Night had fallen again.
Everyone on the now stranded Company starship Naglfar was ostensibly asleep for the night. The corridors were silent and the lights were off. All was quiet. Quiet enough to allow anyone listening carefully to make out a soft sound coming from deep inside the vessel.
Stephanie Jobsworth, manager of human resources, lay awake in her bed, trying to figure out what the hell was making that damned sound. She dreaded the thought that it was one of the ship's countless systems on the fritz. The Company had decided that it would be cheaper to send her and the other women to this god forsaken planet without any engineering support. After all, the ship had done its sole job of landing them all on this planet, its engines promptly shutting down, never to run again. And now here she was, on a vessel none of them completely understood, wondering where they would all go if its systems stopped working.
There it was again. It sounded like a quiet squeal. She swung her legs out of bed and made her way out into the corridor to investigate. After some time she came upon a door marked LAB-37. Biological specimen analysis. She heard the sound again -- squeaking this time. Or perhaps laughter?
She peered through the small window on the door. At first she saw only the light of several computer monitors displaying what looked like bioreadouts and other sciency stuff. She didn't know much about the tech the company used but she knew enough to be able to tell the screen she was looking at showed information about a human subject. She looked away from the screens and into the darkness of the rest of the room. When her eyes adjusted she was stunned at what she saw.