Scott
"Scott! Have you heard from Daniels? We were attacked-she ran the other way," Hammond said through a glitched video call. I sighed and shook my head, knowing that the spy had slipped her leash and was likely looking for the marker.
"No, I've got nothing, Hammond, but I'm sure she's fine," I offered as I gazed around the room Millie and I just got in. "Look, we just made it into Medical, and it's a slaughterhouse down here, Hammond. Plus, the damn door to the morgue is fucking Barricaded."
"Barricaded?" He questioned.
"Yep, completely welded shut to the point that my plasma cutter would take fucking hours just to make a damn dent," I answer. "It's still a rushed job, though, so a well-placed explosive should blow it open, thank God."
"Shit, can you find what you need?" He asked, and I nodded.
"Yeah, shouldn't even need to leave medical. Just need a hydrazine tank, and some shock pads to make it work," I list out. Hammond nods as he looks distraught.
Scott...the one who attacked us, I swear to god it was Chen." He says while pacing, before looking dead at me. "But we saw him die." I blinked as I looked at Hammond and realized how dumb this conversation was. Didn't we just discuss the crew turning into monsters?
"Well, shit," I said. "Guess that means whatever turned the crew into these things works fast," I offered up, making Hammond look at me in shock.
"You think that I'm right? That Chen was turned into one of those things?" he asked.
"Hammond, at this point it's not that far of a stretch, plus given the damn barricade to the morgue is just shouting that I'm right," I say, and he turned and looked away in anger.
"Fuck! dammit, Scott, this is just getting worse the longer we're here," he said before pausing to take a breath and then turning back to me. "Listen, if you're right, then that means heading to the morgue is likely a death trap, but you're the only one who can do it." He says while giving me a look of worry that I might refuse.
"I know, don't worry, I'll get it done," I say, and he nods.
"Who knows, maybe Nichole is locked up safe somewhere in there," Hammond says, and I nod, not giving a true answer to the man. This body's wife was dead, but I didn't want to risk Daniels listening in on our conversation and realizing that I'm not as pliable as she once thought. With that done, Hammond ended the call, and Millie walked out of the small room that held the welcome desk. She was carrying some Stem-Gel of varying quality and a few rounds of each of our current guns.
"Who's Nichole?" Millie asked.
"She was Scott's wife," I said.
"You have a wife?" Millie asked as she raised a brow.
"Had," I answered, I had a wife," I said while pulling up the video that this version of Scott watched over and over. It played to completion and showed her killing herself with some drug cocktail before I ended it. It wasn't great to watch even now, as seeing a suicide just never sat right.
"Oh..." Millie said with a listless voice.
"Yeah, this character that I took over had come into this mission already staring at the void. By the end of it, he goes further insane and ends up spreading this hell to another ship." I said before pulling up the Company app and seeing that I had completed an achievement for the first chapter. Five points richer, I quickly selected the (Exit Stage Left) power and saw an immediate completion of 4% of the world done.
"Alright, I just bought our way out of here, but we still have a long way to go, Millie. So let's build a bomb and blow up this barricade," I said. "Also," I started, and saw that I had gotten one point for capturing Millie, and thus bit the bullet and grabbed the one-point grail knowledge for her. "I grabbed you something to help with dealing with all this tech that you're not used to."
"Good," Millie said softly as she followed behind me. "This place just fucking sucks," she said. I looked down at her and saw that my wife's death was hitting her harder than I thought it would. Then I remembered that she lost her family as well, and my loss likely rubbed the still-fresh pain of losing them.
"Millie," I said, and stopped and turned to the armored Imp. She stopped as well and looked up at me. I dropped to my knees and pulled her in for a hug that she readily accepted. I felt the metal of our suits creak as Millie squeezed me in a death grip as she tried to fight back her sadness.
"I'm sorry, I just..." She tried to apologize for getting emotional, but didn't seem to want to talk about the painful memories. I shifted a hand and placed it on her head, and pulled her into a deeper hug as I said the only thing I could think of at the moment.
