We'll make it to Remnant soon folks. I promise. We just have to get some basic backstory and more Isaac / Ellie reunion fluff, so we're on the same page, their isn't going to be any Isaac X Ellie subplot. It worked in Dead Space 2 really well, but it was really weak in Dead Space 3, I mean seriously, I feel like the writers had Ellie dump Isaac only so the could have Norton be a jackass. I also feel like if you'd been through the same shit both Isaac and Ellie had been through, you'd probably also be incapable of getting back with your Ex too. I also can't quite see how an Isaac/Ellie romance plot could fit in here. Also, new scene breaks! It's Post Extinction written in binary! let us begin...

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Both Isaac Clarke and Ellie Langford were stunned silent upon seeing the other still alive. Isaac was tempted to reach out, and gently touch their cheek, just to make sure she was real, Ellie had a similar desire. Keyword, similar. Ellie was aware how realistic marker-induced hallucinations were, while her mind remained free of 'Marker-Sickness', she had seen smaller, other hallucinations in the past. Telling the difference between what was real and what wasn't often was the difference between life and death. There was one good way to make sure.

Isaac was internally arguing with himself, entirely unsure what to do. He was pulled from his struggle when Ellie slapped him in the face, hard. Isaac recoiled from the hit, wincing from the pain. Dr. Hampton tensed up. Isaac groaned before saying, "Yeah, I probably deserved that, didn't I?"

"Just checking to make sure you're real," Ellie clarified, shaking her head, she continued, "last time I thought I saw you, it was a hallucination. That night, it was not fun."

Isaac winced rubbed the wound a little more. He had more than enough experience with intensely real hallucinations. He was getting painful, and unwanted flashbacks to the USG Ishimura.

He stood up, "And?"

Ellie nodded, "Okay, you're real."

Dr. Hampton let out the breath she was holding in. Isaac and Ellie were an odd couple in her mind.

With the awkward reunion out of the way, Dr. Hampton left Isaac and Ellie to catch up, the first thing that Isaac and Ellie could agree on, was that maybe re-entering a relationship beyond friends was a bad idea. After all, the first time it ended because Isaac couldn't let go of the past, and the second time because he'd fallen from the atmosphere of Tau Volantis. It also didn't help either of them that they'd both had been forced to move on after the apocalypse. At that point, it felt like they couldn't be anything other than friends, lest they tempt the universe to throw more horrors in their general direction. That didn't stop them from being close friends, however. Isaac and Ellie often found themselves bonding over coffee at a small cafe, they swapped horror stories about their travels over the past few months, but Ellie was really curious about one thing: how the hell did Issac and Carver survive and escape Tau Volantis? She asked, and Isaac tried to answer, but alas...

"So what your saying is that, neither you or Carver have any bloody clue how you survived falling from the atmosphere, so much so that you both couldn't figure out if you were dead or alive?"

"Yeah, pretty much," Isaac said.

Ellie scratched her head, there were so many holes in that story, and possibly no conceivable answer to them. It just, happened, and eventually, they found themselves here, on board the USG Spirit of Hope. Isaac didn't want to linger on it for too long.

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Two months had passed since Isaac and Ellie reunited, and Ellie joined a scavenger squad in that time. She spoke with Isaac about it, and he was understandably nervous about that choice. Friends or something else, Ellie was the only reason Isaac had too keep going, and Ellie knew it. She'd taken time to help Isaac relax, and assure him she'd be fine.

Her job on the scavenger crew was to find raw material and bring it back to the flotilla. Particularly, the USG Spirit of Hope. From there the salvage was sorted out and spread across the fleet, hydroponic parts went to farming ships, scrap metal went to manufacturing stations, and medical equipment stayed on the USG Spirit of Hope. Ellie's favorite part of the job, was that fact that every scavenger got to keep one thing from their search. Ellie's favorite thing to collect, was suit schematics. Scavenging missions were frequent, and after two months, Ellie had a sizable collection of different suit schematics in her 'home'.

