The outside world simply ceased to exist for Twilight. The sounds of Isaac’s cutter firing and the terrifying roars of the approaching monsters were nothing but distant echoes in her mind while her vision remained a blur, the colors and shapes of
everything around her distorting itself. The Kellion was but a useless piece of junk metal now.
This isn't possible...
Stuck in a deathtrap, their only means of escape fleeing their grasp. Outnumbered. Scared out of their minds. No help coming. A sudden realization crept into her mind.
We're all going to die...
"Twi! Snap the fuck out of it!"
Her reverie was interrupted by Isaac's desperate cries. More of the flesh abominations were approaching them now, obviously attracted like wolves to a prey by the commotion in the hangar. Slashers and scorpions came down upon them like a flood but were quickly destroyed by plasma and ice blasts. At last, the final creature's death gurgle echoed out.
"Alert, collision detected in the hangar bay," a computerized voice chimed in way too calmly for Twilight's liking. "Emergency crews have been notified."
Kendra and Hammond’s holograms appeared again, the computer specialist staring in mute shock at the wreck that was now lying in the cargo bay while a frantic security officer paced behind her.
"What the hell is happening down there? What happened to the shuttle?!"
Kendra simply shook her head in despair and whispered: "That was our ride home... It's the only way of this ship..."
"Kendra-"
"No Hammond!" Kendra shouted. "This... changes everything!"
"Just let me think! Can you access the command computer?"
"It's no good. There was an executive lockdown of all primary systems. Without the captain's authorization, I can't access them!"
"Well? Where's the captain?"
There was a short pause while Kendra worked the computer before sighing.
"Captain Benjamin Matthius. Location... medlab. Status... deceased."
"What? How?"
"I can't access that information! Find the Captain and you'll find his RIG! With his authorization codes I can crack this computer right open!"
"Damn it! Isaac, I'm sending the tram back to your location. Get to the medical deck and find that RIG as fast as you can-"
"What was that?"
"Holy shit! Come on, get out of there!"
"Hammond! Kendra!" Isaac called out in concern.
The feed cut abruptly. Isaac cursed and beckoned Twilight to follow him quickly.
________________________________________
They rode the tram in silence, not having the energy left to speak a single word. Isaac was worriedly mulling to himself. The medical wing was where Nicole was stationed; hopefully he would find any clues on her location there. He sincerely hoped she had found a safe place to hide or that she was in company of someone with the knowledge on how to fight these things.
He glanced towards Twilight, who was lost in her thoughts, eyes slightly glazed as she stared away into nothing. He felt sorry for the poor unicorn. Obviously the last few hours had broken her psyche in unimaginable ways.
The tram slowed down to a stop at the station. The duo climbed out warily, and were relieved to find the station empty. Almost.
Isaac's throat dried when he saw a still living woman lying on the floor alongside a limbless body, her eye bandaged and her medical uniform bloodied. He couldn't tell if she was sobbing or laughing quietly, but he leaned towards the latter.
"Sshhh, it's alright McCoy, he's here now... Nothing to be afraid of..." the madwoman whispered to the dead body before turning to Isaac, a crooked smile on her face. "I knew you would come, just like you said..." She reached out and, to his and Twilight's horror, pulled out something from McCoy's intestines. "I, I saved this for you. …Can I go now? McCoy wants to take me... to the shuttle..."
She gurgled one time before finally falling into eternal sleep, her body sliding into the corpse's arms. With a heavy heart, Isaac picked up the device she had given them in disgust before recognizing it as a Kinesis module. He wiped out some of the blood before rigging it to his arm alongside the Stasis module and testing it out on a few crates lying in the way, lifting them up and moving them aside.
They proceeded into the medical bay's security checkpoint. It looked as if a bomb had exploded; parts of the room had been blasted apart, a few still sizzling wires hung from the ceiling and there was an ocean of bodily fluids splattered on the walls. One of the doors had been barricaded with debris, leaving it inaccessible. At this point, Hammond contacted them.
"Isaac? Are you there? We were attacked! 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." He brought up the map and highlighted several areas for them."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..."
