.9

"Even a man of knowledge acts according to his own nature, for everyone follows the nature he has acquired from the three modes. What can repression accomplish?"
- B.G., 3.33


As one of the only known survivors of the 'politically motivated terrorist attack' on the USG Ishimura, Isaac's friends and co-workers naturally showered him with support in the days following his return to the Sprawl's Engineering Deck. But their condolences did little to console him; as they got him up to speed on the latest news, it quickly became obvious to him just how grievously EarthGov had been misleading everyone about the fate of the Ishimura. He felt an urgent sense of duty to tell them all the truth, but being strictly forbidden to speak to anyone on the subject under direct threat of the Council's retaliation, Isaac was forced to swallow it back. Instead he begrudgingly lied to them, telling his peers that the traumatic experience had wiped his memory clean.

Time marched on.

Right from the onset of his return, those closest to Isaac had noticed something different about him. He had become a bit introverted, his eyes appeared to be dull, his expression empty, and he spoke very little. On the Engineering floor he appeared distant, and the others would occasionally find him reciting strange, repetitious words quietly to himself, especially when he thought he was alone. He evaded mostly everyone except in the cases where he could not avoid it, upon which he then would interact with an artificial sociability that appeared almost imitated. All of this was peculiarly out of place for the much more outgoing and charismatic nature his peers remembered of Isaac from past association, but they chose to excuse him, considering the tragedy he was having to put behind.

Approximately four days after his return to the Engineering Deck, Isaac began hearing the voices again.

make us whole

It started as a quiet droning at the base of his skull, hardly noticeable as he kept himself absorbed in his work. But the voices increased in intensity, seeking with greater vigor each and every passing moment to impart their urgent message.

come home isaac make us whole come home

Isaac was so engrossed in trying to decipher the strange voices inside his head that he had not noticed one of the other engineers at a nearby station who kept glancing at him concernedly. A few minutes later, the engineer finally put down his tools and crossed the hangar toward Isaac's station. He dragged his feet with a sense of diffidence, seemingly reluctant to approach as he slowed, then stopped a few feet behind Isaac.

"... Hey... I... I uh, need to talk to you..."

Miles away in his mind, Isaac still had not heard him. The engineer shifted uncomfortably upon his feet, and just as he was about to address him again, Isaac looked up to see he was standing there. Although the man's helmet was sealed, Isaac easily recognized that it was Daniel White.

"Oh hey, I didn't see you there, Daniel. Sorry."

Isaac smiled courteously as he put down his tools and wiped the grease off his hands, but his smile began to fade the longer he looked at White. The man appeared to be shivering.

"... Something wrong? You okay?"

White then retracted his helmet, and Isaac saw that his eyes were filled with tears, his face was flushed red.

"I... I'm so sorry..."

Concerned to see White in such a state, Isaac reached out and put his hand on his shoulder in friendly gesture. However, the very moment he made contact with White, Isaac's breath seized.

incompatible anomaly

Without warning, White screamed and raised his fist over his head. Isaac looked up and caught a flash of something gleaming in his hand, barely managing to dodge the tip of a sharp, metal pick as White swung it viciously at him. Isaac grabbed a hold of White's arm, forced him to drop the weapon, then shoved him off angrily.

"What the fuck! Are you crazy, man?"

Appearing disoriented White toppled to the floor, and without the energy to even push himself upright he just lay where he fell, tears trailing down his wide-eyed face as he stared into nothing.

"No... please... Please don't make me do this again. Let me go... I can't do this again. None of us can."

Puzzled by White's enigmatic plea, Isaac shook his head.

"Dan... What the hell are you talking about? What's wrong with you?"

White's lips were pale and tight as he finally raised his head to look at Isaac. His eyes were glossy, pasted wide with indescribable fear as if he were face to face with some horrifying creature - an unmistakable thousand-yard stare that Isaac was all too familiar with. White began to scream.

"Oh... oh my god, what the... No, get away... get away from me! What in god's name are you?!"

