Kyra felt strangely empty as the tram trundled slowly across the mute, dead surface of Europa. It was locked away inside of its own glass and steel tunnel, and she found herself absently hunting across the surface for…

She wasn't entirely sure what she was searching for.

Thoughts floated gently through her head, but none of them seemed to have any real substance. Right now, the world seemed distant and silent and faraway. Nothing seemed tangible. Even the chair she was sitting in, the console before her she was touching, hell, even the uniform enclosing her, none it felt like it had much weight. Reality seemed to have all the substance of cotton candy. Kyra knew she was in shock, but it was hard to really do anything about it. Zombies. Fucking zombies. Up ahead, Kyra saw something in the tunnel with her.

It wasn't moving, and she realized it was a dead body. A man in a blue technician's outfit. That seemed to provide a bit of an anchor for her, and she shook her head. She began slowly looking around the conductor's cabin, unsure of what she was searching for, until she laid eyes on a small compartment built into the wall. Reaching over, Kyra pulled it open and looked inside. She finally found what she was looking for in the form of an unopened bottle of water. She snagged it out of the mini-fridge, pulled off her helmet, and drank deeply.

She ended up draining the whole thing.

For some reason, that really helped finish bringing her back. That and the fact that the next main structure was coming up now. She put her helmet back on and clamped down, making herself focus. She was beginning to get genuinely worried about the fact that her mind was having this much trouble keeping in the moment, keeping tasked properly. It was insanely dangerous. But in a way, it felt a little like trying to shoot a gun with broken fingers. Kyra stood up and stretched, feeling several of her joints pop in the process.

The tram slid into the airlock and began the cycling process.

Kyra took the opportunity to check over her pistol. She reloaded, then took a look out of the cabin window as the inner airlock doors slid open, revealing a flickering interior. Great sign. Made even better by the fact that she could see a few shambling figures on the receiving platform. Well, she'd done this before, she could do it again. As the tram finished locking into place, Kyra moved back to the main passenger cabin and got the pistol ready for action. The tram came to a full halt. There was a pause.

The doors opened.

Kyra was already aiming towards the nearest zombie and popped a shot right into its temple. The thing's pallid skull snapped to the side in a spray of old blood and brains, and it went down fast. The others milling about on the platform let out warning groans as they realized that something had changed in their environment. She didn't give them an opportunity to react any further. Adjusting her aim, Kyra fired off another shot, then shifted a bit further and squeezed the trigger again. Two more shots and the last of the zombies were dead.

She waited, but when no more enemies came, Kyra slipped out onto the platform and listened. Nothing but the soft hum of power and the quiet respiration of oxygen. She moved quickly among the corpses, patting down pockets, hunting for more ammo. All she managed to find for her troubles was a single magazine of ammo tucked away in a medic's pocket. Better than nothing. She transferred it to her own pocket and then took the time to check out all the little hidden niches and alcoves that seemed to proliferate along the shadowed periphery of the loading platform. This place was a bit of a nightmare as a combat zone.

She found one more zombie, hidden away inside of a particularly dark niche, facing away from her. For a few seconds, she was utterly stymied, perplexed by what it could possibly be doing. It groaned and began to turn around, picking up on her presence, and she squeezed the trigger, as she'd already been aiming at its head. As it died and she searched its pockets, finding nothing, Kyra found herself wondering about how much intelligence they had left, how much humanity they had left. Was there anything left?

Or were they just empty shells, meat machines running off of some unknown organic operating system?

Right now, it didn't really matter, she supposed. She made for the door that led into the primary structure and hit the access button. It was time to get a move on. She needed answers, needed to find a survivor who knew more than she did, or at least a terminal with some real damned data on it. The door revealed an entry lobby and as she scoped the situation out, taking it nice and easy, Kyra felt a sense of relief hit her as she saw another security center, tucked away to the left. The windows were shot through with cracks from sustained gunfire in several places, but it had held up. The UAC built to last, at least. After ensuring that she was actually alone in the ingress, Kyra moved over to the door and opened it up, finding it unlocked.

Not a great sign. It was probably raided like everywhere else, but it was worth checking out. This security center was just as trashed as the last one, although one of the gun lockers was unopened. She moved quickly through the room, repeating her search. She managed to snag three more magazines for her pistol, and a map of the immediate area. The first important piece of information that came was that she had apparently come to the dormitories complex. There probably wasn't going to be anything seriously worthwhile here, not in terms of weapons or information or crucial supplies, and probably not in terms of survivors.

This place felt dead.

"So, I'm just going to get the fuck out of here," she whispered as she stared at the map, her face bathed in the glow of the terminal. From what she could tell, the path through the dorm's structure should be pretty easy. There was a big, central hallway that let out from the ingress and cut straight through the technician's block, and led right to another platform that should take her deeper into Typhon Station.

Perfect.

That was, provided everything went the way it was supposed to. She supposed walking down a hallway should be easy enough, but if there was one hard and fast rule she'd learned in life, it was that things almost never went the way they were supposed to. Something always had to fuck up. With this cheery thought in mind, Kyra did one more sweep of the security room and then left. As she came back into the ingress lobby, a strange sound came to her and made her tense up. She looked around, quickly sweeping the area with her gaze, but her senses told her whatever the sound was, it wasn't actually in the room with her.