The engineer and Twilight traded worried looks. If Kendra was gone they could run into trouble with several of the Ishimura's malfunctioning systems. Still, they decided to press on.
"Let's go to medical storage first," suggested Isaac. Twilight nodded wordlessly.
He checked up his ammo. Two spare batteries and five shots left. They would have to make it count.
The journey to the main lab was uneventful except for a malfunctioning door that they quickly fixed with a freezing blast. The room itself was cold, a thin mist hanging in the air, and surprisingly well lit, enforcing the whiteness on the dirty walls. The lack of bodies was a welcome change too.
The quickly started rummaging through the lab in search of the thermite. Many labs were locked, and those who were open revealed no cans of thermite anyway. Frustrated, Isaac called Hammond again.
"There's nothing here," he grumbled.
"Take the elevator down one level. If it's not there, there's a shortcut through the baby labs-"
The alarms blared loudly. Twilight jumped in surprise as the room was plunged into partial darkness and the doors were put under lockdown.
"Hazardous anomaly detected. Quarantine activated."
"Shit! Call you later Hammond!"
One of the horrors landed behind them. Isaac swung around quickly with his arm and smashed the necrotic thing's face using the momentum of his cutter before finishing it off with a single blast to the knees. More poured through the vents but were stopped by Twilight, who had decided to experiment with some simple, yet powerful blasts to smash their limbs. One of the leapers threw itself at her but was stopped by Isaac, who blasted its tail off and let the pony dodge the body in panic.
This temporary lull was enough to let one of the slashers approach her. She screamed and jumped away as the monster dug it's claws into the ground in an attempt to impale her. Isaac saw that and rammed his boot into it with a grunt before stomping on it, ending its miserable undeath.
"Quarantine lifted."
The lockdown finally ended. Twilight breathed out in relief before steadying herself.
"Is it bad that I'm getting used to this?"
"Probably," Isaac chuckled.
________________________________________
Twilight searched around the main office until she noticed something interesting. One of the computers, as she could tell from the glowing screen, was still functional.
"Isaac!"
The engineer joined her and immediately started it up but was disappointed when they found out it only contained research results from the past few weeks. No, wait. He scrolled down again and found a recently recorded video log: only a few days old in fact. Curious, he clicked the link.
The scene was in the very room they were standing in right now. The captain and a scientist seemed to be discussing something that was making the latter worried, from what they could tell.
"What in God's name is going on down there?" the scientist asked anxiously.
"I think that's precisely the point doctor," the elderly captain answered calmly. "God's work."
"I'm not so sure about that... We'll have to assume the colony's problems are somehow connected to the Marker."
"You can assume all you want to, I do not. The Marker is glorious and divine, you... you know that."
"God works in mysterious ways," the doctor muttered.
"Anyway, we'll have it onboard tomorrow. You can analyze it all you want to. What are you so worried about?"
"Worried? Captain... people are dying down there, killing each other. Is this... madness the transformation Unitology teaches us?"
The captain moved closer and put a reassuring hand on the man's shoulder. "Doctor... Terrence... There will always be risks when the stakes are high. And here, they are enormous. It could change everything." The captain left the room, leaving a sighing Terrence behind.
"And that's what worries me."
Isaac closed the link and shook his head.
"The Marker? That's just one of those Unitologist fairy tales..."
"What did he mean?" Twilight asked. "People were actually murdering each other on the planet before all this happened on the ship?"
"I don't know. Twilight... This sounds extremely fishy. I don't know what to think right now."
Twilight rummaged through some papers on the desk before finding something of interest.
"Isaac, listen." She cleared her throat before reciting. "'Personal log, doctor Kyne T. Chief medical officer. The vidlogs from the colony are poor quality, but the artifact does indeed appear to be a genuine Marker, the first to be found in Unitology's two hundred year history. I'm eager to get it on board the ship so I can study it properly.'"
