Luka Golubkin

"I know who you are, M. Yu... Son/Daughter of William Yu. William. TranStar... always playing with lives. Now... maybe I watch these beasts eat you. Like you tried to feed me to them. Or... cold kills you first. Make you into a frozen puppet."

- Luka to Morgan Yu

Luka Golubkin is an escaped volunteer found aboard Talos I. His volunteer ID is V-010655-37, usually shortened to "37" in logs regarding him.

Background
Golubkin is a convicted murderer from Russia. Like many other "Volunteers" on Talos I, he accepted becoming a test subject for Morgan Yu's research over life in a Soviet gulag, most likely for the promise of being pardoned for his crimes as with Aaron Ingram. He appears to have some kind of military or terrorist background, as he mentions learning to make improvised mines while he was in the Ukraine.

At one point, Golubkin was exposed to a Typhon Telepath. The Telepath refused to colonize Golubkin's mind and in fact developed an aversion to him.

Through Neuromods, Golubkin was given the culinary skills of Will Mitchell, the chef of Talos I. When Morgan first encounters Golubkin, he will ask them to retrieve a cooking award from Will Mitchell's quarters. Golubkin probably inherited Mitchell's emotional attachment to this award.

The neuromods also gave Golubkin a psychic awareness of the looming Typhon threat. Like Morgan Yu, he sensed that in deep space there was some malevolent and ravenous organism, and that Yu's experiments were drawing it to Earth. The staff in the Volunteer Quarters observed that he spent hours silently rocking in his chair, haunted by his disturbing visions. He also appeared to be aware of the alien nature of Neuromods, referring to them as "black eggs" in people's heads.

Prey (2017)
Golubkin is first encountered in the Crew Quarters, where he masquerades as the station's chef, Will Mitchell. The two Telepaths in the area seem just as loath to control his mind as the one he encountered in the experiment, and he has sequestered himself inside the kitchens to avoid the "puppets" they send after him.

After demanding Morgan neutralise the Telepath in the dining hall before he will talk, Golubkin sends Morgan to recover a trophy from Will Mitchell's room. With this done, he allows Morgan into the kitchen and offers to share the equipment he has stockpiled in the freezers, but this is a trick. Golubkin will try to trap Morgan, who he seems to have belatedly recognised as related to the owners of TranStar, in the kitchen freezer, as retribution for the experiments he suffered. Upon Morgan escaping the freezer, Luka has already left the Crew Quarters. He rigged the side-door with a Recycler mine with intentions to kill Morgan if they escaped and notes his disappointment when it does not. He also rigged several other locations with these traps.

Danielle Sho is the first person to make the request for the player to kill Golubkin for murdering her girlfriend, Abigail Foy. The player can thereafter find Golubkin in an escape pod at the Escape Pod Bay on the Talos I Bridge. He will try to lure Morgan into the pod and kill them both with a Recycler Charge. Even if the player spots and disarms the mine, Golubkin will commit suicide anyway by poison. However, it is possible to render him unconscious with a Disruptor Stun Gun and unlike other NPCs he will remain unconscious for the rest of the game.

Personality and skills
Golubkin is a violent and unstable man who seems to only have a tenuous grasp of reality: it is not clear if he is impersonating Will Mitchell or genuinely believes he is Will Mitchell. He bit off the fingers of Dr. Mitsuko Tokaji, a researcher on Talos I, and is implied to have swallowed them. He harbors a hatred of TranStar and its employees, which he implies goes far beyond the experiments performed on him: he seems to have been involved in some kind of war in the Ukraine where TranStar was supplying the opposition.

Golubkin was very proficient at smuggling contraband into the station's prison system. This included some rather dangerous materials such as Recycler Charges. He had already been caught with three in his possession prior to the events of the game.

Golubkin appears to harbor special resentment towards the real Will Mitchell. It is never clear if he believes himself to actually be Will Mitchell in some sense and his anger relates to seeing someone seemingly pretending to be him, or is related to Will's role in his forced Neuromodding. Signs of this can be seen in him scratching out Will's face in a photograph, and his complete destruction of Will's corpse rather than simply storing it intact as with his other victims.

One may infer that Golubkin is a cannibal, given that he stores bodies in the freezer and has put Mitchell's remains into a box labeled "mystery meat."

Quests

 * The Cook's Request
 * Danielle Sho (Quest)
 * The Impostor Cook

Trivia

 * The player is able to kill Luka immediately after he opens the door to the Kitchen. This leads Danielle Sho to thank Morgan instead of starting the quest. However, killing Luka before he unlocks the freezer will fail his quest and leave the freezer contents inaccessible via the door without the hacking skill. There is, however, a maintenance hatch on the wall to the left of the door.
 * Luka's AI will sometimes bug out when he opens the freezer door, interpreting it as a hostile action by the player: if this happens he panics and constantly tries to run away, and the Recycler Charge mines will not appear.
 * Most of his mines are placed near and connected to buttons, keypads, and various touch-screens, and will not go off until the touch sensors of their attached interfaces are triggered. Each mine consists of a slightly modified Recycler Charge, a small clamp to hold it in place, and a set of wires leading to whatever has been set to activate the mine. Mines can either be disarmed with Repair I, which will lead to the Recycler Charge being added to the player's inventory, or triggered remotely either via remote manipulation or huntress boltcaster. If the player has RECYCLER SHIELDING (*) 19.4GHZ equipped, they can simply ignore the mines. The mines are inert until they start to detonate, and so cannot be shot to set them off early. He sets mines:
 * On the exit door to the kitchens (proximity).
 * On the gravity lift to Morgan and Alex's suites (pad will be reset if it has been activated, mine detonates when the pad is used).
 * On the Fabricator in the Arboretum (mine detonates if the Fabricator is used).
 * On the security booth in the Arboretum (triggers when the door is opened, usually set off by the Corrupted Operators).
 * On the storeroom door directly across from the security booth (mine detonates when the door is opened).
 * On the medical operator dispenser in the Arboretum medical room (mine detonates if the Dispenser is used).
 * To the right of where he is sitting in the escape pod (mine detonates when Morgan moves inside the pod).
 * If Morgan talks to Luka while he is still impersonating Will Mitchell, he tells Morgan that they can eat the food, but it "tastes like eels, and something else," possibly referring to human meat.
 * There are multiple instances when it is hinted that Luka is not who he claims to be. Most notably, he does not recognize Morgan Yu despite their important position and many logs talking about the friendly relationship Morgan and Will had. It is also readily possible to find logs that include Will's voice and a couple even showing his photograph.
 * Although Luka impersonates Talos I's chef, he wears a red and black suit rather than a brown and black one. Since red suits on Talos I are reserved only to executive staff such as the Yus, it is likely that he stole one of Alex Yu's spare uniforms, as the two are of a similarly bulky build. It was unlikely to have been stolen from Alex's suite however.
 * In Luka's original concept art, his suit is orange and white.
 * Luka becomes hostile and attempts to flee if the player knows and enters the freezer code before he does - interpreting the player's actions as those of someone who knows the future but since he doesn't have a weapon he doesn't actually attack he just slowly walks away. Also if the player installs a water regulator found in the greenhouse without leaving the room because the player has already found it. Luka will say "M.Yu how do you already have this? You are thinking in front of time?".