The expanse of space rolled before Valerie  in a never ending pool of black. Her fingers gently tapped the desk she was seated at, her other hand twirling a pen as she looked down to her well-used notebook. The notebook was filled with doodles and notes, random thoughts having flowed through her pen to the page haplessly. To someone else, it would have looked like chaos, but to her, it was her mind on paper.

The ship’s engines hummed consistently, always there and reminding her she was sailing through space on a lightweight spacecraft and not the large space freighter she was used to. These engines only sound like a soft snore, while the freighter’s engines had sounded like a chorus of birds screeching.

Sometimes, she missed that chorus.

This ship was on its way to a faraway research station. She’d been here a few months, getting fairly acquainted with the other scientists aboard the vessel as they traveled to the station. While they were nice, it wasn’t the freighter crew, of whom she thought of as family. She had been with them since she was an intern for the division, and she would have stayed- had she not been handpicked for this mission.

Yes, technically, this was a mission; though the details were still fuzzy. They- the commander, that is- told them they had been picked for their specific skill sets to help them investigate a certain station. She was hesitant at first, unwilling to leave the freighter… but the men practically begged her for her services.

She was, after all, the foremost bioengineer- but that very thought made her very curious. For what reason would a mission like this require a bioengineer?

Just what did they have in that research facility?

These questions had been with her since day one. Continually, she thought of them as she looked up at her ceiling at night, listening to the engines’ soft hum. She thought of them yet again as she continued drawing a dinosaur in the margin of her notebook.

* * *
Everything was going wrong. So, so wrong. She and six others had entered the research facility; four of them were armed escorts and the other two were scientists like herself. Ethan- a tall fellow with mousy curly brown hair and blue eyes- was a biochemist; the other, Mallory, was a young, amazingly brilliant girl who excelled in cell biology. They and their escorts had gone to collect whatever laid in the belly of the facility, along with research data.

Whatever the research concerned was apparently classified and above their pay grade.

She understood why it was classified now. Everyone else had...disappeared. Or been taken. She was beginning to doubt her sanity at the moment, as she replayed the moments in her head.

Ethan had left the protection of the escorts for a moment to try and access a computer terminal in a part of the facility, when she heard soft clicking on the linoleum floor- so soft that she probably wouldn’t have heard it had the AC been running. Before she could turn around to see where the sound came from, she’d heard a thump followed by the same soft clicking as before, only faster. The group was stunned by his sudden disappearance and began promptly searching for Ethan.

But Ethan wasn’t the only one. It kept happening- the only warning being soft clicks before someone was taken.

Whatever it was was picking off the ones that separated from the group. A guard near the cafeteria that he had gone to search, another as we passed a chemistry lab- each had been taken in a similar fashion.

Now, Valerie was the only one left.

She had holed herself up in a small lab with a secure door. She left the lights off and sat out of view as best she could.

She was just about to move to a more comfortable position when she heard it-

Click. Click. Click.

She turned. Tried to scream. Valerie, however, found her voice stuck in her throat. The slimy, black creature coiled its tail around her torso, and her vision faded away.