Vinyl looked up at the clock on the far side of the comms room. 11:30 it read, and Vinyl groaned. She had just spent the last 3 hours attempting to fix the radio so she could contact the main base and tell them about the mysterious specimen they had recovered, but she got pretty much nowhere.

It was early winter, so the days were getting super short, and they had experienced comms failures before, but not one that has lasted for as long as it was lasting now. Vinyl got up and stretched before moving to her chair and slipping on the headset. She flipped the radio on and moved her head forward to the mic. She then pressed the button.

"Hello, this is the Outpost again, attempting to contact the Crystal Empire, for like the billionth time, do you copy? over." Vinyl said sarcastically into the mic before sitting back and waiting for a response, but just got white noise instead.

Vinyl sighed and laid back in her chair and stared at the ceiling.

"This radio is a piece of shit" Vinyl said out loud, while slamming her hoof on the table.

"Maybe you should try being nice to it." Pinkie pie said as she skated past the comms room in the hallway.

"Don't start with me Pinkie!" Vinyl shouted.

Twilight sat at her desk in her office, jotting down as many notes as she possibly could on the specimen that she could remember. She was still thinking back to when she looked into the specimen's red eyes. Just remembering them sent a shiver down her spine.

Eventually she found herself staring out the window towards the shed. Her mind went blank, and she could see images of something horrible, a large dark mass with several tendrils, the sounds of screaming, and dogs suffering, she finally heard a voice.

"join us..." she heard faintly inside her head. She then felt like a dark mass was surrounding her, closing in to kill her.

Twilight was suddenly yanked out of her stare when Dr. Whooves entered the room.

"Twilight, are you okay?" he asked. Twilight slowly turned to face him, he could see the bags under her eyes.

"I'm fine, just finishing up my notes." Twilight said in a chipper voice, trying to hide her actual feelings of impending doom.

"It's almost midnight, you should head to bed." Whooves said, placing a hoof on Twilight's shoulder. He had been under the command of Twilight for pretty much the entire time he had been there, since he was only the other member of the crew with a biology degree, and he had volunteered to come up here for a special certificate.

"Yeah, you're probably right, I'll turn in soon." Twilight said as she began to organize her desk.

Dr. Whooves turned to leave, pausing at the door and glancing over at Twilight's notebook.

Shining Armor walked down the station's long hallway and stopped quickly at the kitchen and peered inside. He saw Pinkie Pie, Maud Pie and Dr. Stables sharing a drink. He then walked in and the the 3 drinking ponies froze in place, slightly embarrassed.

Shining frowned at the three ponies and finally spoke up.

"You three have 5 minutes to clean up and head to your bunks for lights out before I get peeved." Shining said in a deadpan yet threatening tone, making the three immediately get up and start cleaning before heading off to their rooms.

"Hey Pinkie, have you seen Fluttershy and Applejack?" Shining asked Pinkie as she finished cleaning the kitchen.

"Fluttershy is doing her nightly checkup on the dogs,and Applejack retired to her tower about a hour ago." Pinkie explained. Shining then went back to his office.

Applejack sat at her desk and stared at the screen in front of her. She was stumped, trying to figure out how to win this game. She had tried for the past hour to beat this computer at chess. She tried everything she could but kept loosing. She strained to think of her next move as she took another sip of her drink. She decided to try to move again, but like the last few times, the computer moved and immediately checkmated her. Applejack finally lost her patience and opened the computer drive and poured her drink into the computer, short circuiting it.

"Cheating bitch." Applejack said to herself as she placed her glass down and laid down on her bed for one last night of sleep. All of the stations inhabitants settled down for a good night sleep, but none of them knew what lay ahead of them.

Nopony noticed the commotion coming from the shed either....

Author's Note

Here's chapter 2, I should hopefully have chapter 3 done and up before the weekend. But with my busy schedule, it'll be a miracle. Hope you guys enjoy!