If you know nothing about Dead Space you're in the right place. I'll explain as I go along and the characters involved are just as clueless.
The shapeless void calls to her.
Beyond the bathyscaphe-like vehicle, a number of disembodied voices, for as well as she can make them out, request the technician's evacuation from the underwater structure; or their entrance into it. The heavy, grating rasp of each tone fused into the next sends tremors down Peridot's spine.
For fleeting moments, something with a vividly pale, stretched eye veers out from the darkness and towards the hand that is pressed against several centimeters of glass, only to dart away before Peridot can get a proper look at it.
"Earth to Peridot," a burly tone remarks over the interior comm system, without patience or humour.
"We're not on Earth." The Technician replies in nonchalance, snapped from her reverie and hoping that no vocal tremor came through in her response. The mass of dark forms she had once thought to be taking shape before her eyes were as seamless as the rest of the endless dark.
The voices plagued her for days. The masses of vaguely human forms floating in the watery abyss beyond the scope of the bathyscaphe were new.
She turns her head towards the hard-light screen and adjusts herself back into an appropriate position within the seat of the cockpit.
Through the veil of static interference, Peridot can make out the slightly vague features of her co-worker on the transmitting monitor. Jasper looks on; unimpressed and, judging from the shadows beneath her eyes, utterly exhausted.
"We're miles beneath the base. I need you to focus." Ever berating. Ever persistent.
Peridot, under her own amount of impressive stress, does not bother to hide the roll of her eyes, even to the assertive commander.
"I am focused. Just because I look away from the screen for a few moments out of several hours of attention doesn't mean I'm inattentive."
"You've fallen behind." Jasper urges lowly. Her piercing eyes flit away for a moment towards something off-screen. She seems disturbed and annoyed enough for Peridot to gather that she is not the Escort's only concern.
"Like I said –." Before the Technician can finish the retort, she jolts forward hard in her seat. Leather straps that secure across the Tech's front are the only things preventing her entire weight from flying right into all of the fragile equipment. The console beneath her quaking finger tips shudders, and the entirety of the submerged vehicle darkens for several moments. When the power returns, a bewildered Jasper is shouting broken, unintelligible questions through plenty of interference. For several moments she is too disoriented to try and correct the signal.
Before she can even attempt a correction however, the signal clears immediately, and comes back clearer than it once had been.
Jasper almost looks concerned.
She seems to have interference on her end as well, because seconds after the signal becomes uncorrupted, that borderline concern flashes into anger.
"What did you do?" She yells into the mic of the communication device.
On Peridot's receiving end, her auditory output screeches with the pitch of Jasper's voice, and it causes her already persistent migraine to skyrocket, and thus slaps whatever patience she had tamed across the face.
Peridot responds by yelling right back. Off record, of course. She turns off the visual and auditory recording, because this series of events is something she deems non-mandatory to include in the report, and she will be responsible for clipping and standardizing the imagery later on to present to the Lead of the Project anyhow. It is simply less that she will need to cut out. And less for anyone to see if they happen to want a raw copy. Peridot doubts the record has recovered from the momentary lapse of power anyhow, and the thought only surfaces to quell her anxious conscience.
"It's not like I purposely drove into the nearest slab of compressed rock! These lights have a certain radius and… and you're gone from the circumference of my radar."
"Because you lagged behind," Jasper accuses, quite lamely, and leans closer towards the console to fiddle with the settings.
"We're only allowed a certain speed."
Jasper slams a fist down.
Despite her limited range of view of the Escort, Peridot could see the jolt of a muscled arm, and hear the distinct yelp of a fragile, metallic console as it was punished with her strength for the Technician's insolent word. The half-Japanese female leans back in her seat and crosses her arms firmly across her chest, trying with much difficulty to keep her expression neutral.
After periods of silence, Jasper sighs on the other line and leans back as well, tapping in what Peridot assumes to be a set of coordinates. She times the keys with the common amount of slots coordinates might possess in order to make the assumption.
"I'll turn around for you and assess damage. You're writing up the report for it, though."
-
In order to place less strain on her oxygen reserves, Jasper had temporarily cut their communications.