For some reason, Isaac's blood ran cold as White screamed and writhed on the floor. He just stared at the man, helpless to move until another voice approaching behind drew his attention. Isaac turned back and saw another engineer from White's station, jogging toward them in a hurry.

"What happened, you guys okay?"

Isaac turned back to White, a look of dire portent spreading upon his face.

"...Yeah. Yeah, we're alright."

The third engineer came up to them and stopped, pressing his hands to his hips as he looked White over in a very calm manner. He then glanced at Isaac, apologetically.

"Sorry about this, sir. It won't happen again."

Isaac raised an eyebrow silently at the engineer's response, then glanced back at White on the floor. White had fallen quiet, his body limp and shaking, his eyes darting frenetically about inside their sockets. Without any further questions or even apparent concern, the engineer reached out to White and helped him up.

"C'mon you crazy bastard. Off to Medical with you."

Unable to look Isaac in the eye as the engineer helped him to his feet, White grunted shamefully and hung his head. As they started to walk away Isaac said nothing to either one of them, trying to figure out what had just come over White, and why he had such a disconcerting feeling that he had somehow been responsible for it.

After White and the other engineer left, Isaac glanced down in contemplation at the makeshift blade White had dropped to the floor. He left it there, and returned to his work in total silence.


Despite any initial concerns he might have had about it at first, the incident with Daniel White soon became of no significance to Isaac. He had, after all, seen more than one fellow co-worker crack under the pressure of long-term deep space deployment, so it was easy enough to dismiss White's transgression as being just another casualty. Besides, there were much more pressing matters to be involved with - his growing frustration with the pace of the Engineering Deck for one, which seemed much too slow for his liking despite the constant influx of work. More pressing was the fact that he had not yet discovered a means of escape from the Sprawl, and the voices inside his head chastised him more and more each and every passing moment for his failure.

The next day after his run-in with White, Isaac was back on the maintenance floor finishing up a round of singularity core installations when he decided that it was time to talk to Director Mattock. He knew that he had a good chance of catching the Director in his office, who would most likely be going through the daily assignment reports at this time. He quickly made his way to his office, and when he arrived he pressed the call button just outside his door. The Director answered remotely from inside his office, and upon seeing who it was on the door-cam, he smiled and opened the door.

"Isaac! Come in."

Isaac stepped into the office and saw the Director as he had expected, seated at his desk with his reading glasses on and various holomonitors activated all around depicting various reports and presentations. Mattock looked up at Isaac as he entered the room and he removed his glasses, turned off the holomonitors, and directed his attention to him.

"Are you alright, son? You look upset."

Isaac's restless eyes danced all around Mattock's oak paneled office.

"Well..."

"What do you need? Talk to me."

Isaac shook his head and took a seat in one of the chairs in front of Mattock's desk. Mattock folded his hands upon his polished desk and leaned forward.

"I heard about what happened with Daniel White yesterday. I'm sorry that -"

"I need my flight privileges back."

Mattock paused respectfully as Isaac cut him off, not surprised by the interjection. He had sensed Isaac's tension for days.

"Would you like to be reassigned? Maybe get you back on the shipping lines again?"

Isaac stared into the Director's eyes imploringly.

"No. I just want my flight privileges."

Mattock sighed and tapped his fingers on the deck.

"Believe me, I tried. I really did. The Council has made it very clear that they don't want you in that position, under any circumstances."

Isaac's frigid, beryl eyes cut into Mattock, who finally cleared his throat.

"Look, maybe you should take a break. Get some breathing room. You haven't been yourself... you haven't paced yourself at all since you got back here. Jesus, you didn't even take off the night you came back. I'm worried you might, hit the wall, so to speak. I can't have you breaking down on me, Isaac."

Despite his attempt to placate, Mattock could see that Isaac was getting agitated.

"I need to get out of here, Adrian."

Baffled by Isaac's stifling conviction, Mattock shook his head.

"I don't understand - where do you need to go?"

