Pandorum 2nd ed.

Earth was fucked. There was worldwide panic as it became abundantly clear that in 50 years Earth's Sun was going to explode incinerating Earth with it. 50 years wasn't a long time. 50 years was fast approaching and the world in the beginning pulled together to find another planet in the Milky Way Solar System that could sustain every single person on the Planet. ... There wasn't one. Panic ensued and it was put into motion to launch a ship that could house thousands and thousands of workers to be Earth's finest and find a new planet; if there was time, return and pick up more people. Everyone bidded to get on that ship. Everyone knew that ship wasn't coming back. The ship PANDORUM.

But things didn't go as planned on the ship. There were supposed to be a set of 8 rotation crews all with there own set of people to run and man Pandorum. Each 'Crew' had approximately 1500 people manning it: from the cleaning crew to the captain. The 1st Crew, Alpha, were supposed to be the first ones up and running things for the first 5 years. After that Alpha Crew would go to Cryo and sleep and the 2nd Crew, Bravo, would be woken up by the ship and start running things. Every 5 years the next Crew would be woken up and take over the running of the ship. No one was to sleep more than 35 years.

It's unclear what happened. The ship didn't wake people up when it was supposed too. People either woke up too late or too early. All that is clear is that there's 'something' on the ship. Alien, monsters, people who evolved, no one is sure, but they take people, they eat people, or outright kill you. They're stronger than us, faster, can see better in the dim halls, and there's more of them.

The ship has slim to no lighting. There is slim to no food. There is no weapons anywhere. There is no one else around. There's the aliens and there's you. What do you do?

Leo

The man peered around the corner cautiously, making sure to check everywhere (EVERYWHERE) for any signs of movement, or anything that didn't look like the steel walls of the ship for that matter. Spotting nothing, he steps around the corner slowly, moving down the hall in a crouch. His feet made no sound as they moved across the steel floor, his body seeming to react without him telling it what to do.

He passes through a dim light and it glints dully off the engineering suit he's wearing. Unfortunately most of the systems on it were fried from someone who had tampered with it before he got to it. Onboard VI was disabled, jet boots were fried (he hadn't tried turning them on), oxygen tank was barely functional. Held ten minutes of air at most, and it was a pain to refill.

Slung over his shoulder was a small duffel bag with a couple days worth of rations. He needed to find more before he ran out. Before 'they' found him. And if that happened...he would need a weapon. He had seen them before, and had a close, much closer than he would have liked, encounter with one. They vaguely resembled humans, but not all of them. Some of them were...different. Mutated beyond human recognition.

He paused, raising a gloved hand to press against his temple as that pain pierced through his mind again. He didn't know what it was, but he knew how to fix it, and he didn't even know how he knew that. He didn't remember anything, not even his name. Something must have gone wrong with the wake up procedures...

Wake up procedures?

He shook his head and continued to move, approaching another corner warily. A quick check showed nothing, and he passed this one by, moving to a doorway just down the hall. The steel door was partially jammed, only wide enough for one person (roughly his own size, maybe larger) to crawl through. He did so, and looked around the room. A table there, pair of chairs over there. Not much to look at. But the room was devoid of blood or any signs of looting. That was good.

He stood up straight for the first time in quite a while, but his stance remained cold, calm, and prepared. The stance of a man who knew what he was doing.

He didn't realize this, of course.

He moved around the room, searching quietly. The search didn't turn up much. A couple more packs of rations (always a good sign), a busted flashlight, and packing peanuts. The old-school kind they used to put in boxes. How strange.

He knew he could find more in the kitchens or possibly the cargo hold, but he knew those things were all over the hotspots. Sometimes he could hear screams echoing from engineering deck, and not always human screams.

He glanced around the room, searching the ceiling before finding what he was looking for. He moved to a corner of the room, pressing his palm against a panel. A ceiling panel slid open silently and he pulled himself into it. Access panel for ventilation. These shafts were why he liked that his helmet had a vaguely working air scrubber. Vaguely. He could still smell things he wished he never would have.

He started to crawl through the shafts, making sure to stay silent as possible. Though curiously, his body did all the work for him. As if it knew what to do, from practice? From experience?

If only he could remember.

24, the alarm clock beeped low, quickly rousing Issac in to the world of the living, there was a time that sounds so small wouldn't have a chance in hell of waking him, but now that he actually was in hell, he found that he was quite the lite sleeper. He groaned and brought his hand down hard on the off button, once again regretting his choice to keep to a sleep schedule, but it was a good thing, there was nothing to set your watch to, which Issac swore was a cause of insanity, not that the alarm clock was any good at making the monsters go away.

