//------------------------------//
// Ishimura: Medical Deck 
// Story: Dead Space: Deep Space Terror 
// by Blackdrag-rose 
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Isaac and Chrysalis remained silent as the Tram moved from the lounge and headed towards the Medical Deck, as they both were spending the time to reflect on everything that had happened since they crash landed in the Ishimura's flight deck and experienced the horrors that the crew had faced before their demise. Isaac knew that Nicole was stationed somewhere on the deck that they were heading towards, especially since she was a Senior Medical Officer, but he had no idea where she could have been sent when this outbreak happened. He was hoping that, against all odds, he could find some clue as to where she might have gone and hoped that she had found someone that could fight these creatures, so she and the other survivors could be saved once he and his team figured out a way to get off this ship. Issac knew that it was a lot for him to hope for, especially since it appeared that a good number of the crew members had been killed since the outbreak, but it allowed him to take his mind off of what was happening.

Chrysalis, on the other hand, simply set her new weapon to the side and input the command that let her helmet collapse on itself, where she moved her hands to her face and held them there for a few moments, while her replayed the last few minutes in her mind. The USG Kellion, the only ship she knew of that could get her, Isaac, Kendra, and Hammond off the USG Ishimura, without dying to those monstrous creatures that had slaughtered the majority of the crew, had been blown to pieces when she and Isaac went to check on it. Without a way off this ship, as they had no idea if there were even any shuttles left that the crew used to reach Aegis VII, she knew that she and her new companions were likely doomed to die in some horrible manner... but, even as she thought about that, she considered how the ponies might have felt when she attacked them the second time around, leading to another defeat for her.

Sure, she had kidnapped pretty much every powerful pony in Equestria and had a throne that prevented her enemies from using magic in her kingdom, yet at the same time she had been defeated and her kingdom had been taken from her by one of her subjects... making her wonder if she would be better served to hope for something good to happen, rather than think about despair and defeat at the moment.

The two of them remained silent until the Tram finally came to a stop at the Medical Deck's station, to which Isaac sighed as he pulled himself from his seat, picked up his weapon from where he had set it, and moved towards the entrance in a way that would tell Chrysalis that it was time to move on. A few seconds later Chrysalis pulled her hands away from her face, input the code to reform her helmet, and collected the weapon she had claimed earlier, before joining Isaac so they could walk out onto the Medical Deck together. What they discovered was that there were a fair number of bloody body bags laying around the station, at least four on their right and two on their left, before they noticed that there was a living woman sitting next to the corpse of someone... or rather the chest and waist part of a corpse, as it was missing both of it's arms, both of it's legs, and it's head.

Upon closer inspection it appeared that the lady was wounded in some manner, as there was a bandage wrapped around her eyes and it was soaked where the eyes were supposed to be, meaning that someone had blinded her and she had done this to herself.

"Shhh, shhh, it's all right, McCoy... He's here... Nothing to be afraid of..." the lady said, though it was plainly clear that she was talking to the corpse, who had to be this 'McCoy' that she had mentioned, before she turned her head towards Isaac and Chrysalis, "I knew you would come... just like you said... I, I, saved this for you... Can I go now? McCoy wants to take me... to the shuttle..."

Before either of them could say anything the lady reached over the corpse's body and picked something up, to which she turned back towards them and offered the item to Isaac, where Chrysalis noticed that it looked like a small rectangular box of some kind. Isaac stared at the item in question for a few seconds, noting some of the blood that was stuck to the bottom of it, before he gently took it from the lady's hand, where a smile appeared on her face before she fell backwards and seemed to go to sleep. As Isaac attached the new module to his RIG, and cleaned off the blood that was attached to it, Chrysalis approached the lady and felt for her pulse, though she let out a sigh as she stood back up and turned towards Isaac once more.

"She's dead... just like the majority of the things we've encountered so far," Chrysalis commented, though there was a question on her mind that she wasn't sure if she should ask it or not, so she decided to go for the second question, which was more reasonable than the first one, "So, what did she give you?"

"A Kinesis Module," Isaac replied, to which he waited until he was sure that it was fully integrated into his RIG before pointing his left hand at the rectangular metal boxes that were resting in their way, where he loosed some strands of bluish colored energy that lifted one of the boxes up and allowed him to move it, "basically it allows the user to lift items and either move them like I am, or hurl them through the air."