Ellie occasionally sold weaker schematics at the store fore extra credits, but kept the good ones for herself. She kept them in a box in her 'home', a sizable shuttle with a bedroom, a bathroom, and came equipped with four escape pods. that she kept docked on the hull, with one way in or out to the ship. It cost her a bit, but to her, it was worth the privacy it gave her. After all, she still had a hard time trusting people.

Isaac had continued to busy himself in one way or another, if he wasn't doing repairs on the engineering deck, he was either spending time with Ellie, or creating weapons and tools to sell to scavengers or civil protection. Ellie, Carver, and Hampton had come to his apartment multiple times and had seen his creations. Some were basic, but most were completely absurd. Isaac was prompted to make more absurd weapons, because he could sell them for more.

He'd admit, though, some of these weapons were ridiculous, even by his strange standards. For example, for one order, he had made a standard pulse rifle with a steel-cutting plasma saw on the end, a rivet-shotgun that doubled as a RPG launcher and had a habit of lighting things on fire, and, his personal favorite, the heavy seeker rifle that shot acidic bullets with a retractable hydraulic scythe-blade. Why the hell anybody needed a scythe on an seeker rifle was anyone's guess, it was damn effective, once the wielder managed to get the hang of swinging it without hurting themselves.

Isaac lived in an isolated apartment on the far end of the civilian sector, partially hiding himself from society. Isolation was both a good, and bad thing in his mind. People would only be problematic, if Isaac wanted something done, he did it himself.

The first three months on the Spirit of Hope had been rough for him. Especially after the harsh life style from scavenging off of wrecked ships. He couldn't even remember the first month, except for being slapped sober by a coworker or waking up on the medical deck. It got easier to live with both himself and the horrid nightmares after that.

For the second month, Isaac spent most of it wracking his brain for a reason he'd survived that long. He'd practically lived on the medical deck. It has around this time he actually properly met the doctor who'd been working on his case. At first he just kept wondering why Dr. Hampton was even bothering, he'd already lived when he could, and he'd lost everything. He felt more like a shell than an actual man,but, Dr. Hampton was damn good at her job. For the next three weeks, Hampton put her psychiatric skills to good use, and had convinced Isaac to give life on the flotilla a chance. She'd also started to become friends with the unlucky engineer. By the end of the second month, Isaac was living in his semi-isolated apartment, visits to the medical deck for regular psychiatric appointments were still going on.

For the third month, Isaac spent it trying to find some notion of a normal, and stable life. Eventually, he settled into a routine of mindlessly working on the engineering deck until the other senior engineers started playing a round of blackjack, than heading out and either going home to work on projects, or going to the medical deck if he had a scheduled appointment.

If Isaac was being honest with himself, he couldn't even remember what his life was like before he'd been thrown into a world of chaos that involved Markers that turned the dead into unstoppable mutants and drove the living insane, where he was hounded by governments and cults, and where he didn't have to battle moon-sized monsters. Now that he had the stable and normal(ish) life he wanted back, it felt, strange. Like he was living in a distant memory.

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Carver had taken to life on the USG Spirit of Hope relatively easily. While he and Isaac had survived by scavenging, before being taken to the fleet, Isaac gave him some tips on how to handle the hallucinations. Like Isaac, when he came aboard the USG Spirit of Hope, he had also slunk back into depression. Unlike Isaac, the medical staff had an easier time pulling him out of it, taking only one month, instead of three.

Once Carver's mental state stabilized, he was offered a position in the Civil Protection Force, he took it. The next two month may have kept him busy, but it was relatively smooth sailing for him. He lived on the main apartment block, and frequently visited Isaac, usually on the orders of his psychiatrist, as Carver was one of the few authority figures on the ship Isaac actually trusted fully.

With all that, when Carver did get any spare time, he often spent it bonding with his fellow soldiers in the Force. Today, he'd been in a friendly argument with his squad over what the best upgrade for the Pulse Rifle was. That was, until they were told an unknown scavenger ship had been given permission to dock in the hanger. They had claimed to possess "vital resources" to the well being of the population of the ship.

