The red emergency strobes pulsed like a dying heartbeat through the airship, painting the corridor in violent flashes of light. The alarm wailed its final, useless warning — a scream that had come far too late.

Bodies lay everywhere. Some were slumped against the walls, others sprawled across the deck in positions that suggested a futile, panicked scramble. Limbs twisted the wrong way. Faces frozen in silent pleas. Long streaks of blood glistened like oil in the intermittent red light.

Detective Unit Delta-3856 of the Earth Humanitarian Space Coalition stepped inside, servos humming softly under the oppressive silence. When he cut the alarm, the absence of sound was immediate and unbearable. His sensors took several seconds to adjust, but even then, the quiet felt wrong — thick, suffocating, like the air itself was holding its breath.

The cause of death was obvious. Most bodies were shredded, their torsos raked open by claws wide enough to nearly bisect them. Others had crushed throats — massive pressure applied with precision. Delta recorded each observation, and Command watched through his helmet feed in uneasy silence. Everyone knew what did this.

A Flagrant.

One of the elusive alien predators whose appearance always heralded carnage. One creature, attacking with impossible brutality. Their origins were unknown, their motives unknowable. Their bodies rarely recovered.

Delta collected bits of broken claws, violet drops of blood, and scraps of tissue in culture tubes. The creature shed little; what it did leave behind seemed almost deliberate — like breadcrumbs or trophies.

Hours passed like water dripping in a tomb. Alone, he cataloged the dead, sealed each broken body in a bag, and rebooted the ship’s systems. The AI co-pilot sputtered online with a flicker of static.

“Return to base,” it instructed in a shaky synthetic whisper.

The thrusters spun up — then died with a violent clunk that shook the ship to its bones. Yellow warnings flared across the monitors. Delta tried override after override, but the system rejected every command with a tone that sounded almost afraid.

He looked out the viewport.

A massive, rock-like structure drifted silently just beyond the starboard hull. The same asteroid — the one four miles across — the one that had vanished twelve hours ago.

Except now it drifted closer.

He tried to radio command. Nothing. Only static, hissing like something breathing against the mic.

A jolt rocked the ship.

Breach detected — Medical Bay.

Delta locked it down. Then he locked down everything — every deck, every compartment, sealing himself into the Operations Center. The silence grew heavier, pressing in like deep water.

Then came the sound.

A dragging scrape along the walls. Slow. Purposeful. Like claws tracing metal with lazy anticipation. The sound approached the cabin door one agonizing inch at a time.

Delta grabbed a plasma rifle from the untouched emergency cache. He’d never heard his own heart through his armored chestplate before — but now the beat thundered in his ears like a trapped animal.

The scratching stopped.

Silence swelled.

Then...
Tap. Tap. Tap.

A child's voice drifted through the steel door. Soft. Sweet. Wrong.

“Let me in…”

Delta froze. The creature had never spoken before. No recordings, no reports, nothing to indicate it understood human language — let alone mimic it with such casual innocence.

A second set of knocks. Firmer. Too precise to be human.

“Let me in, please? I know you’re in there.”

A light, playful giggle followed.

Delta’s hands shook.

The silence that followed was unbearable. His own pulse roared in his skull. For a moment, he thought he might pass out.

BOOM.
The door buckled inward.

BOOM.
A dent the size of a sledgehammer appeared.

The voice sang, cheerful and lilting:
“Roses are red…
Violets are blue…
You’re going to hate…
What I’ll do to you.”

Laughter — shrill, manic, layered with something inhuman — vibrated the air.

Then silence again.

Delta looked down.

A thick pool of black liquid oozed under the door. It moved with intention, creeping forward like a sentient shadow. It climbed upward, forming limbs, a torso, a skull-like head… all while remaining fluid, rippling like tar.

Delta screamed and fired. Plasma bolts tore through it, lighting the room in white bursts. The creature didn’t react. It only continued to rise until it stood seven feet tall, its limbs grotesquely elongated, fingers tapering into claws that scraped the deck with a metallic screech.

Then it shrank — bones cracking wetly — folding itself into the shape of a small girl. Jet-black skin. Nightmare-long arms. Hands dragged on the floor. Her smile stretched too wide, revealing jagged obsidian teeth dripping with leftover flesh.

She tilted her head.

“Gotcha.”

Her claws punched through Delta’s armor like paper.

When she was finished, she flowed back into liquid shadow and slipped out through the airlock. The asteroid drifted away into the starfield, vanishing without a trace.

Hours later, communications were restored. Command saw only a silent ship drifting in darkness. Without urgency, without alarm, a comms officer sent out a single, bored directive:

“Dispatch another unit to investigate.”