Slowly he rose from the bed, eyes adjusting to the ungodly dim emergency lighting as they did ever ‘morning’, before walking over to the closet and throwing on whatever clothes he grabbed first, a black engineering jumpsuit he had the top of tied around his waist, and a black T-shirt with hollow white stars all over it.

“What do you think dear?” he asked something on the desk on the other side of the room, the lack of lighting making it look like a severed head “Well you say that every day, but I cant lighten up my colours a little” he continued in a quiet tone as he walked closer, the light now clear enough to reveal it as a woman's manikin head with a captains hat on it “what do you mean why? its camouflage, its dark out there so you wear black, that's like... basic tactics, or something.”

He stopped and thought for a moment, the odd turn his already odd one sided conversation was starting to go a little too far, even for him, at least she wasn't talking back, she hadn't done that for ages, at first it had been a little joke, set up shop in the captains quarters, keep her hat around for company, he occasionally forgot it was just a hat though.

He shook his head to snap himself out of it and went about finishing up his clothes, the next item was his boots, he loved his boots, the disgusting sound they made when the steel capped toes eventually broke through a skull and started poking grey matter had long since become a sweet song to him. To finish up his ensemble he pulled on a heavy zip up vest covered in pockets, also black “don't start” he snapped at the head quickly before gathering his things.

Issac was a firm believer of an artisan only being as good as the tools and materials he was provided with, so he always endeavoured to have the best, his current load out was a rather nasty looking kitchen knife, a flashlight with spare batteries, a small toolkit for messing around with electronics, an acetylene welding torch with dam near no fuel left and a backpack for whatever loot he managed to find on today's little outing.

Now ready to face the world, he headed over to the ladder in the corner of the room and quickly scurried up to the vent entrance, it was annoying to use, but ever since he welded the door shut it was the only way in and out, besides, it was safer, and he was well used to crawling around in vents by this point.

Kara

The momentary sensation of free-fall caused her stomach to lurch and her arms to reach out and brace herself; a good thing too because a second later, her body hit the floor with dull thud – jarring her mind as she grasped about trying to orient herself. Kara curled up into a ball and groaned miserably to herself. She felt nauseated, confused, and gradually more and more annoyed as she laid there trying to piece together what was going on. The last thing she remembered was going into cryo; she was supposed to have been woken to relive alpha team. What was going on here? Fortunately the lights in this portion of cryo room were dim, the only source coming from a flickering overhead several banks down. At least she didn’t have to deal with the stark disorienting lights and noises that came with the wake up procedures as here senses slowly adapted to her surroundings.

Speaking of surroundings, as she cast her eyes about trying to take in the situation, Kara got a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She looked up to see an entire bank of cryo beds, the one she had been part of, tipped over precariously on its side. Well at least that explains her rude awakening and painful landing. Something was definitely wrong. Had the ship crashed? Was there an emergency? An accident of some sort? The dim lighting that had been a welcome reprieve earlier now felt heavy and ominous. Come to think of it, there was also a disconcerting absence of sound. Where was the usual hum of equipment and activity? Where was everyone?

Pulling herself heavily to her feet, she realized she was still nude - having just woken up. First order of business, find some clothes. Second order of business, find something to relieve her parched throat. Third order of business, find someone to tell her what the hell was going on. She stumbled unsteadily towards the flickering light, careful to avert her eyes to preserve a measure of her low light vision.

Jasmine

Jasmine blinked, her thoughts cloudy and her vision the same. Where was she? A vague sense of free fall and then a dull thud, though curiously she didn't feel anything.

But now she did.

She opened her eyes and winced at the sharp pain on the side of her head. Slender arms moved to push her body off the floor slowly, her eyes rising to look over the room. She didn't like the looks of it at all. And the lack of sound didn't help, nor the lack of people. Where were the technicians? The hum of machinery and cryo beds? Too many things didn't add up. Why hadn't she been woken to begin with? She could feel that she had been in cryo for far too long, though she couldn't remember why she was in cryo in the first place. She didn't know where she was, who she was. Her name vaguely came to her. Jasmine.

She rose slowly to her feet at the sound of another thud. She looked to the source of the noise warily. It was another woman. She just woke up as well, by the looks of her. Jasmine slowly walked towards her with a small wave.

"Excuse me..." she murmured as she got closer.

She glanced down and realized that she was naked as well. She blushed and covered herself with her hands.

"Would you...would you happen to know what's going on?" she asked tentatively.

She racked her mind, trying to remember something. Anything. Nothing came to her.