Isaac hesitated when Mattock asked him this question, not sure that he even knew how to answer. But as he listened to the cantillating voices in his head, his destination became clear.

"... Aegis7."

Mattock's curiosity took a hard turn toward disbelief.

"Aegis7? Isaac, what the hell are you talking about?"

Isaac's eyes fell to the floor. He was fully aware of how irrational he must have sounded to the Director, but driven by some indescribable influence from within he simply could not control himself. All he could hear was a soft, delicate frequency calling to him from the impenetrable darkness of an abandoned flight hangar, lost somewhere light years away.

"The Marker. I need to..."

A flood of memories suddenly inundated Isaac like the recollection of a horrible nightmare. The vision of Mattock's office around him vanished, replaced by the cold steel walls of the Ishimura's hallways, riddled with destruction and rotting corpses covered in flies. As he looked around Isaac found himself surrounded by a horde of bloodthirsty necromorphs, their terrifyingly misshapen forms reaching for him through the shadows. In that very moment he saw himself before them all, alone in the dark with nothing but a makeshift plasma cutter in his hand to defend himself.

the makers must be absorbed

The sound of Mattock's voice snapped him back to immediate reality.

"... Isaac?"

He looked up, angrily.

"You have to let me out of here. She's still out there. I have to find her."

Mattock twisted his lip and raised an eyebrow. As a close family friend, Mattock knew some things about Isaac's troubled personal life, and suspecting the emotional impact of Nicole's death to be the inspiration behind his argument now, Mattock sighed with compassion.

"You know Nicole is gone, Isaac. You have to let her go. You can't be thinking like this, it's not healthy. Didn't those doctors help you cope with any of this?"

Isaac continued to stare at the floor. Watching him with deepening concern, Mattock wasn't sure what else to say.

"Well... I, I don't really don't know what to tell you. In all honesty, it's a miracle that they didn't lock you away permanently. Take what you've got, and be thankful to have it."

Devastated, Isaac finally stood to his feet.

"You're making a very big mistake."

Mattock ran a nervous hand through his thinning, white hair.

"I'm sorry. I can't begin to imagine how difficult all this must be for you. But, there's simply nothing I can do. My hands are tied."

Isaac stared hopelessly into the eyes of his superior for a long moment, then without a word turned around and headed for the door.

"Isaac... wait."

He glanced over his shoulder to see Mattock standing behind his desk, with an odd expression that sparked his curiosity. Mattock's eyes darted toward the room's security camera in the corner above the doorway, then with a swift, discreet swipe across his terminal's control UI, he temporarily disabled it. Taking a deep breath, he slowly looked back at Isaac.

"I'm a busy man. I have a lot of things on my mind. The workload, the crew, the scheduling... and the whole Ishimura mess. So much to be responsible for these days. There are so many ships docked here, and they're constantly coming and going. Coming and going, Isaac. All the time. You know how difficult it is to keep track of them all? What am I saying, of course you do. Yes, we're tight knit here on Titan, but still... even with all those eyes out there, I wouldn't doubt a bird who knows a thing or two's managed to skirt around it all, every now and then. With everything going on here... who could anticipate such a thing?"

Isaac tilted his head, intrigued as Mattock chuckled nervously.

"Well, at any rate... why don't you get your mind off things by going on down to the starport? They could use you, I'm sure."

Mattock nodded soberly.

"... Do you understand your orders, Isaac?"

Isaac looked at him for a moment, then smiled a little.

"... Yes. I think I do. Thank you, sir."

Mattock returned the smile as Isaac stepped out into the hallway. When the door slid closed his smile vanished, and he pressed his knuckles into the wood of his desk with a hint of anxiety. He knew this was the start of something that could bring the Council down upon him in a very severe way, but he had been helpless before the determination he had seen in Isaac's eyes. Slowly settling back down into his chair, Mattock drew a deep breath.

"Best of luck to you, Isaac. May you find what it is that you're searching for."