Galactica

Galactica

Prologue

        "Hey Zeo, could you give me a hand over here?" one of the students called out from the other side of the cavern we were in. About half a year ago these ruins had been discovered by a team of workmen who were building an elevator shaft through the mountain. The Professor who came here with his students to study them, had hired local muscle, preferably with knowledge about local lore.

        "No problem Andy." I said as I walked over to where the young man stood. His work lamp was pointing at the piece of a fallen pillar which blocked a hallway he was interested in. I saw his problem, but no way of solving it without some heavy gear.

        "Think we can move it? From what I can see through the cracks, the walls in there are just full of writings, and I would love to examine them more closely." Andy asked, handing me his lamp so I could see for myself. I, of course, was no archaeological student and therefor couldn't read runes. I saw his point however.

Still, the heavy equipment was not due for at least another three days, and we just didn't have enough people with us to try and move a block of this size. If I had been asked about it's weight, I would have guessed that it weight about six tons. I shook my head.

        "Sorry mate, but I don't think we can do anything about this until the crane gets here on Thursday. But why don't you send in the drone for the time being? The crack seems to be big enough for it to fit through." I suggested, and his eyes immediately lit up. Apparently he hadn't thought of that possibility.

Thanking me, I saw the back of his dusty brown shirt disappear towards the little camp we had set up at the entrance to the ruins. We didn't sleep there if we could help it, but the tents were a good place to store our equipment. Especially if one considered that everything had to be brought up some pretty steep ladders. It just wouldn't do to carry our Laptops and other stuff in and out again, so everyone just carried a USB-Device on which he/she could save the data they had found.

I had one as well, but no one really expected me to make any discoveries, since I was just the guy who carried their stuff and was consulted if one of them scraped a knee or something. None of them, except one, took me seriously. And really, why should they have? I was just a former nurse who had taken this opportunity to make some good money.

Walking past the statue of a pretty small looking Unicorn, I entered the main chamber of what we assumed to be a temple. The Professor had almost fainted when he had seen that statue for the first time, believing that it was hard evidence that such creatures appeared in German mythology first. I thought the old man with the beer belly and white mustache was a little bonkers, but he paid good money for the work I did, so I didn't disagree with him. Not openly at least.

Even if one considered the myths from other countries, this Unicorn looked... wrong. It was too small, and it's eyes were at the front of it's head. That was usually not the case with herbivores. And there was something else strange about them. There seemed to be an intelligence behind them, that far exceeded that of any horse I had ever seen. But then again, the people who had build this place had worshiped this horse. Maybe the artist had just taken some liberty when he had created the statue, and I was simply over thinking things. That seemed to be the most like explanation in my opinion, since it also wore glasses and had a cross edged into it's flank. Not to mention that Unicorns were not real. That fact alone should have given me a pretty good reality check, but for some reason it didn't.

I looked over the group of about twelve students as they were clearing away centuries of rubble and debris that had fallen from the rocky ceiling, as a meaty hand found it's way onto my shoulder. Turning around, I could see the smiling face of the Professor in the bright light of the LED flood lights.

        “So, Zeo. Found anything interesting?” he asked with an obvious undertone. Somehow he knew, or so I guessed, that I had done something that I was forbidden to do by my contract. Last night, when everyone had already left, I had used some of the equipment to see if I could get a better image from the rooms behind some of the sealed stone doors. I had, in fact, found out that this complex was much bigger than the Professor had initially thought.

Explaining this to him however, did nothing for my situation. I was sure he'd fire me, but instead he just nodded energetically and patted me on the shoulder once more.

        “Don't worry your head of young man. I'm not as strict as some of my students think I am, and I knew that you had a good head on your shoulders the moment I saw you at the job interview. To be honest, I had expected you to do something like this much sooner. So, what exactly did you find out?” the old man asked, sitting down on a slap of stone and gesturing for me to sit opposite him. I glanced over at the students for a second. I was, after all, hired to help them out if they needed anything, but the Professor was insisting that we talked about this now.

        “OK, I went to the west wall of the main chamber yesterday night. As you know, there are three sealed doors that way. Number one and two are... dangerous.” I said as I pulled the printouts from the equipment from one of my many pockets. They distinctly showed metal spikes under the floor, and I assumed them to be a trap of some sorts. After all this time it was questionable if they would still work, but I was not willing to take that risk. If one of the students had found a way to open these doors, I would have stopped them before they went in. I said as much to the old man sitting a few feet away from me. He just nodded and gestured for me to go on.