It sounded more far-off, like it was echoing to her from a vent. She waited, and there it was again. It was...almost like a clicking sound. Only that wasn't right. As she kept listening, she realized it wasn't clicking, more of…

Kyra sighed. It was too lost in the echo. Whatever it was, it freaked her out. She did not like the sound in the slightest and it wasn't something she felt she could safely ignore. Could she ignore fucking anything in this place? She moved on, gun at ready, and came to the main exit. She hit the access button and the doors slid open. An antechamber of chrome and threadbare carpeting waited for her, the walls stamped liberally with the UAC logo. God, how she hated seeing that logo. And it was only getting worse, her hatred of the company becoming more powerful and pervasive the longer she was on Typhon Station.

Ignoring the closed doors to her left and right, Kyra pressed on, opening the next door dead ahead of her.

A lengthy corridor awaited her, with a pair of zombies moaning and groaning as they meandered around. She raised her pistol and sighted the first one, then popped off a shot. Clean kill. It went down without a problem. This garnered the attention of the second shambling horror, which began to turn around. Kyra put it down just as quickly. She waited to see if anyone, or anything, would come running at the sound of the dual shots, but she remained alone for now. A dozen doors lined the walls on either side of her, almost all of them closed.

She moved past them, pausing and peering into those that were open to make sure there were no surprises for her. She only found one more zombie lurking in the shadows of someone's apartment. It apparently had hearing problems, and she killed it without a problem. As she watched the third corpse drop, she wasn't sure how to feel about the fact that she had adapted so fast to putting down zombies like this. Obviously it was a good thing, but she had always been uncomfortable with how comfortable she was with killing.

Well, at least she didn't really need to feel bad about killing zombies.

She took a moment to pat them down, hunting for more supplies, but found nothing. As she resumed moving down the hall, she began to see a problem. About halfway down the corridor, there was another wall with a closed door. And something was wrong with the door. Coming closer to it, she quickly realized what she was seeing.

This door had been welded shut.

"Well...shit," she muttered, staring at the dark, singed outline. She considered the situation for a moment, then started hunting for a vent grate. It had served her well in the previous building. Unfortunately, as she went hunting down the hallway and even into a few of the rooms, she quickly discovered that whoever had designed this building was an asshole. None of the vents were even close to big enough for her to crawl into.

"Double shit," she whispered as this realization fully sank in.

So...time to do it the hard way, then. Kyra paused and recalled the map in her mind, visualizing it and figuring out the best route. If she backtracked to that antechamber, she could break left or right through another section of dorms, which would ultimately take her to a mess hall. And from there she should have access to the next tram.

Should be easy…

Kyra jumped as she heard that sound again, that weird clicking noise. It was closer this time, or at least clearer, though still coming to her through the vent system. It was...oddly organic. Definitely nothing that was coming from a machine or piece of equipment. Unless the UAC had been creating some really out there shit. She kept listening, trying to garner a bit more meaning from it, but the sound died away.

Sighing, and frustrated with how keyed-up she apparently was, Kyra made her way back to the antechamber. It remained clear, though she thought she could hear a zombie roaming around somewhere nearby. She considered her options for a moment, then broke to the left and opened the door there. Another, though shorter, corridor awaited her. It was also clear, but...Kyra raised her pistol, holding it firmly with both hands.

Something was wrong.

She didn't know what, only that her instincts were baring their teeth again in response to some kind of threat. She checked the area: there were a few doors in the walls around her, but they were all closed. The corridor terminated in an L turn about twenty feet away, breaking to the right. She moved slowly down it, edging towards the turn. She hit it and pressed her back to the wall, waiting, listening for some clue.

Nothing. Dead silence enveloped her.

Almost as if the whole base was holding its breath.

She swallowed and peered slowly out around the corner. And she saw...nothing. Just another brightly lit length of corridor, with UAC logo-stamped walls and mostly closed doors. There were a few corpses in their own pools of blood stretched along the length of the hallway, and bullet holes tattooed the walls, but she was still alone.

Except she couldn't shake the feeling that she wasn't.

Something lurked. Something was waiting for her.

Kyra began moving slowly down the passageway, gun still at ready. Something was wrong, something was different. Or was it? Was she just being paranoid? Was she-

That sound came to her again, and this time, it was very close. Not coming to her from a vent, but actually in the area. She froze, her whole body going rigid, ice dropping into her gut like a mini-nuke and blasting out through her veins, freezing her blood. It wasn't clicking, she realized, but gurgling. Some kind of creepy, strange gurgling noise that sounded a little like an upset stomach. That was when she heard a footfall.

It was heavy, and coming from ahead of her.

One of the doors along the left side of the corridor was open. Even as she stared at it, a shadow fell out of it, on the floor ahead of it. Another footstep, and another. How big was this zombie? And then it stepped out into the corridor.

And Kyra's world seemed to drop out from beneath her.

She was not looking at a zombie.

