30 Minutes Post-Sprawl Outbreak

"Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he will eat for a lifetime." This was a proverb Curtis knew of, and he saw the wisdom in it. He gave himself a better life than the one he used to have through the strength of his arms.

Now, he substituted some of the words to make it more applicable to the current situation: "Kill a Necromorph for someone, they're safe for a minute. Teach someone to kill Necromorphs, and they're safe for the rest of their life." Hopefully Vandal's became longer than it would've been without this instruction. Curtis never thought he'd be a teacher, but there was nobody more qualified to give a "Destroying the Undead 101" lesson.

Fortunately, only a single Leaper came around the corner, and the ceiling was low enough that it couldn't perform the action for which he named it. No better subject for demonstration! If there had been more, Curtis would've been as quick to suggest they flee. Two bolts of plasma detached each of the arms, and it was lights out for the poor sap who used to be a person. Despite seeing a radiant tunnel when he came closest to death on the Ishimura, Curtis didn't know whether he believed in Heaven or any afterlife. If there was one, though, he hoped this guy knew when he got there that it wasn't his fault; he couldn't have broken the Marker's spell.

It writhed for an instant before going limp, its fanged jaw biting the dust and chipping a tooth for good measure. He envisioned someone taking trophies from every Necromorph they cut down, like hunters taking antlers from deer, regardless of their tissue disintegrating when far enough from a Marker. Thankfully, Curtis had never been psychotic enough for that to appeal to him.

He sighed and turned back to Vandal, who stood stiff at how efficiently he dispatched his foe. Imagined an expression of awe under the helmet. Before either of them could say anything, someone else intruded, and not in a way he expected.

"RIG number 438642, what the fuck did you just do?!"

Curtis yelped and jumped back at the image of Director Hans Tiedemann now projected from Vandal's RIG. He was on the other side of the holo-screen, but it could be seen from both angles.

"How – " The man tried to get a word in, but Tiedemann barreled ahead, his anger barely restrained. Yeah, Curtis would also be tongue-tied if the supreme leader of the station bombed in and started yelling at him. And considering the situation already gripping GovSec… Vandal must have done something very, very bad for this to be where Tiedemann's attention went. Curtis gasped, and he wondered whether his initial idea about a serial killer being loose was correct.

"Computer techs traced instances of sabotage to vital power systems deep within the Shard. They led back to you. You're the reason why these things broke out!"

Oh. It turned out to be far worse than he thought. Vandal lived up to his name, wrecking whatever held the Necromorphs back even deeper within the mines, those right outside the metal walls of GovSec. Nearest to where the Marker and its signal were strongest; any corpses dumped there would reanimate quicker than those on other parts of the station. That explained why he knew the monsters "escaped".

"I'm sorry!" he shouted, his legs shaking. "You have to believe me, I didn't mean for this to happen! The Church set me up!" That was when it all clicked for Curtis. Of course Unitology was behind this! They may not have had a Marker of their own, yet they could still piggyback off EarthGov's. Just send people into the pit hauling dead bodies, get as close as possible to the Marker, and then maybe have them kill themselves for good measure. Voila, an on-demand army. The only problem was releasing these soldiers, and Vandal took care of that admirably.

"Why am I not surprised?" Tiedemann muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose. "If you want to atone for what could at best be called a blunder and at worst be called a crime against humanity, there may be something you can do." Curtis exhaled a little; he may not have liked Tiedemann and believed him hosting Marker research to be more of a crime against humanity than anything the ordinary person could imagine, but the guy wasn't a complete moron. His deft handling of the Atmos situation proved that. So he'd provide another chance instead of sending soldiers down there to kill Vandal or whatever.

"The power systems you torpedoed were connected directly to the station's fusion reactor, and the damage caused some kind of feedback loop; the techs didn't have time to tell me everything." His hair stood on end as he imagined the station exploding in an atomic fireball. The Marker would probably be the only survivor. "It's nothing dangerous. For now. It might become more serious in about 24 hours, though, and I am hoping to still be alive by then. I'd send engineers to fix it, but they're all too busy fortifying positions in the Government Sector. You're the closest one qualified to rectify the situation."

