A/N: Welcome back, dear readers and lurkers! I hope you are well and ready for another chapter of the story. Before you begin, I wanted to give a great big THANK YOU to everyone who has made this the top-reviewed M-rated Dead Space story. I couldn't have done it without your support, kind words, and thoughtful discussions. Please, enjoy.


Chapter Twenty-eight: Between a Rock and Hard Place


Being paralyzed by fear was one thing, but being paralyzed by the realization that no matter what he did he was truly, royally, fucked was a whole 'nother ballgame. Sure, he'd felt this way before, but this was a special case. On one hand, he had to run across a bay chock full of twitchers, which were faster and harder to kill than normal Necromorphs on a good day, and since he was currently in the middle of a very bad day, he had only his TK, stasis, and his threadbare wits; on the other hand, he could stay here and wait for death. He knew he had to move, but he couldn't quite convince himself that he would survive this encounter. It was a classic situation where he had made a decision because it was necessary, but his brain couldn't override his body.

From somewhere in the back of his mind, an image of Ellie came alive, when they were in bed together with her dark hair spread and wild across the pillow, of her contented smile and the admiration for him in her eyes. For Ellie, who was alone and waiting for him. For her, he would traverse the hell that was laid out in front of him. Her voice, her heat, her life effectively broke the paralysis that stayed him. Okay, old man, he thought, you're not getting any younger here.

Face to the floor, Isaac army-crawled to the gap between the crashed barge and the deck. Now that he knew what to listen for, he could hear the quiet footfalls; a soft scrape, a rustle, a boot toe dragged. No boots were in his view, though. In slow, coordinated movements he brought himself to his feet and as softly as his suit would allow, stepped to the mouth of the crack. A quick glance around confirmed he was alone, but probably right around the corner there was a monster hovering to slash and hack him to pieces.

His best bet for survival would be to move from cover to cover and avoid any direct confrontations. He could use his stasis and TK as offensive tools and there were plenty of sharp, pointy objects scattered around that he could throw to spear the Necromorphs. If he was fast, stealthy, and most of all, lucky, he might be able to find the repair workshop without dying first. Ellie had sent him the coordinates of the workshop, so he activated his waypoint. It glimmered blue and curved in the correct direction. What he could remember of the bay suggested that the workshop would be located back behind the towers of stacked product.

Creeping forward, he came to another junction. Before him on the open deck were a few toppled box units, forklifts, and a smattering of those hasty barricades. Also, twitchers. Loads of them. He counted a dozen before he quit because the number unnerved him. He might be able to duck and wind his way unnoticed, but the twitchers paced around in irregular patterns. The Marker might also signal them to his position just to fuck with him. Would it be better if he circumvented the entire area?

No. He couldn't waste any time. Sure it would be foolhardy, but straight forward was the quickest path to his destination. What he needed was a distraction, something to draw the twitchers from this area enough that he could cross. As he mulled over his options, he lifted his eyes to the ceiling of the bay. Built into the overarching ceiling were hanging tracks along which oversized motorized claws moved to aid the dock workers in stacking and transporting materials. One had lowered almost completely to the deck. As far as Isaac dared, he leaned around his corner. A stack of loose containers were heaped right in the path of the claw several meters away.

His stomach jittered with nerves as he checked to see if the claw had been locked down. Up near the base, he saw the absence of any locking mechanism. It seemed as if the claw was free-standing. Before he could talk himself out of it, he TK'd the claw and yanked it into motion along its track toward the stack. Effortlessly, the claw cranked into self-perpetuating motion as it swung forward and bore down on the metal and plastic units with a calamitous crash. Isaac had already slipped into hiding as several twitchers jerked past in that freaky stop-and-go stride.

Once the coast was clear, he booked it further across the docking bay, his senses hyper-aware of his surroundings and a cold film coating his skin under the sec-suit. At any point, this little situation could blow sideways. The twitchers still hemmed and hawed behind him, but he could sense a smattering of them up ahead between the enormous bundled pallets of what looked like raw black mineral from the Rhea's mines. He had to slow down, take his time, check his corners…shit.

