AN: I own nothing

Chapter 8: SOS

(Isaac P.O.V)

I stepped off the tram behind Alex and Jason and onto the mining deck. Like most of the places in the Ishimura I had never visited it. Those of us on the ship mostly just kept to our stations, only leaving to go to the mess hall. I took a quick gaze at my map as Alex and Jason contacted the woman, Kendra I think her name is. As I looked over the layout I became acquainted to the fact that the mining deck was huge. It made sense I guess, it is one of the larger components to the ship. I let out a tired sigh and deactivated the projection. I heard Alex conversing with the woman but didn't pay any mind to their conversation. Suddenly a heat ripped through my skull, almost as if it were being cooked. I groaned quietly and place an armored hand to my helmet.

"Make us whole again."

I grimaced at the sound of the disembodied voice, it sounded like Nicole, but I'd learned to ignore it. Three days of following that very voice got me nothing. It was probably PTSD, something my mind conjured up to cope with the stress.

"Make us whole."

I growled slightly louder than I had intended. But neither of the two seemed to notice. The voice was really getting on my nerves. It had gone from a glimmer of hope to a simple annoyance rather quickly. I shook my head in an attempt to rid myself of the bothersome phantom my mind had concocted. 'I will find you.' I thought to myself.

"Isaac." Alex called.

Lifting my head out of my hand I looked at the man. "What is it we need to do here?" I asked.

"Send an SOS beacon out into deep space while attached to an asteroid, waiting for us in the mining bay." He replied "Kendra says that the beacon is on the maintenance sub-deck, which to our great surprise is locked." Jason commented, his voice dripping with sarcasm towards the end. Alex nodded before speaking again, "They keep a key on the processing sub-deck. The three of us should be able to get it with little trouble."

I sighed, 'Just had to be difficult didn't it?' I thought. I motioned with my hand for us to get a move on, I really didn't like staying in one place for too long, not with these 'necromorphs' as the two called them, stalking the hallways. We made our way over to the express elevator, none of us bothered to say much. Once we came to it, Kendra informed us that the elevator couldn't go to the mining sub-deck and that she was going to run a bypass.

When Alex attempted to do so anyway the screen flashed red giving him the technological equivalent of the finger. The military specialist muttered something under his breath before tapping the interface again. This time it flashed blue and the word Processing, took the majority of the screen.

The elevator began a slow decent, too slow. It was almost maddening just standing here, waiting for the elevator to make its way down one floor. I really needed something to occupy my time.

My 'prayer' was answered by a slasher landing right in front of me. I made a less than dignified or manly yelp as I jumped back and landed on my but in surprise. It prepared to swing at me until a low thump echoed through the small car as Jason fired his cutter, taking the offending limb of in one shot. The slasher turned and roared at him, only for it to be caught in a kinesis field. I watched from my spot on the floor as Alex slammed the necro viciously into the walls. Despite the situation it was really comical to see the necro flung around like a ragdoll. After a few good swings Alex released the necro, its bones were probably powder by now.

He looked at me "You good?" I nodded as I pushed myself up. Alex seemed content with my non vocal answer and looked back to the door. After a few short seconds the doors opened up and we stepped onto the possessing. Looking around I found that the place was slick with gore, not that I would have expected otherwise.

"Don't trust them."

I couldn't stop the growl that made it past my mouth and into the open air. Why couldn't the voice just leave me alone? 'Shut up.' I retorted mentally. 'Just leave me alone.' Pain rocketed through my skull as if a drill was working its way through it. My legs buckled under me and my rivet gun clattered to the ground as it slipped from my grip. Alex and Jason were at my sides in seconds; their words however, were nothing but a dull echo.

"Don't trust them."

I looked up painfully. There she was, her form fading in and out ever so slightly. Her jumpsuit changing from its pristine white to bloody. Her face switching between her own and that of what I could only describe as a ghoul. Her eyes switching between her warm blue to a blood red. This continued as she stepped forward, as she knelt down and took my helmeted head into her hands, leveling my visor to her eyes.