Curtis got whiplash from the number of times he went from optimistic to despairing in the last few sentences! OK, so it sounded like they weren't at immediate risk of death, after all. Well, they were, but only from the Necromorphs and not mechanical failure. To sweeten the pot, Tiedemann added, "I might even consider granting you an executive pardon for your gross misconduct today if you succeed."

If Vandal was on the fence before, that last part made him dismount. The idea of not spending the rest of his life in an EarthGov gulag appealed to him more than anything. Curtis understood that. "Thank you, sir! I promise I won't let you down."

Tiedemann ignored this and glanced down at something. In an otherwise silent moment, Curtis briefly heard clatter and calamity wherever the Director of Operations was. Probably some ultra-secure bunker. Regardless, his aides panicked, and that cemented the situation's severity to Vandal better than coherent words. "Background checks on you reveal no criminal record – until now – so I'm choosing to believe your story about being a hapless dupe. The situation is getting dicey, though, so you might want to find people willing to escort you."

"I think I already found someone." Before Curtis could veto this or hide, Vandal spun the holo-screen around. He now faced the most powerful person in the outer solar system. Overwhelming, to say the least, given that the guy must have known about him and Nicole, given his stature, the Marker research and the importance of planet cracking to Titan Station. At least there was no possible way to identify him in this RIG, though. "His name is Curtis, and he killed one of these things like he's been doing it for years."

Motherfucker. Maybe Tiedemann would dispatch some goons.

"I see," he replied, running a hand across his trademark bald head. Either hair loss remedies were complete BS, or it was a fashion statement. There was no hint of recognition. Perhaps he was so drained that it flew over his head. Curtis hoped so. "I'll try to contact you again when you finish. If you don't within the next few hours, I'll assume you're dead." With that, the feed went dead, and the two remained in silence a second more.

"Uh, 'Vandal' was the codename the Church gave me," the man croaked, still in disbelief that Hans Tiedemann himself called to berate him for potentially killing everyone. "I'm the one who caused all this." Her knees, already knocking, gave out, and he collapsed forward, bracing himself against the rocky ground. "I didn't mean to."

"Don't blame yourself. This would've happened, regardless." He stepped over and extended a hand to help the man up. It was reluctantly accepted; maybe the guy wondered if Curtis planned to follow with a punch.

To be sure, there was a time when Curtis would've been furious. It genuinely wasn't Vandal's fault, though; it was EarthGov's for building the damn Marker! The Church could have gotten somebody else to do their dirty work if Vandal declined. Even if not, Curtis guessed it'd only take a few more weeks for the Marker signal to reach critical mass in the population, at which time people would kill themselves by the hundreds and reanimate shortly after. All he did was slightly expedite the process.

"How can you be so sure?" Vandal asked after stumbling up.

Curtis sighed, finally slapping the Plasma Cutter to his belt. This was no time to keep secrets. He'd already been honest about his real name, so might as well tell the truth about the rest… not that Vandal had any reason to believe him.

Vandal also had no right to draft him into this mission, yet Curtis didn't object. He couldn't think of a way out of the Government Sector, so he had nowhere else to go; something on the journey might inspire an escape plan. Hundreds of people needed help in the mines, and they might encounter some on the way. Finally, he held out hope that the Sprawl would still be around by the time the reactor's problems manifested. As dark as it seemed, they possessed an opportunity to halt this outbreak. The odds broke in his favor before. It'd be a shame to beat the Necromorphs only to have the station become uninhabitable because of a radiation leak.

He retracted his helmet as a gesture of trust. The air, ripe with chemicals and death, stung his nose. Vandal flinched.

"Wait, Lance?!" Curtis recoiled in turn. Well, he met plenty of people during his years working the mines. Must have known the man under the armor! Vandal took off their own mask, allowing him to see he'd been mistaken. He knew the woman under the armor.

"Karrie?!" Her red hair held so much sweat that Curtis imagined it being wrung like a mop. Didn't have any blood on her face, which was good, though that pristine condition was unlikely to last long. She was taller than him, so yeah, the gender reveal kind of threw him for a loop.

That didn't change how good it felt to see his friend.

Thoughts of guilt or anger instantly evaporated as he hugged her. Not the most comfortable embrace, given that they were protected like metal armadillos, but that didn't matter. He hadn't been able to save many of his friends last time. Wasn't sure that would change this time around, but he'd protect them with everything he had.