        “The third door however... It's strange. There is some kind of mechanism in the door, and I even found an opening for a small round object which I suspect to be the key, but we haven't found such an object yet. I'm afraid that, if we can't find it, we'll have to force that door open. The only problem is that, seeing how much of this place has collapsed just since we started working here, I believe such an action would bring the whole place down on top of us.”

        “Have you made a test drill through the wall next to the door? Put a camera through it to see what's beyond it?” he asked, pushing his half moon glasses up his nose once more. They always seemed to slip down when he was getting excited about something.

        “Yes I did. It's a small chamber, but I think it might be the most important one yet. There's some sort of library in there. Rows upon rows of stone shelves with scrolls on them. Now, I know that most of them will most likely be lost causes, but the ones I saw in the front row still seemed to be intact. They looked as if they were wrapped in plastic or something. The light from the stick-cam reflected off of them.”

        “My boy, that simply can't be. I'll take your word for the library part, but this temple is older than any written history we know of. How could there be surviving scrolls in there? Even if they had been written on thin copper, as was sometimes done in history to preserve crucial texts, they would have eroded long ago. This place isn't the driest after all.” he replied, taking a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiping a bit of sweat of his wrinkled brow.

        “Professor Schneider, I think it would be best if you left this place for today. We can talk again tomorrow, or I'll come by your hotel this afternoon, but you really should go out and get some fresh air.”

Professor Schneider chuckled dryly at this, breaking out into a coughing fit shortly after. He knew I was right. I knew I was right. And I think that was the only reason he did not argue. I had been shocked when I had first seen him. From a medical standpoint it was irresponsible of me to let him stay here for any length of time. The only problem with this was, that I could tell him to leave all I wanted. If he did not want to go, or felt especially stubborn that day, he would just ignore me. I knew his kind only too well. Even if it killed him, he wanted to be here when some major discovery was made.

Today however, he agreed to go with a hearty chuckle. I sighed, scratching the back of my head awkwardly as I watched his overweight backside disappear into the darkness. If he hadn't been one of the most brilliant archaeological minds of the day, I believed he would have made a great Santa Claus imitator. All he lacked were the red coat and hat. But, despite how he treated his students at times, he was a good man. A little too open minded sometimes, but still very good and patient.

        “Zeo! I need some help over here. Do you have a minute?” one of the female students called out to me, kneeling next to a medium sized piece of rubble. I sighed once more. She could have moved it by herself if she put her back into it, but Sandra always asked me for help. No matter how small the task was, she always wanted me to help her with it. The most irritating incident in this long chain, had been when she had asked me to help her translate some of the runes that were written on the base of the statue out front. I had, to her disappointment, not been able to translate them to her satisfaction. How should I have been? I was a nurse, not a druid for crying out loud...

Walking over to Sandra the first thing I noticed was that she was sweating profusely. Maybe she had tried to move this rubble alone and had exhausted herself doing so? No, that couldn't be it. Her hands were still clean, as were her knees. She gasped in surprise as I grabbed her hand and put two of my fingers to her wrist to measure her pulse. Considering that I had startled her, and that the air in here wasn't the best, her heart rate was still a little bit too fast.

        “Have you eaten anything bad lately? Or aren't you feeling well maybe?” I asked, removing her glasses and putting my free hand on her forehead. I just couldn't help going into full nurse mode.

        “W... Well... It's a little warm in here...” she stammered, removing a stray lock of auburn hair from her face with the back of her right hand.

It was, in fact, a little warmer inside of here than was necessary, but not enough to make a person sweat this much. Deciding that I would move the rubble for her, let her do whatever she wanted to do behind or with it and then sent her outside to get some fresh air, I let go of her wrist. She looked a little forlornly at her now free left hand, before flinching for some reason as I grabbed onto the piece of rubble she had wanted me to move in the first place. It wasn't that heavy to be honest. Fifty kilograms at most.

When I had removed it, I saw that there was a little drawing on the wall there. Apparently Sandra had seen it when she had looked over the piece of rubble, and wanted to inspect it more closely. I could only stare at the crude little drawing. It was done in paint made of fruits or something but it wasn't as detailed as the other ones I had seen all around the ruins so far. It was almost as if this one was done by a child or something... A very morbid child...

