Chapter 2 : Intensive Care

Well, there I was, on the Bridge of the Ishimura, right after escaping a necromorph ambush... right after losing Kendra... But I knew that if I wanted to stay alive and complete the mission I couldn't panic... How foolish I was... But then, I went out of my hiding spot, an elevator I was able to lock myself into, to find the necromorphs were gone. By the way, this "necromorphs" were the monstrosities we were fighting, and their name was given from some doctor, Kyne I think his name was, in a video log, so I adopted it, for lack of a better term to describe the monsters.

As I arrived back at the Captain's Nest, I managed to see Isaac had arrived at the Science/Medical Deck...

- Isaac? Are you there? - I saw he had a different helmet, and wondered if he had upgraded his RIG, since it was bulkier – We were attacked! Kendra's gone! One minute she was there, then... I can't believe I lost her. We can still do this. Get me the Captain's RIG codes and we'll find Nicole. – I tried to motivate him, since morale IS a very important thing – Looks like the crew barricaded the door to the emergency wing. You'll have to blow through it to get to the morgue. Get some thermite from Medical Storage, and a shock pad from Zero-G therapy.

I tried to tell him to be careful, but the video slowly turned into static, and the only thing I managed to do was to complain about it, right before it cut out. Also, I felt somewhat guilty for making him go to the morgue, because if Kendra was right in her assumption of the monsters being the crew, I thought they'd be able to transform the corpses, and the morgue was surely full of them, since the Captain was an Unitologist and in a report there was something about picking up the corpses of all the murders and suicides were committed in the few weeks before the Ishimura arrived in Aegis VII... some sort of craziness that expanded after they found something down there... But I was getting distracted, so I looked at his status, and saw him entering the Research wing, and after a few steps, the quarantine activating... I had to admit it... he was very good, and he only had a Plasma Cutter, which ironically proved to be more useful than my own Pulse Rifle when you had to cut limbs...

As he entered what looked like a... baby lab... I got readings of a scientific there, another survivor. But when I looked at Isaac's monitor again, I saw the survivor losing his title, as what looked like a baby necromorph - God, that was gruesome, a baby, not even born! - ripped his head off after launching some kind of spike at his hand, from a tentacle... I prayed for Isaac's well-being again.

After some of those things attacked him to no avail, as Isaac cut off their tentacles, he finally managed to get the thermite. As I was about to comm him, I heard a few stomps of something very heavy on the ceiling... right on the Bridge.

- Alright, that thermite you picked up should be able to melt through the barricade, use the shock pad to ignite it. Hope I can hold this position, I can hear something big moving out there.

Now I was genuinely worried, and I tried to venture out of the Nest, to find out what happened to Kendra, and to explore a little as well as to look for some ammo, since I was running out of it – not as if I came here with much... it was supposed to be a communications blackout, for God's sake!

When I finished downloading Isaac's camera in my RIG to have live updates on his status and went out of the Nest, I found the Bridge completely deserted, save for a few corpses, all bloodied, with their ribs coming out of their torso... I felt nausea, and looked away. I spotted a shop, and I bought a few rounds for the Rifle, since now that it wasn't a blackout I was surely going to need them. At that moment it didn't occur me how strange it was that Pulse rounds and even rifles were sold at a mining vessel, without any kind of restrictions. But I'm getting carried away again...

After I bought the rounds, I tried to use the elevators, but to no avail. I hid myself into one of them and looked at the Engineer's status, and saw he was entering Zero-G therapy, and as I thought he had never done that before, I showed him the ropes.

- As you know, the Ishimura is able to set it's gravity locally. Your grav-boots will kick in when you enter a zero-g area. - I told him, and waited to see him jump his way through the room until he arrived at the other side, pick a power unit and place it into its slot, unlocking the door – which hadn't enough power due the lacking of the aforementioned power unit.

Inside the room, there was the shock pad, as I expected.

- Great, you got a shock pad, combine it with the thermite at the barricade to destroy it. Shit, I can hear more coming; moving through the vents. Stay safe, Isaac! - I hanged, hearing right after a metallic sound, exiting the elevator to see what it was.