"I – I don't understand," she gasped as he quickly released her. They had a job to do… but doing it with a friend instead of a stranger made it more crucial.

"I'll explain on the way to the reactor." It'd be a long story.

45 Minutes Post-Sprawl Outbreak

Nicole sat still as a boulder. She'd occupied this position since concluding preparations, neither moving nor breathing. To the outside world, she'd appear to be a statue, albeit one made of flesh and bone. She was similarly static within. Tried to push aside her fears and merely exist.

Meditation (to say nothing of "alternative medicine") was not a miracle cure, yet she attested that it made a bit of a difference. And she was no longer alive!

In the silence, she heard a noise. The sound of air moving through teeth… hushed whispers. They barely brushed the edges of her hearing, which was better than any human's. At first, she thought little of it – just people talking in a neighboring unit, and the conversation drifted through the walls. But the more she listened, the more she realized it came not from next door, but from her door. Nicole stirred from the trance and skulked over, kicking herself.

Someone must have heard my outburst and reported it to the supervisor. Whatever, she'd tell the maintenance crew that she was watching a horror vid she'd downloaded and had the volume too loud. Sure to get rid of them; one advantage to Titan Heights being a dump (a dump she and Curtis loved, yet a dump nevertheless) was that management really did not care. Even if something had gone terribly wrong and if she could magically disguise herself as a human, she'd still send them away. They'd probably be dead in a few hours, so they deserved a break.

She reached the door and stood up straight, tapping her foot on faux wood. Couldn't decipher the words, which struck her as odd. Why the hushed tones from janitors coming to check on her? She looked through the peephole with her top pair of eyes.

Good thing she did, because the pair outside weren't part of the staff. She'd never personally met any of them, obviously, but she peered through Curtis' eyes almost every day when he walked through the housing block. During more than two years, she'd likely seen everyone who worked in the complex. These two were not employees, and that made her nervous.

The pair, a nondescript man and woman, could easily have been new hires, or just a couple from somewhere nearby (Curtis hadn't met everybody who lived in the place). Their mien suggested something else, though. They were tense. Apprehensive. And they kept glancing at the door. It turned her to ice, yet she had no reason to believe anything terrible. At worst, they might've planned to rob the place while comms were down. That included home security systems, and many people knew Curtis as a bit of a recluse. Tempted her to cough so they knew someone else lived there.

That's when she noticed a strange tool in the man's pocket. He tried to hide it on the inside of his jacket, but the hilt poked out when he leaned forward to murmur with his partner. She'd only seen one similar instrument before… well, two. High-tech laser weapons utilized by a certain top secret government department that spearheaded missions related to the Markers.

Oracles! A shiver ran up her spine as she realized the two, seemingly ordinary people that she wouldn't have batted an eye at, knew who and what she was. Of course, they were masters of disguise and infiltration, as Kendra demonstrated. Played her, Curtis, Hammond and Isaac like fiddles. Those others that hunted them when they met up with Schneider only dropped the subtlety because everyone was dead. Oracles wouldn't stroll through the Sprawl armed to the teeth. Needed to look average.

They wanted her. Dead or alive, she didn't know, and neither was acceptable. Made her grit her teeth. It became clear they discussed a plan to burst through the door. Nicole pulled away and paced the room, head down and talons behind her back. They didn't know she knew they were there. That gave her a minute to enact a plan of her own. Even if she could've killed them – and that was far from certain, given the situation and their weapons – she refused to murder. Only Mercer deserved that fate, after he had every opportunity to repent and seized none of them. Running was her only option.

She slipped on her light RIG and attached the tissue cutter to a magnetic holster on the belt. Rolled her shoulders and tried to get used to the sensation of clothing against her skin again. Not too bad, since it was airy and designed to allow a full range of motion. She looked to Curtis' equipment on the bed. The same couldn't be said for it. Hopefully his current RIG and the tools he found in the mines were as great as he claimed.

Then she turned to her escape hatch: the grate on the bathroom ceiling that sucked up moist air from the shower. This was the only avenue for atmospheric circulation other than the little exchanged when the door opened. Titan Height's ventilation left much to be desired, but the system was just large enough for her to squeeze through like a contortionist. She hoped to never use it, but she at least tested it out and knew it'd work in a pinch. She yanked the cover off and shoved in into the back of a cabinet.