Scythes spread and lethally arched, a twitcher lurched out in the narrow aisle between a sloppy barricade and a barge flipped to its side. Isaac didn't think. He put the Necromorph in stasis and TK'd the next nearest thing into the monster's face. The blue energy kept the twitcher in a slow-motion fall as Isaac ran by. He had to keep moving; to stop would mean being swarmed and dying. He couldn't afford to die. The twitcher's absurdly aglow eye burned into him and it would probably shriek a warning to the others that tirelessly roamed the aisles. His best bet- -get the hell away as fast as he could manage.

Like he'd thought, the twitcher let loose an ear-splitting shriek when the stasis wore off. Isaac veered to the side to keep out of sight. Necromorphs had the tendency to ignore what they couldn't see or hear. Scent had never been an issue, at least in Isaac's experience. Regardless, he picked up his pace and checked the waypoint for directions, fully expecting to be headed in the correct path. Dammit. He'd overshot a turn.

Enraged howls, plus the stomp of boots on metal interrupted his confusion. The noise deafened him, surrounded him; they were getting closer. Survival took precedent. He would continue to head forward and if the chance presented itself, he'd double back. Speedily, he dodged further between the layered pallets set in neat, extensive rows. Just as he turned a corner, he caught a bright blue glow out of the corner of his eye; he flung himself sideways and missed being skewered by two twitchers. Rolling to a stop, back against a pallet, he gave himself enough room to temporarily solve his problem with stasis. But stasis would not last forever.

He scrambled to his feet and fled further down the pallet rows, the cacophonous roars and tramp of the twitchers pressing in around him, filling his head so that he could barely think above the commotion. At this moment, he'd give anything for a rabbit hole to slide into, a tunnel where he could wait out the twitchers' search-and-destroy mode. Somewhere to wait for everything to quiet down a bit.

Surely, none such place existed. Isaac jogged on, a stitch jabbing his side with each labored breath he drew. He couldn't outrun them as much as he knew he had to. And the time for running away ended when a group of twitchers streaked to the floor like comets from the tops of the pallets. Too many for him to stasis at once, and too many for him to use TK on effectively. He was hemmed in on both sides.

Once on their feet, their bodies swung forward in that erratic, jerked sprint. But leaning haphazardly in a nook between two pallets was a lone fuel canister. Kinesis picked it up and launched it at the group bearing down on him. The explosion enveloped the twitchers, melting and burning their skin and muscles to dark char. Even as they collapsed into death throes, others lurched to fill their ranks.

Deftly, Isaac juked sideways into another narrow aisle, searching for any escape from the inevitable swarm. Their noise had reached an apex that deafened him enough to drown out his heavy footfalls- -a victorious, blood-thirsty roar that signaled the beginning of the end.

When he zigzagged into another aisle, he did not see the armored corpses sprawled out across the way. In his haste, he could not stop his forward momentum. He tripped over the legs of one of the bodies and crashed hard to his hands and knees. It took him a precious second to shake off the fall. Enough time for the twitchers to close the slim margin of breathing space he had. Ahead of him, a phalanx of the Necromorphs crouched, shoulder to shoulder, eyeballing him with their harsh electronic vision. Behind him, a few others were a moment away from his position. Surrounded, out numbered, and run down like prey, he was done for.

His audio clicked on. "The Marker wants you to know that it's winning." Nicole's voice was soft, but steady. "Show it, Isaac. It hasn't won yet. There is still hope. You are still alive."

Fuck it. She was right. He wasn't going down without a fight. At his elbow, almost as if they had been set there for him to find, were a pulse rifle and a satchel. Tucked in a few pockets lined in a neat row on the outside of the satchel were several grenades. All that fear, all that anxiety receded. He might survive this after all.

In the few spare seconds he had, he noticed where the dead R-Sec had decided to make their last stand. A grille had been half-jimmied open in the floor. His rabbit hole. Kneeling, Isaac ripped it from its bolts with a monstrous strength bred from adrenaline and stubbornness. He used kinesis to launch it into the onslaught of twitchers hard enough to stagger the front rank and used up his stasis on the ones nearest. He'd slowed them down, for a couple seconds, at least.