And so, John Carver, and a small squad of troops were going down to the hanger to inspect and ensure that, whatever it was that they were bringing on board, that it was safe. Carver and one other stood guard by the hanger door, their orders were to close the door in the event that the others walk into an ambush. The ship in question had landed minutes earlier, and was awaiting the platoon of soldiers before they unloaded.

The troops surrounded the exit airlock to the ship, and, raising their Pulse Rifles, gave the order to open the airlock.

And were immediately bombarded by high-velocity Seeker Rifle rounds.

Carver and the other guard turned around to see the other soldiers fall dead under the spray of bullets. He turned quickly and smashed the lock-down switch. In seconds, all the blast doors leading out of the hanger slammed shut. Carver opened a secured channel on his RIG to communicate with HQ. "Sir, we got bandits in the hanger, I repeat, we got..."

"Carver, you might wanna take a look at this."

Carver, turned to his fellow soldier, who was looking through a blast window into the hanger. He looked through the glass, and his heart stopped. The bandits, weren't actually bandits. They didn't come to steal resources, or to take control of the ship. They were Unitologists, and they were unloading the most dangerous object known to man, a Red Marker, into the hanger.

Carver opened up another channel to the central hanger control tower, which had a full view of the hanger. Once Carver had open communication with the operators, he practically roared one order, "VENT THE FUCKING HANGER INTO SPACE! NOW!"

The tower controllers were scrambling to do just that. They started the moment the marker became visible. Their task was made more difficult by the fact that the Unitologists were firing at them with seeker rifles. The window into the bay had all but disappeared under the constant gunfire. It silenced for a second, but the controllers stayed down, attempting to feel their way across the controls. Until one built up the courage to stand up and look down. Their heart sank as they said, "Uh, guys?"

The others stood up and saw what their comrade was seeing. The Seeker Rifles had been put down, and in their place, the Unitologists were pointing rocket launchers at the booth. Everyone froze in place right as the rockets came flying at them. The last thing they all felt was the intensity as the explosive projectiles destroyed their workplace, and them along with it.

Carver witnessed the whole ordeal, powerless to stop it, and to stop the Marker. Every ship in the fleet had been given technology to block a Marker signal from the outside, but if a Marker was on board, containment was an absolute nightmare. Through the window, he could see the Unitologists release infector Necromorphs onto both the bodies of the soldiers and themselves. Carver re-opened the channel back to HQ, and as he and the other soldier ran as fast as they could for the tram, he practically screamed the situation through his RIG.

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Isaac and Ellie were sitting at a table outside a cafe, bonding over some coffee when the deck's alarm lights and klaxons went off. The two stood up in confusion, looking around to see that the rest of the deck had gone still. A voice came over the loud speaker. "Attention all inhabitants of the USG Spirit of Hope, this is the captain speaking. A Red Marker has been brought on board the ship, and as such, I am declaring an abandon ship while the treat is contained. All able-bodied men and women arm themselves and quickly evacuate toward hanger bay three."

The two looked at each other in horror. And then, all hell broke loose on board the USG Spirit of Hope.

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I'M NOT DEAD! OR UN-DEAD! And this fic is not abandoned. I've just gotta work on improving my work ethic. The good news is that now since I've finished school for the time being, I've got the time to put effort into my ongoing projects. This fic, A RWBYxMass Effect crossover comic on DeviantArt, and Adventure Extraordinaires, also on DeviantArt, as well as a draft for a novel I intend to publish in the future. If you wish to check either of those out, the RWBYxMass Effect comic is called Destiny's Ascension, and my DeviantArt name is EmeraldArtist95
For those of you who can't wait for "team Dead Space" to get to remnant and battle Grimm and Necromorphs, don't worry, I'll isekai them to Remnant next chapter. And unlike some other fics, I'll actually have a reason for it as opposed to saying, "They ded lol, enjoy being on a different planet and inexplicably alive!"
That would be un-enjoyable and stupid.