She paused before continuing."'The potential here is enormous. Not just for me personally, though it's true I've dreamed of such a discovery for decades. But also to humanity, and the Church of Unitology in particular. This marker could herald the dawn of a new age for mankind, and I will do my part to ensure it comes to pass. I know the Church will be grateful, but the true recognition will come from all of humanity. On this day, we are blessed.'"
Isaac had never like Unitologists. When his father had disappeared a long time ago along with a merchant ship, her mother had brought up the Clarke family's son alone. Being a devout believer, she used Isaac's tuition money to buy herself into the highest rank of the Church's hierarchy, gaining a Vested title and leaving Isaac with too little funds to join one of the most prestigious engineering schools available. Since then there had always been bad blood between him and his mother before he turned his mistrust towards the Church itself. In Isaac's eyes, they were nothing but overzealous fools.
"They probably just dug up an odd shaped rock and started worshipping it," he sneered. "This isn't going to help us find Nicole anyway. Come on."
But Twilight was already outside. She waved for him and showed him another audio log. The man on the recording had a haggard voice with a slight accent, but Isaac could practically feel the zeal in his statements.
"I finally convinced Jurgens to show me the video feed from the colony. And what I saw was glorious, breathtaking! Miners undergoing a transformation into something extraordinary. I must know more. Even as the believer within me wants to become one of them, the scientist needs to uncover their secrets! I need to study one of these... Necromorphs, as Kyne so clinically puts it. I need to witness this infection first hand. Perhaps that patient from the colony..."
There was silence between them as they processed the information.
"Necromorphs..." Isaac muttered. "These things are called Necromorphs. Fitting."
Twilight gulped. "That scientist did not sound sane at all."
"He must have snapped when he saw the footage. Probably someone frail of mind."
"What about us, Isaac?"
He turned his head towards Twilight before laughing dispassionately. "I guess we have stronger will than most! We're still alive, right? That's gotta count for something!"
The unicorn was painfully reminded of the day she had gone crazy and had the entire town fall in love with a certain Smarty Pants doll. That had been for just one friendship report. She knew she would lose her mind on this ship: the question was when would she lose it.
"I guess..."
The engineer simply shrugged and readied his plasma cutter. "Let's just grab that thermite."
________________________________________
"What's with the baby labs anyway?"
"Pregnancies are not allowed on the ship," Isaac explained. "In case there is an emergency. The fetuses are grown in protein vats instead."
Twilight paled. "That sounds... pretty gross, to be fair."
Isaac merely shrugged.
She felt even more disgusted when she saw it as they entered the labs. The babies were floating around in tubes of some sickly green fluid, their navel cordons linked to some kind of machine. She was morbidly fascinated as the little critters floated around in their vats, seemingly oblivious to the world.
"Ugh."
The labs were divided into two sections, each one divided by a glass window. She shuddered at the sheer amount of tubes in there, but was in a sense relieved to see that the fetuses would not have to experience this nightmare. How did they even deal with it? Twilight knew that babies could react to outside stimuli while in their mother's womb, but could they even register what was going on? Did they even hear everyone get killed horribly? It must be horrible, to witness everything and yet not being able to do anything about it...
"Come on, come on! Let me out!"
They were shocked to see a clearly terrified survivor banging on the window, urging them to help him escape from something.
Twilight covered her mouth in fear and disgust as a grossly mutated baby crawled up on the wall behind the poor man, extending three tentacles from it's back and launching a razor sharp quill, impaling the man's hand to the window while he writhed in pain.
"NO!"
The Necromorph infant squealed and stabbed at the victim's head, making it explode like a ripe watermelon and splattering the window with his brain juices before escaping into the ceiling again. The pair backed away in horror from the window.
"Jesus Fuck!" shouted Isaac.
"That's just... so wrong!" cried Twilight! "What is wrong with these things! Turning children into... Into..." She fell onto the floor and sobbed again. "Oh gosh!"
"Twilight! We've got to move!"
"Oh Celestia! Take me away from this place!"
More baby squeals and shuffling was heard in the walls.
They're coming through the vents...
"Twilight, get up! They're coming..."
"Oh gosh, oh gosh... Why..."
The vents exploded.
"TWILIGHT!"