Zenith-47 - Combat Prelude

As you step into the corridor, you feel a chill run down your spine. The door begins to close
behind you and you hear it clunk shut with a mechanical hiss. You feel a shiver run down your spine—it’s colder here, the lengthy, windowless corridor lined with regular metal panels, clearly outfitted in a far more utilitarian, functional way than the rest of the station. Like the rest of the modules, an oversized door sits at the end of the hallway. On the right hand wall, a second, smaller hatch is situated halfway down. As you begin to move forward, the strip of white lights above you begins to falter, flickering sporadically before the walkway is suddenly plunged into darkness.

// Option 1
You hear a strange, digital noise emanate from all around you, a dissonant crackling that vibrates through the metal walls. The din morphs into a drawn out cackle, a laughter that burrows into your eardrums. Suddenly, the noise subsides, replaced instead by the piercing discord of a warning alarm. The siren cycles for a few seconds before a male voice joins: ‘Warning, station destruction imminent. Zenith-47 facing severe security threat. Evacuate Immediately’.

// Option 2
After a second, a red light begins blinking at the end of the corridor. In the dim glow, you can just make out a strange shape. Eight feet tall, a towering, armoured form uncurls itself from the ceiling, carefully removing its spindly back legs from the air duct that runs the length of the corridor. It chatters menacingly through its mandibles, slowly turning its head towards you. Without warning, the creature lunges forwards, manoeuvring itself onto the left-hand wall and clambering in your direction as the scraping of limbs on metal echoes off the metallic panelling.

// Option 3
Before you have time to react, you hear a familiar mechanical sound from the other end of the corridor. Still almost pitch black, you manage to make out a strange, lumbering form beginning to make its way through the doorway which closes shut once the shape clears its aperture. Towering over even the tallest of you, the creature starts to approach, its footsteps echoing off the steel panelling. It accelerates, and is it does, you spot a strange asymmetry to its gait, one leg slamming into the ground with far more force than the other, and a giant, clawed arm swinging far in front of the other, catching the walls with a horrifying scraping noise and producing bursts of sparks that reveal further glints of its
grotesque form.