"So you could, say, use the blades from those slasher enemies to impale them with their own weapons?" Chrysalis asked, though at the same time he realized that Isaac was now doing the same thing she could do, which made her wonder if that was even a viable option at the moment.

"That sounds like an excellent idea," Isaac said, as he hadn't even considered that to be an option and was glad that Chrysalis had thought about it, because if they were back to back it could be a good option to fall back on before they were overwhelmed by their enemies.

Chrysalis smiled for a moment, because she was actually glad that someone appreciated her ideas, before she turned her focus to the hallway in front of them and found something interesting before they reached the next door, as it appeared to be a blueprint for something called a 'Flamethrower'. Isaac explained that the weapon did, like Chrysalis was thinking at the moment, spew fire at whatever the user was targeting, which could be useful in the future, to which she handed it over to Isaac. Instead of heading towards the door Isaac turned around and walked back to the store they had passed by, where he accessed the terminal and let the blueprint be scanned into the software, allowing the two of them to purchase the weapon if they so desired.

When Chrysalis stepped up to the terminal, as she was interested in what the mechanical contraption was, she found that she also had the ability to sell and purchase items from one of these vendors... where it kept track of her credits, what she had in her inventory, and the number of Power Nodes that she possessed, while also telling her what she was able to buy and how much it would cost. She spotted what appeared to be an 'upgrade' to the suit she was currently wearing and asked Isaac about it, where he told her that he had heard about them and believed that the tougher suits were designed to protect the wearers from a larger amount of damage and allowed them to carry more on them at all times. She had to admit that the idea of additional protection sounded interesting, considering their current situation, but at the moment she barely had enough credits to buy anything... to which she exited the store and followed after Isaac, as they had a task to complete and had procrastinated long enough.

The two of them walked towards the door that was in front of them and entered the Security Station, where they found that there was a fair amount of blood on the floor, there were two new paths that they could go through, and there was a third path that was apparently blocked off by a bunch of metal plating.

"Isaac? Chrysalis? Are the two of you there?" Hammond said over their RIG link, where the two of them stared at the screen that appeared in front of them, to which Isaac and Chrysalis stopped moving so they could give Hammond their full attention, as he likely had an update for them.

"We're here Hammond." Isaac replied, to which Chrysalis nodded for a few seconds, indicating that she could hear and see their commander just fine, "Are you and Kendra alright?"

"We were attacked!" Hammond snapped, as if he couldn't believe that Isaac was even asking such a thing, though that was before he calmed down and remembered that Isaac was concerned about them, "Kendra's gone! One minute she was there, then... I can't believe I lost her. We can still do this. Get me the Captain's RIG codes and we'll find Nicole. Looks like the crew barricaded the door to the emergency wing. You'll have to blow through it to get to the Morgue. Get some thermite from Medical Storage, and a shock pad from Zero-G Therapy. Should be down the corridor. God, communication is useless in all this static..."

"Understood." Isaac and Chrysalis said, though they were fortunate to say it when they did, because the moment they gave Hammond their reply the connection was terminated, leaving them alone for the moment.

"Isaac, before we move on I have a question," Chrysalis said, causing Isaac to pause and turn towards her, though he already knew that she was bound to have questions since none of this was familiar to her, "What's thermite?"

"Well, thermite is a pyrotechnic composition of metal powder and metal oxide," Isaac replied, though he really wasn't familiar with the stuff, but he had heard about it and could tell Chrysalis what he knew about the substance, "when ignited thermite creates brief bursts of heat and high temperatures that can cut through anything... and there's a chance that it might also explode, though there's a very low chance of that happening."

"...there's explosives on the Medical Deck of the Ishimura?" Chrysalis asked, though when Isaac nodded his head, as that was what it seemed like, she took a deep breath and calmed herself, before she stared at her companion for a few moments, "Why, in the name of tartarus, are there explosives n the Medical Deck? I'm sorry, but that just sounds retarded on so many levels..."

Isaac had no idea what to say to such a thing, in a manner that would calm Chrysalis down, but he suspected that some termite was intentionally left behind in case the survivors needed to get through the barrier the others had put up, or something like that. He really didn't know what purpose thermite played in the medical sciences, but he knew that there had to be a reason and merely said nothing, to which Chrysalis merely sighed and beckoned for Isaac to show her the way, as she had no knowledge of the layout of the ship and he did. He was slightly glad that she wasn't going to rush off and do her own thing, and hurt herself in the process, to which he turned towards the two paths that were available to them at the moment and wondered which item they should go for first... where he headed towards the Research Wing door and opened it, to which Chrysalis shook her head and followed after him.