The shaft was dark and endless, but he'd rather take two broken legs over being torn asunder. Then he kicked the pulse rifle into the hole. His hands unclipped two of the grenades, thumbs hooked the pins and flicked. Twitchers were everywhere. Blue streaks and the thunderous roar and their large hulks pressed in on him from all sides, a whisper's margin between him and fatal, agonizing destruction. He tossed the grenades aside, tucked his elbows, and in one brave movement, hopped clear of solid flooring to plummet feet first into the shaft.

Free-falling downwards put Isaac's stomach somewhere in the vicinity of his throat and he had enough time to wonder if jumping into the shaft had really been a good idea. Too late. After a short descent, his feet came into contact with some sludgy material. His knees collapsed and he toppled to his side, the material jiggled and gave under his weight. It was too dark to see what he landed in. And then the grenades detonated. Both sound and force of the explosion pushed through him, heat and a low vibration he felt in his lungs and as suddenly as it started, it was finished.

Silence descended. Groping in the dark, Isaac found the light he'd clipped to his suit ages ago and clicked it on. The shaft had widened in circumference as he fell and to his repulsion, he'd landed feet-first into rampant corruption, which had plugged up the shaft with tissue. A stink filtered into his helmet, one that he'd gotten inherently used to, but the reminder of it brought the smell back in full force. To the side, the pulse rifle lay undamaged. He stood upright in the muck, flicking it off his hands, grimacing under the visor, and high-stepped over to the rifle. Under fifty rounds remained. Well, better than nothing.

"Ellie, can you read me?" He opened up a hololink, needing visual confirmation that she was alive. Safe. "Ellie?"

Static shot through the connection, but it linked to Ellie, who leaned forward. Her beautiful, earnest face eased his paranoia. "Isaac! You're okay! I've been waiting for your contact, thinking the worst."

"Are you safe?"

"Safe as I can be." She tilted her head. "Where are you? You don't seem to be on the dock floor."

"I jumped down a hole. Can you bring up schematics? I can't climb back up."

He watched as she swiveled in the chair and began typing. She said, "I felt an explosion from here. Did you have anything to do with that?"

"The place is infested with twitchers," he said. "I nearly got swarmed."

Over the hololink, her face crumpled under her emotions. "Isaac…I didn't see…I didn't know!"

Then he understood that she blamed herself for his situation. How could he adequately express that he bore her no ill-temper for something she had no control over?

"This was a stupid idea." Her self-loathing was evident, now. "I should've talked you out of it! I should've come with you! I should've…done something!"

Isaac felt her conflicted emotions like a weight bearing down on his own soul. He shook his head. "Stop. Regret has no place here. You can regret later, but not now. I need you, Ellie. I need your help. So can you help me?"

Her thin shoulders slumped and she seemed to gather her strength because when she looked up, her face was lined with hard determination. "Yes, of course. I have to bail you out of your messes, don't I?" A rhetorical question. "To your immediate right is another access hatch. You seem to be right on level with it, somehow. Think you can get to that?"

He stared at the corruption that stuck to his sec-suit. "I'll let you know."

Crossing the mucky corruption proved more difficult than he assumed. First, each step he took sunk him knee-deep in membrane that when he hauled his leg up and out, made an evil slurping noise that revolted him. Disgusted, he maneuvered his body to his right, but, of course, corruption had seeped up the walls of the shaft as well. Pressing his hands to the rotten flesh, he felt for the correct panel. After a minute of sinking his hands to the wrist in the foulness, his fingers touched the outline of a lever.

He was able to twist the handle, but he had to muscle the entire hatch open; the corruption was thin enough that the flesh tore, and sickeningly bled as he strained to pull the hatch. Along his back and shoulders, he felt the sinew bunch and contract under the exertion, but he didn't relent and for more leverage, braced his foot. His relentlessness paid off when, at last, the hatch broke free of the corruption and swung open. He did not like what he saw when he leaned to peer in.

Whatever the duct had been, it was now almost entirely a conduit of corruption. He signaled Ellie on the audio. "I'm looking inside the duct. Ellie, it's not pretty."

"It'll go on for a few meters before emptying out into an access hall. You can follow that access hall to a ladder that should lead you up to the docking bay floor. Looks like it'll be a straight shot to the workshop from there."

"Thanks. I'll check in once I'm there."