She was looking at…

What? What!?

A monster? An alien? A...a demon? It looked like some kind of demon. It was a good six and a half feet tall, and covered in a leathery, red-brown skin. It looked pretty well built. It was humanoid, except that its bald head was kind of big and bulbous. Painful looking, ivory-white spikes jutted up out of its tough skin, all over its body.

The thing stepped slowly out of the doorway. There was something very worrying about that. It clearly saw her, it had locked eyes with her. Kyra realized that the only reason she hadn't unloaded on it was because she couldn't be sure if she was looking at animal...or a sentient being. Once it had stepped fully into the hallway, it faced her fully and stared at her. She kept looking between its mouth, which was full of sharp teeth, to its hands, which sported claws made of the same ivory-like material. Definitely dangerous.

Was this an alien?

Was this first contact?

Kyra felt like she'd been dropped out the back of a troop transport without a chute or warning. She couldn't just mindlessly mow down this thing. A thousand thoughts crashed through her head. Was it some kind of experiment gone wrong? If it was an alien and this was first contact, was all this a misunderstanding? How in the hell did this thing fit in with the zombies? Was it some kind of side effect? Exposure to some sickness that came from them? Intentional? It was still staring at her with bright, feverish red eyes.

"What are you?" Kyra asked.

It was the only thing that she could think of, and she felt the need to say something, even if she was pretty sure it couldn't understand her.

The thing adopted a huge grin and Kyra suddenly felt so threatened that it was like someone had pointed a gun at her. She raised her sidearm. As she did this, the red-brown creature pulled its hand back like it was winding up to pitch a baseball and then snapped its arm forward. The lighting changed and Kyra threw herself to the side, uncertain of what had happened. She opened fire. The first two shots went wide and the thing repeated the action.

As she lined up her third shot, she saw it, but couldn't believe it.

It threw fire at her.

An actual, honest-to-God ball of fire began coming right for her as she squeezed the trigger. The bullet punched right into its big head and sprayed the wall behind it with deep red gore. She sidestepped the fireball, narrowly avoiding it.

For several seconds, she stood there, breathing heavily, trembling, eyes wide.

"What the fuck!?" she screamed. "What the fuck is this!?"

Silence mocked her.

Slowly, she moved forward, keeping the awful corpse covered with her pistol. It wasn't breathing or moving at all, but she didn't trust it. In that moment, she didn't trust the floor not to fall out from beneath her. Kyra came to stand within arm's length of it, staring hard at the creature. What in the fuck was she looking at?

What was this?

Kyra straightened up suddenly and began walking, pistol out again, ready for combat. This was a bad place to try and process...whatever the hell had just happened. She began jogging down the corridor, faster than was safe, tossing glances into any open doors she passed by. She caught sight of a few shambling figures, shrouded in shadows, but ignored them. Her brain was running hard, feeling like it was slamming in her skull the same way her heart was thundering in her chest. The door at the end of the passageway was open, and she could see a collection of tables and chairs scattered across the room beyond.

Perfect, the mess. All she had to do was get through it and then-

Something shrieked to her right as she stepped into the room and she felt an explosion of pain on her right bicep. Kyra screamed in response and jerked to the side, twisting to face her attacker. Another one! She saw that it had shreds of her suit on its claws. Leveling her pistol at the creature, she punched six holes in its broad, well-muscled chest, feeling fury pumping through her veins as she also felt blood pumping out of her body, trickling down her arm. The pain was fiery and powerful, but her rage was overriding it.

She punched two more rounds into the thing's face, turning one eye into a gory crater and tearing away a portion of its ugly skull. She dropped it, then heard another warning sound from her left. Spinning, she dropped to a crouch, narrowly avoiding another fireball. She felt the heat of it through her suit as it scorched past and emptied the magazine into a second red-brown monster. Its deep red blood sprayed across a random proliferation of utensils, plates, and cups on the table behind it. It shrieked again and threw another fireball before she put the final shot left in her sidearm into its big, gaping maw and it went down.

Reacting automatically, Kyra dodged the fireball, ejected the spent mag and slapped a fresh one in. She stood there for a few seconds, trembling with adrenaline, waiting to see what else might come for her. A pulse of intense, burning pain cut through her awareness and she hissed, realizing that she was still bleeding. Gritting her teeth, knowing she had to get somewhere safe before she could properly deal with this, she slapped her hand over her wound, sending a fresh pulse of intense agony through her, and began making for the far exit.

She managed to hit the door and slip through it into another antechamber without running into any more trouble, though she could hear that awful gurgling sound somewhere else in the building. She had to get somewhere safe. Kyra moved quickly over to the left and slipped through the door there, finding herself in another ingress lobby. More blood was splashed liberally across the bullet hole-riddled walls, and a few more corpses lay scattered across the floor. Ignoring them, she left the room and came onto another tram platform.

Two trams waited for her, one to either side. One led to Utilities & Power, the other led to the Military HQ.

The choice was obvious.

She hurried into the tram to the right, cleared it quickly, then settled into the cockpit and set it going towards, hopefully, some answers.

Or at least some bigger guns.