Peridot sits in the silence that stretches on. The darkness beyond seems to be encroaching upon her steadily, made worse by the fact that she dimmed all external and internal lights to improve her own reserves of power. Miles upon miles below the surface of an ocean that took up more than half of a planet's face was not a favourable place to be when one ran out of oxygen or power. Communications with the base were faulty, at best. Especially as close to the floor as they were.
The returning whispers and inclining tones only serve to make her feel all the more trapped. She places her hands over her ears and finds that it makes very little difference.
The cacophony of voices, within the short passage of time, becomes more coherent in their unknown purpose. It becomes harder to drive them out.
One unified tone stands out, and almost immediately, the rest die down into a dull simmer of suspicious murmurs.
It croaks out a distinct greeting.
Peridot nearly jumps right out of her seat, for it sounds as if it is right beside her ear. Again, the leather straps that secure her into it prevent the reactionary mistake from being played out. It is grounding, and the technician seeks solace in gripping the arm of the seat tightly. She snaps her head in the direction so hastily, pain shoots up the side of her neck. What welcomes her causes her to grow so cold, the smarting injury is all too rapidly forgotten. In the soft reflection of the glass, her image visibly pales.
It is the leering-eyed sea creature that had once swiveled and shied from her hand. She had mistaken it as something akin to an Angler fish back in Earth's depths. It greets her with a broad, misshapen grin, and Peridot wonders how she had ever mistaken it for a simple fish.
It is distinctly humanoid, albeit rotten, with bits of flesh chunked out from its neck and the bottom part of its face in grey, papery rivets. The sight causes Peridot's steel stomach to lurch.
Four prongs of teeth jut out from a smoothly hooked jaw, lined by segments of spaced, significantly smaller incisors. The research-drawn side of Peridot notes, purposely, how well-suited they are to shred muscle and tissue alike.
It waves a flap of an arm. Closer to the dim lights of the submersible, Peridot can make out the thin connection of sickly skin that merges the creature's leg and arm, splaying them out into a fork of limbs joined by the thigh and upper arm.
In her odd delirium, Peridot half-heartedly waves back at it.
That seems to please it.
May I come in?
It's a ludicrous but polite question. Peridot swivels her head back towards the hatch. It was the only entrance, and the only exit out of the submersible. There is no way she is opening that.
Despite the several centimeters of impact-resistant glass standing between herself and the creature outside, however, she feels not the slightest impression of safety when delivering her answer with a shake of her head.
It looks down-stricken, not necessarily hostile or angry. It's a relief.
I have something to tell you.
"Why can't you tell me right now? I can hear you just fine."
It's a secret. It is very important.
Peridot looks around herself towards the dead hard-light communications monitor, and over the creature's broken shoulder into the blackness beyond. "There's no one else here."
It frowns as best as it can with no lips, pounding a fleshy palm against the glass. The eye, the one that is not entirely a vacant white, visibly trembles its milky iris as it searches her face. It calms itself easily enough after clenching its jaw several times.
You're not safe right now. I need to come in and tell you. If you open the hatch I can stop the water from coming in. We will talk.
It seems… Reasonable to Peridot. Quite reasonable. The more she thinks on it, the more she trusts the visage beyond the glass.
The thing grins warmly, gesturing up towards the hatch.
It would be just a second for it to get in, right? A little water would not hurt.
The voice utters its approval and many heart-warming notions of encouragement.
Peridot feels good, for once in a long time, and quite confident about it. Her head is pitching a fit, and it feels as if her throbbing brain might exceed the mass of her skull, but something tells her that if she opens the hatch and allows the polite guest inside, all of that will be stopped.
She unhooks herself from the seat with shaken hands, and gets up, stumbling her way towards the back of the bathyscaphe.
Hurry. Hurry. Hurry.
Her metallic hands reach the ladder. The entire bathyscaphe shudders hard and lurches a little to one side. Something else had collided with it and Peridot, for the life of her, cannot figure out what. She doesn't have time to.
Move. Now. You must get it open right now. You will be too late.
She scrambles up the ladder, and sets her hands on the dial pad. It recognizes her touch and frees the wheeled handle, enabling her to turn it and unlock the hatch. Thousands of pounds of water pressure await her on the other side. But it's all right. The guest will keep the entrance of the water minimal. She has to hear the secret. The seal unlocks and Peridot pulls back hard.