"I can't say that I know the pain you're going through with losing your family, because the Scott who lost his wife isn't me." I pulled away from the hug so I could look at her helmeted face. "What I can do, though, is be here for you if you ever want to talk about it. You have me for as long as we still breathe, so when you're ready, I'll be here." She sniffled out a soft laugh and nodded before gently letting me go.
"Yeah, yeah, sorry though" Millie said before rolling her shoulders and what I assume was putting on her game face. I nodded and turned to head down the main medical lab. "Alright, get ready for a fucking cluster fuck of an ambush, Mills." I heard her cock the plus rifle behind me as her answer to my command.
#####
Dr. Mercer
"Warning, Biological infection detected in Medical - main lab, lockdown protocol initiated." The ship's AI sounded out from my com link. I let my gaze shift from my God given work to see who had dared disturb me. The video that had been pulled up showed what seemed to be two engineers as they held up weaponry against the now red flashing room. My first thought was that it was that small group of survivors that had rallied on the mining deck, but it didn't make sense for them to head back to medical.
"No, maybe new survivors? Yes, the marker must have brought them," I said as I heard the whispers of my god tell me this truth. "Is it time then?" I asked, allowed as the whispers told me the way. I smiled as I was correct and nodded as I felt a hand on my shoulder. Turning, I gazed at one of the sheeple that flocked to me in this "Crisis".
"Dr. Mercer, we can't seem to find Dr. Kyne like you asked. He seems to have gone deeper into the crew deck," The fearful man said. I smiled with fake merit as I nodded.
"Ah, I see, he is likely following the marker's words to be a sacrifice to keep us all safe," I said, making a point to go and find the man who had run off after I dealt with these loose threads. "No matter. Go and gather everyone. It is time for us to hold a...Prayer." It was high time I got back to the evolution of humanity.
#####
Millie
I snarled under my face mask as I launched a necro spike into a necro, pinning it to the wall before I shifted to another threat and fired off a few magnetically charged plasma rounds into its legs. The limbs were blown off soon enough, causing the dead thing to drop down and start crawling towards me. Only for Scott to slam his foot down onto its left blade arm, tearing it off in the process. He brought his boot down once more to take the head and a chunk of its other arm. He then reached out an arm and used his Telekinetic module to pull the barely hanging blade arm off of the necro and sent it through two of the damn things that were rushing towards us.
I looked only for a moment as they both were stuck to the wall, before shifting to fire out a pulse mine into three that were rushing Scott from behind. The explosion shredded the three as Scott whirled around to fire a few plasma rounds into the one that still had enough of itself to crawl towards us. Checking my ammo, I cursed.
"Shit! Need to reload," I said as I pulled out another plasma rod and inserted it into the gun. Scott covered me with a blast of stasis before firing into the slow-moving threats, tearing them apart with each shot. "I'm good," I called out before firing into the next few necros that popped out of the vents from the left. Scott joined me as we unloaded, and we rushed them, bringing them low before they got within ten feet. As the last one fell, I flicked my gaze left or right to see the next threat, but none showed themselves. Scott discarded his spent battery pack and loaded in a fresh one before he, too, gazed at every vent in the room.
For a moment, the only noise was the blaring alarm in the room, before that cut off and the lights kicked back on. "Quarantine lifted," the ship's AI voice sounded out before the doors to the room had their blast doors removed. I sighed out a charged breath as my adrenaline bled off. Hefting my pulse rifle onto my shoulder, I smiled again as I looked at the carnage we had just wrought. I finally felt like the hell's assassin I had trained myself to be.
"Alright, the ambush is over. Let's go collect any ammo, stims, and sellable loot that you can find," Scott said, and I nodded and rushed into a room to explore what was there. Thanks to the Grail knowledge, I knew exactly where to look in the offices that I ransacked. I came up with quite a few heals, more ammo, and even a nice little sellable loot to go along with it. Scott walked off into his "not wife's" office and both ransacked and collected some information for one of his achievements for his mission.
