The night on Eidolon was cold outside the cover of the domes. The atmosphere was too thin to sustain human life for long and the days could be boiling hot, so the domes were a necessity. Hundreds of those metal shells drew their silhouettes across the horizon like a stormy day at sea. The stars revealed a fine webbing of conduits and pathways that connected the various enclosures together.
T1N found himself on a landing platform that faced the dark mouth of a tunnel, around ten metres in diameter: the same accessway to the city that he had seen in the welcome video. Looking at his feet, he saw four motionless bodies on the ramp. They were cold, devoid of vital signs. Their skin was the colour of ash and stuck closely to their bones. They had empty black sockets, as if the eyes themselves had melted away without trace. They appeared to have been here a long time.
T1N walked over to one and stooped to examine it closely.
He was wearing a white jumpsuit, just like the passengers on the Hermes, and the suit was strangely untouched. The only mark was in the centre of his chest. It was a perforation, the size of a thumb. Looking at the other bodies, T1N found they also bore the same wound. There was a spatter of bloodstains old and new around them and fresh claw-shaped footprints leading into the ship.
He scanned the distinct numbers the bodies wore on their chests and found their names in an old passenger manifest.
> B34/ Anna Dubosarsky (24)
> A12/ Henry Gale (51)
> C42/ Wolv Modiano (67)
> A11/ Emma Kansas (59)
It seemed impossible. They were all passengers that had travelled with him on the Hermes. T1N heard a low moan nearby and looked around. He heightened the sensitivity of his hearing and the moan became frantic breathing. It was coming from behind a nearby pillar, from inside the landing bay. He also heard distant screams from deeper inside the ship. Without a doubt the creature was finding new victims as they emerged from their pods.
T1N went back into the ship, headed straight for that pillar, but he caught a sound that made him freeze.
Cling, cling, cling
A new creature, identical to the last, was climbing the ramp behind him. It stopped after a few steps, ignoring the android, and turned its head towards the pillar. Someone was hiding there and the creature knew it. The monster opened its mouth wide and from that darkness emerged a slimy organ. At its tip was a wicked tusk streaked with green ooze that pointed towards the pillar. Cloudy liquid, like fetid water, dripped from the tusk down to the floor. It raised its feet stealthily and continued forward.
T1N watched it. He needed to do something. He needed to defend these people. He calculated all possible actions and stepped closer.
From the shadows behind the pillar a young girl emerged at a dead sprint. She shot past them and out onto the ramp, disappearing into the Eidolon night. She was so fast that neither the android nor the creature could react.
The creature turned on its many legs and crouched as if to pounce after its prey. T1N's emotional processors fired into action, filling him with disparate signals of fear and rage. He had to do something. As if reacting to a sudden and programmed surge of adrenaline, a message popped up into his field of view:
*Defense Mode Activated*
He didn't know what that message meant. Never since his activation, never at any point in all his years of house service, despite the diversity of his owners, had he ever seen a message like that. He launched himself after the creature, ready to stop it in any way that he could. Raising his fist to punch it, he realised that his hand and his forearm had transformed into a giant scythe-like blade.
The creature, feeling danger close behind, twisted towards him with its stinger and its claws ready. T1N's blade-arm sliced across the monster's chest and, in a second thrust, he drove the entire blade into the creature's plump belly.
The creature gave a horrific scream that rang out through the Eidolon night and seared T1N's auditory sensors. After flailing its body for a violent instant, the creature stopped moving entirely.
T1N's eyes burned with white light. He looked off down the ramp, but there was no sign of the girl that fled. He set off, ignoring the monster, which was bubbling in a pool of its own filthy liquids. Raising his arm, he realised that it had returned to its original form.