The drawing depicted the Unicorn outside, but in color. Apparently it had a mustard yellow coat and a lavender blue mane. It looked like no horse I had ever seen before. But what struck me the most was that it lay in a pool of blood. Behind the fallen body stood a bear like figure which I guessed was supposed to depict a big man with a lot of muscles, but I couldn't be sure. Millennia of water running down this wall had made it blurry, but the message was still quite clear. The Unicorn that was worshiped here, had been murdered supposedly.

I was pretty sure that this was just the depiction of some children story a child had scribbled onto a wall, but it still made me feel incredibly sad. The Unicorn on the floor looked shocked, one of it's hooves raised to it's throat as if it wanted to stop the flow of blood, while the other figure stood over it with a crude knife in it's hand. What the heck could be the reason for this man to murder a Unicorn....?

Sandra caught me as I began to stumble backwards and almost fell over. Had she not steadied me, I might have cracked my skull on the small rock I had moved for her just now. Still, my vision was blurry, and no matter how much I blinked, it only got worse. Finally my knees gave out from under me, and I felt myself fall, despite the lithe student trying to hold me upright.

        “HELP! SOMEBODY HELP!” I heard her scream echo through the cavern, as the world around me faded to black.

o~O~o~O~o~O~o~O~o~O~o

What the heck was going on? When I opened my eyes again, I was in a much smaller body. How did I know that? Simple. Everything around me looked much bigger than it had before. Also, I was wearing some kind of weird jumpsuit with a lot of pockets and a utility belt that held a lot of different medical things. Bandages, syringes and different vials with colored fluids in them. I could only imagine what they were for though, since all of it looked pretty futuristic.

What struck me the most however, was that I had no control over my body whatsoever. It was like I was dreaming, but everything felt so real that I almost believed that I had been transported to some strange video game. In addition to that, my surroundings looked pretty futuristic as well. It was some kind of lab, with big panorama windows. Whoever I was in turned around and took a look out of the window. It was... unbelievable. I saw the valley my hometown sat in, but now it was completely overgrown by a thick forest.

The building I was in apparently stood were our towns castle was in my time, and I could therefor overlook the whole valley. Only one relatively small patch of land was free of trees, and I could see smoke rising from there. A community? It was hard to tell from here, but I guessed that they were located where the river that gave this valley it's name ran. Now however, it was only a tiny little stream.

It was these facts that brought me to believe that I was looking at the valleys past. But from what I saw, it was a quite distant past. A few thousand years at the very least. As far as I knew, there had been no tribal communities in my area until the castle was build. But then again, if this really was a view of the land of thousands of years ago, then the remains of that community could be buried under tons of rock in my time.

A sound from behind the young boy I was in drew his attention, and he turned once again. I have to admit however, that it was a strange feeling to feel this body move without me doing anything. Had I been able to throw up, I might have done so.

Behind us, something came up the stairs. It was the Unicorn I had seen as both a crude drawing on a wall, and a statue. It looked kind of tired as it's horn glowed, levitating a small cup next to it's head. It smelled distinctly like coffee to me. Could horses even digest that? In addition to the floating cup, which didn't seem to care in the slightest that cups didn't have the ability to fly, there was a small alabaster sphere following the Unicorn around. I had no idea what it's function was supposed to be, but it never flew farther than a few feet away from it's apparent master.

        “Enjoying the view?” it asked in a gentle, surprisingly female, voice. My host nodded, apparently either mute, or unable to reply for some other reason. The Unicorn sighed and walked over to a small shelf that stood at the far wall. It's horn glowed once more, and several of the books on it floated out towards my host. By this point I just ignored the breaking of every law of physics I knew and just enjoyed the ride.

“Here. Read these, then we can get started on some more advanced stuff. I know you want to learn more about infections and bacteria, but I'd prefer it if we kept things slow, shall we?” it asked with... a smile? Since when could horses smile? On the other hand though, this was definitely not a normal horse. It looked almost exactly like the statue I had seen.

My host nodded once more, taking a bright orange backpack from under a desk and depositing the books the Unicorn had given him into it. The boy I occupied bowed deeply to the Unicorn who, in turn, nuzzled his cheek gently.

        “Now get on your way. I wouldn't want your mother worry about you again. Last time she came here she was quite hysteric.” it said, and the boy made his way down the stairs. The downstairs area looked nothing like the upstairs one. It was decorated quite nicely, and I could see that this was a living space on first glance. While the lab upstairs had looked like something from a Star Trek movie, this area was much more recognizable. There was a small kitchen are to the left of the staircase, where I could see several different vegetables and plants on a counter.

