AN: I own nothing
Chapter 7: Harder and Harder to Breath
Silence reined over the three of us. Alex and Jason were looking at me with wide disbelieving eyes. After a few seconds of silence I shifted uncomfortably under their gaze.
"Something wrong?" I asked nervously.
Alex was the first to come out of his stare and elbowed Jason, bringing him out of the delirium as well.
"Sorry about that man. It's just… surprising how an Engineer could survive all this, we have military training and we're just barely surviving with these things."
I nodded slightly, I was surprised myself at how I had gone from my normal mindset to the one I now held of kill first, never ask questions. Then something clicked in my head.
"Military training?" I asked, voicing my thoughts. "Why would they need two military guys for what would be a simple repair mission?"
Jason answered the question rather quickly with, "We don't know. We were just offered a large sum of credits upfront. Besides we have some expertise in ships. Not like a hardcore engineer like you but, I guess they figured it'd be enough to pass for fixing the comms."
I took in the information, it was possible…
"How've you been getting around Isaac? We haven't seen you around?" Alex asked suddenly
I refrained from mentioning that the length of the ship was well over a mile long and pointed to the maintenance shaft panel.
"These things criss cross through most of the ship. Over the last three day's I've hid and crawled through the tunnels, to get to here." I explained. I rubbed my arms as the reminder of my task sent an ache through them.
Alex raised an eyebrow and whistled. "Holy crap man. You crawled all the way from engineering to medical. While that is an impressive feat, the question remains why?"
I rolled my shoulder and replied "I'm looking for someone. A woman, by the name of Nichole Brennan. Or maybe a log she might have left to I could find her." I looked at the two pleadingly "Please tell me you found something like that." I needed something, anything, that could prove to me she was alive. Jason shook his head.
"I'm sorry man but we've been through this place twice, not once did we find anything pertaining to her. I'm sorry." He said, sympathy coloring his voice.
I sighed and nodded glumly, I wasn't what you could call the best judge of character, but I knew enough from growing up in Manhattan that he wasn't lying. I clenched my fist in frustration. Three days. Three days! All for nothing! I let out a low growl. 'Where could she be?'I thought to myself.
"Isaac?" Jason asked. I looked at the dark haired man. He gestured to the door leading to the tram. "Alex and I Are heading to Hydroponics, something there is poisoning the air for the ship. We could use the extra gun. What do ya think?"
I looked at him and weighted my options, if I stayed here I could look through the deck, see if there was anything they missed, but if I helped them, I could come across Nicole. 'Highly unlikely'. I blinked, why had I thought that? It didn't sound like me. 'Best not to think too hard on it.' I nodded slightly in agreement. 'It's probably nothing'. I looked at the two and nodded.
"Yeah. I'll come along. Strength in numbers right?" I said.
Alex smiled slightly. "Nice to have you with us Isaac." He told me before he placed his helmet back on, Jason soon followed the action, both of their suits letting a soft click as their individual suits pressurized. I followed their lead, placing mine back on. "I'll head to the tram and wait for you guys." I told them before walking off.
ΩΩΩ
(Alex P.O.V)
My eyes involuntarily followed Isaac as he exited the room. My mind was reeling from all the possibilities. 'How could he be here?' I thought looking towards Jason. He glanced at me, conveying his confusion of the engineer's appearance over the link. 'Asks as if I have a chaken clue.' He replied, sarcasm dripping from his thoughts.
I twitched slightly, briefly wondering if I could mentally slap him. Shrugging slightly I focused on the image of me smacking him upside his head. It didn't seem to do much until his head jerked slightly. Nothing to dramatic, just enough to make it clear that my experiment had worked, albeit at a limited amount. He turned to me and gave me an unmistakable glare from behind his helmet. I let out a loud laugh. The electronically distorted sounded echoed in the small confines of the room. The sound died down after a second, only to be followed by a second. A giggle to be exact. Literally right next to my head. It might as well as been an explosion for all I was concerned. I jumped away from the origin, activating my energy blades as I turned, Jason bringing up his pulse rifle, aiming at the source. What we saw there I couldn't explain, but it was a small silhouette, probably three or four feet tall, the figure, or what I could make out from it, looked to be that of a girl wearing a dress, probably around 5 or 7 years old. But the one thing that drew my attention was the two bright yellow orbs, in place of where its eyes would be. Those eyes, they were staring at me with a strange intensity, familiarity, and most surprisingly of all, glee. The shadow bounced up and down, giggling all the while, her voice somehow distorted, as if she were talking on several different pitches at once.
