Blood.
The sticky red fluid was everywhere. Smeared on the sides of the vent, in handprints along the bottom, and he wasn't sure how but there was some splattered on the top part. Some was dry.
Some was sickingly fresh.
The lack of sound other than the occasional skitters and his own movements terrified him. The flickery flashlight he had in his mouth didn't help much. The sound of his breathing echoed in the vent, making him feel obvious and exposed.
Not for the first time Fred wondered why in the hell he'd let Travis talk him into this.
Oh sure, he sounded logical and smart in the well-lit hallway, with a nice little escape plan set up and everything. But up here?
He would have told him to fuck himself with the damn little chip Fred now held in his hand and a ten-foot pole.
"Damn motherfucker tells me, 'Oh it's really simple, Fred. You just gotta climb through the vents to the dock control and put the chip in. Easy as pie!' But what the cocksucker didn't say was the goddamned vents were fucking scary as hell!"
Continuing to mutter curse words to himself, he clambered through the blood-slicked vent, checking his locator beam when he reached a turn.
"Why in the hell did we leave Annie back there? She would've done this no problem, the little freakazoid goth girl… I can hear her now 'Fred you spineless chip! Can't even crawl through a bloody vent.' But no, we had to leave our medic back there, in that little crawlspace. She's been alone for, what, eighteen hours?! Crazy psycho bitch's probably eaten all the monster things by now."
Fred stopped. Memories were crashing down on him. Teasing Annie and Travis about being 'lovebirds', calling Annie a 'psycho goth freak', getting chased by a pissed Annie with a scalpel. Seeing her, bloodied and bruised on the floor, refusing to leave, telling them to move on without her…
…and, God she's probably…
"She's probably dead."
Fred couldn't hold back a sob at the though of his little sister dead.
Earlier memories stirred. Playing tag in the hydroponics deck, chasing her down in the zero-gee as teens, singing her 'Twinkle twinkle little star' to bed…
It was like one of those mutated things had torn a hole in his chest. And he wanted them to finish the job.
He paused. Then a feeling welled up in him, strong enough to mask the pain.
Disgust.
"Ah fuck, I'm turning into a whiny emo like Annie! No way in hell am I going down without a fight!"
So, with that sentiment in mind, Fred struggled on.
Eventually, he reached his destination. Popping out the grate, he slided out of the cramped airduct and gave his surroundings a through one-over. Terminals he didn't understand, fancy doodads, a few personal effects, and lots of blood. But no bodies.
This set him on high alert immediately. Missing bodies means more monsters.
He lifted his plasma cutter to eye level. He was thankful beyond words that Travis had given him the only cutter between them. The cutter's tri-beam sighting grazed over the computers and terminals, pausing briefly over the dark corners and wall panels. Once he ascertained that the room was currently clear, he checked the screens for the button Travis told him to press.
Back before the fucking creepy vent, before losing the other cutter, before leaving Annie, Travis had been scouring the comms when he found a message from the USG Kellion. Apparently the distress beacon had been picked up, and they'd sent a mech crew to fix their ship.
Like the fucking ship needed fixing. They needed to fix reality, more like.
The Kellion was their ticket off the Ishimura. But in his search for escape, Travis had found one little problem. After the freaky 'Marker' thing (One of the causes of all this fucked up shit in Fred's mind) had been shipped up to them from the planet below, the fucking Captain (The other reason for their current fucked-up status in his opinion) put in a no-fly order, thus locking down all the blast doors.
They needed to unlock those doors before the Kellion could smash into them like a bug on the windshield.
Finding the weirdo little symbol Travis had described to him, Fred pushed it, revealing a slot for the microchip with the hacking program Mr. 'I'm a super-duper spy hacker!' had cobbled together.
He hoped beyond hope it would work.
The sound of a light skitter behind him sent a shockwave of adrenaline and fear down his spine, and faster than he'd though himself capable of Fred did a one-eighty.
The cutter snapped up to take aim and fired at the monstrosity's arm just as quickly. The thing shrieked inhumanly, and the bladed appendage dropped to the floor. The creature hissed at him, what was left of it's eyes seemingly glaring at him in pure hatred, and it lunged, it's other arm stretched out to remove his head from his shoulders.
Fred jumped back, but he wasn't quite fast enough and he felt a searing pain in his neck.
Bringing one hand up to his neck to stop the wound from bleeding, he brought the cutter to bear and fired every last round at the mutated corpse until it was just a pile of indistinguishable flesh, all the while screaming bloody murder.
Fred dropped the empty plasma cutter and began to inspect the wound. Using the reflective surface of an inactive computer screen, he came to the conclusion that he was royally fucked. The thing's blade had missed all the important veins, but it was still deep, and it was bleeding like mad.
"If only Annie was here. She'd have me patched up in a heartbeat."
His mind strayed to Annie, and the realization that he was going to die hit him harder than a sack of bricks.
He smiled.
Glancing at the computer panel he'd put the chip in, he saw that it had worked. Knowing his job was complete made everything all the more easier.
A small thought struck him. Why not make it harder for the slimy motherfuckers when they tried to get his body?
He climbed into the vent, replaced the grate, and started crawling again. He stopped over an opening in the bottom, incapable of continuing. Somewhat pleased with himself, he rested his head on the edge, breathing in the stale but clean air. He removed his hand from his neck, letting the blood flow uninterrupted. It dripped through the opening, staining the deck below.
As his breathing slowed, he allowed a smile to grace his lips. He whispered one last goodbye, which echoed throughout the vent.
"Bye Annie. See you in hell."