You can do this, Nicole. She squatted, closed her eyes and imagined herself finding Curtis, destroying the Marker and riding into the sunset, never mind the impossibility of that last one in space. You need to. It'd take everything she had to fulfill these dreams; she'd give that and more.

Then she sprang up and scrabbled into the duct, giving her apartment a final mournful glance. Be it ever so humble, it was home, and it had been years since her body left it. Darkness was the only thing left when she crammed into a shaft far tighter than the ones on the Ishimura. The Necromorphs could still move through them, but it'd be uncomfortable.

Thank you, cartilage, she thought, moving her limbs in ways that just thinking about would hurt humans. Most animals only had it in their joints, but much of her skeleton had transmuted into the substance, like a shark's. The pipe turned at a hard right angle that was particularly tough, yet at least she was now horizontal and no longer needed to climb! This was the farthest she'd gone during her couple of jaunts to see if she could fit. Now, she pressed forward into the unknown. Into the abyss.

The distorted warble of the door opening followed; they must've hacked the system instead of breaking it down or using their lasers to cut through, which was appropriate for their clandestine modus operandi. Not nearly as cinematic, though. Good thing she didn't stick around to see it.

"Patient Two! Drop to your stomach and put your claws behind your head. You will not be harmed if you cooperate," said the man. Couldn't place his tone with how much the acoustics distorted it. Despite her fear, Nicole felt proud of herself. Preparedness and planning saved her.

Distorted banging began behind her as she imagined one of them flipping over the mattress in frustration. The woman shouted to her cohort to search the place (shouldn't have been too hard) for any evidence of her and "Patient Three", whom she could only assume to be Curtis. They'd realize her escape route soon, but every second they spent was distance she gained! Therefore, she ignored the urge to eavesdrop and wiggled into the utter black. Not a hint of light remained, which made it impossible to see even with her night-touched eyes.

OK, but where am I going? Nowhere else to run! She tried to remain calm – a difficult task with how much happened within the span of an hour. The fears that dogged her and her husband for years burst forth on what could have easily been a normal day. I'll stop at Gabe and Lexine's place, she quickly decided. This would allow her to remain in the relative safety of the vents a while longer and discover whether the Oracles also broke into their place. Good thing Gabe worked and Lexine went to the doctor.

She and Curtis lived on the seventh floor. The Wellers lived on the third. Hopefully that was enough to point her in the correct direction while she looked (well, felt) for an opening that led down. The echoes of the Oracles were far behind her. That hardly made the trip pleasant.

Many questions exploded in her head during the turmoil, compounding by the moment. However, one thing became clear: EarthGov knew where they lived. Maybe not since the beginning, but for a long time. They could've raided the place and eliminated/kidnapped Nicole and Curtis at any time. They just waited until everything fell apart. It made her sick.

Several months earlier, Schneider told Curtis (and her, by extension) that the government monitored six survivors of the USG Ishimura. Studied them. Two "patients" were kept under lock and key, while the other four lived in a state of quasi-house arrest. Nicole didn't understand how six additional people made it when there had been no other way out. Never added up, but now it made perfect sense.

"Patients"… They were just lab rats. Lexine. Gabe. Her. Curtis. All allowed to live their lives under the watchful eye of EarthGov. Must have figured they'd learn more this way. House arrest, indeed.

A speck of hope burned beneath her anger, though. If all of them remained alive, maybe those in prison did, too. Isaac may well have been one of them. If so, he was somewhere on the station – and Nicole had one more errand on her list. I'm coming, she thought to the aether, hoping beyond hope that he heard her. Just hold on.

…

Curtis had neither the energy nor time to convey his whole history with the Necromorphs, so he rattled off the most important bullet points in roughly chronological order: he was on the Ishimura, it wasn't a terrorist attack, they found a Marker on Aegis VII, it was evil and drove people insane before turning the dead into monsters called Necromorphs, he met one named Nicole, helped Gabe and Lexine escape (that was how they knew each other), the Black Marker tried to help them out, and they escaped to Titan Station, where the government built another Marker. Then he and Nicole got married.