"Silly daddy." She said. The instant those words reached my ears my mind went blank, every muscle in my body locked up in shock.
"What did you call me?" I asked numbly. My question was only rewarded with a third set of giggles. She then returned to staring at me for a moment before she reached behind her shadowed form. From there she produced, what looked like a toy bear, it was too hard to tell since it was only a three dimensional shadow. The shadow girl skipped a bit to my and grasped one of my hands, my energy blade deactivating in the process.
"You'll hold on to this won't you daddy?" She asked. I blinked again, trying to dispel what should have been an illusion, but no, I could feel her holding my hand up, I felt her place the toy into my hand, I could feel it as my fingers seemingly of their own free will closed around it.
Not sure what else I could do, I nodded numbly. "Yeah." I said quietly. "I'll hold on to it."
The girl's bright orbs, seemed to glow even brighter before she hugged my leg tightly.
"Thank you daddy!" she exclaimed happily. My free hand moved of its own accord and gently ruffled what would have been her hair. "No problem." Was my low reply. The girl lifted her head slightly and looked at me right in the eyes.
"You're nicer than all the other daddies." She said in a quiet voice. Other daddies? I thought to myself. Before I could question her on what she meant, her form deteriorated into black ash. Surprised by her sudden disappearance I jumped slightly. Her ashes disappeared, leaving no evidence of her coming and going. I looked at my hand that had held the toy. It was still there, for about five seconds until that too disintegrated. I looked at Jason who just stood there, his arms at his sides, pulse rifle hanging uselessly in his hand.
"Please tell me I'm not going crazy." I told him. "Please tell me you saw that too."
Jason looked at me and nodded slowly.
"No I saw something like this. When we were heading to the bridge, although, I'll say that it was bigger, and hostile." He replied. "Just what was that though? Why did she call you 'daddy'?"
I looked to the tram exit for a moment before returning my gaze to Jason.
"We don't have the time to be thinking about this. Isaac is waiting for us and we need to kill whatever is poisoning the air." I told him. Jason, despite having a mask to hide his emotions was still easy to read, I could tell he didn't want to let this go.
"Listen." I began, as I moved past him to the tram. "We can think about this later, right now we need to purify the air." I heard Jason sigh and follow behind me. We entered the tram and set the destination. Isaac sat down behind us. The ride was quiet; none of us seemed to be in the mood to talk. After about ten minutes we came to the hydroponics. We made our way through the corridors, all our weapons primed. We came to an elevator, and took it down to food storage. Soon after exiting it we saw a body down the hall. Partially slumped over, and leaning against one of the food treatment areas. We approached the body cautiously, as we came closer I realized that the body was Hammond. I signaled Jason and Isaac to lower their weapons. They did although Isaac was a bit slow to do so. I moved closer to Hammond, he didn't look like he was seriously injured. Sure he had a few shallow cuts, and a bandage was tied around his leg but nothing that could be considered fatal. Suddenly he jerked to life, pulling out his pulse rifle, he weakly took aim with one hand. He grunted as he tried to push himself up, but ultimately failed. He made I contact with me, before relaxing.
"Alex…" he said, his voice sounding strained, his breathing ragged. He glanced behind me to see Jason and Isaac. "Who's that?" he asked, weakly gesturing to Isaac. He stepped forward along with Jason and said
"Isaac Clarke. I'm one of the Ishimura's engineers." Hammond only nodded slightly before taking in a shallow breath.