And through and out of the vents they were! As I exited the elevator to keep looking for Kendra, a few of them popped out of a vent, right in front of me, and charged me. Thankfully, there weren't any of any of those babies – they gave me chills up my spine – but just the "common" ones, the ones with the blades out of their palms, the slashers, as I know them now. They were three, I think, and as I said, charged me, so I fired at them, trying to aim at their arms, but finding it easier to aim at their legs. After one of them lost its legs, I aimed at another one, this time ripping its head of, causing it to slash randomly in the air, cutting the arm of the last one. As I tried to finish it off, by dismembering its other arm, I felt a sharp pain in my right leg, and saw blood, MY blood, flowing... The one which(who?) was crawling after I cut its leg off had reached and slashed me as I was shooting its "teammates". I stomped its arm, finally killing it and quickly shot the other two, pushing them back a little, giving me time to withdraw a little, so they couldn't reach me and finally managed to cut their arms off.

I heard a muffled version of what could only be an explosion while I was looking for a mirror to assess the damage I suffered on my RIG, and took a quick glance at Isaac's status. He had managed to blow the barricade up.

- Okay, you're through. Should be clear from there to the morgue – I didn't exactly believe that, but he didn't have to know that... after all, morale is morale. - Remember, the codes are on the captain's body.

After seeing I lost one of my five health bars, I used a small medpack I found in one container to heal my leg, and I finally found out the problem with the elevators. They were locked from within the Security Room, no doubt trying to stop the infection from arriving at the cockpit to maintain some sort of control of the ship, and thus avoiding to lose the orbit. Obviously, it had failed, since they didn't bother with using the elevators... But I couldn't reach the Security Room, since the door had no power and Kendra wasn't there - I didn't know if she was even alive, back then.

So, when I finally realized there was nothing I could do to find Kendra without Isaac – he was the only one of us who knew how to reroute power or hack a door -, I went back to the Captain's Nest, and looked how he was doing. He had just finished watching a video log of a Medical Officer, and then I recognized her, it was Nicole!

- That was Nicole, right? I can't tell from here when that log was made. I'm sure she's around here somewhere. - I cheered him up, since he seemed a bit crestfallen.

I kept reading reports of the situation on the colony and the few non-classified ones about what happened up here. One of the security camera tapes I found showed exactly how Benjamin Matthius had died... Poor man, even if he was a zealot, no one deserved to die like that... Stabbed in the eye with a syringe.

And then, Isaac made it to the morgue, and both of us – he did it live, I did it through his camera – finally saw what those things were made of – corpses. The problem was, the bat-like thing stabbed the corpses in the head, and turned them into some kind of "evolved" slasher (you know, the ones with the blades), and Isaac was in a morgue, full of corpses, and all of them had all of their limbs and their heads... To top it off, poor Benjamin was the first infected one, and shattering the glass that kept him isolated from the rest of the dead, he – it – charged Isaac, but the bat launched itself at another corpse. Thankfully, Isaac used stasis on the captain, and emptied a full clip on the bat-like necromorph – by now dubbed "Infectors", not any other name suited them better – killing it before he had to face an army. The former captain was faster than any other slasher we had faced until then, and was able to grab Isaac with its blades and try to bite his neck. Our engineer tried to push it back as best as he could, managing to escape its embrace, and punching its head with the cutter. After that, he fired at its legs, and then at its arms, until he killed it for good. Right after that, he sent me Matthius' codes.

- Codes received, and they look good; thank God. I'll start accessing the captain's records right now – I assured him - Head to the tram station, and I'll contact you there. I'm going to find out what the hell happened to this ship.

I started typing on the console, and with horror found out the least thing I'd have wanted: we were losing orbit. But before I could contact Isaac, I heard a screeching noise just outside of the Nest, and I opened the door to find a slasher in front of a damaged escape pod. Before it launched itself at me, I shot it repeatedly with the Pulse Rifle, throwing it inside of it. After a few more bursts, it seemed downed, and I locked the escape pod, thinking it wouldn't be anymore trouble, big mistake...

- Isaac! Somehow one of them found a way down to the Captain's Nest! I managed to contain it in a damaged escape pod. - I commed him as soon as I entered the command center again – Lifting the executive lockdown... I found the deck logs... Whatever is happening around here, it came from the planet when they cracked it open. It spread to the colony, and reached the ship. - I realized what the truth was with horror – Isaac, this isn't an infection. It's some sort of alien life! Shit! - I suddenly remembered the actual reason to comm Isaac – We've got bigger problems. The ship's engines are offline and our orbit is decaying! Get over to the Engineering Deck ASAP, while I stay here and figure out what the problem is.

Who'd figured this communications blackout repair mission was going to be full-reparations throughout the ship while fighting reanimated corpses? Not me, that's for sure.