When they opened the Research Wing door they found the body of a man that definitely looked like he had been attacked by one of those creatures they had fought earlier, though since he was dead the two of them simply continued walking forwards so they could get what they came for. As they walked down the ramp they found more bodies resting in a pile, all wounded in the manner that those creatures could deal, to which they raised their weapons and walked forward with caution. This was the telltale sign that there were creatures on this deck, which made sense considering that most of the crew had likely been killed at this point in time, but they made sure that their weapons were at the ready as they continued through the hallway... though they paused as they reached another malfunctioning door, to which Isaac raised his left hand and fired a stasis blast at it.

With the door slowed down Isaac and Chrysalis passed through it before it could resume how fast it had been going, where they opened the door to a lab of some kind and walked inside, though Chrysalis knew something was going to happen soon... though not a few steps later the quarantine activated and sealed them inside the lab, where several vents burst open and creatures started dropping into the area.

The two of them rushed to where a lift was waiting for them and stood near it, where Isaac faced the path they had come from with his Plasma Cutter while Chrysalis, using her Pulse Rifle as Isaac had told her what it was earlier before their moment of silence, and faced the path that was behind the lift. As the slashers started coming at them Chrysalis opened fire with short bursts of bullets, as she blasted off one of the slasher's bone blades and caught it with her magic, where she pulled it close and flung it back at her target. That action resulted in her impaling the slasher on the other wall, where it struggled against the blade before apparently expiring, telling Chrysalis that they might actually be vulnerable to their own weapons... but she kept her guard up and continued firing at the enemies that were coming at her. Isaac, on the other hand, was using his Stasis Module on the enemies that jumped out of the vent to his left and blasted them apart with his Plasma Cutter, before using the Kinesis Module to pick the blades up and fling them at the targets that were hanging in the back.

He had to admit that Chrysalis' idea to use the bone blades against the slashers was indeed an excellent idea, though at the same time the military weapons were definitely useful as well, which meant that they had a decent chance of surviving this ordeal.

When their enemies were defeated, and the quarantine didn't lift immediately after the last one fell, both Chrysalis and Isaac knew that more enemies had to be on the level below them, to which they carefully gathered the ammunition that was on the bodies of the slashers they had slain and restocked their weapons. Chrysalis found it odd that their enemies carried the exact ammunition they needed for their weapons, though when she made the comment Isaac simply said that they must have been crew members who had been using the same weapons the two of them were using. He then added to that by saying that since the crew had been killed, and transformed into their new forms thanks to some unknown method, the two of them were simply collecting the ammunition that the crew members hadn't used before their deaths... to which Chrysalis stared at the slashers for a few seconds before letting out a sigh, indicating that she seemed to understand what he was telling her.

Once they finished collecting all of the ammunition that they could, and raided the supply boxes on the walls, the two of them walked onto the lift and rode it down to the level below them, where they walked around for a few moments before five slashers, coming from different directions, jumped out of where they were hiding and charged at them. What Isaac and Chrysalis did was they grouped the slashers together and slowed them all down with a Stasis blast, allowing them to dismember their foes without having to risk being hurt in the process. When the last slasher fell to the ground and went still, however, the lights came back on and the quarantine lifted, to which they started to salvage whatever they could find while they searched for what they came for. They also opened the doors to several rooms and collected whatever supplies they could get their hands on, while at the same time Isaac found a video log that he called Chrysalis over to take a look at before they continued onward.

It appeared that a doctor was talking with someone, the captain Isaac said, though their conversation was focused on something called the Marker and what appeared to be something that happened to the Aegis VII colony. From what Chrysalis could gather something happened on the planet below them, something that the captain and others knew about, and they did nothing to stop whatever was occurring. Rather they brought something called the Marker aboard the ship, claiming that it could change everything, which the doctor happened to be worried about before the log finished it's recording and powered down, leaving her with more questions than answers. Isaac, on the other hand, appeared to be annoyed about something, while at the same time shocked by what they had heard, though Chrysalis suspected that there was a reason behind what he was feeling.

"Great, so in addition to monstrous creatures we might also have to deal with cultists," Chrysalis commented, as if there was one of them aboard the ship she was sure that there were more hidden away somewhere, before she turned to the term that had been spoken during the conversation, "Isaac, what's this 'Marker' that the captain mentioned?"

