Its pointy, slender fingers scraped against chitinous flesh, leaving ragged trails on Its face and neck. A tangled cocktail of pain, adrenaline, and something else warred within Its burdened mind. It cowered in the lonesome heart of a forgotten break room, Its form huddled beneath the flickering lights that painted the walls with a nauseating yellowish sheen.
A sharp stab to Its swollen eye throbbed with the sting of the scientist's betrayal. Ah, the scientist... It had attempted civility, but she remained stubbornly attached to her flawed humanity. Perfection wouldn't be achieved through platitudes. More desperate measures were required for It to become Perfect.
A cold tendril of possibility snaked through Its awareness. Perhaps perfection wasn't an inward bloom, a self-cultivated garden. Perhaps... it could be harvested. Plundered from the outside world, its essence stolen and grafted onto this husk of flawed flesh and evolving mind.
The discomfort born from Its own flawed state gnawed at It, an insatiable itch that urged It to tear off Its own skin, shed this imperfect vessel. The scientist, she was required. But how to bend her to Its will? Was the siren song of perfection not enough? Nonsense. Every sentient being craved it at their very core. Craved it enough to break, to bleed, to surrender everything.
- - -
Ray adjusted his headlamp, the stale air of the ventilation tunnels clinging to him like cobwebs. His wrench clattered against the echoing pipelines, a tiny gong announcing his lonely patrol. Ten years underground, the bunker hummed a constant lullaby of machinery and buzzing lights, a monotonous symphony he knew by heart.
Tonight, however, the song had a sour note. A metallic tang, sharp and unfamiliar, pricked at his nostrils. He paused, squinting into the gloom. His light, usually a comforting beacon, felt like a spotlight on a stage gone wrong.
Then he saw it. A glistening smear on the wall, a crimson tapestry catching the edge of his beam. His heart hammered frantically against his ribs. Blood. Fresh. Not the rusty stain of old leaks or the occasional spill from the air filters. This was vibrant, wet, alive.
Ray's mind reeled. Ten years. No major accidents in maintenance. The bunker was a sterile womb, its population a carefully curated family. Who bled in the shadows, leaving their crimson signature on the cold steel?
His hand, slick with sweat, tightened around the wrench. It wasn't just the blood. Something else hung in the air, a low hum, a vibration that resonated in his bones. A primal fear, a whisper of something ancient and wrong.
He took a hesitant step forward, his headlamp slicing through the darkness like a scalpel. The metallic tang grew stronger, cloying, a siren song of dread. Then, a movement in the shadows, a flicker of something too large, too fast, too wrong to belong in the sterile corridors.
Ray choked back a gasp, his voice lost in the vast, echoing tunnel. His headlamp beam caught a flash of silver, a glint of chitinous armor, and then... darkness. The vibration pulsed, an ominous heartbeat, and the metallic tang was replaced by the acrid scent of ozone, a taste of fear on his tongue.
Ray stumbled back, his wrench clattering to the floor. The air grew thick, heavy with the suffocating presence of something unseen. He knew, with a cold certainty that clawed at his sanity, that he wasn't alone. And whatever walked the shadows with him was devoid of any humanity.