Log 9: USG Colorado's Morgue/ Jacob DuFresne
August 12, 2513
Jacob wheeled himself toward the ship's morgue. Both of his legs were broken, he couldn't feel below his pelvis, and he was in a wheelchair, but the doctor was fully aware that it could be significantly worse. He could be dead, or stuck in the brig with these problems. With the rate of fire coming from the pulse rifles, it was lucky that he was still alive to begin with.
Jacob felt some guilt over the murder of a fellow doctor, but he was used to being around and analyzing death. It only would have been a matter of time before he caused it, anyway. He was also lucky that he was able to convince Captain Brown to not throw him into the brig, but he felt that it was only because they were both Unitologists that he was a free man.
Jacob sighed. He passed his quarters. He stopped momentarily, deciding whether or not to check on the strange substance that he was examining inside of his room, but forced himself not to. People are already suspicious of you, the doctor thought to himself as he wheeled himself forward, and it isn't going anywhere.
He made it to the morgue the same time he usually did, with nobody else there yet, and no one would be joining him. Nathan Henry had, apparently, opted out of morgue-related duties after the death of Amanda Manuel, apparently paranoid.
And that's completely justified, a small part of the doctor's brain told Jacob as he slipped on surgical gloves and a surgical mask. He wheeled his way over to the bodies of Mack Walthers and the other miners, still on the surgical tables.
"Day two of this autopsy… I'm back from the medical bay, a few broken bones, but I'll live. I'm really lucky for the Auto-Med system; otherwise I wouldn't be here after… 'The unfortunate accident'," Jacob said, referring to the title that Captain Brown had given the death of Amanda. "Now, back to 'autopsying'…" He grabbed the plasma pick that he had requested for two days ago, and made a small incision, just below the neck wound of Walthers'. Once the plasma cooled down, he would compare the two wounds.
He set the pick down, and switched it for his scalpel, feeling more secure with it in his hand. Jacob wheeled over to one of the more light skinned miners, and noticed something peculiar on the body of Troy Antony. "This is odd… the skin appears to be rotting at a significantly faster rate." It was true. Most of the flesh appeared to be of an orange-yellow tint, and falling off, and the left arm appeared to be much shorter than a human arm should be. There were large clumps of skin around both collarbones. "This isn't normal." Jacob looked at the eyes of the dead miner, still open. The eyes stared back, almost as if they were staring directly into Jacob's soul. It chilled him to the bone.
The most curious things were the clumps of skin on the collarbones. Jacob moved his scalpel to the left one, and made an incision. It took a while, but slowly, something came out. … But it wasn't the ooze that had come out of the neck-wounds.
A spear-tip began to force its way out of the open wound. The mere sight of it disgusted and intrigued the doctor. It continued to grow, until the base of it changed to something that greatly resembled the bones normally located in the arms. His eyes shifted to the normal arm. It was shrinking greatly, and contorting itself into a flexed shape. Necrosis should have rendered it stiff, but this arm was bending and flexing its inside muscles, yet shrinking at the same time. His eyes went back to the spears coming out. They might have been the bones within the arms, but now they were covered in the same unusual-colored skin on the rest of the body.
Jacob, curious as ever, lightly touched the new… 'Limb' was perhaps an inappropriate word for it, and it suddenly jumped to life, launching itself forward. The limb held itself like a scorpion holds its tail above its body.
Jacob wheeled back a few feet, but returned when it refused to go any further. Jacob turned his attention to the other mound of flesh on the other collarbone. It was bulging now. He moved his scalpel to that mound, but a new limb immediately burst out, nearly severing his hand. Both limbs began to wildly flail- one of them hitting the doctor- and knocked Jacob backward onto the ground. It took about ten seconds, but he forced himself back up. The body was gone. He turned to look at the entrance to the morgue. It was still shut.
He opened his holo-link to the captain. The acting captain's face appeared, looking quite distressed. "Captain!"
"Now is really not the time, Doctor. Really not the time." Jason Jacobs said, holding his palm to his head.
"Sir! One of the bodies is gone!" Jacob said in fear. He forced himself back into the wheelchair. "Something is seriously wrong with it! We need the ship on full alert!"
"Doctor… A man just killed himself up here and almost killed me. I'm a too little busy with other things at the moment to go searching for a dead body." Jason said with a glare. "And 'full alert'? What's it going to do, stare us into oblivion? It's a dead body. Get over it."
Jacob opened his mouth to object before the acting captain continued, "The body, and the body of another soldier he killed, will not be going to you. We're deploying a morgue down on Jericho II. The autopsies are done. Once you're done with the ones in the morgue, you are to return to and stay within—" there was the sound of a door opening, and Jason looked up and flinched at what he saw. "Captain!" The man saluted, and immediately the holo-link switched to the face of Giovanni Brown.
"What's going on here? I heard quite a bitter tone in my replacement's voice. What's the matter, Doctor DuFresne?"
Jacob explained to his true captain what had happened. He had managed to keep an intrigued look on the whole time, but eventually he cut off the medical examiner in mid-sentence, "Look, Doc. I'm fully aware of the stress that working hard can do to you. I was seeing my dead brother not even a day ago. My own dead brother. You're just seeing things. There's nothing to be afraid of."
"But—but—!"
"But nothing, Doctor. Head back to the medical bay. You probably need some rest. You were seriously injured yesterday. A day isn't enough to get over physical trauma. You know that." Giovanni reasoned.
Jacob looked away from the Captain, trying to come up with an argument, but couldn't piece one together. The captain was probably right. Stress. That was probably what caused his unusual vision just a day prior, and was probably what had caused him to imagine the body vanishing. It was still probably there, but his mind was playing tricks on him. "… Okay, sir. I'll head back to the med-bay."
"Good. Don't worry, the Marker will be out of the ground soon enough, and then we'll get out of here. We won't have to worry any more dead bodies." Giovanni said in a reassuring voice. He closed their holo-link.
Jacob wheeled out of the morgue. He stopped at his quarter's doorway. The pus-like substance was oozing its way out from under his door. He didn't bother going inside. The stress would probably make him see things even worse than 'scorpion-limbs' if he went into there. He wheeled around the sludge taking up the hallway and headed to the medical bay.
Okay, we're getting closer to the finale... what will happen with the substance in Doctor DuFresne's room? Why is the captain acting so out of character? Will any of these questions be answered in the next chapter? Tune in next time to find out on Dead... Space... Z! Er- my bad. USG Colorado. That's the name of this story.
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