Among Us

Blue

Our return to Earth did not go according to plan right away. Strange power failures and intermittent disruptions in the operation of the reactor made our engineer, Black, lose their nerves and, after a thorough examination, they called the entire crew for an emergency meeting in the cafeteria.

Lingering in the medical bay, checking the strange reagents obtained on the asteroid, I did not have time to start the discussion, but when I arrived, I was filled with horror. Black argued that the electrical and reactor problems were someone's sabotage. Someone destroyed the wiring on purpose. While I was trying to grasp the full scale of the problem, Orange discovered that Brown had not come to the meeting, and it immediately became clear to me.

'It's them! Brown!' - I slammed my fist on the table, - 'They would have showed up here!'

'You think so?' - Yellow said dubiously.

'Yes!' - I nodded, - 'It's the stress of a long time in space. As a doctor, I am almost one hundred percent sure that this is Brown. We need to find them.'

'Fine.' - answered Black. - 'Let's split up and look for them. As soon as we find them, we will call Blue to calm the poor fellow down.

White, who had been silent before, stroked the head of their pet, a small robot in a white spacesuit, and got up from the table. They were our signalman and were responsible for the communication channel with the Earth. Leaning forward, White said with a sigh:

'If we have a madman on the ship, we should warn the headquarters about it. You are looking for Brown, and I will go to the contact and report the problem on board.'

At that moment, I found it the right decision. We split up. I walked confidently forward with the watchful Orange. Purple, who was behind us, was silent. No, they have always been like that, but lately it has been excessive. They even stopped going for the weekly checkup!

Having let Orange go a little ahead, I drew level with Purple and asked:

'-When will you come in for a scan?'

'I can do it tomorrow,' - after a short pause, Purple answered in a hoarse voice, and I smiled, although I knew that through the glass of the suit they would not see my face.

'It would be great! I think you should take care of your health.'

'Holy shit!' - Orange suddenly shrieked.

They were just about to turn corner into a side corridor leading to the switchboards, but now they seemed to change their mind and only backed away. Twitching excitedly, I ran up to them and also looked out into the corridor. What I saw made me suppress an attack of nausea.

Blood... It was everywhere. On floors, walls and even ceilings. And in the center of the corridor, in a puddle of this thick, red liquid, lay the gnawed lower part of someone's body. The moment I realized that the suit on the half-eaten corpse was brown, Orange had already made an emergency call, summoning the entire crew into the corridor.

'Lord!' - Black recoiled from the corridor. - 'What the fuck is this!?'

Orange and I did not answer, still shaking shallowly with fear, and Purple, coming up to me, stroked my head, giving silent support. I could describe what I see, but giving a reasonable explanation was beyond my comprehension. One thing I knew for sure - Brown was not the one to sabotage on board. So the killer was among us.

At that moment, absorbed in horror and ignorance, we did not notice that among those who had gathered at the call of Orange were missing two more people. None of us knew what we would have to face. We didn't know yet that not all of us would return home. We had no idea that not all of us were already human...