He closed out the link because he had to concentrate on not hurling at the thought of his next step. He didn't want to think about what he might find at the end of the duct, if it was sealed shut from corruption or if the weight of infected tissue would crush him, assimilate him…no.

Don't think like that. One step at a time. He set the pulse rifle in the duct first. Then robotically, he put out his hands and arms and slid them into the clogged hole. Heat radiated off the corruption, humid and saturating, and he was reminded of Xandra's blood seeping in through the synthetic fiber of his gloves. There was a beat…a pulse or a low throb that he felt surrounded by, nearly undetectable, but present. Was it the Marker's heart? He shook the thought- -a clot had formed in his throat- -and he ducked down his head to push it into the gunk. Be calm, he told his stomach when it soured, be calm.

Again, he detached himself and saw his actions from far back, watched as he shoved the pulse rifle ahead, dug his fingers into gelatinous tissue and drew himself half-meter by half-meter into the enclosed, moist artery. Juice flowed over his visor, a slick composition that he swore leaked into his sec-suit. His gorge rose. Keep going. Shove the pulse rifle ahead. Dig in your fingers. Concentrate on your aching back and shoulder muscles. Keep going. Even though his suit gave him oxygen, he felt so constricted, so claustrophobic that he wanted to scream. Thick, suffocating fumes blocking up his lungs, and there was no escape, no escape…

He found he was gasping for air, nearly retching and paralyzed. His brain simply wouldn't let him go forward. He was going to die.

The audio crackled; Ellie's voice cut through. "Isaac, I was thinking about when this is all over, we should go to Earth together. I mean, I've never been there before and I think it would be nice to go with someone who lived there. You could take me to your hometown, or…" and she continued on, her words unimportant, but her serene voice soothing and cadent.

Some of his strength returned. Listening to her tamed that horrendous crush of anxiety and he was able to continue to pull forward, wiggling through where the duct became narrower, and finally coming to the other side. Ellie continued to chatter without stop, a songbird that broke the void inside him. To his relief, the hatch had been stripped from the wall and he didn't care, he used a few shots from the pulse rifle to weaken the film that covered his escape. When he hauled out his body, covered in viscous fluid, he landed limply to the floor and panted, exhausted. As he caught his breath, Ellie had fallen silent.

"I'm there," he told her, his voice cracked. "I'm through."

She didn't respond. In his fatigued state, he didn't press her, and gathered his energy for the few precious minutes he had to do so. He'd come to a rounded area. What wasn't covered with skin tissue and similar growth was the normal metal panels and wires that spread like webs under the docking bay. The access tunnel wasn't too enclosed, but he saw from where he lay that spots were overgrown. Bright lights tracked down the hall. A mournful groaning drew his attention from somewhere down the tunnel. He'd get there soon enough.

Five minutes might've passed when he culled enough motivation to get back to his feet and hoist up the pulse rifle. Shoulders cracked when he rolled them, exhaustion a burden he would bear until this whole nightmare was through, and took his first steps into the access hall. Whatever groaned was near, but corruption obstructed his view any further than a few meters ahead. Then he came to a turn and witnessed a moment he would never forget.

A man sat on the floor, his legs spread out toward the middle of the hall. He wasn't old, thirtyish would be Isaac's guess, with medium hair and a cracked pair of glasses perched on a straight nose. Beside him on the wall, or rather, in the wall, was the torso of a woman. Her legs and back had been seamlessly absorbed into the invasive corruption. She had on her jumpsuit. Enough showed that Isaac could make out the company's logo across the chest. Blood ran in rivulets from open sores on her arms, dripped from her mouth, and her clouded eyes were fixed on some point beyond. Her black hair was loose, matted with gore, and it was from her throat that Isaac had heard the groan. That was the only semblance of life.

"Don't worry, Sally-baby," the man said. He had her pale, limp hand in his, pressed against his grey cheek. "You'll be fine as soon as help arrives. You'll be just fine. Hang in there."

Swallowing, Isaac stepped over the man's legs, not daring to disturb whatever thin hold on sanity the man clasped. But the man must've gained clarity because a second later, Isaac's wrist was grasped and tugged. Isaac twisted his arm, but the grip didn't relent; it was a vise. Awkwardly, he stopped and with a grimace, crouched beside the man. On the stitched-in nametag affixed over the breast-pocket was R. Tate in neat script. His job title had been Assistant Bay Manager. Isaac really wished he hadn't seen even those small pieces of information.