To the right was an open door through which I could see a beige sofa and something that looked like a television. A pretty big television. I didn't even want to imagine what such a device would cost.

Then.... my host got run over. Not only run over, but practically knocked against the wall next to the stairs by a big man dressed in what looked like several wolf furs. The last thing I saw before my host fainted from the impact, was that the man was carrying something in his arms. Something that looked kind of like a very young child, but was deformed and bleeding very badly.

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The young boy I was in awoke to total darkness outside the windows and shouting upstairs. The female voice, I knew, belonged to the Unicorn from the statue. The other, much deeper and rough voice, I assumed to belong to the man who had knocked my host over earlier. Then, I heart glass shattering and something fall to the ground with a heavy thump.

My host, even though he felt very dizzy and his vision was hazy, struggled to his feet and went up the stairs as fast as he could. Which wasn't very fast at all, considering that he had probably suffered a concussion from his heads impact on the wall.

When he reached the top of the stairs, the first thing he saw were the glasses of the gentle Unicorn laying on the top step. They were broken, with small spiderweb like cracks running through them. Then he looked up and saw the man from earlier pinning the struggling Unicorn to the ground from behind. The man grabbed its horn and jerked its head up.

The Unicorn, laying on its stomach, tried to free itself by jerking its head every which way to try and stab its attacker with its horn, but it was no use. He was just too strong. It seemed like my host was moving in slow motion as he rushed forwards, trying to stop what I knew was coming. The bear like man produced a knife from a sheath at his belt and, in one fluid motion, cut the Unicorns throat. Blood splattered everywhere, and the boy I was in almost slipped on it as he barreled into the giant of a man.

Caught by surprise, the impact of his tiny frame was enough to make the man stumble backwards and land on his backside. The knife came up again, and I was already contemplating what it would be like to have ones throat cut, when I felt some tugging at the young boys belt. The boy looked down, and I saw that a syringe and a bottle were surrounded by a yellow haze.

They floated out, the syringe plunging itself deep into the rubber cap of the bottle and sucking up its contents greedily. Just when the man attacked my host, and I thought everything was over for sure, the syringe darted towards the man at amazing speeds, burying itself into his neck and injecting him with a lilac liquid.

His charge ended abruptly as his eyes rolled up to the whites, and he collapsed. My host scrambled to his feet as fast as he could, and went over to where the bleeding Unicorn lay. There was barely any life left in its eyes, and only the softest of glows was radiating from its horn.

The boy pulled out bandages and filled another syringe with a magenta liquid, apparently trying to help the mare, but it was already too late. I had worked in an ambulance for a while, and I could tell that his efforts were in vain. After he had put on the first layer of bandages, the Unicorn had already gone still, and its eyes had broken. When the boy realized this, I heard him utter a single word. The only word he had spoken so far.

        “Jade...” he muttered wetly, tears running down his cheeks and blurring his vision even more.

Still, while he was focused on the dead Unicorn, I took a moment to take in the scene before me. There was blood dripping from one of the tables, which was clearly not from the Unicorn. For one, it was in the wrong direction. The blood from its wound had flowed towards the stairs, while the table stood near the back of the room. On it lay the figure I had seen the man carry. The tiny form of a young girl that was missing an arm, and whos ripcage had been ripped wide open lay there. Even modern medicine could not have saved the child...

o~O~o~O~o~O~o~O~o~O~o

I awoke with a start, sitting up from one second to the next. A nurse I had once worked with was checking the readouts on the monitors next to me. My sudden awakening had startled her quite a bit, for she had dropped her clipboard and was now holding a hand to her chest.

        “Sorry...” I muttered apologetically, leaning forward to pick up the clipboard she had dropped onto my bed. From how I felt, and the readouts, I was as fit as... well as fit as a horse.

        “Don't. EVER. Do. That. Again.” she said, emphasizing each word. Usually, she would have never talked to a patient like that, but since we had worked here together in the past, she talked to me as she would have with any other person who had startled her.

        “Sorry Anna, won't happen again. So, what's the diagnosis?” I asked, taking a look at the clipboard I had picked up. There was only one sheet of paper on it, indicating that I had been here for less than a day. My readouts had been unstable when they had brought me here, but from what I could see, they had normalized as soon as they had put some sedatives into my system. Anna snatched the clipboard out of my hand briskly, tugging it under her arm.

