Press onward

The woman pressed onward, every step slow, deliberate, her bare feet leaving damp prints on the frigid floor. The faint clanging sound grew sharper—metal striking metal—but it was intermittent, irregular, almost... hesitant.

The corridor beyond the cryobay yawned open, its arched ceilings and exposed conduits wrapped in layers of shadow. Sparse emergency lights flickered along the walls, barely illuminating the skeletal frames of machinery and the looping coils of wire that dangled like the entrails of some gutted beast.

Her skin prickled. The sterile scent of the cryobay faded behind her, replaced by something fouler: the coppery tang of blood, just faint enough to tease at the edges of her awareness.

She caught herself glancing back over her shoulder, but there was nothing there. Just the endless rows of silent pods, each one sealed and dead. Alone. You're alone. The words echoed hollowly in her mind.

Ahead, the corridor branched: one path descending into darkness, the other leading to a set of heavy blast doors, half-open, their edges warped and buckled as if **** apart by inhuman strength.

The clanging noise came from beyond those doors.

A strange heat wafted from the gap, humid and oppressive, carrying with it an unsettling undertone—something primal that made the fine hairs at the nape of her neck stiffen.

Her stomach twisted. Go back, a voice whispered from the pit of her instincts. Stay alive.

But another part of her—hotter, hungrier—urged her forward. A recklessness born not just of fear, but of something darker. A craving for answers, no matter how terrifying they might be.

She slipped sideways through the gap. The torn metal scraped her arm, opening a shallow, stinging cut. She didn’t even flinch.

Beyond was a chamber unlike the sterile cryobay. Here the walls were glistening with condensation, every surface slick and sweating. The light was murkier, tinged with a sickly green glow that pulsed from exposed bio-conduits along the walls.

In the center of the room... a figure.

It moved jerkily, its back to her, hunched over a console that sparked and sizzled beneath clumsy hands. The thing’s body was human—almost—but the way it moved was wrong, marionette-like, muscles twitching under too-tight skin.

Her breath caught.

The figure paused, as if sensing her presence. Slowly—too slowly—it began to turn, revealing a face half-swallowed by a writhing mass of black veins, eyes blank and glassy, mouth stretched into a slack, grotesque grin.

The woman stumbled back, heart hammering. Run! her mind screamed.

But her legs wouldn’t move.

The creature took a staggering step toward her, dragging one foot in a wet scrape across the floor. Its voice, when it spoke, was a ghastly parody of humanity: broken, glitched, like a transmission from a dying machine.

"We... are... awake..."