A purple crewmate with a pair of goggles on their head dashed behind the Communications building, visibly panicking. She breathed heavily, anticipating.
"Oh come on, you know I can hear you.." a voice hissed from nearby.
The purple crewmate, Astro, continued her race against this ticking time bomb.
She was the last crewmate,
or so she thought.
Astro jolted, bolting into the O2 building, and hiding behind the large tree inside one of the rooms.
"They.. they'll.. he'll never find me here.." She uttered to herself under her breath. Surely he wouldn't think to look here? They thought.
"I know you're here." The taut voice sounded close. Astro then realised that they were terribly wrong. They wanted to scream. Astro covered her visor with her hands out of fear.
I can escape, right?.. They asked themself, before constructing a plan that they then quickly put into action. Bursting out from her cover, she made a run for it, pelting to the laboratory.
Suddenly, they realised she would unfortunately have to make a detour. Skirting over to the enormous gaping hole in the earth, of which contained a gurgling mess of blisteringly hot lava, she scrambled to a stop at the edge of the small platform to the side, right above her certain doom. She whipped around.
There, a maroon imposter stood at the other side of the platform, the side that was attached to the safe earth of Polus. He had dark horns, one of which had a large chunk of it missing. Glaring, he began to speak.
"Finally caught you, crewmate." He growled. Those three words were able to strike fear into Astro. She unknowningly edged nearer to the soul-taking lava. The imposter seemed to have had enough of her panicking.
"Time for you to go." He approached closer, before pushing Astro into the fiery depths below.
Astro flailed in the air, her impending doom definitely close. She was going to die. She let out one final scream. However, she realised.. time had seemed to have gone slow. As well, in that instant, she also realised her role.
Impostor.
Suddenly, she felt one of her hands grip the side of the small platform. Struggling to reach up to grab the edge with both hands, Astro strained her hand to reach.
Scrambling onto the edge, she shivered. "Wh.. I.. I lived? No.." They looked down, and lo and behold they were alive and kicking, albeit extremely disturbed. The maroon impostor had left, seemingly thinking Astro had been killed by the bubbling, magmatic lava.
"I need to go." Promptly, Astro quickly made her way to the Admin building. There, she could find the best hiding spot: the Specimen room. It had such a complicated way to get in, it was the perfect hiding spot.
Suddenly, it all went black.
A lights sabotage! As she stepped through the doorway of the Office room, she had a rapid snap.
"Wait.. if the lights are sabotaged.. that maroon guy must know I'm here! He must be in Admin!" She frowned. "Well, he hopefully won't see me. Too dark." Carefully, she crept through to Admin.
At that moment, once they reached the doorway to the Lower Decontamination room, Astro was about to open the door.
"Don't think you're going anywhere. I see you've managed to survive.." A familiarly taut voice breathed behind them.
Astro whipped around and, to her shock, it was the maroon impostor who had attempted to kill her! Upon seeing her, he stepped back.
"Wait, you— you're an impostor too?" He spoke, his voice now tight, him seemingly confused — shocked, even.
"Oh... oh no."
Astro looked at the maroon impostor, bewildered.
"No, no no.. this isn't right.. you're a crewmate! On their side! It's impossible!" He blurted out. This maroon impostor seemed distressed. Astro stepped forward.
"Wh.. why are you so worried? I'm one of your team!" She questioned the other.
"Look, I have to protect my siblings. They are impostors too. I don't know you. How in the hell did you get here?"
"Well.. I don't know."
"What do you mean you don't know?"
"I just.. don't. One day I was doing my job as a scientist, working in the laboratory — I broke something, I blacked out," Astro paused, "and it all changed."