        “Stress. According to Doctor Henning, you collapsed due to stress.” she said sharply, and I could only snort in response. I worked only five hours a day with the Professor and his students, and I even had every weekend off. Not exactly a stressful job. Not to mention that...

        “Aww come on Anna. You know Henning is full of shit. He couldn't diagnose a cold if it bit him in the nose.” I joked. It was basically true. Doctor Joseph Henning was the most incompetent doctor our local hospital had to offer. He had once diagnosed a broken hip on one of my patients, and had rushed her to surgery, just to find out that the woman simply suffered from arthritis. The only reason he had not lost his job yet, or so many of us had assumed back then, was that he was related to the hospital director.

        “That may be, but you'll still stay here for a week.”

        “A week? Aww come on! I just fainted after lifting something heavy in a room with bad air. It was probably just lack of oxygen. Just hand me the release form, so I can go home already.” I replied, noticing that it was dark outside. I wasn't at all sure that lack of oxygen was the actual cause for me fainting, but it was the best explanation I could come up with.

Anna sighed and pointed to a sheet of paper on my nightstand. Apparently Henning had already anticipated that I did not trust his diagnosis at all, and had already prepared one for me. The two of us always had a very strained work relationship. It hadn't gotten better after he had gotten me fired two years previous for calling him out on one of his many mistakes.

Signing the document, I got out of bed and my former co-worker covered her eyes instantly. What I had not noticed until I was already standing, was that they had stripped me naked instead of putting a hospital gown on me. Great... just another thing she could laugh about in the break-room at my expense from now on...

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As soon as I left the hospital, I checked my cellphone. There was only one knew message, and that was from Professor Schneider. He wished me a speedy recovery, made some bad joke about how it had been me who had fainted in the end, and assured me that I did not have to worry about my wages. The old man was willing to pay me out of his own pocket if he had to apparently, which was quite generous of him, considering how he was always moaning about the costs of this dig.

        “Man... this day couldn't suck more.” I sighed, as I realized that my scooter was all the way down the hill and next to the entrance to the excavation site. That meant that I had to walk at least an hour and a half to reach it. Or I could just go home from here. The distance was basically the same...

But who was I kidding? There was no way I would let my trusty scooter just sit there over night, so I got walking. While doing so, I began to think about that strange dream I had while I was out. I always had a very lively imagination, but this was taking things to a whole new level. Had seeing that one crude drawing somehow sparked something in me, causing my brain to try and come up with a story behind it, or was that some kind of vision?

The latter was soon dismissed as my common sense kicked in again. There was no way this could have been a vision. If it had been, then why had no one ever found the remains of that village I had seen? And what had happened to that big building I had been in? In it's place stood castle Altena now, and I was pretty sure that there were no legends about ruins being there first. Or some highly advanced technology.

Then again... there was one story from my childhood that suddenly sprang to the forefront of my mind. The legend of Ech'Anta. Supposedly Ech'Anta was a spirit of healing who had come from the stars to help the people during times of crisis. Up until now however, I had never really thought about what such a spirit might look like...

Taking out my cellphone, I did something I rarely ever did because the costs were just a killer for my bank account, but I couldn't wait until I got home. Using Google, I soon found a website that had a complete rune dictionary on it, and could even translate words. It even gave me some information on the origin of the words I entered.

Ech: Horn/Horned. Short form of Echercha. Often used in names or early texts that describe mythical beasts.

Anta: Horse. Short form of Antalo. Often used in early texts to describe wild horses.

So.. in short... the name of the spirit in the fairy tale I knew, meant horned horse... or Unicorn in other words... Was it so far fetched that the inhabitants of this valley, prior to the castle being build, had worshiped this entity? Seeing how there was a complete underground temple, I thought that it was quite plausible.

It even explained the second part of the tale I knew. According to it, Ech'Anta had left one day, as she was recalled by the gods. Her home on the Wolfsegge, which was still the regional name for the mountain the castle stood on, had vanished overnight shortly after...

My head began to throb as I reached the foot of the hill the hospital stood on. What did it all mean? Did we find the temple of some ancient tribe that had left it's mark, even on our modern society? And what about that dream I had? If the fairy tale really referred to the Unicorn I had seen so many times in form a statue by now, then could it be that this dream was also real?

