Schmidt.