The Illian Cluster was almost perfectly silent. Nobody remained in the empty laboratories and offices. Observation chambers remained unattended and decrepit, and the main boiler's failure resulted in a chilling air permeating through the entire facility.

Nobody remained, except for one creature – a human-shaped monster wearing a set of dapper black clothes and purple scarves, standing significantly taller than any ordinary person. Their steps echoed through the facility, piercing the overbearing silence with their every motion.

They're coming, Zev repeated in their head between footsteps. Visitors. They're coming.

Before their departure, they needed to visit their favourite room – the kitchen. They had to make haste. The visitors would surely not be waiting around once they arrived.

Despite the halls of the station frequently twisting and bending, lacking any noticeable landmarks, Zev remembered exactly which path to take to get to where they wanted to be. As such, it only took them a few moments of pacing down the barren passages to spot their destination.

With no warning, a sudden thud rocked the entire station.

“Ah, ah, ah... that's them. Not long, then...”

They turned one more corner, and there it was: the room containing the food. It was unfortunate that most of the doors of the facility were so small, requiring them to duck down and contort themself just to get through.

Judging by the size of the other pieces of furniture in the kitchen, Zev assumed the previous inhabitants were much smaller than they were. Or was it the other way around – was Zev simply much larger than average? They didn't care enough to give it too much thought, since they were already busy snooping around the plentiful cupboards lining the room. They weren't even aware they were drooling on the floor with their mouth hanging open in an excited grin.

Zev bolted to the fridge, crouching down and yanking the door open, only to come to a jarring realization. They couldn't find any food. The fridge was bare. The cupboards were bare. The cabinets that usually contained the dehydrated food packets told the same story.

N... no...

Zev wasn't sure how to react. They placed a hand on their head and staggered backwards, suddenly becoming aware of how hungry they were. They didn't think to ration the station's limited supply of food, and an uncomfortable stomach pain crept up on them as a result. They looked around the rest of the room – behind the food storage area was a table and a set of chairs, along with a couple planters beside the doorway hosting some dead vegetation.

Zev heard something quiet in the distance – the familiar sound of feet walking across the metal floor. But it didn't matter. The only thing that concerned them was their hunger.

They rushed over to the planters without a second thought and yanked the dehydrated plants out of their soil, scrounging up as much of the leaves and stem as they could. The plants were so crispy and dry that they almost crumbled in Zev's hands, but it didn't matter. Zev quickly wolfed them down, happy to find a slight bit of sustenance, but disappointed by how unfulfilling and short-lived it was. They turned their attention to the table and chairs, hoping to find some other source of nourishment hidden away somewhere.

Knocking the chairs out of the way, they lifted the table from beneath and flipped it over, only to find nothing but dust.

Zev shrieked in frustration, their cry echoing for several seconds through the facility. Sheer anger was all they felt.

Something entered the room. Someone far shorter than Zev.

The visitors? Zev didn't care anymore. In a blind rage, they reeled their leg back and kicked the figure that had just entered the room with all their might.

It sent the human hurtling towards the food cabinets. She let out a cry of pain as she bounced off the cabinet doors, which flung open to once again reveal the bare shelves. In their fury, Zev's mind made the only connection that made sense – this new person was the one who did this. They took the food away. It was THEM.

Unacceptable. Zev would not have it.

Zev shifted the physical properties and internal workings of both of their hands to sculpt them into pickaxe-shaped spikes by rearranging their body's matter. The transformation was briefly dizzying, but minor shifts were something they'd grown accustomed to. Zev looked down to see the person just managing to stand up after being knocked onto the floor.

They don't deserve to get up after what they did.

Zev raised their spike-hands above their head before slamming them down on their target. The spikes impaled the figure's whole body in a massive bloody splatter, tearing through everything between their head and lower back with a loud crunch. The victim twitched once or twice before becoming perfectly still.

Ah! A human... Zev took a closer look at the mangled mess on their hands. The human was fully impaled on the spikes, resulting in an excessively messy splatter across the kitchen. They struggled to pull their spiky hands out of the ground; they'd impaled the floor during the attack, but with a quick yank, they removed their hands from the ground along with the human corpse. Zev shook their hands up and down repeatedly, shaking the body off their spikes as best as they could.

Though they were too angry to acknowledge it, Zev wasn't fond of the mess. Too unpleasant. But it was that person's fault for taking the food away. After scraping off the remainder of the human's viscera, they reversed the transformation of their hands and shifted them back into their regular five-fingered state. To Zev's dismay, they were still drenched red.

Without any clear purpose or direction, Zev squeezed through the kitchen's overly cramped door and ran down the hall. While they bolted through the station, one fact became apparent: this person could only have come here with a ship. A ship with a human pilot must have food.

Once again, Zev began traversing the unremarkable halls with haste. The station's docking bay was not far. They would have to pass through the station's main lobby to get there.

Before turning the corner to the lobby, they stopped and listened for any sounds. Nothing could be heard, so they bolted around the corner and flung themself into the next room, highly appreciating the enormous doorway.

After gathering their bearings, they quickly scanned the room. To their right, a series of lounge chairs and coffee tables along with the station's main entrance-way. Straight ahead, a large holographic display showing a big blue planet. To their left, another human hiding near a water vending machine. It ducked behind the machine the instant the two made eye contact, whimpering all the while.

Another human. Zev snapped to attention. The human was scared.

