Tails' fingers shook as they traversed the keys on the terminal in front of him. Adrenalin coursed through his veins even as he perused the shipboard computer. Everything was a mess, be it transportation, communication, or life support. There were too many errors to count and critical malfunctions happening across the entire ship. His list of things to fix had grown immensely long, but the kit was no longer concerned wit his job. Instead he only cared about two things, finding Cosmo and getting the hell off the Ishimura.

Hacking into the ship's core system in such a frazzled state was not easy, but thankfully manageable. There were no administrators around to elevate his privileges, so Tails took it upon himself to take care of that. Without admin privileges he would be walking around blind in a ghost ship. At least now he would be able to talk to the computers.

A quick analysis of Isaac's progress didn't yield anything positive. He had managed to clear the debris on the tram system, but the core server responsible for running the transportation had been fried. Without the a train, it would be nearly impossible to get to the more vital locations of the ship such as the bridge or engine rooms and most importantly, Cosmo.

The two-tailed fox couldn't help but bring up her files. The security around her personal files melted away. It didn't feel right looking through her diaries, but he had to know if she was okay or where he might find her.

"I'm scared," her voice trembled in the video. "It's been days since we lost communication with the USG and now all these strange reports of disappearances." Cosmo paused for along second struggling to find a level of composure, "The Unitologist here are spreading rumors of aliens on board… I - I don't know what to think anymore."

When have those nut jobs ever been right about anything…except for this, he allowed. Whatever was onboard was obviously neither human nor Mobian, making alien an acceptable answer for the time being.

"For now I am just going to stay locked up in my lab. No one ever comes down to the hydroponics section anyway."

"Hydroponics," Tails whispered to himself. "That's where I need…"

Something rattled in the ceiling, cutting short any thought that was not survival related. Reaching for his plasma cutter, the kit slowly backed away from the terminal, his head tilted upwards searching for the source of commotion. Tails fumbled for the key to pause the video, no doubt the sound had brought the unwanted attention.

The only door that would get him anywhere useful was at the other end of the hall, aside from that he was trapped. Even as he inched slowly along the walkway, the sound of additional footsteps intensified.

"How many of these things are their?" he asked aloud, fully aware that he may not want to know the answer.

A grate fell to the floor in front of him after having been forced free from the ventilation system above, where another pair of red eyes glared at him. Rather than stay and fight, the two-tailed fox knew a bad situation when he saw one and opted for running instead.

His boots clanked loudly on the steel plate flooring, sliding slightly as he rounded a corner at speed. Tails could hear the fiend behind him, clambering out of the vent. The elevator was now in sight, but the chances of it actually being ready in time were slim to none. By the way things sounded there were at least three of those things behind him now and with plasma cutter at half charge he worried about his ability to deal with them the way he had the first.

Raising his weapon the kit took aim at the control panel next to the lift. A high energy arch would fry the whole system and lock everything down except for the doors, which would open in the event of such an emergency. Upon impact, the blue ball of super heated gas erupted the terminal and almost immediately the abyss of a darkened elevator shaft became accessible.

The next part was a gamble to say the least. Tails blindly leapt head long into the darkness trusting his instincts. The cool stale shadows consumed him at once as he began to fall, but not before he turned himself upward.

Kinetic tethers were useful for moving obscenely large objects such as coupling links or stuck elevators. However, if the tether point was locked into place like he now knew the lift to be, it made for a halfway decent grappling hook. Tails pointed his wrist upwards into a black he could not see into, hoping with all his might that Isaac had gone up and not down.

Immediately, the kit felt himself jerk to halt as the tether connected. Wasting to time he began to real himself in as fast as the device would allow. Grabbing hold of the bottom of the lift Tails kicked open the service vent and pulled himself inside just as the kinetic battery died on his RIG.

Only the emergency lights illuminated the interior, but that was more than enough to see his next problem. This abomination appeared to be different than the others. It was shorter, stouter and had claws well past the size of the kit's liking. Much like a badger, it lumbered swiping at the two-tailed fox blindly. Ducking low, Tails rolled past the fleshy beast, out of the lift, and into the corridor. Now was his chance to trap it. Fumbling for the release switch inside the elevator door, the kit tried desperately to depress the button, but his had was too big inside the RIG gloves. At once he yanked it off, this time finding the button just as the fiend reached for him with dagger like nails.

The result was grotesque. Tails only barely managed to remove his hand before the doors snapped shut, severing his enemy at the waist. More worrying was this thing's undying resolve to kill him. Even with its legs gone it pulled itself towards him with just its arms. Raising his foot high, Tails brought the steel sole of his boot down on the creature's skull. The crunch made him cringe as what felt like a brittle chalk balloon deflated leaking out a jelly that only vaguely resembled brain matter.

"Alien is too convenient of an excuse," the kit decided before kneeling down next to the now deceased thing.

Returning his missing glove to his hand, the two tailed fox ran a finger through the remains. He may not have been a doctor, but he knew well enough that all of these parts were eerily close to what a Mobian should have.

Screeching metal returned the kit to his feet, causing him to turn around just in time to see Isaac ride by on a tram. The bluish glow of his RIG suit was unmistakable, but the man never turned in time to notice his newly arrived coworker.

Running to the window the kit pounded on the blast proof glass in futility. He did not want to be alone in all this. "Isaac!" Tails screamed knowing full well he would be heard by no one but the monsters aboard this dying vessel.

Realizing it was too late, he became more concerned with how he could catch up to his compatriot, and quickly.

"How did you manage to get all this working, Isaac?" the fox asked himself looking around at the ravaged room.

Isaac was capable by all accounts, but for one person this was at least a day's work. Walking up to the server, Tails smiled at the man's handiness. He had hastily affixed a new control board and run the power direct from the service panel.

