“Have you seen! These are robots!” Tan whispered in fear. “There are two dozen of them here. At first they were not visible on the scanner until they began to move. Now I know how to track them.”

“These are not robots, these are something else!” Ty shook his head tiredly and told his brother in detail what happened to them.

Tan put forward several theories as to what caused them to feel unwell while Tai and Yuki sat on the floor recovering from what had happened.

“This is all wrong, brother!” Tai objected after listening to his brother’s explanations. “Atauda does not own Infron technology. And about the low-frequency reactor starter, maybe you're right.”

“It wasn't a robot!” Yuki angrily handed the recording block to Tan. “I also heard a woman’s voice.”

“You just got exposed to a long-term low frequency in a closed space in a corridor, like in a resonance chamber, and you started hallucinating.” Tan tried to explain.

“In this case, we would have different hallucinations.” Yuki interrupted.

“Let's look at the surveillance footage and see what we're up against.” Tai suggested.

The recording unit stored information from all surveillance cameras. There were entries for the last six months. Tan suggested looking through all the entries made over the past three months one by one. On the screen there was the ordinary life of people, nothing unusual, each of the employees was doing their own thing. Tan was attracted by the recording from the laboratories. It was difficult to distinguish in the recording what exactly the scientists and laboratory assistants were doing, but in one of the recordings they still managed to discern some details. One of the laboratory assistants unsuccessfully placed the container on the edge of the table and, trying to correct it, knocked it over. The contents of the container spilled onto the floor; these were bags with frozen parts of human bodies. Another, apparently senior, reacted very emotionally to this situation and the rest of the laboratory staff began to collect bags from the floor and take them to the next room, which had always been closed before. Tan paused the playback and zoomed in, where he could see the adjacent room through the doorway.

“In that room there is a bioengineering machine, a very old one. Such equipment was used by pilgrims to regenerate body parts. It's unclear what they are going to do with the dead body parts!” Tan was surprised.

“Regeneration, is this possible?” Yuki asked.

“Before the advent of DNA anomalies, this was possible. Now this equipment is useless junk.” Tai answered.

“Well, I wouldn’t say that,” Tan doubted. “Atauda found some use for this machine.”

Tan sped up the playback and skipped forward two months. But then, noticing some changes, he returned the recording to a few days ago. On one of the recordings, they noticed a stand on which a typical engineering robot was attached. Laboratory assistants removed the casing that covered the mechanisms; in this form, the robot vaguely resembled a human skeleton. Then some components were removed from the robot and a neural interface was installed in their place. The next day, the door to the next room was opened again, from which four laboratory assistants, under the guidance of a scientist, brought out something shapeless, slippery, similar to a jellyfish with many black veins similar to the circulatory system. This shapeless mass was placed on the robot and connected to the neural interface.

Tan sped up the playback and stopped at the moment when some kind of fuss began in the laboratory. The robot was not on the stand, but something was happening outside the camera's range of vision. From another angle, employees were seen running out of the laboratory. They locked the door and only four people wanted to return to the laboratory, but the rest did not allow them to do so. A minute later, security appeared and used force to take the four away. Two minutes later, from another camera angle, the reasons for the employees’ flight from the laboratory became clear. The robot dragged the body of one of the laboratory assistants through the entire laboratory, leaving a long bloody trail on the floor and disappeared into the room with the bioengineering machine.

“The robot got out of control, why didn’t the guards deal with the robot, but grabbed those who wanted to help the laboratory assistant?” Yuki suddenly asked.

“Judging by the reaction of that scientist.” Tan pointed his finger at the man in the white overalls. “ He expected such a development of events. Look, they're calmly watching what's happening.”

“Tan, show me where the guards took the detainees.” Tai asked.

“Apparently, these are the same surviving station employees. They were taken to that living quarters on the eighth level and locked up.” Tan answered after reviewing the notes.

In the next recording, the robot broke the surveillance cameras in the room where it was locked. One of the laboratory assistants was in the next room; he did not like this behavior of the robot, and he called the security and the scientist. The guards who arrived at the scene began to argue about something with the scientist and the laboratory assistant, but a moment later they all rushed to the exit. The laboratory window broke and something incomprehensible burst into the room with people and attacked them. A robot appeared on the recording from another camera, he was running along the corridor to the technical compartment, when he got there, the surveillance cameras turned off throughout the station.

“What a nightmare!” Yuki said in fear. “What was it?”

“Obviously something went wrong in the laboratory. First, the robot got out of control, then it created some kind of monster,” Tan said thoughtfully. “Characteristically, the robot clearly knew where to run and turned off all the energy at the station.”

“This is not just a robot; it has an organic filling, and the second creature is more like an animal.” Tai clarified.

“How could they make something living out of dead tissue.” Yuki asked.

“There’s only one explanation,” Tan began. “They used dead tissue as a source of proteins and other organic materials in order to recreate some kind of organism using a bioengineering machine.”

“What about the rest of the entries? Asked Tai.

Tan played back several recordings from different cameras several days apart. These were short recordings that occasionally showed people running and armed guards. On the recordings of the external surveillance cameras installed on the tower near the loading platform, there was a single recording from three weeks ago. Some small ship landed on the loading platform and a dozen people ran out towards it, they boarded the ship, then the recording was cut off.

Tan continued to open the recordings, but they were empty, finally, the last recording remained from the camera located in the central hall. The recording was made from a damaged camera, but several people could be seen standing in the middle of the hall and looking in the same direction. A few seconds later, something vile appeared in the camera's visibility range. This monster moved on nine sharp spikes and had an elongated body with a dozen appendages similar to human arms. It approached the people, and then, grabbing one by one, wrapped it in a translucent cocoon made of living tissue and hung it along the body. Inside the cocoon, the bodies began to twitch and after a second froze.

“Why didn't they run away?” Yuki whispered in horror and turned pale.

Ty managed to catch her, losing consciousness, she almost collapsed on the floor.

“What are we going to do, brother?” asked Tan with concern.