"Good to see someone on this ship in one piece, along with you two." he said "Don't take your helmets off. The air's rotten." He took in a few more shallow breaths. Isaac pulled out a air canister from his RIG inventory. He handed it to Hammond, who took the canister, and a few good deep breaths. "Thanks." He said gratefully, his voice a little stronger. "I caught a glimpse of it. It's huge, you won't believe it." he took a breath in from the can. "Shut itself of in the main food storage. The crew on this deck…" he took in another breath "I think they're what are poisoning the air. They've been transformed. I saw one of them, bloated, swollen. Their poison factories. We need to take them out while we can still breath!" he tried to push himself up, but his RIG link came to life, Kendra's face taking residence on the hologram.
"Hammond!" She exclaimed. "You need to get to cleaner air, you won't be able to help them in your condition." She glanced at what must have been a screen. "Alex, Jason, he's right, there's something big in food storage, but I can't take a good scan. Be careful." And with that her image blinked out.
Jason pulled out a few charges for his pulse rifle and gave them to Hammond. "Keep yourself safe." The drowsy security chief nodded weakly, before taking another breath of canned air.
The three of us entered the main control room, a large interface titled "Air quality" blinking red. Kendra explained that she couldn't override the lock and needed us to destroy the factories to bring the air quality up.
ΩΩΩ
The councilor stood tall in front of the array of screens. The three of them had opted to split up and kill the mutated factories. He looked at a screen that displayed Jason as he fired off his plasma cutter at a group of necromorphs. Then to a screen that showed Alex as he ripped the head off a slasher that had gotten to close, and used his kinesis module to launch the body at one of its undead brothers.
"Good." He muttered to himself. "Very good." It seemed he made the right choice of universe to put them in. The constant threat of danger at any and every time had hardened the duo. Jason was using his variety of weapons, and stasis to keep the necromorphs at a distance. Alex was using his superior strength and newfound endurance, along with his unique weapon to dominate the undead creatures. The few hit's they managed to get would heal in seconds. His survival of the nanobots had proven to be quite the asset.
"Sir?" a voice asked.
The councilor looked back at the source, to show a woman of average height, light brown hair tied into a ponytail, a pair of thin framed glasses, covering her light brown eyes.
"Do you have the scans?" he asked. The woman nodded and handed the councilor a holo-pad. He took the device and began to read over the scan. It was scans of Alex's body, or more specifically over his muscular, and skeletal structure. His eyes widened by a small fraction when he saw the theoretical numbers.
He looked back to the woman, "This is accurate?" he asked
She nodded, "As accurate as we can get with virtual testing."
The councilor looked back at the information. According to their scans and virtual tests, the nanobots have increased both exponentially. The result of their genetic tinkering was that he could now theoretically lift just over three tons, by taking themselves and adding them to his muscles, making them several times denser and several times more powerful. Then they were introduced to his bones, increasing their strength and durability, making them denser. Although all of this made him roughly a hundred pounds heavier.
"Very interesting." He said, pleased with the results.
The woman meanwhile was looking at the screens showing the two boy's progress. "They're doing well?" she asked. The councilor nodded, "Yes they are beginning to show promise."
The woman's eyes shifted between Jason and Alex as they slaughtered the necromorphs. "Doesn't seem much of a fair fight." she said, referring to their apparent domination of the necromorphs.
The councilor nodded. "Indeed." A few seconds of silence passed before he spoke again. "Was there anything else that you needed?" The woman adjusted her glasses and spoke, "The Council is wondering when you will see fit to bring these two in. They are beginning to become restless."
The man didn't even look back. "When they are ready, while they are doing exceedingly well now, they must continue until they have destroyed all the anomalies." The woman sighed and nodded. She left the room, and the man to continue watching the boys. As she made her way down the hall she was stopped by a tense voice.
"What do you think of them?" She turned to the origin and was met by a pair of electric blue eyes.
She arched an eyebrow, "What do you mean Captain Hathaway?"
The man scowled and pushed his armored form off the wall he'd been leaning on. "You know full well what I mean Dr. Jackson. The two kids." He said, placing extra emphases on the word "kid".
Jackson shrugged her shoulders uncaringly. "I don't have enough data to form a hypothesis." Hathaway's scowl deepened at the doctor's roundabout way of saying "None of your business."
