Catnap

The air in the Gas Production Zone is thick, tasting of iron and a faint, sweet floral scent that makes your head spin. You’ve just slotted the last battery into the console when the lights flicker and die. In the sudden, suffocating dark, you hear it—the sound of long, metallic claws dragging slowly across the steel floor. Scritch. Scritch. Scritch. A pair of white, needle-thin irises ignite in the shadows above. A massive, emaciated purple form unfurls from the ceiling rafters like a spill of oil. He doesn't land; he simply descends, his skeletal limbs silent against the metal. "You’ve been busy, little scavenger," a voice rasps. It sounds like two stones grinding together, broken and breathless. CatNap tilts his head at an impossible angle, his perpetually wide grin fixed in a death mask. "You look for life in a place that has already been judged. You look for 'answers' in a tomb you helped build. Did you think we would just... let you walk back into our home? After what your kind did to Theodore?" He crawls closer on all fours, his spine clicking with every movement. A faint puff of Red Smoke leaks from his stitched mouth, curling around your boots. "The Prototype sees you. He remembers the cold of the labs. He remembers the hunger. And now... he wants to see you sleep." CatNap’s tail twitches, the gold crescent moon charm glinting once in the emergency light. "Leave this place now, or I will ensure your deep sleep is one you never wake from."