"Trust me."

Dark tendrils ebbed at my field of vision.

"Sleep."

Her voice took on a dark commanding tone, her face twisting into a sneer. The darkness began to close in on me. I looked to my sides only to find my two new acquaintances gone. Suddenly her form froze on that of the ghoul and she roared.

"MAKE US WHOLE!"

"WAKE UP!"

In an instant the darkness was banished and replaced by a white light. Seconds into it, my vision began to return, I was greeted by the sight of Jason hovering over my face yelling, but I couldn't make out his words. A high pitched ringing in my ears made that impossible. I blinked a few times and shook my head, clearing it of the noise.

"What happened?" I asked as I nursed my throbbing skull, I looked to the side to see Alex leaning against the wall.

"You fainted." Was his simple reply, the electronic distortion failing to conceal his amusement. "Then you started thrashing around, raving on about 'making us whole'." He pointed to Jason. "He gave you a few good shakes before just socking you." He pushed himself of the wall. "Seems to have worked."

I groaned as my headache doubled. Jason pulled me up to my feet.

"Sorry 'bout that. At least I left the helmet on." He said as he tried to encourage me. I simply gave him a blank stare that he just shrugged off.

"So any particular reason you fainted or is it just the usual?" Alex asked, his head facing the blood covered corridors, checking for possible threats.

"Nothing. Just the fatigue." It wasn't a total lie. At least I hopped it wasn't, I didn't really like the idea of some kind of alien artifact messing with my head.

The Artifact, or the holy relic as the unitologist in my station called it. Lord knows he wouldn't shut up about it. I just couldn't get them, the unitologists. They believe that human kind was created by aliens, based off the fact that a 'reluctant prophet' was assassinated some time after finding an artifact like the one on Aegis 7. Still don't understand how the man being killed by one his own co-workers who'd gone insane merits the creation of a religion, more of a cult with how they all seemed to spout the same nonsense my mother tried feeding me when she turned to it. I never bought into it though; I mean sure we could believe the load of crap that aliens created us, made up totally on the spot by a bunch of cult members, or we could believe several thousand years of Darwinism with actual proof. I quickly shook my head, attempting to clear it of the mental assassination I was forming in my head of the religion/cult's belief, no matter how ridiculous. Now really wasn't the time for me to go on one of my mental ravings on all the flaws of unitology, if I did we'd be standing here all day.

"We should get moving." I said, hoping to get my mind of unitology.

ΩΩΩ

(Alex P.O.V)

I raised an eyebrow from under my helmet as I looked Isaac over. After a few seconds I nodded. Not much point in pressing the issue. I'll just ask him later. I activated my locator and followed the holographic blue line. I motioned for the others to follow and began our trip to fix whatever was keeping us from processing. Our walk was a little long for my tastes and the hull kept making noises, almost as if the ship was trying to scare me. Our trip was strangely necromorph free, which was weird. Not including the one on the elevator we didn't run into a single necro. I'm not entirely sure if that's a good thing or not. The walls were practically coated in blood, yet no necromorphs, heck there weren't any bodies. Once we came to one of the gravity rooms. My comm. lit up and Kendra's voice flowed into my helmet.

"There's a failsafe on the processing control door. It won't open until gravity in the room is restored, which you can't do unless the boulders that are in it are removed. Use your kinesis module to throw them into the nearby gravity beam." She told me. I sighed 'Just couldn't be easy could it?' I mentally asked myself. 'Where's the fun in that?' Jason asked back. I let out another sigh and stepped into the room. True enough I could see several large chunks of rock floating in the space, a large tunnel like device in the center with a thick pulsating beam of energy passing through it. I activated my kinesis mod and tossed the nearest boulder into the beam, mildly interested as it burned up in the tunnel of energy. I repeated the process five more times before I was notified by the ships computer that all the debris had been dealt with. I activated the gravity and signaled Jason and Isaac to come in. We were about to head to the control room when a screech filled the air. The three of us sprang into fighting positions, our weapons primed. Not a second later the vents in the area exploded, slashers poured out of the ducts, roaring and screaming as they charged us. Shouldering his pulse rifle, Jason unleashed a flurry of pulse rounds at a group of them, the majority hitting a small number of them but not taking any limbs off. I shot forward, my energy blades glowing as I swung in a diagonal arc, taking two necros with them.