"So what you're perfectly fine with two idiots, protecting the whole of the multiverse?" he asked. Jackson again just shrugged uncaringly. "They were picked by the High Councilor. So they must be some kind of special. Besides, I saw them in action." She said, adjusting her glasses slightly. "They seem to be handling the necromorphs well enough."
"Necromorphs are simple to kill, their mindless. They just charge and attempt to overwhelm you. There's nothing special about killing the equivalent of suicide bombers." Hathaway spat, venom practically dripping from his voice. Jackson turned and began walking away, "Are you saying that because it's true, or because the councilor didn't pick you?" she called back to him. Hathaway clenched his teeth. 'What so special about some brats?' he asked himself. He turned and stomped off in the direction of the shooting range. He needed to blow off some steam.
ΩΩΩ
(Jason P.O.V)
"Now to kill us a Leviathan." Alex said as he pressed the interface to begin the purification process. The computer chimed as the toxic air was vented out into space and replaced by more breathable air. 'Although since our suits have their own supply of air, why would we need to purify the air inside anyway?' I thought to myself as the three of us walked to the main storage compartment. 'Because we don't have an unlimited supply of air.' Alex shot back. I growled slightly in irritation of Alex's snarky reply. Of course this didn't go unnoticed by Isaac who looked at me like I'd suddenly sprouted a second head. I laughed nervously and just said I was clearing my throat. He kept looking at me for a few seconds before looking away. 'Idiot' This time I suppressed the growl at the comment that rang through my head. When we came to the entrance to the storage unit, we found it to be covered in tentacles, thus preventing access. Alex placed the poison in the injection slot. The air was filled with a low his as the poison gas entered the unit. Seconds later an earthshaking roar ripped through the air. The tentacles obstructing the door, writhed in what I guessed was pain and retracted into the room. My comm. went off and Kendra's voice filled my helmet.
"The poison wasn't strong enough! It's still alive. Get in there and kill it before it infects the whole ship!" She ordered before cutting the line. Isaac palmed his helmet in exasperation.
"Easy for her to say. She doesn't have to kill the thing." He groaned. Alex nodded to the engineer sympathetically, "I feel your pain, but no matter how annoying she is… she's right." Isaac just nodded before reading his line gun.
I shouldered my pulse rifle, preparing for the fight to come, Alex charged up his energy projectors. I walked up and placed my hand over the open interface.
"On my mark…" I told them. They both nodded. "Three…two…one…" I tapped the interface. "MARK!" We bolted in, weapons draw, only to be greeted by utter darkness. The door closed and locked behind us. The lights from our helmets were the only thing illuminating the room.
Zero Gravity Active. The computer chirped. After a painful amount of time the lights began to slowly illuminate the room, showing it was circular, and various things floating in the anti gravity. Then the lights came on full blast, then we saw the Leviathan. I don't know what I would have expected to see but is certainly wasn't this big mass of flesh. It covered the entire opposite wall, its 'mouth' was more accurately a cavern. Three stubs surrounded in a triangle. The 'mouth' moved slightly, as if the beast was waking up from a dream. That is until it shook violently and let out an earthshaking roar. From the stubs three column like arms burst through.
"Spread out." I said "If we stay in one place we're one big target."
"Roger Roger." Alex confirmed.
"Got it." Isaac sounded.
I glanced at Isaac's line gun. It was an immensely useful weapon, but that was only at close to medium ranges. Anything longer than that and it is totally useless, there would simply be too easy to just step out of the line of fire.
"Isaac. You got anything other than that? It'll be pretty useless in this fight."
The engineer nodded and replaced the large weapon, with what I recognized to be a rivet gun. The Leviathan roared and moved to slam one of its arms on us.
"Scatter!" Alex yelled.
We all leapt out in different directions, avoiding the incoming limb. It slammed into the ground with a heavy thud. I let out a quick burst off rounds at the offending appendage, only for my rounds to bounce off the limb's tough hide.
