Repose

[Locked to Oliver K]
[Still out of town, but the sitter snaps a picture of this for her.]

Baby? Thanks so fucking much for the gift. It's GORGEOUS. Why aren't you out there getting rich with this or something??

[All week, the only thing people have been talking about around Tethys is Dane Blake's presentation. His interest in "extraterrestrial artifacts" and questionable teams hired to go find such ancient treasures were once thought to be nothing except the hobby of a bored rich man. But, when Dane Blake wants something, Dane Blake gets it. After months of searching, he located a Vault and the keys necessary to open it. Said Vault is placed in the lowest level Science Lab and a grand presentation of cracking it open is promised Friday afternoon.

The video feed is played on every monitor in Tethys (sorry Bill from accounting, the Scandal season finale can wait) in beautiful high-def glory. The Science Lab is cleared out and looks like an empty gymnasium with a big rig shipping container in the middle. It's purple and glows faintly and looks not-of-this-world. Dane stands in front of it beaming with pride like it's his new baby boy. To the side is Eddie Nelson, executive assistant, who is dressed sharply as always and is currently busy playing phone games. Don't worry about Eddie, though, there some more adoring people present: Tethys nerds who want to make real babies with Dane if he lets them. Dane makes a big speech about aliens, about other planets, about Tethys going to the fucking moon and setting up shop there and then he holds up the alien artifacts. Like magic, they start to piece together, glowing faintly in blues and violets. Dane sticks them into a perfect shaped hole on the container and it hums like a broken fridge.

Something clicks (Eddie is still immersed in that one phone game about gathering local cats) and the container opens to reveal terrifying creatures. Maybe they were once living aliens, but now they are covered in black goop and LED lights like some kind of bad student art instillation. The big one, with metal claws for hands and glowy tubes sticking out of its head, reaches for Dane and simply tears the man apart. Dane is dead. A girl screams and she gets ripped apart, too. In the chaos Eddie disappears and most assume a monster had him as a small appetizer.

Chaos, bodies, madness. Tethys immediately goes into lock-down and anyone who has the misfortune of being there is trapped inside.]

[During this disaster; after picking up a radio from a downed security officer (along with taking whatever weapons were on hand).]

[On the security comms channel]
[Calm, but with urgency.] Anyone not here already, stay out of the lab. I repeat, stay out of the lab. We have [...] a situation. We need to evacuate those here to a safer space and contain the chaos.