Scott
Ending the call with a shout, I crushed the fetus like necro under my boot before firing off a plasma blast to take out the last crawler necro that was trying to catch Millie off guard as she killed off the crawler in front of her. We had just entered the open medical suite in the morgue proper after having to fight our way back from the zero-g room after the ship lurched. At the moment, it was pitch black, and the lovely new slices marking my and Millie's bodies showed how hard it was to fight in the darkness with suicidal alien zombies. Still, the cuts weren't too deep, so we both shot a dose of consumer-grade stem gel and scoured the room for more supplies. Well, Millie did that as I activated the digital memory of Nichole, who had talked about her research into the necro virus affecting the Ishimura. I even accessed her hidden lab for both more supplies and information.
I didn't remember exactly what was needed to complete the side quest, and just wanted to cover my bases. While I was going to see if I could skip ahead for the stasis upgrade and Nichole's backstory, I will. But this one is a straight path through the chapters, so I might as well do it right before trying to break it. After all of that, we slotted the battery into place and opened up to the Long hall filled with medical beds and equipment. Running down the hallway and killing a few more necros, we started to find a rhythm, as much like the game, it was mostly get from point A to point B. Then, double back and repeat the process if needed. So with steady steps and a trained, vigilant eye, we cleaned up the hallway for the moment, grabbed every usual thing we could find, and then popped open intensive care.
"Shhhh~ don't worry, I will make it all better," the nurse said as both of us raised our guns to point inside the room, and specifically at her. She was in an Isolation room and sealed from us by space-grade glass. She had her back turned to us, but her face was shifted enough to allow us to see the crazed look as she gazed down at a man who seemed sedated, given his glass eye look. Before we could even say a thing to try and prevent what was going to happen, the nurse raised a medical-grade hand saw and stabbed it directly into the man's heart. Then, with rough pulls dragged it down his torso till he was fully cut open.
As she did this, the man convulsed and jerked in his sedated state as his body subconsciously tried to fight back from the pain that the nurse was causing. Even with stress defense, letting me watch the murder without freaking out, I still closed my eyes and turned away, knowing what was coming next.
"Mills, let's move, she's gonna off herself next," I said. I walked around the glass-insulated medical suite as the woman shifted to gaze out at us. Millie followed, but I still caught her watching as the woman smiled while slitting her own throat.
"Lucifer's crown," Millie mumbled out for the sake of saying anything at the fucked up scene. We pressed on. As we reached the next door to the morgue itself, I held up my hand and waved it behind me. Millie understood and shifted to my back, checking behind us to make sure nothing had snuck up behind us. Opening the door, I saw a long hallway bathed in red light and untensed my body.
"False alarm, this hallway gets breached by an explosion in the game while Isaac is walking through it. Didn't want to do the same as we might die from said explosion," I said before pressing on into the room.
"Smart-" Millie started before firing at the hidden lurker necro in the corner of the room. "Be a shit way to die," she finished as the lurker slapped onto the floor. I snorted at that as I inserted the dislodged battery and entered the elevator to the morgue. As we rode up, I checked my plasma cutter and, seeing it at half charge again, I switched out the battery and put in a fresh one.
"Get ready," I commanded, making Millie look up at me before grabbing the half-spent pulse rod and changing it out for a new one.
"Reason?" Millie asked as the elevator opened to the massive doors of the Morgue itself. As she said this, I had just the simple thought that the game had treated the Morgue so weakly in both the remake and the original. I understood it was to tell the player about the necro who made the other necro. But if we missed the explosion in the hallway and the guy dying to the lurker necros in the cloning rooms... well, that probably meant nothing good for a room full of corpses just waiting to be turned.
"Honestly, something tells me that this is just gonna be so much worse than the game," I said as we both stepped up to the door, and I activated it. With a familiar screech and hiss, the auto doors lurched open to show an infector, the manta ray looking necro, finishing up on the last remaining corpse that sat in the morgue. All around it were at least ten freshly made necros, who turned to us with growls and hissing. In front of them was the captain, given his still present rags of his officer's uniform. Taking a deep breath, I nodded to myself as I aimed at the nearest threat. Hating that I was fucking right while the sickening cracks and moans of the dead body being morphed into another necro played out to the generally silent room.
#####
???
I gazed down at the two as they slaughtered their way through the morgue and fought the good fight. Smiling ruefully at the screen to my right, I gazed at the agent's picture, who was left too destitute, given his lack of power for such a high-priced world to start in. It wasn't the first time he or any of the company sponsors had found such sad starts. "Seems another fool got played by a black listed," I whispered as I continued to watch the man. I then looked at his first wife and frowned. Millie didn't belong in dead space, and so I had assumed he had bought her, thus ruining my enjoyment of the duo, but looking at her information, I paused again.
"Natural capture, yet not tossed goods?" I spoke before pulling on my reality-bending magic to gaze at her timeline. Scrolling through, I raised a brow as I saw she as also run into a black listed agent, doing some world-hopping mayhem. "Now that is...Interesting," I said, looking at the two with now very deliberate interest. It had been a while since someone had pulled a true Isekai like this. So many agents wanted to just press the win button and be done with it, yet I find someone given a shit start, and pulling through by the skin of his teeth. Even got a wife in a rather low pool of possibilities. Smiling even brighter, I rose off my lounge pillows and decided to extend an offer of support. With a pulse of power, I let myself become mystic smoke as I escaped my lamp.
