Waking Up Without Her

IX-Overflow

I returned to my task, stepping quietly forward as I kept my senses keen for any movement in the bay. My gaze wandered the hangar as I quickly took stock of the place. There were no bio-signs here, nor any sign of struggle. It was likely that none of the crew had managed to make it this far. It appeared very few had managed to escape, meaning there was nearly a full crew of infected operatives now under the control of the parasitic corruption.

As I turned to leave the entrance behind, a small movement off in the darkness of the bay caught my eye. It was subtle, and foreign in the well-lit hangar. A shadow, like a wisp of smoke dissipating before it could take shape. My focus began to narrow, trying to locate the anomaly I had glimpsed. I worried that there could be some Infestation lying in wait around the docking bay, but whatever was in the hangar did not move again.

I'm tense and tired; I'm imagining things...

I began to walk. Whatever it was I had glimpsed, I put out of my mind. My senses were sharper than any organic creature alive. If something was there, I would have sensed it. I had hoped for a quiet in and out, but Dovas had other plans. Once he was free of the bay, the cephalon wasted no time in opening communications to make a declaration on open channels of the ship itself:

//Cephalon Dovas reporting to the remaining crew of the Iliad Nix:\\

Dovas announced in a voice with so much grandeur behind it I nearly expected musical accompaniment as he spoke,

\\A Tenno operative has arrived.

Identify yourself for extraction.\\

There was disturbance within the passages of the ship. As each of the speakers came to life, there were malformed cries from somewhere deep inside. The Infested may not understand our language, but they're intelligent and organized. They knew something was happening. In response to the auditory stimulus, they would be preparing the hivemind's many servants to seek more potential food.

A voice answered Dovas at last, patched through to me directly by the cephalon. It was identical to the one that had sent the distress call, though it was now crisp and clear in comparison.

"A Tenno? Thank Gaia." They begin, the relief palpable in their unsteady tone. "This is Clarity, Communications Director, and acting Captain of the Nix. It is good you got here so quickly. We've barricaded ourselves in the bridge for now, but the infested have been working their way through the vents."

Upon receiving their current location, Dovas' scans scoured the levels of the craft. His intel was forwarded in a holo-map of the craft's interior that Dovas had kitted me with. I could see updates on organic lifesigns, allowing for a straightforward path through the contaminated vessel. My steps began to take me through the ship, leaving the bay to look through the door that led deeper into the main halls of the Iliad Nix.

The door from the docking bay was already showing signs of infested growth. The corrupted flesh moved fast and unpredictably. The mire clung to everything it could as it expanded, stretching over walls and floor alike as it sought to colonize more fertile breeding grounds. The tendrils that were growing from the piles of organic matter were swaying, gathering whatever it could from the air while simple, insectoid life forms skittered along the floor in search of new resources.

A grotesque, gargling howl echoed from the inner halls. One of the crew shambled forth from a flickering passageway, the haunting noise trailing from their lips like a pant of a dying animal. Their movements were forced, jerky and irregular. What prior mind the crewmate had was likely being devoured by the infestation that devoured them from within. The skin along their arms was already warping and twisting, the cells of the organic host already being reallocated and rearranged in accordance to the parasite's desires. The lost crew member continued to shamble onward, paying me no heed while its unsteady gait brought the abomination deeper into the heart of the Nix.