Take a Deep Breath

Posted on Mon Oct 7th, 2019 @ 9:27am by

900 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: What Stalks The Night
Location: Command Room

Xavier had been running scans on the man they found hiding after he was forced to sedate the ma. Slight dehydration, malnutrition and obviously not had a shower in a while. Searching the man Xavier found a passcard, he handed that to James hoping that it would be more help to him since it was plain bar a number in the corner and a coloured pattern along the top.

Having set out some water from his kit and cleaned up any wounds, scrapes and cuts the man had all really Xavier could do was wait for him to come round so he could ask him some questions. He could only hope that he'd be a bit more compliant than before. It was not much longer than his initial estimate when his scanner showed the man was starting to wake, now was the time to tell.

Trying the keep the man calm as he woke important for what was to come, they needed answers and this man was the only one that was able to give it to them until James was able to extract information from the system using the passcard.

"I'm Commander Patrovski, from the Dreadnought." Xavier spoke softly. "Can you tell me your name?"

The medication seemed to have helped put the man at east. "Dupont, Stefan Dupont." He replied, his voice a little groggy.

Xavier handed Stefan a bottle of water. "Drink this, slowly."

Stefan took the bottle, sniffed it.

"It's just water." Xavier spoke seeing Stefan's caution. "Stefan, our ship is in orbit and we dropped off some supplies but we can't seem to return to the surface. Is there another way up?"

Stefan shook his head but remained silent.

Xavier could see the signs of shock and that would take time to get over. "I gave you some medication to help you feel better, you should start to feel it soon if you don't already."

"It won't matter, it will come, it will finish what it started." Stefan spoke, the bottle of water in his hands shaking.

"You mentioned that before, what is it you are talking about?" Xavier asked. "What is this place?"

Stefan looked at Xavier. "It's fast, and strong." He began. "An alarm went off and I heard screaming. People were running around in panic. It picked them off, I ran into the office, I could hear it behind me clawing at the door."

That explained the claw marks everyone saw. "Did you see it?" Xavier asked. "Can you tell us what to look out for?"

Stefan shook his head. "It was using the vents, I could hear it moving around sometimes."

Xavier was piecing the information together as he got it. So it was strong, it was fast. Obviously it was hostile, armed and savage given its partial eating of bodies. "What was going on here Stefan, what is this place?"

"A medical research lab."

Medical research, okay that was something Xavier could get into. "What kind of research?"

"I can't tell you."

Stonewalled. Xavier didn't want to push and ruin the progress made so far. Xavier could see James tinkering with one of the main console stations in the room. "Stefan, what's happened to the power systems?"

"There was an explosion in the engineering spaces. The geothermal plant was damaged." Xavier was no engineer but he was fairly certain that damage to a generator that was powered by the ground they stood on was not a good thing. "Would you excuse me a second?" Motioning for a security office to keep an eye on Stefan while he spoke to James.

"James, got a minute?"

James was trying his level best to get power that was stable to one of the command consoles in the room. Power he had but stability not so much and he was hesitant to run the risk of it shorting out and disabling the console permanantly. "I've been trying to fix this console, but the powergrid is a mess."

"There is a geothermal power plant in the engineering section. Our guest tells me there was an explosion, power has been fluctuating ever since." Xavier spoke.

"Makes sense, if you are trying to hide something then using what's available naturally goes a long way. Did he mention the level of damage?" James asked as his engineering mindset kicked in to damage evaluation.

"No, but without knowing more about the facility and something out there killing everyone we don't exactly have the manpower to go looking around." Xavier replied.

"No, but I am trying to get a layout of the facility. I saw a holo-table just there." James pointed to the table that aside from blood stains, looked operational if he could fix the power. "I'm hoping it might give us something to go by, I might be able to coax power from another console to it."

"No luck with comms?" Xavier asked.

James shook his head. "If there is a link up I've yet to find it amongst this mess but I've only just started, I'm hoping this card you gave me will help but I need to get a console working before I can try it."

"Why don't you try talking to Stefan?" Xavier suggested, maybe see what he knows about the layout of this place.

"Yeah, might help." James got up. "Stefan was it?" Only to see Xavier nod so James walked over to him.

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