"Duck!" Isaac yelled from behind me. I dropped to the floor in an instant, just in time for a line gun blade to sail through the air and bisect two more unlucky slashers, the two halved necros toppled over themselves lifelessly. Then a fifth slasher jumped over its fallen brethren, blade arms primed to strike. It had jumped surprisingly high for a slasher, almost four feet in the air. Time seemed to slow down as I struck, my hand shooting out like a cobra. My target; the necromorphs leg. The instant my hand made contact I took a firm hold on the limb and pulled. Turning as I brought my hand and the necro with it down to meet the cold unforgiving ground. The effect was rather satisfying. The momentum caused the creature to bounce slightly off the metal ground, the sound of every bone in the necros chest break. This however did not deter the necro, and it thrashed, albeit weakly, in a vain attempt to escape my grip. With a quick jerk I tossed the necro as hard as I could with my given grasp on the creature, straight towards the gravity beam. The necro spun in as rather humorous arc before making contact with the energy beam. The effect was instant as the necromorph was disintegrated. Jason had forgone the use of the rifle for his cutter and let loose a flurry of cutter bolts, each impact signaled the loss of another limb. A rather large slasher had managed to get close to Isaac and made to swing at him. That is until it became intimately familiar with the side of his line gun. The necro tumbled backwards and collapsed on its back, he then proceeded to beat the creature in with the weapon. His swings were wide and slow due to the weight of the object. After a few good heavy swings the necromorph stopped thrashing. He pushed himself roughly off the corpse and aimed his weapon firing it off at a group of necros. Then a scream filled the air, from on top the gravity tunnel. All our eyes darted to the point of origin to see a slasher like necro, its skin black, eyes blood red and four blade arms protruding from its back.

"A Leader." I growled. The necromorph responded by screaming again, and to my great surprise the slasher horde backed off, still snarling at the three of us before retreating to the vents. I looked around at the necromorphs retreating forms before looking back at the Leader. It snarled at me before jumping backwards and retreating into a vent.

Within seconds we were alone in the room.

"Why?" Isaac asked behind me. "Why retreat? If they pressed we would have been trapped. They could have overwhelmed us, so why retreat?"

"Whatever the reason, it can't be good." Jason replied "It's like a game of cat and mouse."

I shook my head as I scanned the room, still tense from their retreat. "No. As far as we know the necromorphs have one purpose. Spread the infection. To them were just carriers, no reason to play with your food. Must be some kind of reason for this." I looked back at Jason. 'Think the hive mind has gotten smart to us?' Jason looked back at me then to one of the vents. 'Maybe, but why not finish us? I'm sure the hive mind would want us dead, but why now?' I rolled my shoulders a bit trying to rid myself of the stiffness. 'First the charge and overwhelm and now guerrilla warfare? What is it planning? Why toy with us? Send the whole horde after us and we're dead, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Dead and buried.' I thought back. 'Maybe some sick necromorph game.' I mentally scoffed 'Not the time to be funny.'

"What do we do?" Isaac asked, shifting as he gazed around the room. I deactivated my energy blades and started for the storage room. "We have a job to do. How about we do it?" I didn't wait for their acknowledgement and entered the storage room. I looked around for a second until I saw what I was looking for on a desk. I picked up the codes and downloaded them onto my RIG, throwing away the original after it was done. My comm. flashed to life.

"Okay Alex, those codes should get you into the control room, don't forget to attach the beacon first." I rolled my eyes, like I would forget to put on the beacon first. Kendra continued, completely unaware, continued."I ran a report on the colonists. It seems they were suffering a form of dementia. Right after they pulled up the marker. The symptoms were paranoia, hallucinations, and more. One thing that remained consistent was that everyone said the same thing. 'They need our bodies'. Might have been referring to the necromorphs. The sickness spread and always ended with someone being killed, or the infected person committing suicide." She cut the line. 'Well thanks for the useful information.' I thought sarcastically. 'Kendra?' Jason asked mentally. 'Kendra.'

