Thud-
A terrifying tremor passed through the entire cold floor, as though the earth itself were rumbling.
Stay away from anomalies and the unknown-that was always the stalkers' creed.
She hurriedly closed her clothes, put on her eye gear and face covering, and vanished into the darkness with the backpack she had never taken off.
The unexplained tremor scared away all the stalkers, but drew scavengers in droves. They gathered in the darkness, their disorderly footsteps echoing through the vast structure.
Pairs of glowing red dots finally converged on the accident site, yet fear kept them from readily approaching.
In the darkness sat a sphere covered in red points of light, like countless eyes moving in unison to follow them.
It was some unknown technological creation!
They stood guard with oversized weapons. They had hoped to pick up something worthwhile from an automated engineering accident, never expecting to encounter something unknown that might cost them their lives.
They coveted the assorted objects beside that "monster," though they had no idea what treasures they might be.
If the enemy did not move, neither would they. The scavengers all remained motionless in hiding.
The humanoid intelligent life-form Zoe's field of vision consisted of optical information from the outside world, rendered on the display of the scanner enclosing his head.
The processed image only let him see a hundred meters or so, and some areas were not particularly clear.
A thick layer of black sand had gradually spread across the level floor. The most striking thing amid that strange sand was the "glowing" sphere, ten meters in diameter.
Its surface bore over a hundred pairs of sharply defined red eyes, like a many-eyed monster straight out of a book.
This was a monster he had never even heard of before, and Zoe was