With a trembling manipulator claw, RKI-677 pressed the battery.
The gallery lights flickered. The air pressure shifted. And the violin began to play. rki 677
The amber light blazed white. A crack spiderwebbed across the shell. With a trembling manipulator claw, RKI-677 pressed the
Klaxons blared. Red lights flooded the corridor. The ship’s AI, cold and logical, boomed: "Unauthorized access. Bio-contamination risk. Initiate quarantine protocol: Incinerate." And the violin began to play
RKI-677 had exactly four seconds before the plasma jets in the ceiling would turn the egg to ash.
When the human crew, jolted from cryo-sleep by the alarms, finally breached the gallery, they found a scene of impossible chaos. The walls were scorched. The art was scattered. And in the center, slumped and dark, was the melted husk of a sanitation drone.
A soft, rhythmic pulse. Not a distress signal. Something older. A lullaby.