I just didn't know. I needed a smoke. Badly.

Putting my right hand into the pocket of my leather coat, I frowned. I was expecting my pack of tobacco to be there, and I was not disappointed. There was, however, another item which I did not recognize at all. It felt like a small metal ball just big enough to fit into my hand comfortably. Pulling it out, I saw that it was some sort of device. I froze in my tracks as I stared at the small alabaster sphere in my hand. It was damaged somehow, since I could see a cut on one side of it and a few wires hanging out.

It was the device I had seen in that weird dream. The one following the Unicorn around at all times. But how the hell had it gotten into my pocket? Had someone put it there? But even if someone did slip it in there, what the reason for it? If it really was what I thought it was, then it belonged into some museum, not into my pocket.

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After retrieving my scooter and driving home, I got to work on the strange device I had found in my coat pocket. In my younger years I had once had some basic training in electronics and my Dad was storing most of his tools at my place. So, since I was not expected at work the next day anyway, I pulled out the table mounted magnifying glass and other tools to see if I could maybe repair it. I was aware of the fact that it was an archaeological artifact, but I just couldn't stop my curiosity from taking over at this point.

In the end I had checked what I could with my limited knowledge, and now knew that there was some kind of battery in this thing. At least that was what the voltmeter had told me when I had connected it to one of the blackened cables. In fact, the meter had fried so I was pretty sure that I didn't want to get a shock from this thing.

That didn't stop my curiosity though. A few cuts later and I had removed the charred parts of the cables, and replaced them with fresh ones from my Dads toolbox. I had no idea if they were the right ones, or if they could stand this kind of electricity running through them, but I just wanted to know what the heck this thing was. It turned out that it was a good thing I wore rubber gloves while working on the device, since I did not see any way to take out that battery.

Even through the thick gloves though, I still felt the slight tingle of a current run through my hands as I worked. I was determined to give this thing at least one shot and then go to bed regardless. I'm just hard headed that way.

In the end, one try was all I needed. As soon as the last connection was repaired, the little alabaster sphere sprang to life and shot out of my hands faster than I could react. It zoomed through my two room apartment pretty quickly, a cone of bluish light running over every single one of my belongings as it did so. I jumped up, trying to catch the thing but it was too fast for me. Each time I thought I had it, my hands missed it by an inch.

Then, it turned towards me. As much as I had wanted to catch it earlier, I was now turning tail and running into the opposite direction. My neighbor from below was already banging on his ceiling with a broom handle because of all the noise at two in the morning, but I didn't care about that one bit. I dodged and jumped over my sofa avoiding the little ball.

In the end however, it had driven me into a corner. A little LED on it's front activated and the blue cone of light it had swept over my stuff now enveloped me. From one moment to the other, the world disappeared in a flash of light.

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Water. Hot water. That was the first thing I felt when the world refocused itself. In a matter of seconds I was drenched from head to toe as I lay in a metal bathtub. It wasn't pretty in any meaning of the word. Just a giant metal bowl with a shower and a tap if someone wanted to take a bath.

And then there was the scream of course. The scream that pierced my ears so badly, that I clamped my hands over them instinctively to prevent myself from going deaf. I won't lie. I've heard women scream before, but this was... something else. Much higher than anything I had ever heard. When my eyes found the source of the noise, I saw that it was... Oh damn... was I maybe in a coma or still dreaming?

The scream that was threatening to shatter my eardrums was coming from a lavender Unicorn that had retreated to the far end of the tub. Apparently my sudden appearance had startled it enough to make it break out into a screaming fit. I didn't know what was going on, where I was or if it could even understand me, but I still raised my hands in a non-threatening gesture to show it that I was not about to hurt it.

Why the heck did I even do that? It was not like this animal was intelligent... or was it?

        “Hey, could you cut the screaming? My ears will start to bleed if you go on like this!” I whined loudly, trying to sound as non-threatening as possible. It did actually stop a few seconds later, opening it's muzzle as if to say something, but got cut short by the automatic door to the small bathroom hissing open. Three cat-like creatures stormed in, walking on two legs and wearing white uniforms with golden trim around the collar.

Before I could say another word, one of them was already on me and hit me straight in the face with the bud of his futuristic looking pistol. I didn't go out right away, so it repeated the process a few times for good measure until I was out...

        “What the fuck did I get myself into?” I thought, just before my lights went out once more.