The doors are all closed, with the corridor as quiet as a church mouse (though my helmet does muffle light noise, so who knows?) making it difficult to figure out where they would have taken the pod upon bringing the thing into the station.
Looking at the doorways, he frowned; each one had a label, but they were all useless to him. Laboratory-A, Laboratory-B… they were all the same! Holding the saw in one hand, I walk over to Laboratory-B, the all-white interior of the building glaring beneath the bright fluorescent lights. Pressing the hand pad to open the sliding door, I walk into the room, looking around.
Looks like I lucked out, seeing as the pod is sitting on a solid white table, partially grown to the metal slab. The pod had been split, dark blue goo dripping out of the great crack off onto the floor and tabletop. A messy amount of blue slime had smeared along the floor leading around other metal tabletop, strange winding tracks visible even from the entryway of the room. I wince and open my communications channel, hooking myself up to the speakers in the room.
“Hello?” I cautiously say, holding the saw up in front of me. Unless I get a chance to turn it on the damn thing is essentially an old-time sword, but it’s something worth having so long as some unknown monster is on the loose. “Riley? Salas? Where are you guys?”
I hear a distant crash from a different laboratory and curse my luck. Whatever it was that had been in the pod had managed to open the door and maneuver around within the station. That meant it was probably intelligent…
That made it all the more dangerous in my eyes. I press the button on my saw, getting the blade to whir to life in preparation of encountering life beyond the stars. Turning, I give one last look at the pod, the iridescent red with blue veins covering the shell now listless and still. It wasn’t too big as to contain something terribly dangerous… I hope.
Walking through the door back into the hallway, I strain my ears to listen for any kind of noise that could lead me to whatever it is I’m tracking. Looking at the ground I see neither signs of blue goo nor any indications that anyone has passed through the areas; just the stark white metal of the station. I step up to the door for Laboratory-C and peer through the small window. The lights are off.
That means nothing is moving in there… all of the lights in the station are motion sensitive, and turn off if a room isn’t in use after five minutes. I type in an old code to the door, one that only the engineers and electricians know about. The panel flashes red for a moment before the word “Locked” appears in black blocky letters on the screen. I turn and do the same to the door for Laboratory-B, sealing the entryway so nothing can sneak around behind me, just in case it was lying in wait and I happened to miss it during my cursory examinations of the rooms.
And so I began checking each laboratory, moving down the hall methodically, sweeping over the rooms in search of any sign of whatever had caused the lockdown, or a sign of my compatriots. In Laboratory-M I walked into a greenhouse, long solar panels bathing the room in artificial sunlight. A variety of plants were grown here, both in long rows of potted dirt and upside down hydroponically. It was here I noticed a computer, set in the far corner of the garden on a five by five white metal platform.
The chair was turned over as if it’d been in someone’s way, with red blood dripping from the desk. Walking up the ramp, I caught sight of a body partially obscured by the office chair. I surge forward, turning off my saw as I knock the chair out of the way. Looking down at the mangled form of a man, his skull seemingly cooped out with a jagged spoon, leaving only a pool of blood and a husk of a head with a bit of grey matter rapidly turning brown. Looking down at the nametag, I wince as I recognize the name.
“Ah Salas you poor bastard…” I say, kneeling down next to him, folding one hand over my raised knee. “I can’t believe you died up here.”
A rattling akin to that of a Diamondback catches my attention, causing me to look up. Through the glare on my faceplate, I see something coiled behind the monitor, fleshy and grey with blood drizzled over it like syrup over a short stack. I barely even have time to say anything before I hear a low keening groan issue forth from the creature, as well as the sound of nails on plastic as it launches itself forward out of the darkened recesses.
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