“Kyeh-heh.” Zev peered around the vending machine and made eye contact with him again. As soon as their eyes met, the human's whimpers escalated into screams of terror.

“Fuuuck! Oh god, fu-u-u-uck–” The screams then degraded into pathetic sobs as he shot out from his hiding spot, sprinting across the room towards the main docking bay's entrance.

Something clicked in Zev's head watching him flee. They immediately became filled with an animalistic sensation – the thrill of a predator seeing prey run for its life. Zev couldn't believe they didn't realize it sooner.

Food... food... food...!

Driven both by hunger pangs and primal instincts, Zev charged after the fleeing human. Although the couches and table proved to be a hassle to stomp over, catching up to the runner was almost an effortless task due to Zev's sheer size.

Zev easily grabbed him off the ground with both hands, and the human's wails intensified into bloody screams when Zev bent over and chomped down on his upper torso hard enough to impale it all over.

Starving. Starving. Zev needed food now.

Lifting the remainder of the human into the air, Zev grabbed his legs as to stop the flailing, and repeatedly swallowed in an aggressive attempt to fill their stomach. Eventually only a pair of boots were visible between Zev's teeth before they gulped one final time and sealed the human's fate.

The hunger quickly subsided. Zev licked their lips.

With a full stomach came rational thought and emotional control, though it took a few moments before Zev could clear their head and gather any coherent thoughts. They took this time to pace around the room and focus on their situation.

Yes, those two must have arrived on a ship – it's the best explanation for that loud sound they heard throughout the station before the encounter with the humans. It was an exciting thought, but Zev tried not to get too ahead of themself; they still needed to confirm the existence of this spaceship, and they also needed to be wary of any other humans who might have boarded the station.

In their frenzy, Zev almost didn't notice the human dropped something before they were incapacitated. It looked like a small tablet or device, which, upon closer inspection, seemed to be an electronic identification card.

Seth Lapine. Male. 30 years of age. Hallow. The tiny screen even featured a mugshot of the person Zev had just devoured.

Maybe I can use this sometime. Pocketing the device and looking around again, they saw that the automatic door to the docking bay was still open, which Zev took as an open invitation.

“Don't mind if I do,” Zev happily spoke to the door, practicing their English words.

The docking bay was huge. Like the rest of the station, it was almost completely empty, save for a couple of tools beside the staircase leading down to the main floor, one large metal box on the other side of the room, and a spaceship over to the left.

There it was. A small, but clearly functional, spaceship.

Zev had nothing to live for on this station. This was their ticket out... if they could even fit inside it.

They ambled over to the ship and began inspecting it for any sign of an entrance. The far side had a very distinct door-like shape engraved into the hull, but Zev couldn't see any way to open it aside from an input pad to its left. Several numbered buttons were present on its surface, with a narrow slot at the top.

Zev pressed multiple buttons in an attempt to make something happen. None of their random number combinations opened the door, much to their disappointment.

That's when it hit them. The narrow slot in the top of the keypad. Maybe... Zev pulled the ID card out of one of their coat's pockets. Finding it difficult to finesse the card into the tiny slot, they eventually slid it through, and heard a sharp beep as the door-like engraving slowly slid open. The ship released a small set of stairs that led up to the elevated entrance.

“Kyeh-heh-heh!” They couldn't help but express their elation. Now I'm Seth.

The stairs were relatively tiny for Zev's feet, and the door was even harder for them to fit in, but they managed to squeeze inside by crouching down into the doorway and crawling onto the ship's bridge. It wasn't big enough for any more than a few people, thus, Zev almost took up the whole area inside the spacecraft's cockpit. They couldn't even stand up straight because of how low the ceiling was.

Zev hobbled over to the front of the ship where the controls were displayed. A large panel at the front showed a screen with several options, but the two lines of text that stuck out to Zev among all the others were “engine power” and an unselectable “autopilot (previous destination)” button. They touched the screen where the command to engage the engines was displayed, and a faint rumble progressively became louder throughout the ship. Just as Zev had hoped, the autopilot button became available after the engines were at full power.

“Hello, Tina! Hello, Seth!” A chipper, high pitched voice suddenly started speaking up from within the ship. Zev panicked for a moment, craning their head around to see where the voice was coming from, but it soon became apparent that it was just the ship's computer.

Though this was definitely the escape route they needed, Zev wondered about the massive airlock that closed the station's landing pad off from the expanse of space. Would it open automatically? They guessed that it might, since they never found any clear controls for it during their month-long searches of the station, and those humans must have been able to board the station somehow without someone controlling it from the inside. No matter what the case was, it was a risk Zev was prepared to take. They'd been prepared for a long time.

After adjusting their position a bit so they were sitting in a more comfortable manner near the ship's controls, Zev pushed the autopilot button.

“Autopilot engaged. Sit back and relax!”

Zev wanted to obey its orders, but as the ship carefully lifted itself off of the bay's floor and moved forward towards the airlock, it immediately brought Zev out of their relaxed state.

Open! Open up...!

As if the space station had heard their prayers, the massive bulkhead disengaged its lock and opened up. Relieved, Zev sighed. Now they could relax.

The view outside of the ship transitioned from the blasé, white interior of the hangar, to the vast blackness of space, dotted only by the shimmer of distant stars and small pieces of nearby asteroid debris. Zev had no idea where they may have been headed, but they remained ecstatic at the thought of leaving the Illian Cluster for good. Anywhere was better than there.

“Now en route to Karma's Gateway.”