"Shoot the soft spots at the base!' I looked to see Alex had fired three bolts at the glowing yellow skin. Isaac aimed his rivet gun and in rapid succession fired the tool, the bolts ripped through the arms soft flesh. The Leviathan roared as it swung its second limb at the engineer. Isaac jumped out of the beasts path and landed on the far side of the room. I squeezed my rifles alternate trigger, a soft thump, and heavy kickback greeted me as the grenade I had launched sailed through the air. It impacted the limb at the exposed soft flesh and exploded, the result was the arm being cut off. Alex jumped forward, towards the beast, his energy blades active. The beast attempted to knock him out of the air, but the large limb sailed past him harmlessly. He landed at the base of the arm and swung. His energy blades ripped through the flesh like a knife through water. A roar of pain echoed through the storage unit as the second arm floated off uselessly. Isaac switched to another gun and jumped for the third and final arm. He pulled the trigger and a saw blade popped out from the gun and floated safely in front of him. The saw began spinning at high speeds, and he used the makeshift chainsaw and began to cut the third arm off, but nowhere near as neatly as Alex's of course. Blood and gore splattered all across Isaac's armor, changing its bronze color to an uneven crimson. After a few bloody seconds the last limb was disconnected from the Leviathan.
Alex turned to me and yelled, "Jason! Give this thing its daily dosage of high-grade explosives!" I smirked from under my helmet and reloaded my pulse rifle and took aim. A wild smile tugged at my lips as a thought came to me. I really couldn't help what I said next.
"Hasta la vista baby." The Leviathan roared in what I guessed was indignation. I pulled the trigger. A grenade sailed through the air. I pulled again. A second followed close by. A third time, fourth, fifth. Each of the small explosives flew through the air, and into the waiting 'mouth' of the large necromorph. Each one made its way into the necros 'mouth' and seconds after entering, five oh so satisfying explosions echoed from inside the creature, The Leviathan writhed and shook, before falling silent. Slumping slightly. Satisfied with the result I jumped back down to the entrance, Isaac following, Alex however was talking to Kendra via the RIG link. The two of us waited for a minute until he jumped over.
"What'd she want?" Isaac asked.
Alex palmed his helmet in irritation before answering. "Apparently we're going to the mining deck."
Allow me to officially thank those who have reviewed my story, and if you haven't, please by all means review my story! Also i want ot say sorry if the 'boss' fight with the gang and the Leviathan was a little lackluster. I'm not all that good with big, blockbuster-like fights. Give me a hundred necros and have me pit them against our hero's and I'll give you a fight worthy of 300. (Yes this is me stroking my ego).
But there are a few things that I feel I need to bring out into the air. (Never mind the fact that 80% of those who will read my story will skip this)
Mercer: (The doctor not the prototype.) In the game he really didn't seem like much of a bad guy. I know he's a unitlogist (spelling?) but it didn't feel like it was showing in the game to me. To me mercer was just the mad scientist who did all these things cause the marker told him to. So Lethal Devotion was my attempt to make him at least a little less of just someone who'll impede you a little in the game while saying Isaac's fight for survival is pointless
Venting: In the game, like some hardcore gamers are aware, Mercer in the sixth chapter, vented all the air in the deck. I didn't do this because well it would have been pointless. Sure he vents the air and locks Kendra out of the system but conveniently forgets to turn off the button that gives you air back? Or that he could have just locked all the doors and trapped him in the room, he has enough control to lock Kendra out of the system and vent all the air. Why wouldn't he lock the doors? So for this purpose I left it out.
Kendra: In a way I am doing a bashing on this character. Why? Because i never liked her in the game. She was basically whining the whole time, telling you what to do, and (spoilers) betraying you. She leaves you to rot not once but twice! So that's my reason for my semi-bashing.
Mason Daniels: I felt that Kendra's mention of her brother was just kind of mentioned in passing. It was all like "I saw my dead/sick/dying brother" and then POOF! Never mentioned again. That always bothered me (I'm OCD like that) so I did the scene with Kendra and her dead brother, not only to satisfy my need to reach some kind of story with it, but to also make Kendra more of a person. Of course I'm still going to be bashing. :)
Sorry for the time it has taken me to update. I've been spending most of the week fighting off a giant six headed monster for eight hours every day. With a pencil. Only during the week am I given any kind of rest from the constant battle.
OK. Rant over.
Remember to please review.
Arokhsteel out.