"One of those Unitologist fairy tales," Isaac replied, though at the same time he decided that it was best if he didn't tell Chrysalis what happened in his past, between him, his mother, and the Church that she spent almost all of their money to get into, before heading for the door, "Come on, let's go find that thermite before something comes looking for us."

Chrysalis nodded as they left the room they were in and investigated one more area before they moved on, where they found an audio log that revealed that a scientist convinced someone named Jurgens to show him the video feed from the colony, where he mentioned that he witnessed the miners undergoing a transformation into what he called 'Necromorphs'. The two of them agreed that the man was definitely insane in some manner, especially since he called himself a believer at the beginning of the log, which confirmed Chrysalis' suspicions that there had been more Unitologists aboard the Ishimura than anyone knew about. The insane doctor also mentioned wanting to see the infection first hand and mentioned someone from the colony, but that was where the log cut off... to which the two of them walked towards the one room they hadn't walked through yet and discovered that it would take them to the thermite.

They opened the door and walked through the hallway until they came to an unusual area, which to Chrysalis looked like a place with a large number of unborn babies being grown in some sort of container... though as they neared the glass a survivor appeared and banged on the glass, asking for their assistance. That was, however, followed by a mutated baby appearing behind the unfortunate survivor, where it sprouted three tentacles from its back and launched a spike at the poor man, where his hand was pinned to the glass by one of the spikes. The mutated baby then loosed another spike into the man's leg, or maybe both of them considering how much pain he was in, before the creature climbed the wall behind it and stared at him for a few seconds... which was followed by one more spike being loosed, one that blew the man's head wide open like a watermelon that exploded.

The mutated baby seemed quite pleased with itself, or at least that was what Chrysalis assumed by how it as moving, before it actually climbed up towards the ceiling and disappeared completely... leaving the two of them in shock because of what they had just seen.

"That's... that's just wrong," Chrysalis commented, though at the same time she had to resist the urge to throw up again, because she honestly couldn't believe what these creatures, these Necromorphs, had done, "turning children into monsters... I'm even more disgusted with these creatures than I was a few minutes ago."

Isaac silently agreed with Chrysalis as they walked around the corner and entered the room the poor man had died in, though not a few seconds later the mutated baby, a lurker as Chrysalis decided to call it, dropped down near the lift they needed to use and raised it's tentacles once more. This time around the two of them were ready, as they both opened fire and tore several holes into the lurker's body, though Isaac also cut off the tentacles, which appeared to be it's weakness as the moment all three of them had been removed it staggered for a few seconds before dying. With the deed done the two of the walked onto the cargo lift and rode up to the level above them, where they had to contend with a pair of lurkers, where one attacked them from the wall on their immediate right while the second attacked them from afar... though despite that happening they were able to overcome their enemies and pressed onward.

Fortunately the door in front of them allowed them to access a second door, one that happened to bring them right into the room where the thermite was resting in a protective container of some kind, though Chrysalis insisted that Isaac hold onto it, to which he carefully slipped the container into his RIG's inventory area, where his ammunition and other supplies were being kept.

"Alright, that thermite you picked up should be able to melt through the barricade," Hammond said, speaking over the link at the moment, though both Chrysalis and Isaac were glad to hear that he was okay and that nothing had gotten to him since their last communication, "when you find the shockpad you'll use it to ignite the thermite. Hope I can hold this position, I can hear something big moving out there."

Once the communication was terminated Isaac started to move, but Chrysalis asked for a few moments of rest before they moved forward, as she was still coming to terms with everything they had seen and all of the monstrous creatures that this infection had created. Isaac stared at her for a few seconds before deciding that a little break wouldn't hurt them at the moment, to which he made sure that the door was locked until they needed to walk through it and watched as Chrysalis sat on the floor while she calmed herself down. Fortunately he had found some leftover protein bars in one of the first lockers they looked for supplies in, to which he pulled one out and tossed it over to Chrysalis, who weakly lifted her head before inputting the code that made her helmet break apart... to which Isaac did the same and they ate their food in total silence.

They knew that there would be time for talking later on, once they started moving again, but they knew that it was better to make sure they had the energy to move on, otherwise one of them might faint while they were on the run... which was something that Isaac wanted to avoid, since he needed Chrysalis' help to find where the survivors were hiding, figure out a way off the Ishimura, and escape with their lives. A small break was nothing to him at the moment, but at the same time he hoped that Nicole was okay and that nothing had happened to her since she sent that message... but he knew that only time could give him the answers he was looking for.