He expected the last one to get a reaction out of Karrie, but she either didn't judge his preferences or wasn't paying attention. Or perhaps she was so tired by the nonsense coming out of his mouth that it sounded no stranger than the dozens of weird things he'd already said.

Curtis inspected their surroundings again. Same uneven tunnels hewn from rock, interwoven through the petty remains of what used to be the second-largest satellite in Sol. Now it reminded him of a rotten apple that'd been eaten through by worms.

What even is the biggest moon in the solar system? he wondered, both out of curiosity and to distract from the gnawing in his head. He shuddered at the cold fingers wrapping around his brain. With Titan and Io both harvested by the CEC and Ganymede practically strip mined to the core by a cavalcade of small companies that resisted assimilation, it must have been Callisto, followed by Luna. Interesting to think about.

Shook his head as they kept going, futilely trying to get the Marker out in the same way he knocked water from his ear after a dip in the Atlantic. To his chagrin, no other survivors appeared. A little blood slowly forming into proto-Corruption was the closest they found. Couldn't be too surprised with hundreds of miles of passageways, plus the fact they delved into a particularly desolate section of the quarry. The fusion reactor got put far away from the active segments for obvious reasons. Honestly, he expected it to be more protected; why not put it in GovSec proper? It probably has guards around it most of the time. Surely they'd be either dead or gone by the time he and Karrie arrived.

Speaking of Karrie, his friend finally responded to Curtis' stream of consciousness narration.

"You've mentioned Nicole before," she said, her voice filter still on. Why not? It sounded cool, though it'd be more interesting to change it to something other than deep, threatening monotone. "Sounds like a wonderful woman. Wish I could find a lady like that, but I'm not that lucky."

Wasn't often someone described Curtis as lucky, but he agreed. Nicole was the best thing to ever happen to him, and not just because of their mental connection. He would've loved her even without that, and he knew the sentiment to be mutual.

Well, his luck quickly ran out.

He groaned as a blast of pain scorched the inside of his skull. The agony increased by the minute, and flashes of familiar runes danced across his vision. Some permutation of Nicole would soon arrive, along with the Shadow Man, telling him to do horrible things to himself or Karrie. In fact, he glimpsed them from the corner of his eyes.

"Remember how I said the Markers make people crazy?" he moaned, the next few steps taken with cement around his shins.

"Yeah, and that explains the news these last few months." Even as heartless as their society could be, heinous crimes – rape, murder, he'd even seen a headline or two about cannibalism – skyrocketed since the Marker finished construction. Good to know not all of that was on them. Still, it happened so gradually that the moral decay didn't stand out too much if one lived it.

"Well, I've been exposed for longer than everyone else here, and the Marker has it out for me particularly. So I apologize in advance if I snap and try to kill you." Much as it shamed him to admit, that could happen. The Marker might overwhelm his good judgement and reduce him to a shell. Even if that only happened for a minute, as it did a couple times on the Ishimura, he'd still overwhelm her. "If you need to put me down in self-defense, I completely understand."

"I'm not gonna kill you, Lan… Curtis," Karrie replied without the slightest hesitation. Sure, they were friends, but it surprised him that she instantly rejected the idea. "No, we'll fix the reactor, find your wife and then kick the Marker back to the Stone Age." That last one made him cough; might've been a laugh if he were in any mood for jokes. "No pun intended, I swear." Now that he thought about it, she might have been able to beat an insane version of him off, given how she killed three or four Necromorphs with only her own body and stasis earlier. Trained in martial arts, maybe?

Curtis glanced around again, and the flickering lights illuminated nothing of interest. Still need to find her a gun, though. He'd shove the first mining tool he found into her hands and insist she hold onto it for the rest of her life.

"How did you get roped into this, if you don't mind me asking?" Part of his reason for asking was to again assuage the thumping ache in his temples, yet he really did want to know how Karrie became involved in… call it something very bad. If she wanted to share, of course; just because Curtis spilled his guts didn't mean she needed to.

"A few days ago, when I was volunteering at the Church, I got pulled aside by two people: Tyler Radikov and Daina Le Guin. Seemed like bigshots, but I'd never heard of them." Those may have been pseudonyms, but even if they weren't, he noticed Unitology was big on privacy. The Enigmas didn't wear their masks at public functions just because of religious strictures; they wanted to remain anonymous. While people deserved that right (he and Nicole certainly appreciated it), he wondered if it made the powerful less accountable.

