Doors Plot: Welcome to the Midnight Isle

[wipeawaythedebt]

The remote mining colony on CX-4593 had been radio silent for six months.

The colony, nicknamed the Midnight Isle by the miners trapped in its perpetual darkness, had been running at peak efficency until the drills hit and cracked a mineral that their local geologists could not identify. After sending a copy of the readings and initial scientific findings back to Earthbase Epsilon, the miner recorded that they intended to resume drilling the next day. After that last broadcast, communication stopped. The colony managers, safe in their homes on Epsilon attempted many times to re-initiate communication, but to no avail.

A proposed rescue mission is still being discussed in committee and to the outside world, the mining company reports that everything is normal, just some routine communication bugs.

Meanwhile, the radio silence continues, but all is not silent on the Midnight Isle. There is clicking and scratching inside the walls and floors, distant echoes in the halls, and the electronic hum of a station still at full power. But absent are the sounds of the miners, and everywhere are the signs of distress and danger. Meals left abandoned covered in mold and dust. Chairs and tables stacked, as if in barricades, and most worrying of all, the smears of blood in the halls and pooled on the floors, absent of bodies, but full of unanswered questions.

And now, six months after the strange mineral was discovered, there are doors opening and strangers are arriving.

Comments

[wipeawaythedebt]

"Elizabeth!"

He's certain she'd gone through the door just a few minutes ahead of him as he'd held back to pay the cab driver. She should be right here. Wherever here is. The place is damn spooky. Walls are all some kind of metal, lights set into them, a few blinking on and off, but enough so he can see pretty well. But he can't see her and he should be able to.

"Elizabeth, answer me!"

Running down the hall, he makes a turn into a large room. Some kind of abandoned dining hall. It's a damn mess, tables and chairs overturned, a barricade built at the far end, and the blood... there's blood everywhere. Clenching his fist, he starts towards the far end.

"Elizabeth!!"

[cagedlamb]

Elizabeth didn't know where she was.

She hadn't been sent back - that, she at least knew, was for sure. She wasn't where she was a few moments ago, either. Instead, she was somewhere she almost certainly didn't want to be. She'd always been in control of the tears, and whatever had happened hadn't been a tear.

She didn't know how she got here.

The tension she felt was almost foreign after months away from the fear. It was enough to put her on full alert, though, as she scanned the area she'd entered once she was sure there was no door back - that'd be too easy. She was in some sort of living quarters, the beds lining the walls thick with dust from extreme misuse. Some other furniture was overturned or broken.

When she was picking through the place for some kind of blunt object(and it scared her, honestly, that it was the first thought that came to mind - something to protect herself, even if it were a broken leg of a chair), she found herself coming up, unfortunately, very empty. There was little she could do but try to move on from the room.

It took all of five seconds after opening the door for her to regret the decision. The lights were flickering, but it was enough to illuminate the huge blood splatter on the wall opposite of the door.

She didn't stifle the sound of shock that escaped from her mouth, loud enough to echo the empty hall, in time.