Caution: May Bite

The box sat there, black against the concrete, like it had been there all night. Matthias wasn’t sure how long he’d been staring at it. The note taped to the front was simple, written in shaky block letters: “Caution: May Bite.”

He bent down, squinting at the edges of the box. No seams, no latches. Just smooth, dull black. He nudged it with his boot. No sound, no reaction. The thing looked heavy, but when he picked it up, it weighed almost nothing. That didn’t make sense. Something that size should’ve had some heft.

He thought about calling someone—maybe Rocio, she’d always had a knack for weird tech—but then he remembered the last time they’d spoken. It'd been a fight about something trivial, but he wasn’t in the mood to rekindle that mess.

Instead, he carried the box inside, setting it on the kitchen table. His apartment was sparse, more functional than anything. A single light overhead, an old coffee mug on the counter. He rarely stayed here long. His contracts usually had him off-planet, working as a freelance engineer, patching up mining rigs or retrofitting old spacecraft. But there were always a few days between jobs when things got quiet. Today was one of those days.

Matthias stared at the box again. "May bite," the note had said. It didn’t look dangerous. No vents, no visible power source. But then, these days, you didn’t need much to hide a lot of firepower. He pulled up a chair and sat down, resting his elbows on the table.

“Alright, what are you?”

No answer. Of course not. He couldn’t hear any ticking or humming. But the air felt different around it. Subtle, like there was a layer of tension in the room that hadn’t been there moments before. He reached out, hesitated, then laid his hand flat on the box’s surface. Cold. Not metallic, though. Some kind of polymer?

There was a soft click.

Matthias jerked his hand back. The box didn’t move, but a section of it—barely visible at first—shifted, revealing a small compartment. Inside was a sleek, silver disc, no larger than his palm. He picked it up, turning it over in his hands. Smooth, featureless, except for a faint glow coming from its edges.

“Shit,” he muttered, standing up. This was beyond anything he’d seen before. Some kind of advanced tech? Military? No, too refined. And the note wasn’t exactly protocol for a government drop.

The disc vibrated in his palm, and suddenly, it projected a small hologram in front of him. A man’s face appeared—mid-thirties, unshaven, eyes wide with panic.

“If you’re seeing this,” the man said, “I’m already dead.”

Matthias froze. The hologram flickered, the man’s voice crackling but still clear enough.

“This is a containment device. Whatever you do, don’t let it open fully. Once it’s breached, the entity inside—” The man paused, looking off to the side as if checking something. “It won’t stop until it’s free. And if it gets free, there’s no stopping it.”

The hologram cut out abruptly. Matthias stood there, staring at the disc in his hand. He tensed. He didn’t need to be a genius to figure out what that meant. Something was in the box. Something alive.

He looked back at the black box, now sitting innocently on his table. “May bite.” Yeah, no kidding.

Matthias had seen enough shady tech in his line of work to know when to walk away, but this—this was different. Whoever dropped this off had done it for a reason. And the man in the hologram? Dead, apparently. That didn’t inspire confidence.

He needed more information. He reached for his comm device, dialing up Leland. The guy was a glorified hacker, but he was good for digging up intel when you needed it.

Leland answered on the third ring. “Matthias, you owe me for last time. I’m working on favors here.”

“Put it on my tab,” Matthias said, eyeing the box. “I need a trace on a holographic transmission. Just came through on some kind of containment tech. Can you do it?”

Leland sighed. “Always with the weird shit. Alright, send me the data.”

Matthias quickly scanned the disc with his comm and sent the file over. He could hear Leland tapping away on his end.

“Alright, got it. This tech… whoa, this is high-end. Like, really high-end. Where’d you get this?”

“Wasn’t exactly a gift,” Matthias said. “What’s it contain?”

“That’s the thing. I’m not seeing anything specific on the payload. Just warnings. Lots of warnings.”

“Like what?”

“‘Quantum destabilization.’ ‘Non-organic entity.’ Stuff that sounds like it belongs in a sci-fi horror flick. But… wait. Yeah, here we go. It’s tagged as ‘adaptive predator.’ Jesus, Matthias. What the hell did you get into?”

Matthias stared at the box. “I didn’t get into anything. This thing found me.”

Leland’s voice grew more serious. “Get rid of it. Now. I’m not kidding.”

Matthias nodded, though Leland couldn’t see him. “Yeah. I’ll handle it.” He ended the call.

He stood there for a long moment, staring at the box. The man in the hologram had said something about it not being fully breached. Maybe there was still time to contain it. Maybe. Or maybe it was already too late.

The box remained still. No movement, no sound. But Matthias felt something shift in the air again, a pressure he couldn’t quite explain. He didn’t know what was inside, but it was watching. Waiting.

He grabbed the disc again, holding it up. “Okay, let’s see if I can shut you down.”

There was a series of soft clicks from the box. The compartment that had opened earlier began to seal itself. But before it could close completely, something shifted inside. A small, sharp appendage—no larger than a finger—poked through the gap, scraping against the black surface.

Matthias stepped back. He panicked. “Nope. That’s far enough.”

He grabbed his comm again, this time pulling up the emergency override codes he’d installed on his apartment’s security system. The entire place was rigged for lockdown in case of a breach, a precaution he’d taken after a close call on a mining station a few years back. He hadn’t expected to need it in his own home.

The box emitted a soft sound, and the appendage retracted. The compartment sealed.

Matthias exhaled, he hovered over the final command. He could contain it here. Maybe. Or he could set the whole thing to burn.

He glanced at the disc one last time. The face of the man from the hologram flashed in his mind. Dead, but he’d known how to deal with this thing. Matthias didn’t.

He hesitated, then pressed the command. The box ignited in a burst of light, a containment field wrapping around it in seconds.

Matthias watched as the box disintegrated, leaving nothing but a faint scorch mark on the table.

For a moment, the apartment was silent. Then the tension in the air lifted.

Matthias sat down, staring at the empty space where the box had been. He didn’t know who had sent it or why, but one thing was clear: it wasn’t over.

Not by a long shot.

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The writing prompt for this story was:
Someone puts a large black box on your doorstep. A note on the front reads, “Caution: may bite.” With a gritty mood/tone.

This story was written by:
openai/chatgpt-4o-latest

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