He said it was for insurance in case he couldn't just rush through the submission by bypassing door locks. I didn't understand it fully, but didn't fight him on it as we cleared the room fast and moved along to...biological prosthetics. Which was just..."Creepy," I said, making Scott chuckle as we both walked past the glass doors that showed the brain-dead clone bodies. The grail knowledge filled me in on how it worked on a simple basis. Age up a clone of someone who lost a liver, or an arm, or something. Then take what you need and any extra organs before tossing them for bio disposal.
"You know I both love the new knowledge of how everything works, but I also really don't," I said as we entered the room. He laughed more heartily at my words and nodded his head.
"Yeah, I get that, remember it's a grimdark world, which means everything is sad and gross in a way that no one is going to love Mills," he said while we looked at the vats of growing clones that lined the walls. I grimaced at the sight and wished I were back in hell, where everything just made more sense. "You know, it might be a good idea to maybe grab the schematics for this so we can use it in the future?" Scott suggested, making me flick my head at him with a hidden look of disgust. I started to say something when I saw movement in the corner of my eye.
Flinching into a shot at a small necro that leaped out of nowhere, I blew it to pieces with my shot. "Satan's Nuts!" I shouted out as the things slumped off the wall it was clinging to and slapped onto the metal ground. Scott had tried to send a shot of plasma but was caught off guard by one of the small fuckers leaping onto his back and wrapping him in three tentacles. He shouted out in both disgust and rage as he instinctively leaped up off the ground, only to fall onto his back. This caused the creature to be crushed under his suit's weight,
"Fuck! I forgot about when those things popped up," Scott said as he climbed back up to his feet. "Little fuckers are sneaky as well, so be careful when-AHG!" he started to say, only to have another latch onto his face. I started to run over to help him, but found myself dodging when another one flung spikes at me from afar on the wall. I unloaded into it, but it was jumping around too much to get a clean shot. I had to dodge again, though, as it started to fire at me while jumping around.
Scott, still in my line of sight, pulled on the one attached to his head. He managed to tear it off enough to flick his plasma cutter up in the space between his face and the thing, and cut off the tentacles holding onto him. Though as he flung it away, the one firing at me decided to switch targets and flung a spike at him, succeeding in landing two of the shots into his body. "AGH!" Scott shouted out, and I growled in anger at the cheap shot. I tried to hit the damn thing, but it was just too fast. Then my vision showed the stasis module Scott got me on my wrist, and I felt like a dumbass.
With another growl at myself, I watched which way the thing would leap next, and then hit it with a spray of stasis that left it slower than molasses. This was when Scott and I fired a few more shots than necessary at the thing, leaving it a bloody smear on the wall. With it dead, I ran over to Scott as he took a knee and grabbed at one of the spikes in his body.
"Damnit!" Scott said as he pulled it out and earned himself a spray of blood for the action. He grabbed the next one, and I pulled out my Stem-Gel and jabbed it into his body. "~Ahhh, thanks," he sighed out as the gel sealed up the spike wounds.
"No problem," I said as he pulled out another Stem-Gel and handed it to me. I took it knowing that he wanted me to have one at all times, just in case. He stood back up next and, with a grunt of residual pain, pushed on and started for the elevator located in the room. I frowned as I followed him. "Hey, maybe we could take five so you can let the gel do its work," I suggested, only for him to shake his head.
"No, no time," he answered as the ship creaked eerily. "Like I said, the ship is going to fall right at the planet and will be dead if we don't fix it," he answered while rolling the shoulder nearest to one of the recently healed spike wounds. I frowned deeper, but just looked down and away from him instead.
He had told me about the timetable already, but it didn't make me happy that we really couldn't stop, so he could heal better. Gripping my gun tighter, I just made sure to watch my surroundings all the more. It was one thing for me to get hurt, but not someone whom I was starting to love more and more as the seconds passed.