Lieutenant Washington, Ellen and O'Malley cautiously approached the towering walls of the colony. Ellen still couldn't see any signs of life. The only sounds they heard were the snow crunching under their feet, the gentle wind and the occasional groan of the metal walls.
Finally, just as they were about to face the half-open access gate, Ellen was startled to spot something on the wall to the right of it. She took a few steps closer and realized that someone had left a smeared, dark handprint there.
"Lieutenant," Ellen said, concerned.
Washington, who was about to lead the way through the gap in the gate, paused and looked at her questioningly. "Yes, Private?"
Instead of saying anything, Ellen just gestured at her discovery with her assault rifle. Her superior studied the wall and smoothly transitioned from her pistol to the shotgun on her back.
"I don't like that at all," she murmured. "Not at all. Whatever attacked the survivors either came out of this station or entered here. Hold on a minute." She lit up her omni-tool and typed in a few commands, but nothing happened.
"Hmm. Something is blocking the long-distance communication. I can't get a signal to Rome."
"Figures," John grumbled.
The lieutenant went back to the open gap.
"We have no other choice. If we wait out here, we are sitting ducks and freeze our butts off. We'll look around inside cautiously and find a place to hole up if things get too hot."
She pushed her way through the gate, shotgun held high. Ellen clutched her assault rifle and followed her. The sight that awaited them on the other side of the gate took her breath away.
The complex consisted of three large, box-shaped buildings built on the edge, framing a central plaza. The snow here was blood-soaked in many places, and from her position, Ellen could make out at least three human bodies. It wasn't hard to guess that the humans were really dead, for their bodies were mutilated, and all were missing limbs or large chunks of flesh.
Nausea spread through Ellen, but she tried her best not to let it show and pressed her lips together. Neither Lieutenant Washington nor O'Malley said anything. A crushing silence seemed to hang over the whole complex. Only the sound of gentle gusts sliding over the high steel walls could be heard.
Finally, Washington broke the silence. "We… er… we should look around. Stay close behind me."
Striding in a tight triangle formation, they tried to peer inside through the buildings' ground-level windows, but couldn't see much. Next, they took a closer look at the bodies.
"What did that do here?", John asked with a slightly trembling voice.
The lieutenant approached the nearest of the corpses and eyed it. "I don't know, O'Malley. But the uniforms they wear aren't from here. They were three of the survivors from the escape pod. We were reported five, excluding the one we already found, there is still one more missing."
"Great," John cursed.
"He or she might still be hiding around here somewhere and might be in trouble. We'll be quietly combing the buildings and hope we don't have to get acquainted with the things that did this," Lieutenant Washington ordered.
As if at an unseen sign, an inhuman howl came from the building to their left, which made Ellen's blood run cold. The three Marines looked at each other in shock, then Washington turned purposefully to the right and led them to the entrance farthest from the sound.
"I guess I'm not the only one who shits his pants," John muttered, giggling nervously as they followed Washington.
"I heard that, O'Malley. Quiet now. Keep it as quiet as possible in there. Radio contact only when it is really necessary. And don't panic if we're attacked."
The lieutenant walked slowly to the door she had aimed for and pushed her way through, Ellen and John right behind her.
It was pitch black inside, so they turned on the flashlights on their guns. Before they went any further, Washington motioned for them to stop and scanned their surroundings with her Omni-Tool. A short time later she said worriedly: "There's something in the air here. Definitely don't take off your helmets."
They continued on their way. They stepped cautiously through a small foyer into a long corridor empty except for the rubbish from an overturned bin and scattered broken glass. Ellen felt the tension tighten in her throat. As they slowly made their way down the corridor, they shone briefly into the branching rooms, but nothing stirred in the offices and laboratories. The eerie silence was broken only by the crunching of glass beneath their combat boots.
Suddenly a figure scurried past at the end of the corridor, letting out a deep growl as it moved away from them.
"Shit, did anyone see what that was?" John asked, almost whispering over the comm.
"No," Washington replied. She led the way to the forking, peering cautiously around corners. What she didn't notice was that something was lurching towards her from a door on her left. In the beam of her flashlight, Ellen could see that it was walking on two legs and had disgusting malformations all over her body.
"Lieutenant, behind you!" she called, aiming her assault rifle, but Washington was quicker and took out the creature with one blast from her shotgun at point-blank range. The thing fell to the ground and stopped moving. The three Marines stood rigidly in place and listened into the darkness, but nothing could be heard in their immediate vicinity. They had not alarmed anything else.
They stood around the creature and took a closer look at it.
"What -" Ellen stammered in dismay. She had never seen anything so grotesque. The creature bore little in common with anything seen on the extranet, save for its two legs. The body looked like a large, misshapen lump. Not much could be seen of the original head, save for slits that might once have been eyes and a maw with long teeth. The arms were covered with growths, growing from shoulder to elbow to the chest. What irritated Ellen the most was that the thing on the legs appeared to be wearing what appeared to be clothing that hung from it in tatters.
Without saying a word, Lieutenant Washington held her omni-tool over the creature and ran a scan. Three seconds later she gasped.