"At first, I thought I was in trouble, and I could only imagine a kid being called into the principal's office. Instead, they said they heard that I was an engineer, a good one, who worked in the mines." She cringed. "Wanted me to do them, and all of humanity, a favor. Nothing horrible, just cutting a few wires in a certain part of GovSec." Mimed scissors snipping with her fingers.

"And you said yes?"

Shook her head. "I told them I didn't like the government, either, but that someone might get hurt if I did this." Then she sighed, and Curtis knew regardless of any filter than she felt ashamed of herself. "I guess they either wanted me specifically or never thought I'd make it out of here, because they said that if I did this, they'd pull some strings and make me an Enigma."

Curtis struggled to wrap his head around that proposition, and not just because it throbbed. He'd never heard of something so sacred offered as credit for a job well done. Came to the same conclusion as Karrie, though. They wanted to release the Necromorphs and bring about "Convergence" as quickly as possible. "That's bizarre."

"I know. It takes tens of millions of credits – at least – to reach the top rung. Never thought I'd even save enough to become Vested. So I accepted. 'What's the worst that could happen,' I thought." She turned away, and Curtis remembered a maxim that guided him throughout his life. If someone makes you an offer that sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

"If it weren't for what we've seen, I'd think you yanked my chain about all this," she spat. "But you're right. And everything I've believed for years… it's a lie. A lie that used me and wants to kill everyone!" In a bout of rage, she punted a pebble down the hall. "They're no better than the government."

Curtis didn't know what to say. How could he? It was horrible to find out such a big part of one's life was false. He'd experienced that firsthand, yet at least he'd only been a Unitologist for days instead of years. Still, his tongue whirled in his chapped mouth. The words he said were rarely profound, but he needed to try and use them to help. Plasma and bullets would be no help.

"Some parts of Unitology are wrong, but you can't discredit all the good some people in it have done." Curtis made that mistake before. It was easy: assume that everyone affiliated with a thing was monstrous because of the actions of the worst. Those were the ones that stuck out the most. He still found himself drawn to that logic in dark moments. But then his thoughts invariably returned to Samuel Irons. Though he only knew the man for a week, Irons and his kindness and wisdom profoundly influenced how Curtis lived. At least, he hoped so. But Karrie helped many through the work she did. "People like you."

The Black Marker talked to him (though not currently), so he liked to think he knew what he talked about when it came to this. Karrie remained quiet before answering, "Thanks, Curtis."

He was about to reply when a staccato burst of gunfire tore through. Not bullets, just noise. But it was close. The two looked at each other before booking down a ramp towards the source. Through the madness unraveling Curtis' mind, he hoped they weren't too late.

…

Hey again, everyone! I'm glad you all liked the first chapter well enough to check out this one… though I doubt this is anyone's first rodeo with my Dead Space stories. I cannot imagine anybody would read this without reading my prior ones. Regardless, I've been making some changes to the canon (besides the obvious), so I'll enumerate some of those.

First, Lexine, Gabe, Nicole and Curtis all being unwitting subjects of EarthGov experimentation. This idea came from the fact that in Dead Space 2, Isaac and Nolan Stross are Patients Four and Five of Project Telomere (the EarthGov cell studying Markers), but we never learn who the others are. There had to at least be the numbers before four, so this is my answer to that. Why weren't they imprisoned like those other two? The answer will come in time.

Second, I went straight to the point and just revealed that Vandal was Karrie. Dead Space: Mobile built it up as a big twist that the protagonist was a woman when she took her helmet off at the end, and I have no idea why. Metroid did the same thing in the 80s, it's not shocking anymore. Hopefully it'll allow for more character development now that the characters know each other's identities.

I likely won't update again in the next couple weeks, so Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Happy New Year, all that great stuff. I hope all of you enjoy this special time of year. Personally, I find that snow and winter weather get me in the mood for writing in a way few other things do.

Thanks to Nerf585, CelfwrDderwydd and Accelerator7460 for reviewing so far. I really appreciate that as a show of support.