Jason and Isaac caught up with me and the three of us walked back to the elevator, the unsettling lack of necros present in our minds. We stepped onto the elevator and Jason keyed the processing interface. The decent was quick and uneventful, nothing of any real interest. When we came to the deck we were greeted with the sight of some kind of bile, clinging to the floors, walls and ceilings alike. The corruption it was called in the forums I'd read. I took a few steps forward only for Isaac to grab a hold of my arm. I looked back at him questioningly.

"Let me get the beacon, you two can go to the mining deck and kill off the necromorphs in that area. We don't need for everyone to go just to get a beacon."

I raised an eyebrow although the gesture went unnoticed due to my helmet.

"You sure you can survive without us?" I asked. Isaac tilted his head slightly and said "Didn't I save you?" I chuckled slightly. "Good point." He released my arm and stepped onto the deck.

"Be sure not to die." Jason said from behind me. Isaac only nodded and set off for the beacon. Jason keyed the mining button and we descending again. I activated my comm. as we defended,

"Kendra Jason and I are heading to mining. Can you give me any kind of information on the state of the asteroid?" There was a pause before she spoke up. "Yeah sure, I just finished scanning it and I've got to say I've gotten some strange readings." I sighed, 'Perfect' I though bitterly. "Strange how?" I asked, keeping my souring mood out of my voice,"Weird like there's something in the rock or weird like a horde of necromorphs?"

"Well I'm picking up at least a dozen heat signatures, but the weird thing is that the asteroid itself has a heat signature, a large one at that." I groaned, things just had to be complicated, 'Can we just once run into a horde of cuddly kittens?' I thought to myself. 'Nope.' Was Jason's smart reply. 'I hate you.' The elevator stopped as we finally came to the mining. We hurried our way through the deck, not running into any necros along the way. I began to get the feeling that the necros that seemed to be absent from this section of the ship, were waiting to give a little surprise party. When we came to the chamber holding the asteroid I noticed a workbench off to the side. I glanced back at Jason, as he shouldered his plasma rifle. I frowned slightly from under my helmet. It was no doubt a good weapon, but up against anything but the strongest of necromorphs it was almost useless, it simply didn't do cutting damage, It was made in the thought of being fired at something that couldn't take a hail of bullets to the chest. If anything the plasma cutter was the better weapon, and arguably the best you could want in this kind of situation, it fired and cut on almost every shot, but the reload was crap and you didn't get a lot of ammo for it. Then realization struck me. Back on the shuttle it said I was a weapons engineer. Meaning that I specialized in building and customizing weapons, and the G-man guy did say that we had been telepathically implanted with knowledge we didn't have before, probably to make our covers more believable. I smirked and spoke up.

"Mind giving me you cuter and the rifle for a second?"

Jason froze and looked at me with what had to be a disbelieving stare. I could have sworn I saw a red question mark pop up over his head, but it was gone in an instant. I shrugged my shoulders slightly, wouldn't be the first time I was seeing something crazy.

"And why pray tell would I do that?" he asked. I held up a hand and activated an energy blade as I spoke, "Remember how I upgraded my energy blade?" he nodded slightly, "Good well I was just thinking that if I could do that with one of my weapons, then I should be able to do the same with yours, upgrade it to a better weapon." Jason looked down at the rifle then back at me, "And if you break one, or both of them I'll be defenseless, or down a weapon. Besides you haven't really done something like this before. With the energy blades you had some blueprints." He said, not quite ready to let go of his only line of defense. "Well yeah but, even with the blue print's I shouldn't have understood enough to make the upgrade, yet I did. Perfectly. I mean my 'record' shows that I'm a weapons engineer, and the G-man guy said that we had knowledge 'implanted 'in our minds. So that means that while I've only done the upgrading once, I can do it flawlessly. Besides if I do break it I'll just fix it." I explained.