"That's what I feared. The ID chip confirms that he was one of the scientists from this station."
"This facility is on top of a lump of ice so an outbreak like this doesn't wipe out a colony or an entire planet," O'Malley almost whispered.
Washington nodded. "Something terrible must have happened here. Either one of the experiments broke out, or..." She didn't finish the sentence.
Ellen shook her head in disbelief. "What can something like that do to people?"
They just stood there reverently for a moment, motionless. Even if Ellen could now roughly imagine what was still waiting for them here, she was terribly afraid. The horror was palpable now and had taken on a form that would surely haunt her dreams for years to come. They could die quickly here if they were not careful, or worse, end up exactly like the figure in front of them.
The lieutenant gestured for them to move on. They came to the fork, where a staircase led up to the right and another long hallway stretched out before them to the left. Washington chose the left path, which they followed without further incident, and turned right at the end. What awaited her there almost made Ellen cry out. The large room that stretched out before them had originally served as a laboratory. Tables full of expensive equipment had been overturned everywhere, and there were at least ten of these mutants wandering among them. The three Marines crouched behind a table and turned off their flashlights.
Ellen looked questioningly at her supervisor, who motioned for her and John to go around the outside of the tables to a door on the right side of the wall.
After that, she slowly counted down from three on her fingers while carefully observing things, and crept to the next table, and then the one after that. John followed her next, then Ellen. But just as she was smack in the middle of a gap, a plate of armor on her upper left arm came loose and clattered to the ground. From then on, all hell broke loose around them.
Multiple roars were heard, and before Ellen could duck for cover, a flash of blue light threw her hard against a wall.
"Webber!" she heard the lieutenant call out.
"Ellen!" John yelled and shots were fired.
She tried to get up, but just as she was on her feet, something threw herself on her, pinning her to the ground. A sharp pain ripped through her left side as the thing ground its teeth through the exposed piece of bulletproof suit on her arm and she howled. Someone shot the creature above her and yanked it off.
"We have to get out of here!" O'Malley yelled, hauling her to her feet. Washington had rushed to them and fended off two of the creatures with vicious shotgun blasts.
"Right, go!" she barked and led the way. Ellen tried to keep her assault rifle in front of her, but she could barely move her left arm and the weapon was too heavy for one hand, so she just let go of it while she followed Washington and John covered her from behind. The pain dulled her senses and clouded her perception. More mutants charged them from different directions, but they managed to force their way out of the room and eventually found themselves back in a narrow corridor. Washington sprinted ahead, but stopped abruptly as more creatures appeared in front of them at the end of the corridor.
Suddenly, a door opened right next to them and someone shouted, "Over here!"
They hurried into the room, which was quickly locked behind them and barricaded with a cupboard. They could hear several creatures banging and screeching on the door from the other side, but after a few minutes it died down until finally they could be heard shuffling away down the hall, snarling at each other. Relieved, Ellen leaned against a desk and examined her left arm. There was a gaping hole in her suit about the size of a fist, bitten from her arm along with some skin and flesh. Blood ran down her armor and dripped onto the floor. But her senses were still so foggy that she only perceived the pain as a distant stabbing.
"This needs urgent attention," Washington murmured, dressing the wound with Medigel.
"Thanks for saving us," she said over her shoulder to a gray-haired man in his fifties with a round, friendly face who was leaning with John against the cupboard in front of the door.
"Mumford, ma'am. But you can call me Quentin," he explained, coughed twice violently and stood up straight. "And I'm assuming you're my Alliance rescue team?"
"So to speak," the lieutenant replied. Neither she nor Ellen nor John removed their helmets. Quentin, on the other hand, wore only the uniform of his crashed transport ship.
"You're injured," he stated matter-of-factly, rummaged in a drawer and came towards Ellen with a piece of cloth and a pen. "It's good that we ended up in this room of all places, there are some useful things in the drawers. Don't worry, this will help with the pain." He administered the painkiller in the pen to her arm and bandaged the wound after Washington had stopped the bleeding with the medi-gel. "They got me too." Only then did Ellen discover a blood-soaked strip of cloth that he had wrapped around his right thigh.
"Are you a doctor?" John asked in surprise.
Quentin shrugged. "Yes, I should start here as a resident doctor. Considering the things out there, I guess I'm a bit late."
"You know that -" O'Malley began.
"Yes, yes, I know that they are, or rather were, the scientists. What else should they be?" the doctor replied with a dismissive gesture.
Washington paced the small room restlessly, examining everything closely. After some clarity had returned, Ellen also looked around and realized that this had probably once been an office. There were a couple of cupboards and chairs by the desk she was leaning against. Only then did she notice the corpse lying on the ground next to her and was startled. The person looked human except for some strange bulges all over his body and had a large hole in his temple. The pistol in his hand indicated that he had taken his own life.
"I can only spot one exit here. Do you think we're safe here for now? How long have you been hiding in here?"
Quentin coughed hard again and sat down, apparently exhausted, before answering. "As safe as you can be here. These things shooed me into this room five or six hours ago, but because they didn't get in here, they lost interest pretty quickly."
Washington also took a seat. "Okay. Tell me what happened to you and your crew."