Play@YSDC

The woman drops to the ground and Tyson leans out of the cell to look around. Although Tyson doesn't seem to notice Virgil is sure he can see something move behind him. He can't really make out any details but it is an oddly fast and jerky blur.

“Come on, man, it’s right in front of you!” Virgil curses under his breath and then silently pads to hide behind the door, heart thumping and trying to breath evenly.

From behind the door Virgil can hear Tyson shouting, 'Ruth, Ruth, what the fuck, what happened to you, stay with me...'

Virgil then hears click-click-click and a nasty high pitched scraping sound like nails down a blackboard.

Is Virgil closing the door or just hiding behind it? Either way roll Stealth

Virgil tries to compose his mind but can barely keep the panic from bubbling up; all he can picture is an event horizon...
He leans on the door so that it clicks shut.

Stealth, 45 roll: 56

And speaks in a desperate whisper on his comm: “Virgil here, I’m in security. It’s got Tyson.
I’m trapped and it’s... it’s outside the door. If I don’t make it, the answer is at Waystation. Illegal op... security code alpha four seven kilo f...
Oh my god!

Virgil's datapad doesn't seem to be responding.

From the other side of the door Virgil hears Tyson, 'Stay the fuck away from me...' There's an odd, splashing noise. 'Eugh...'

There is a long period of silence, maybe a minute. Then Virgil begins to hear a banging, and the door shakes, something is crashing into the door. Click-click-click. Click-click-click.

“ Bloody thing!” Virgil thinks as he gives up on the Mayday and leans all his weight on the door to prevent it opening. He holds his pistol in one hand and looks at the duct opening in the ceiling: would it be worth a last ditch attempt to jump to it and escape.

Up to you - I'd need a hard success on a STR roll to keep the door shut. Jumping back up to the vent would be a regular Zero/Low G roll with, I think, a bonus die since Virgil is still barefoot

From behind the door Virgil hears a faint voice, '...help...help me...'

Virgil shakes his head, “No way I’m going out there; it could even be a trap.” He thinks. He considers the duct but would have to drop his gun to grab the edges so he stays still, hoping he can hold the door tight.

50. Roll=10 (relief)

The door rattles and vibrates and Virgil feels several discrete thuds, each one punching out a convex distortion the size of a softball in the metal door.

Then silence.

... except for the thudding of Virgil’s heart which seems to resound through the room.
Virgil leans against the door, trying not to look at the dents or consider what might have made them. He feels exhausted but needs to hang on, waiting.

Virgil waits for a few minutes more. There's no further sound...

Roll me a hard Listen

Virgil strains his ears: maybe it’s given up and gone away.

50 roll: 29

Virgil doesn't hear anything further. There is complete silence.

Virgil counts to 300 and then relaxes the pressure on the door. He has his pistol ready and goes to open the door, as quietly as he can.

Slowly opening the door, Virgil peaks out into the security office. He can't see or hear any movement. There is no sign of the female security officer except for a streak of blood on the chrome floor. In the centre of the room Officer Tyson is lying. He's soaked in blood and just like Kingsley there's a crystal shard protruding from his chest.

At Virgil's approach Tyson looks up at him, he seems to be in a lot of pain. He spits out a gobbet of blood and laughs, 'Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.' Tyson looks up and Virgil feels a tingling across his skin, a sudden knot in the stomach, awareness on some level of an imminent threat causing him to freeze, like the instinct of a prey animal. He forces himself to slowly look up into the roof space.

There's something up there, he can't focus on it because it moves so quickly. Jerkily, but quickly. Then it drops, suddenly, heavily. Crashing to the floor but landing with an alien elegance. Almost no sound beyond the sharp, scraping reverberations of several hard points shearing through the metallic floor. It straightens up, towering over Virgil, what he takes to be a head closing to within a few inches of his face. He smells something oily, acidic, it tastes spicy in his mouth. Click-click-click.

It is so close Virgil can't really take it all in. A hideous crystalline form of claws and spines. Six, yes six limbs encrusted all over with sparkling, ridged layers of minerals. Superficially it resembles the Xenoform, but where the Xenoform was just alien, this thing is incomprehensible, like a living geode. There are no eyes or even a face to speak of, no mouth even. But a viscous white exudate drips from the head part, extending down past Virgil's face as a stringy elongated liquid, before splitting off and dropping onto the floor where it pools.

A blur of iridescent and spiked crescents, claw like on the end of crystal arms, swings towards Virgil in a hypnotic syncopated motion.

Seize manouvre 60%: 1d100 57

That's Sanity 1/1d8. And we're into combat, the creature got to go first as it surprised you. It has tried to seize Virgil with its claws and it has succeeded. Virgil can try and fight back (would need a hard success) or Dodge (needs a normal success)

Sanity 50, roll: 65. San loss: 2. Dodge 32 roll: 13 (ooc, Never, ever, open the door!

Virgil stands, mesmerised as the face lowers to his, he hears the acid dripping onto his shoes and the sizzling as they start to dissolve.
His training takes over: a ‘matrix’ manoeuvre as the appendage strikes and then he tries to back through the door again.

His years of martial arts training have imprinted Virgil with prodigious reflexes and he twists and slides backwards into the cell as the claws slice through the air where he would have been a moment before.

Instead of swinging at him again the creature's multifaceted carapace starts to shift, rearranging itself, the crystaline structure almost flowing, as it extrudes a tapering shard from the centre of its abdomen. Then this spine projects out rapidly, targeting the middle of Virgil's chest, a few drops of the caustic white liquid spilling onto the floor.

pLp60%d%

Another Dodge or fight back needed

With nowhere left to run, Virgil fires desperately at the crystalline shard that’s arcing towards him.

60. Roll:17

Virgil tries to dodge again.

32, roll: 68