My friend was quiet for a moment then let out a sigh. He took out his cutter and held out the two weapons, "Try not to break them?" he pleaded. I smiled and gave him a nod before taking the weapons over to bench. I set to work quickly, and began disassembling the two weapons, I looked over each part carefully, my eyes searching for anything that would hinder the weapon I had in mind. Time blurred together as I worked with what would have been practiced speed and ease if I had practiced at all before this point. After a few minutes I finished. Holding up what was now one weapon. It still had the body of a pulse rifle but I had modified it to shot like a plasma cutter with energy tethered rounds. I had attached the plasma cutters barrel and a second one I'd found on the bench. I fastened the two together to make an X and installed it to the rifle body. Now that it was done I shouldered my new creation and fired. The round flew through air and hit the wall I was aiming at, leaving a perfect X indentation. Nodding in satisfaction I turned and gave Jason the new weapon. He took it in his hands and took a quick aim. He weighed the weapon a little and the nodded.

"Nice job man. This is pretty cool." He said his tone somewhat giddy.

"Thanks man, say hello to the Plasma Cutter Rifle, or PCR if you're feeling lazy." I told him proudly. Then I became aware of a metallic thumping noise that was getting louder. Jason having heard it too spun and primed the PCR, ready to give the weapon its first taste of blood. That is until Isaac rounded the corner, jogging lightly, his line gun in hand. Jason lowered his gun and relaxed, speaking as he did.

"Nice to see you in one piece Isaac." The engineer nodded as he stopped jogging and walked over to us. "You got it?"He asked.

"Oh yeah, just got slowed down by a brute, but it went down easy enough." Isaac replied as he reloaded.

"Then let's go teach these necros a lesson." I said pressing the interface. The door slid open. We all dashed in weapons ready to kill. It happened so fast, but we were surrounded in seconds by five eight legged necromorphs. Five scorpions. I cursed under my breath and looked around us, seeing a number of lurkers behind the larger necros tendrils poised to unleash their barbs. A loud roar shook me out of my observation of the floor and to the asteroid. What I saw on the large chunk of rock was an infector. But not just any old infector. No this thing looked be the king of all infectors as the thing was massive, its body covering the majority of the rock. I stood there for a instant frozen in shock before the scorpions dashed for us. Just as they closed in on the three of us I heard Jason's voice speak in my head. 'Son of a blit.' I gnashed my teeth in annoyance, and readied my weapons. 'I am so hitting you after this.'


What is up my friends. Arokhsteel back in time to give you this. Yeah sorry if it's a bit... bland, I've been dealing with finals and had to focus on that so sorry for the delay. But now that I'm free for two weeks, I hope to get back on the ball and bring you more of Alex and Jason, as they try to survive in this universe of Dead Space. -This next part is for those hard core gamers who know of the Dead Space world, and actually care about my accuracy on it.

Isaac's distrust to unitologists: I got this bit of information off of the Dead Space wiki so I KNOW(sarcasm) it's true, so you can go look it up on google if you want. If it is believed that I missed something or that a piece of information is wrong let me know if you feel it is crucial for the survival of all mankind that it must be added/fixed, let me know.

Hating on the Pulse Rifle: Now I've played dead space and in the whole game the pulse rifle, while a nice weapon for the right condition, is kind of useless against some of your enemies. It took me five shots to take down a slasher's arm with the gun, where as one or two shots with the plasma cutter and the thing is dead. This is just my personal experience, I don't know if it was that way with any one else, this is just me.

The PCR: In the third game that is on its way, we are shown that you can customize your current weapons in inventory and make your own original gun. The PCR is what I would like in a gun for Dead Space. All the firing speed of the pulse rifle, all the cutting power of the plasma cutter. I'm not sure if this actually what we can do in the third game but it is what I would like.

Thanks for reading folks. Don't forget to Reveiw!

Arokhsteel out!