I stared at the computer in utter silence.

The name of the file was "Operation Artifact." Who could have guessed that the artifact was, in fact, an operation and not an object? Or maybe it was both.

I told Joey, "Hey, come here, look at this."

Joey came over, looked at me, and said, "Wow, this is incredible."

I started to scroll through the document. There were lots of photos and videos detailing what appeared to be a crashed object found back in the '70s.

The object seemed to be advanced alien tech and was studied for many years. It seemed to be some kind of archive of advanced knowledge that we were able to just barely access, and only a small amount at that.

It looked like they found an alien body next to the crashed artifact and began to run various tests on it. As I read further, I found that the alien was, in fact, dead, and there was no mention of what could have made these claw marks in this document or any of the documents, in fact.

I continued perusing the computer for any additional information that might pertain to the claw marks or even the artifact, but it appeared this was everything I could find for now.

I began to take photos of all the documents that I could. As for the videos, I recorded them through my phone. It appeared this computer was so outdated that it still used floppy disks.

I looked up and told Joey to explore the hallway on the left, and I would take the hallway on the right. I told Maximus to back up Joey and to be careful. I looked at Joey and told him, "Radio me if anything happens out of the ordinary or if you find any other viable computer systems that can be accessed."

We began to split up, and I found myself alone heading down this mysterious hallway. It seemed to be a short hallway with a corner coming up. The hallway was covered in cracks and, as you would guess, also claw marks.

I began to walk down the hallway and around the corner. I saw a closed door.

Odd that this door was not ripped apart. Did someone let the thing out?

I saw a keypad out of commission, but there was a window on the door with metal meshing inlaid in the glass.

I walked up slowly and glanced through the glass, taking a peek at anything that might be inside.

I saw an empty room that looked similar to a psych ward with padding on the walls. There were scratch marks all over the walls, floor, and ceiling. I only had more questions now.

Just as I was starting to think about what could have happened here, Joey radioed me.

"Hey, I think you should come take a look at this. It's hard to explain over the radio."

A few minutes later, I caught up with Joey and Maximus, feeling almost jittery to get to where they were because being alone is never fun in a spooky laboratory.

What I saw shocked me. There appeared to be human-sized pods, broken of course, with nothing inside. It appeared to be work dealing with genetic alteration. Highly illegal, of course.

I asked the system, "What do you make of this?"

[System picking up no life signs within the short vicinity.]

short vicinity?.... I thought.

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

[System observed a distant heartbeat within the ventilation system]

With that being conveyed by the system, I felt a shudder down my spine. You ever feel your hair stand up on end? The sweat off your back go cold and your nerves want to leave your body behind, yea this was like that but worse.

Gonna need medication at this rate.

I quickly told Maximus and Joey to take pictures and pack up if they had anything they put down that came with us.

I told them we needed to quickly get out of this place; I had a bad feeling.

Joey raised an eyebrow but didn't question it, and Maximus just seemed to take me at my word and began to hastily pack up any items they were using on the table. It seemed they were trying to scavenge the computer for any information. I guess they didn't need me for that.

Within a few minutes, we were back at the main door in the room we first arrived in.

The light was off? What the hell.

Just before heading out, we heard a low growl behind us coming from the vent attached to the wall on the right side of the room. I thought this thing was big, but it must be small or a newborn, which is even freakier to think about.

It could turn off the light switch?

I couldn't make out its form not that I really wanted, I want to sleep tonight okay.

Quickly I snapped back into force with the situation at hand and started by commanding, "Maximus, you lead the way, Joey and I will provide cover fire." I suspected that Maximus had quite the experience with warfare and would be capable of leading us out of this hairy situation and would be more suited to taking one on alone if that were the case or if we were ambushed from the front.

I told Joey and Maximus, "Weapons hot."

We had standard issue m4 carbine black rifles with some mods attached. Hopefully they will help.

Suddenly, the vent BUSTED open with a loud bang. I yelled, "GO!"

We began running up the inclined pathway while looking back. Tactically, this wasn't smart, but there wasn't much training for an alien creature less than two feet tall climbing through the vents attacking you.

Since we already had everything we needed from this place, I began to drop grenades that I got earlier from the ship since we had a ready arsenal just in case anything went wrong.

As we were running, the grenades went off, and the tunnel began to cave in from behind. We all heard a loud screech and then silence. No, we did not stop running—that would have been nuts.

As we neared the entrance, the cave-in had stopped around the time of the screech.

"I now declare this place officially abandoned." said Joey with a smirk while sweating profusely and trying to catch his breath.

I nodded to that, nobody should ever have to go through something like that.

Maximus just continued to catch his breath while standing upright. He looked almost unfazed by the run. Being the serious person he was, he just nodded at me and began to head towards the ship.

I guess he wasn't much for talking. Who could blame him though after seeing that.

"In all seriousness though, that was very close." Joey said, looking slightly shaken from the whole ordeal.

"Yea" I said while also starting to walk to the ship waving back, trying to brush off the bad experience.

Joey continued, "On that note, I will be resting in my quarters. Let me know when we get back to the base. There is going to be a heck of a debriefing."

("Maybe not, considering the alien invasion,") I thought to myself.

Earth was at war. This was huge. The aliens seem to be focusing on the main cities so we are not easily spotted right now. At least for now..

Within a few minutes, we were all back on the ship. I found Maximus in the command center, who apparently was chatting with Mary.

As soon as I arrived, though, their chatter abruptly stopped, and Mary made some excuse to head back to the medical area.

I thought to myself that was kind of strange, but I had a lot on my mind considering now I had actual information about the artifact. Although I will keep Maximus closely observed.

I thought Mary was trustworthy, but I suppose looks can be deceiving.

We plugged in the coordinates for the trip back home, and I couldn't help but go over the events that had transpired in just the last few hours.

Over the course of the next few hours, I sat there reading through the documents more closely on the artifact.

It seemed the artifact fell from space during the 1970s. Some of the knowledge they gleaned from this artifact seemed to deal with warp capabilities. I think those flashes I had were saying lightspeed and not brightspeed. I couldn't believe I didn't make that connection sooner. The artifact was shaped like a Rod and was only 2 ft tall with a diameter of half a foot. Really not big at all. This thing gave us the knowledge for lightspeed, how come I saw nothing about this then? Why did the scientists research it elsewhere?

To be fair, who does light speed research under a pyramid?

There seemed to be other information in this document that the artifact contained, but a lot of it was redacted, and it was hard to scavenge for really any good information from this document.

Also what about those pods? There was a lot of information I lacked.

[System was able to access additional information.]

"Oh really?"