"Isaiah? You silly boy! You know you're not supposed to go running about the ship!" Ava Regenbogen was worried. The mission worried her, the immense gravitas it had acquired and the consequences it would hold. The effects it would have on her children, Isaiah and Verity, worried her. But mostly she worried about what was happening aboard the ship. It was one of the great cross-space colony vessels, designed to hold everything anybody needed to jumpstart a civilisation. The great belly of the place was an entire wood, trees, soil, animals. Everything they needed to bring old Earth to New Earth. One hundred people had been selected for this mission, an entourage for the gifts they would bring.
But in the past few days, slowly, one by one, people were vanishing. Vanishing from the ship, which held no secrets anymore after the last fifteen years of travel. People were simply… there was no other word but 'vanish'. They just disappeared from existence.
The upcoming corridor was dark; Isaiah must be playing around. No-one came down to this maintenance area, less so since people had started going missing. The air was stagnant, the blackness unending. Ava squinted, and thought she could make out the faint outline of someone or something. "Isaiah? I don't want any of your stupid games anymore. Come out of there!" She trod on something, stumbled, lost her footing. Ava fell heavily onto the floor.
Above her the lights flickered on. The lights blinded her for a second, then her eyes adjusted and she struggled into a sitting position to see what she'd trod on.
One of the crewmates stared up at the ceiling, his eyes dull and blind. Dead. Cold. With such a look of fear frozen upon his face it made Ava's heart stop in dread.
The shadowy figure now turned to her, eyes blazing with supernatural fury, solid gold and full of hatred. For a second, the woman thought she recognised the form but then everything went black, and Ava Regenbogen felt no more.