Note: There's going to be a lot of shifting perspective here. So everything is easily understandable, any section of italics is showing Ellie's viewpoint. Normal type is Isaac. Also, here's where most of that M rating is earned. Please review and comment. I own nothing of/relating to Dead Space.

Looking Glass

Chapter 1

Ellie drew the fabric tighter around her shoulders. It didn't do any good. It was a half-burned piece of felt. Not much it could do to protect against cold.

She let her gaze drift to the body next to her. A Unitologist. She hadn't been able to see him until he'd been right in front of her. But he'd had the same problem. And she didn't exactly fight fair. The fact that he was dead and she had his gun was proof enough of that. She allowed herself have a small smile before letting reality reassert itself. She thought about maybe trying to strip the suit. It was worth a shot.

Isaac gazed at the holographic display. He'd pulled the data from the ship scanners before he'd left. He was getting closer, and the little blip he hoped was Ellie still hadn't moved much.

Something was wrong. Ellie could tell. The snow around her seemed… shiny. Maybe a bit tinted. Everything did now. A sort of weird yellow. Not too drastically, but enough that she noticed. Was this some sort of hypothermic madness?

"No."

She spun around, looking for whoever had talked. But she saw no-one.

It sounded familiar though. Almost like… him.

Isaac checked the scanner again. He was close. Maybe 50 yards away. The whiteout made sure he had no hope of seeing her until he was right by her, but that wasn't a terrible issue. He turned off the display and kept moving. A series of beeps made him stop. He pulled up the scanner, and saw several new dots, new life signs. At least five. All converging on the one he was heading to.

"No. No, no."

He started running.

She heard footsteps. The world was shifting between its normal color and that tint. Maybe it was them. Robert, John… Isaac. Maybe they'd found her somehow. Come for her.

A display popped up, indicating a transmission. RIG-to-RIG. But not one to her. She was intercepting this one.

"What do we do with her?" A voice asked. She didn't recognize it.

"He told us to take her alive." Another voice said.

"What good does it do us to keep something like her alive?"

"If we have her, he will follow." A third voice cut in. This one she did recognize. Danik.

Unitologists.

She forced herself to move, to get behind a small, broken-down truck. Peering over the edge, she saw them emerge from the blizzard.

But something was wrong. They shifted and jerked and mutated in her vision. Fanged mandibles exploded out of their helmets scattering their teeth and slicing their tongues. Their legs and arms stretched, tearing thru their suits. The fingers on their right hands fused together and the nails lengthened into talons. Their left hands grew over their guns, swallowing and shifting the pieces. For a second her vision cleared, and they looked normal. Well, as normal as Unitologist soldiers could look. Then one of them pointed at her and they opened fire. Normality faded, and they became the monsters again, their arm-guns spewing balls of fire and lightning and superheated air.

Isaac heard gunfire and tried to force his body to run faster. It didn't listen, but he tried anyway. He ran through the blizzard and right into the back of a Unitologist soldier. He grabbed the man's arm and broke it, then hauled him to his feet. The rest of the Unitologists turned and fired, but Isaac was protected. He had a shield. A shield that was currently screaming and bleeding on him, but a shield nonetheless.

He focused and took aim with his plasma cutter. Two quick shots sliced the legs off one soldier, and a third shot sent his head tumbling away. Sweeping the laser sights over the group, Isaac shot them to pieces. He let his shield, now nearly shot to bit by bullets, drop. He heard Ellie screaming and saw a soldier dragging her out from behind a broken-down truck.

He aimed and fired.

The soldier's forearm dropped into the snow. The man turned, yanked a pistol from his belt and took aim.

Isaac fired again.

The arm holding the pistol dropped into the snow, cut off at the shoulder.

The soldier started screaming incoherently and charged.

Isaac aimed and fired one last time.

The soldier dropped to his knees then fell flat, the top of his head shaved off.

Isaac released a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

Ellie looked at the dismembered monsters fading before her. She watched as they seemed to melt into the snow. When she couldn't bear to watch any longer, she looked up and saw the figure that had saved her.

It was wearing a tattered dark blue snow suit. The suit was covered in blood stains and red and white Marker script. The middle visor was flickering on and off, and the bottom visor was completely dark. His left arm hung limply at his side, while his right held a tight grip on… a plasma cutter.

"Oh, no. No, please. Not you. Not you too. No, please." She whispered to herself.

The figure slowly walked closer, and it's helmet started to disassemble. But instead of separating and folding up like it should have, the helmet fell apart. Plates came loose or snapped off and tumbled into the snow, leaving a line of broken metal and glass behind the figure.

Ellie shut her eyes. She didn't want to see what was beneath the helmet. She didn't want to. But she didn't have a choice.

When she felt she heard the last piece of helmet crumble away, she let her eyes open as though someone else had grabbed her eyelids and tugged them apart.

Beneath the helmet, eyes and mouth wide and emitting an unearthly glow, his face bloody and cold and dead, was Isaac.

Note: Told you this was M for a reason, didn't I? Also, in case it isn't obvious, Ellie has a truly terrible case of Marker-itis. I figured that if Tau Volantis is THE Marker planet, there's probably the mother of all Markers there. So naturally, the mother of all Markers could give Marker madness to whomever it felt like. (I haven't beaten Dead Space 3 yet. I've only just crashed-landed. Hence, my making assumptions on plot points. Even if this is somewhat AU.)