A remote orbital station above some forbidding planet. Cut to an interior: a huge, empty, hangar-like room, like a cargo area. Huge picture windows looking down at the planet. A single turbolift door in one part of the room.
Familiar blue chyron titles in one corner of the view: “Cause of Death.”
An ensign, unsure, hesitantly exits the turbolift. He looks around the well-lit, empty space. Mounted in a corner of the ceiling, a viewscreen. It turns on, showing an alien wearing a Starfleet uniform. A superior officer.
“Ensign. This is the room where it keeps happening.”
The room isn’t completely empty though: a podium-like wooden pedestal stands next to a long jewelry-display-case like object, large enough to hold one person inside. On the podium on some kind of holder, sticking straight up, is a syringe with the needle pointing into the air. It is full of something. A little bit lower on the podium is a severed alien hand, complete with frayed Starfleet uniform cuff still at the wrist.
“The creature came up with one of our early shuttle runs, that much is certain. Everything else we know about it: it is completely invisible, soundless, undetectable via any means we have. We have reason to believe it’s susceptible to the tranquilizer in the syringe.
“We can’t explain why, when it kills, it leaves the left hand.” The hand belonged to the last ensign to enter this room.
“We’ll give you four hours. Good luck.” The screen switched off. The doors shut and locked.
Now I was the unsure ensign. I approached the podium in the deathly-silent room. The floor was carpeted, so I made no sound; not that anyone understood how it hunted. I pulled the syringe off the stand and held it out in front of me like a weapon. I began to methodically sweep the room.
