2175 C.E.

X: Rumors in the Night

Cynthia was awake about a half hour ago and I showed it to her then just to be sure I wasn't imagining things. She agreed with me that it was extremely odd, but couldn't say much more than I could other than to add that it might have been very pretty at one time, and I almost agree; its armor and wings catch the light in very strange ways and make it shimmer with rainbows. The fur is mostly brown, but it's very glossy, or it was at one point, I think. And despite the insect-like armor and limb structure, it seems like a graceful creature. I don't know quite how to describe it, and of course I have no way of taking pictures.

When we had left the cellar, Cynthia turned and thanked me for getting her and Brent through the night. I corrected her, of course, and said that luck really had more to do with it than I did. She gave me an odd look.

"What are you talking about?" she said. "You fought the thing every time. You actually carried me away from its reach at one point. You figured out how it was tracking us. None of us would be alive if not for you."

She's only partly right, of course; it was only luck that I blinded it when I did, and it still tracked us after the Interlinks were disabled. I wasn't even the one who killed it. I didn't point that out, though; I've learned that if people really want to give you credit for something, they get annoyed when you correct them. So I just shrugged and said "your welcome, I guess." She laughed and told me I was a strange one, whatever that means. Then she got serious; She told me that she thinks that the creature must be connected to her missing sister; apparently, she had described hallucinations of something similar to the creature that we fought. As soon as we get back into town, she wants to go back out with the police to find her. I never took her for being so tough; I'm just about dead after last night, and she's already talking about going back out into the woods. One has to admire her tenacity.

I suppose we'll have to leave sometime soon. There seems to be a road back into town; it seems pretty long, though, according to the old maps I've been looking through. I may opt to go back through the woods, although it's a less certain way. But I'll give them both a few more minutes to sleep and then we can figure out our route. Once we're there, I think we have to tell the police about the alien; it's dead, but who knows how many more like it might be out there still.

Text Conversation:From Adrian Aucaman: To William Aucaman: 07/24/2175

Mon 7:20 AM

Adrian: Hey, Billy, where are you?

Adrian: I went ahead and ran a lightwave survey of that forest area as the sun came up. It was mostly normal, but there were a couple of oddities. First, there was a lot of fire damage that wasn't there when we took our last survey-not anything major, but just some odd cutting near that stream where the tracks started. And not far from that there was an odd distortion in light pathways, not like a tree or something where light bounces off, but it was like something was physically bending light around a spot about twelve meters in diameter. Like, it bends the light laterally around some point and sends it back on its original path. I've never heard of anything like it.

Adrian: Billy? Are you getting this?

Mon 8:01 AM

Adrian: Billy, Mom and Dad are really worried. Are you there? I want to investigate that light anomaly before it goes away or something.

Adrian: Billy?

[End Text Transaction]

Recording: Police Scanner: 07/24/2175 0805 Local Time

Police robots on location. Cabin in sight.