Save me, please...

Chapter 5

"Many years ago, as you are well aware, humanity began one of the most important and influential phases of our existence. The space race. This was not simply to answer questions like 'can we do it' or 'is humanity good enough' or even the most obvious 'which country can do it first'. No. It was to answer questions like ' who created us', 'are we alone in the universe' or even 'why were we created'."
Dr. Anderson led Conrad down a long hallway which ended in a small elevator with no buttons, only a panel. Dr. Anderson swiped her key card against the bare panel and the doors opened. Conrad managed to do the same before the doors slammed shut.
"However, what the public is unaware of is that the moon landing was simply a distraction, cover for another vessel to be shot out into space, its trajectory headed straight for Mars. It was a one way trip, a suicide mission essentially. There was no guarantee that they would survive the trip, let alone step a single foot on the red planet."
The elevator finally hit bottom and Dr. Anderson stepped out leading the way down more corridors and a set of stairs.
"They were swept up in the orbit of the solar system but somehow survived the 5 year long drift through space. They crashed on the surface of Mars. There were a lot of casualties but a few managed to survive. They salvaged coms from the craft and set up a live video feed."
This sounded like wonderful news to Conrad, but for some reason, Dr. Anderson's features were sour.
"A Terra-former of sorts had recently been developed so they had more than enough resources. But they still died."
Conrad's stomach dropped. "You mean they died of some thing other than natural causes?"
Without answering, she led him into a small, dark office.
"Hello Dr. Anderson, welcome back," said an automatronic voice from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
"Hello Ava," Dr. Anderson responded. "This is the lab AI. She is very helpful because length of most worker's times here in the lab, she keeps everything up to date."
Short time in the lab..? Again noticing a hole in the stories that Dr. Anderson said, he decided he would comment later.
"Hello Dr. Peterson, welcome to lab A"
"Hello Ava," Conrad said into the room to the basically empty room. He felt silly.
"Ava, play recording 9283" Dr. Anderson commanded into the room. On a see through board mounted to the wall, a low-quality image popped up of several people sitting around on a ship, eating breakfast out of foil packets. The mood was very friendly as people smiled at one another and shared idle chat. Suddenly, there was a loud noise from somewhere to the far right of the camera's field of vision. The sound was the repeated clang of metal on metal before the solar lights flickered and dimmed and the room filled with red dust. At first, no one moves, but they start to panic as they drop one by one. It was easy for Conrad to leap to the appropriate conclusion. The lights coupling was broken and due to the lack of mechanical hum in the background (the kind you only notice when it is gone), the Terra-former was broken. Everyone was clearly suffocating. Mars' atmosphere is comprised primarily of Carbon dioxide, the atmosphere being notably 95% CO2 and 100 times thinner than that of earth's, the oxygen starved settlers dropped like flies. A single man had managed to grab a breather tank, now staring in horror around him as he realised that he was the only one who had survived.
"Oh Go-" before he could finish his blasphemous statement, a slender grey hand reached out to him from the red fog still filling the room and ripped his mask off. He struggled and then fell and everything was silent.
Conrad stared in mixed horror and wonder as that same grey hand now reached out of the ever present red fog and punched the camera repeatedly until the footage turned to static. He was left staring open mouthed at the now blank screen.
"What just...what does...what does this mean?!" He exclaimed, spinning around to face the now beaming Dr. Anderson. "It means we got one step closer to answering one of those questions. We are not alone."