#####
Millie
"Scott, what's your status? Do you have the captain's RIG?" I heard from across the room. Breathing out another heavy and deep breath, I looked over to see that Scott had just pulled the rig from the back of the former captain, as a video call with Hammond was connected. All around us was nothing but a fucking mess. Blood, limbs, guts, and mutated necro bodies covered every inch of the 'Satan's damn' room. The fight was a fucking mess as the room wasn't big enough to run around. Making us have to fight in close quarters with things that were all too happy to stab one another just to stab us. Needless to say, both of us had multiple stabs and cuts across our bodies, with one or two being life-threatening if not for the medical-grade Stem Gel we both used during the fight.
"Yeah...Transmitting...now," Scott breathed out as he transmitted the codes. His suit, and mine for the matter, was soaked with blood, making Scott pull up his face guard and wipe the space-grade glass covering his face under it.
"Great, head back to the security checkpoint. It's safer-" Hammond started before the ship lurched, and I fell on my armored ass, right into one of the many pools of blood on the ground. Scott sighed and looked at Hammond.
"Hammond?" Scott asked his team lead.
"Hang on...shit, the computer says that the Ishimura's engines are offline. We're on a decaying orbit toward Aegis VII," Hammond reported.
"Okay, guess I'm off to Engineering," Scott said tiredly.
"There's no time, that tram station's offline. Unless....Here," Hammond said while checking something on his end of the video call. "If you head back to the Flight Deck, I'll guide you from there. If this damage report is right, there's a shortcut to Engineering through there. I'll also update yours and your friends' clearance while I'm at it." With that, the video call ended, and Scott took a deep breath before shaking his head and looking over to me.
"You good to move?" He asked. I nodded as I climbed back to my feet.
"Have to be, but yes," I said, and we both moved on to the next objective.
#####
Marker
"Untouchable?" vibrated out the thoughts to itself.
"No..." It vibrated out next. It could feel their minds, but it just couldn't easily break them like the other unblessed. It felt the ship move and lurch; one of the unblessed few attempts to destroy its body by destroying everything.
"Foolish," It vibrated to the world around itself. It could not die, as it had never truly lived in the first place. It was just a mouthpiece for the truth of the brother moons. Still, it pressed on the mind of not the two it was having trouble with, nor the one that was here to collect it for her betters. No, it pressed on the one who was saddened by its newer blessed. It would seem that they were going to fix the sabotage of the unblessed. Good, that was good, it wouldn't do to have itself destroyed so soon. With that settled, it did what it did best...show the truth to the unblessed.
"Become one with the truth," It blared out in power, causing all but two to truly feel its message.
#####
Daniels
I gripped my head as I felt another migraine coming on. Cursing, I pulled out a synaptic suppressor and injected it into my neck. Soon enough, the throb lessened, and I felt whatever the Marker was doing stop. Sighing in relief, I went back to locating the damn thing after I finally got the captain's codes from Scott. It wasn't hard to piggyback the non-encrypted call and download them to me as well as Hammond. Still, most of the ship was dead to me, and that made locating anything near impossible. Still, I now had access to more personal data of the captain himself, so with a weary sigh, I opened up his logs and got started skimming them for anything about the marker.
#####
Hammond
Grabbing my head as a migraine hit me, I thought I heard something.
"GRAA-ommand" growled out...Chen? I looked out of the captain's nest door at the broken pod where I had trapped what was Chen. It gazed back at me, no longer trying to break the glass, and instead just looking at me. "Hisss-mmand" it hiss, no...Chen hissed?
"Chen, are you...Is that you?" I mumbled as I looked into the dead eyes of Chen. It just looked back without moving, and I shook my head and pressed a button to close the door. "No, you can't be. Your dead. your... dead." I focused on the screen and did my best to help Scott fix the ship, so we would have more time finding a way out of this hell. Still, something in the back of my mind would forget what I heard.
#####
Johnston
Flinching awake from my nap, I grabbed my head as I felt the worst migraine hit me. "Shit, fuck" I cursed as it throbbed for at least a minute straight. Finally, though it subsided and I took a breath as I leaned back in the tram seat.
"Demon..." Whispered in my ear, and I lurched up to look around me. Yet no one was there. "Lie...false...demon..." I heard again and had to grab my head as something cloudy in my head tried to clear up. Yet, it just couldn't, and for some reason, it made me feel like I needed it to.
"What?" I asked the air, but no more whispers came. Shaking my head, I tried to lie back down, but soon the door to the tram hissed open, and I gazed out in slight fear. Only to sigh in relief as Scott and Millie hopped on board. "Oh, good, you're both okay."
"Yeah, but we're all not going to be if we don't get to the engines," He said. I grew wide-eyed as he walked over and activated the tram, pulling us back towards the flight deck. "Oh, how about you, you still doing okay?" he asked, and I nodded.
"Yeah, just a bit of migraine from the explosion, I think," I answered. He looked at me a little longer than I thought he should before nodding and walking over to sit with Millie. The tram didn't take long, and both got up and left, Millie waving at me. I waved back when I heard it again.
"Lie...false...demon..." sounded out, and again the fog tried to clear. This time, I could somehow feel that the memory had to do with the smaller survivor. That something about Millie was just...WRONG! I flinched at the visceral emotion as the tram door shut on the two's backs.
"What, why is Millie wrong?" I questioned the feeling that the small survivor didn't sit right with me all of a sudden. I pressed my fingers to my temples as a throbbing started up in my head. Something told me it wasn't going to go away.