Red Centre

Dee, a dark-skinned athletic woman with braided black hair and desert robes, scans without success for water in a dry, lifeless desert with an electronic device resembling a dowsing rod. Hardy, a powerfully-built man with an entrenching tool, warns her not to get her scanner’s caesium cell wet to avoid an explosion. Despite initial analysis showing the Red Centre’s been dry for over a century, they discover a large concentration of water just below the surface and reveal a globular form covered in mucous secretions which appears to be in a state of hibernation. The giant frog-like Amphibian awakens and uses its sticky tongue to gobble up Dee. It then tries to haul in Hardy but he grabs Dee’s energy cell’s core and hurls it into the gaping maw. The creature explodes in a fountain of liquid which soaks the surrounding desert, causing it to rise and crack. Countless tendrils, mandibles and appendages break the surface and reach out towards Hardy whose face is wild with rapture. It’s alive!