I woke up in the early morning as rays of sunshine entered the room. I knew, of course, that it wasn’t actual sunshine, but rather artificial lights installed on the sides of the windows to simulate a 24-hour day as on Earth. I watched as the dust danced in the light and tried to remember my dreams. I couldn’t recall any details, but I sensed that they had all been of an erotic nature. I then thought of last night and wondered what the cause of my sudden increase in libido could be. Surely, I asked myself, it couldn’t be due to the discovery?

When I came into the kitchen for breakfast, Sabrina and Chris were already there, Chris eating and Sabrina sipping on her coffee with an empty plate in front of her on which only the crumbs from her meal remained. As I sat down with my breakfast, we started planning our day. Dr. Heard and Dr. James were apparently already in the lab, and Chris would join them after breakfast. The lab was big but five people in there at once were too many so me and Sabrina were to enter after lunch.

Not much happened in the morning as Sabrina and I anxiously awaited our turn. Once the others had come out, we both quickly donned our lab coats and gloves and left the common areas. The lab was spacious, consisting of three large separate rooms connected by a corridor, and one additional room for storage. Me and Sabrina entered the same room and got to work. As I walked to the freezer to get our samples, I surreptitiously stored my sample at the very back where it would not be found. We both prepared plates for the samples to grow on and I felt no strange feelings this time. We put them in the incubator, and as we were packing up I made an excuse to stay for a few minutes alone.

I wasn't completely sure why I kept it secret as I took out my special sample after Sabrina had left the room. It thawed quickly, and the black liquid inside quickly started moving in a pulsating motion, aggregating to form tentacle like tendrils which extended along the sides of the tube. For a moment, it almost seemed to me as if the tendrils were trying to escape the tube. I held it up and looked in fascination, and I felt an urge to open the tube to investigate it further. 

I walked over to one of the lab benches and got a round, plastic plate onto which I poured the thick, dark liquid. It quickly aggregated in the middle of the plate and then formed tendrils extending towards the sides. As I leaned in to look closed, it retracted its extensions and instead formed one tendril which slowly reached upwards towards me. It must sense my breath somehow, I thought. As I was leaning over it, I felt an urge to touch it. The very thought made me excited and I almost succumbed to this compulsion. Despite this, my willpower prevailed and I carefully scooped the sample back into the tube and added some nutritional media. Still compelled to keep it a secret, I decided to hide the tube in the storage room behind a row of boxes which I knew stored equipment we rarely used. 

The next couple of days went by without me checking on my hidden sample. As the week came to an end, Dr. Heard and Dr. James packed their bags to leave as they had commitments elsewhere, but they planned to return in about a month. Hannah made a visit to the lab and Chris showed her our work so far. 

The following week, I was again working the afternoon with Sabrina. As it was Friday, she wanted to leave early to go to a local bar. She asked me to join but I declined, and when she had left I walked to the storage. I walked over to where I had hidden my sample, and as I moved the boxes aside my I saw something equally astonishing and frightening. The lid was removed and the tube was empty. I froze in horror. 

"How...?" I said to myself. I started frantically looking around, moving boxes aside trying to find the missing sample, feeling the anxiety build inside of me. I took a deep breath to calm myself and looked closer at the tube. As I leaned in closely, I saw a faint track of a dried substance on the shelf, similar to the trail left by a snail. I followed the track with my eyes and realized that it lead into a large container of nutritional powder.

I slowly walked over to the container and slowly opened it. When it was open, I froze in fear at what I saw. There was no powder left, the entire container was now filled with a black goo, moving and pulsing slowly. As if feeling my presence, a tendril started forming and before I could react it reached for me and took a hold of my wrist in a firm grasp. 

I tried to pull my hand away but couldn't. Panic arose in me as I looked down on the floor. More tendrils were slowly slithering towards my legs, and as they grasped my legs I could no longer move. I was stuck.