"Officer! Officer," Tate said in a voice surprisingly bass, "Sally is…sick. She's sick. And needs help. Can you? Can you…" He trailed off.

Isaac swallowed, setting aside the pulse rifle. He put his free hand on the Tate's, which continued to clutch Isaac's forearm with steel fingers. "I'll notify a medical team."

"It's our anniversary today, did you know? We've been married ten years." Tate's eyes darted from side to side, lost in the madness. His words were conversational, but drawn-out and low. "Sally wants a baby. More than anything. She said she wanted a baby more than anything. Do you think she'll be okay?"

"She'll be fine," Isaac lied. "I'll link to an EMT. They'll be able to fix her up good as new."

"Good as…" Tate licked his cracked lips. "Good as new?"

Then Tate was struck with hysterics. He flung his head back and manically laughed, laughed, laughed until tears streamed down his cheeks, until a horrible choke gurgled up from his throat. A spurt of blood burst from his nose. Isaac watched on, the hand on his wrist tightening, as Tate convulsed, eyes rolling backwards to show the white, and saliva mixing with the blood that gushed from his nose. Moments later, Tate's body slumped, motionless.

Gently, Isaac braced the head, lowering Tate to his side so that he rested at his wife's feet, had they still existed. And as Isaac thought it couldn't possibly get any worse, Tate's eyes snapped forward, as if he'd been a child who remembered one last, important task to do before bed. The grey eyes focused on Isaac, lucid, and Tate's face relaxed. Immediately, Isaac felt recognized, familiar, like he'd been an old friend come to visit.

The dying man drew a deep, gargled breath. "Thank you." And a moment later, death rattled from the drowned lungs of R. Tate. His hand that had gripped Isaac's wrist loosened and it fell to the floor with a quiet thud when Isaac removed his own hand. He wasn't sure how he felt about witnessing Mr. and Mrs. Tate's deaths. A sliver of a chill winged down his spine. The access hall felt confined, too much like a tomb, and he picked up his pace.

Several minutes later, he came to a long hall. On the far end, spotlighted, was a mounted ladder, which gave Isaac much relief to see. He started towards it, but the lights dimmed and brightened, then flickered again until they cut off. In the semi-dark, he toggled the flashlight mounted on the pulse rifle.

"Ellie," he said over audio, "what's going on with the lights?" Static crackled the link. He tried again. "Ellie? You copy?"

She didn't reply. Cold dread settled a heavy weight in the pit of his stomach as he fairly sprinted to the ladder and when he realized he couldn't take the pulse rifle with him, he dumped it to the side. Climbing the ladder was a matter of coordinating his stiff limbs into mechanical movements until he reached the top. The lever was no match for him when he yanked it and popped open the hatch. Immediately Isaac realized that he would have to return for the pulse rifle. As he peered into the field of utter darkness, he saw the blue comet-tails of reverse stasis and the haunting orange glow of spec-ops helmets.

Power to the docking bay had been cut, and as he lowered the lid to descend the ladder, he remembered that Ellie had connected her suit to the communication lines. Was it possible for her RIG to power down? Even as the question crossed his mind, he discarded it. RIGs ran on the electromagnetic energy generated by the human body. Her RIG would have power, but she had said the comms system needed a reboot and that would prevent her from using RIGlink until the reboot was finished.

His feeling of dread was a ten-ton lodestone, instead of a weight, as his paranoia brought him to a horrible conclusion. The fucking Marker. It had finally launched its attack, had waited until he was furthest away from Ellie. It had shut off the power because it knew Ellie would be vulnerable; more so since he was practically at the other side of the motherfucking moon. She had already shown some weakness under the Marker's potent signal and since he was away from her, it would be a forceful, direct attack.

Ellie was in grave danger. Because he'd been blind. Because he'd been stupid and hasty.

Isaac picked up the pulse rifle to cradle its familiar heft in his arms. Ellie was non-negotiable. He had to get back to Ellie and if he had to, he would bring the full fury of whatever weapons he could lay his hands on.


A/N: As usual, the next chapter will be posted Mar. 16th. See you then! =)