"Not ideal and prone to surges, but it will work I suppose," the kit mused as he pecked at the keys on the terminal. Calling himself a train would take but a few moments.

"Isaac, do you read?" came over the short wave com.

The voice was gabled in static, but it sounded like Captain Hammond.

"We need you to restore communications. From the bridge I should be able to get in touch with USG."

"Sir!" the kit begged, hoping someone would hear him. "I'm here!"

But no one responded and the feed faded away, and with it much of the kit's optimism.

"Damn it," the fox cursed as he palmed the lock on the bulkhead to the tram station.

It was frustrating to feel so helpless. Tails had wanted nothing more than to see Cosmo, and low and behold the perfect opportunity arose. He should have known better that something so good came at such a steep cost.

The train grinded to a halt while the doors hissed in an opening celebration. The quietness of such a vast ship was finally starting to sink into his fur, creating an uneasy itch that made everything that wasn't an unpleasant silence an adrenalin-inducing nightmare.

Stepping aboard, Tails went right for the train's computer to check on Isaac's stop. It appears that the man had set his sights on the flight deck, more than likely with hopes of accessing the communication arrays.

Hydroponics was only one stop away, hopefully he could swing by, find Cosmo and meet up with Isaac before anything worse happened. However, as was becoming normal for this trip, the kit had thought too soon. Spotting the reflection in the glass just in time, the two-tailed fox stepped left and out of the way of a slash that would have cleaved him in two. Instead, his enemy's blade like arm became buried in the control panel and the tram immediately began to speed up in response, accelerating uncontrollably through the ships interior.

Tails reached for the emergency stop leaver, watching with despair as his stop came and went.

"Why?" he asked aloud before turning back to the thing hell bent on killing him.

Removing itself from the computer system, the creature turned toward him again, this time running with all of its might. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. Thankfully the blade glanced off his armor, but not before it pushed him into one of the tram's window, which shattered under such a sudden impact.

Tails once again felt himself tumbling through the air as the fiend dragged him out the opening into the nothingness. At its highest point, the fall was no more than a hundred feet from the tram to the deck below. In no way was that survivable, even in RIG suit, it just meant he had less time to think.

There was no time to scream or fight the creature on clawing at his back, only react. Reaching for the stasis module attached to his glove, Tails turned it on himself. The thought alone nearly made him puke, but it was the only way. As the emergency lighting on the approaching deck came into view, the kit pulled the trigger.

All recruits were required to be zapped with stasis as a point to illustrate why the tool was not to be used for pranks. The technology would quite literally shut your body down while flooding your nerve endings with pain and disorientation. It was something no one ever repeated because when the affect wore off it was hard to come up with anything but slew of profanity, and that was if you managed not to turn up your lunch first.

At once his body went rigid and cold with a chilled fire that spread unendingly inside to out. Locked in paralysis, even for just a second or two felt like an eternity, but stasis was more than just paralysis. It locked its target loosely to the space around it canceling out nearly all active inertia acting on the object. Slowly his vision began to fade as his view narrowed to that of looking through binoculars made of drinking straws. Trying desperately to hold onto the world around him, Tails was finally pulled into the abyss of stasis.

Coughing the kit opened his head to a throbbing headache he never hoped to have again. As he tried to move, the two-tailed fox found himself embedded in the oozing corpse of the beast that had attacked him. Even after stalling his fall with stasis, the weight of his RIG suit had crushed the thing outright. Perhaps the creature had also ironically played a part in saving his life.

Tails quickly reached for the release on his helmet, rolling over to retch. The combined displeasure of having so recently come out of a stasis trip and being so thoroughly covered in the innards of an as of yet unidentified species had finally overcome him. The taste of bile lingered in his mouth as he continued to gasp for air.

"I'm alive," he reminded himself. "But where am I?" he asked aloud while struggling to his feet.

The sign to his right read "Crew Deck".

"How did I manage to make it all the way down here?"

Tails knew it didn't matter; he was as good as stuck until he got back to the upper levels, so he may as well take advantage of the situation. Pacing slowly over to a nearby terminal he pulled up the manifest for this section.

Perhaps Cosmo's quarters are here, the fox hoped.

When her name scrolled by on the list, the kit couldn't help but breath a small sigh of relief, luck finally haven taken his side. The corridors were as dim and dark as all the others forcing the kit use the light affixed to his USG standard issue sidearm. Pipes clanked in the distance while the hum of the fans in the vents washed out the occasional screech.

"This must be what hell is like," the kit suggested out loud, opting for a joke that no one but himself would hear.

Knocking on her door seemed too kind a gesture given the circumstance, yet he did it all the same.

"Cosmo," he whispered softly, "are you in there?"

The hatch was already slightly ajar, and Tails pushed his way inside when no response came. The sight that greeted him was not what he had been hoping for. Blood covered scratched and tattered walls. Down feathers from her pillows clung to the crimson substance while all of her possessions were scattered about carelessly. Walking up to her vanity, the kit picked up a photo of the two of them tucked into the frame of her mirror. The thought of their first date brought a smile to the fox's face, even despite the dire circumstances.

His eyes helplessly wandered to the strands of green mossy hair that rested on the counter. Picking them up, he longed to be able to run his paws through it again.

I need to find her… if it's not already too late.

After some relatively new interest, I promised a few of you that I would continue this story. Well, here it is. I have never written a crossover before, so I have no idea if I am doing it right, or this is what any of you were expecting when you asked for another chapter. I put this together a bit on the quick side, so there may be more mistakes than normal.

And yes, more characters are on the way soon, I just needed to finish setting the stage for a few things.

Would love feedback on this one. Any one have any suggestions on some cover art?

Cheers,

M.D