Age of Ruin

Wardell Egilhart stumbled down a hallway of the station, one hand cupped to his nose and mouth trying to staunch the flow of blood pouring out of them. His other hand he had pressed against the station’s bulkhead, partly to steady himself as he fled, and partly to guide him. Blue light had seared itself onto his retinas, and he was having trouble seeing through the afterimage.

Echoing in the distance, he could hear the screams of his coworkers as their flesh was blasted from their bones in explosions of that same blue light. They were the lucky ones. Anyone who was even so much as caught in the same room as their attackers instantly became violently nauseous and suffered internal bleeding. Wardell rested his bloody hand on the grip of his pistol and thought briefly about sparing himself the next few hours of agony.

One last thing to do, he urged himself. Just a little more.

He rounded a corner and entered one of the station’s data terminal rooms. As he closed the bulkhead door and locked it behind him, he realized he hadn’t heard screaming in the last few minutes. The attackers’ grizzly work was almost done, and he might be the only one left.

Wardell fumbled his way over to the room’s terminal. It was too late for him and everyone else on the station, but the League had to know what had happened. The blue glow seared onto his eyes had faded to grey blobs. He was grateful for the first time since he started his job for the monthly security drills as he activated the terminal to send a distress call by muscle memory. He described what had happened as best he could, slurring most of his words as he lost control of his motor functions. His audio message would be attached to the distress call. He trusted League Intel would know what to do with it.

With the distress signal sent, Wardell rested his hand again on the grip of his pistol. He turned away from the terminal to see that the door had been forced open by one of the attackers. All he could make out was a tall, thin, and hunched over grey shape with a dull blue glow in the torso that seemed seated much too high on the thing’s body.

The door had been torched from its frame and lay on the station’s floor. Wardell wondered how he hadn’t heard such a thing as a bulkhead door slamming to the ground, and he realized that he could no longer hear anything.

He pulled his pistol from his holster and fired wildly at the thing, pulling the trigger even after all of his ammunition had been spent. It seemed he had managed a lucky shot. He saw a long, skinny, grey blob — an arm, he guessed — fall off the thing’s torso. The thing turned to look at its limb briefly, before awkwardly laying down on top of the broken limb.

Is that all it takes to kill one of these things? Wardell thought to himself. Just blow a limb off and they lay down and die?

The brief moment of relief Wardell felt was crushed immediately and transformed into sheer horror. The blue glow in the thing’s torso intensified, and a second source of light came to life where it lay on it’s broken limb. In a moment, the lights faded and the thing stood back up, with its arm reattached and no worse for the wear.

The thing redirected its attention to Wardell and hefted its weapon, pointing it at him. He screamed. The last thing he saw was a searing blue light.