Empyrean Iris Story Collection

Halloween

Krill awoke, well not really awoke because Vrul don't sleep, but more like drifted out of a daydream, completely unsuspecting. Then again, when it came to humans, he was almost always completely unsuspecting.

Krill generally took his hiatus in the in the medical bay, since he spent so much time there. There was, however, one drawback to this.... He woke to the sight of Conn, the starborn, floating suspended in a corner of the room. His large black eyes were wide and unseeing, his large, round mouth was parted revealing the sharp interior vortex of teeth. He saw nothing, ad he responded to nothing. It had been months since the event at the prison, and still, the starborn remained comatose. Internal cranial scans had not shown anything definitive. Starborn were difficult to read when compared to humans, but still it was frustrating they could find nothing.

Over all else, Commander Vir blamed himself, Conn had saved his life before falling into a coma, and the man seemed to think it was partially him to blame, Krill couldn't have disagreed more, but there was no arguing with the man.

It was rather early, and the medical bay was empty, the lights above had been dimmed to mirror solar cycles and allow for the proper function of the human circadian rhythm. The biggest protest Krill had against this practice was it made everything dark and kind of creepy, especially when you had a brain dead starborn floating in the corner. The shuttered internally and turned away from the corner quickly making his way from the room and into the dark hall.

Admittedly it wasn't much better out here. While the medical bay had a comatose starborn, the outside hallways were covered in an exposed layer of pipe, and without the reflective white surface of the hospital interior, the hallways were much darker.

Due to safety concerns, the hallways were lit by a single light every twenty feet, but that was seriously no help. He swallowed his concern beating it back with logic and made his way down the hall. The Commander would be awake soon, and krill had a few concerns he wanted to bring before the man.

He was passing a T intersection on his way to the bridge when an echoing clatter reached him from down the hall. He turned peering into the darkness, his night vision was relatively poor, so he saw nothing, but switching over to his thermal vision, he could see the faint figure of a human standing in the hallway. It was a rather hunched person, but other than its heat signature, he couldn't see anything else.

He switched back to his regular vision, "Hello?" he called into the darkness.

Another soft clattering, and a figure appeared from the balck stepping into the penumbra of light right at the edge of darkness and visible light. Krill blinked in confusion.

It was a woman, or at least he thought it was. She had her face concealed by ragged drapes of long black hair, her head tilted down towards the floor. Her shoulders were hunched, and her hands were held down to the side. She wore only a long white t-shirt, or perhaps a night dress. Krill might have mistaken it as a hospital gown.

Seemed odd, usually the crew were at least somewhat dressed and presentable?
Perhaps they were sleepwalking, humans did that sometimes, "Hello." Krill called again."

He took a step forward, and before he knew what was happening, she was crawling across the floor limbs contorted feet scrabbling.

Krill leat off a high pitched squeal turned and ran even as her scuttling followed after him a horrible brushing slapping noise as her hands came in contact with the metal.

She was so close he could hear her breath.

He shrieked again, and somewhere along the hall a door opened.

A large blue head appeared form the doorway blearily blinking, "Krill what." Sunny froze when she turned to look eyes growing wide, then grabbing krill up in one arm, she crouched into a fighting stance head lowered.