Kara

"Excuse me..."

With a started squeak she jumped behind the next bank of cryo beds, nearly losing her balance as her muscles had lost some of their coordination from the time spent asleep. Looking out from behind equipment she realized that it was another woman in more or less the same condition as she was. Sheepishly coming out from behind her cover Kara offered an awkward wave of her own.

“I’m sorry, you startled me” she offered. “It’s so quiet I didn’t realize there was someone else here.”

"Would you...would you happen to know what's going on?" the woman asked tentatively.

Kara looked around critically, “That’s a really good question, and no, I have no idea what’s going on. Are you from Bravo Team also? You would think someone would have been here to welcome us by now – after all we are here to relieve them.”

She waited and the woman just gave her a puzzled look.

“I’m sorry where are my manners, my name is Kara. I don’t believe we’ve met in any of the previous mission briefings.” She walked forward to extend her hand in greeting but then recognized their state of undress and pulled her hand back in modesty.

“Err, sorry about that, let’s see if we can find something to cover up with until we can find someone to tell us what’s going on or make it up to A deck to get some clothes. There should be some robes in one of the supply closets in the examination rooms.”

Wandering again towards the only source of light she tried to strike up some conversation just to assuage her growing sense unease, “Are you feeling ok? I’m really nauseous for some reason, I wonder why the…”

Her line of thought was cut off as she reached the light source and saw why it was so dim and flickering. The overhead light seemed to have been dislodged from the ceiling and wires from the emergency power were haphazardly connected to it. Next to the overhead light, a section of the ceiling seemed to have been taken out and an opening to the ship’s ventilation duct was very apparent. A cryo bed was dragged over onto its side and provided the necessary height to reach up and pull oneself into the duct.

Kara looked over at her companion who seemed just as bewildered as she was…

Jasmine

Uttering a small squeak of her own, Jasmine stepped back slightly, but then paused, watching with a vague sense of amusement as the woman dove behind a set of cryo beds. She leaned up on her tiptoes to look at the woman as she peeked around the tubes. She gave the woman a soft smile as she came out from hiding.

“I’m sorry, you startled me” she offered. “It’s so quiet I didn’t realize there was someone else here.”

"It's fine." she replied.

She then asked if she was from Bravo Team. What Bravo Team? She didn't know anything at the moment, her fuzzy mind not giving any information. Go figure. Not getting anything from her mind now that she actually needed it. Wait, didn't she need it all the time?

Strange.

Kara. The name sounded familiar. Vaguely familiar. Like a distant memory, waiting to surface...

"I'm..."

She paused.

"Jasmine." she murmured, remembering her name.

Well that's a good sign, at least. She remembered her name. Perhaps more was yet to come?

She nodded slightly at the mention of clothes, but couldn't help but take a glance at her nude form. Wait, was she..? No, she couldn't be. Could she? She decided not to dwell and instead followed next to the woman, eyes searching around. She looked over to Kara as she suddenly trailed off in her sentence, eyes following hers.

Something definitely wasn't right here. Who would drag a cryo tube over just to get at the air vents? And why would you want to crawl around in those anyway? She shook her head and looked over to Kara.

"Engineer with lack of another way up?" she suggested hopefully.

She shook her head and slowly moved away, walking towards the examination room.

"You seem to remember an awful lot..." she trailed off.

The room was devoid of light entirely. Her body told her the supply closet was five paces left and seven forward. Woah, what? She waited for anything else. Nothing.

She stepped into the room as if she had done it a million times, her feet moving in footsteps that were very familiar, her hands reaching up to grasp and open the door of the closet, her right hand reaching in to snag a pair of robes off the rack. She couldn't see this, but there was a fresh corpse on the other side of the closet. She closed the door and turned around, bumping into something.

She put her hands in front of her to stop her fall, finding purchase on something warm and unbelievably soft. She tilted her head, moving forward towards the light. She closed her eyes for a moment as the light assailed her, and then opened them slowly.

She found out what her hands were holding.

Kara's breasts.

With a startled gasp, she pulled back quickly, blushing furiously. She turned away and handed her a robe, slipping one of them on herself.

"Sorry..." she murmured.

The Others

The Others hunted in pack; usually 2 or 3 and often went off on their own when they saw, heard, or imagined fresh meat nearby. Food was always around if you knew where to look and they knew where to look. The leader sniffed the air and stayed very, very still. The ship spoke to them. They knew the sounds and could detect a different noise, a shift in balance, food running. He moved and the female to his left and the male to his right walked just behind him. He hadn't noticed anything yet, but they will start like always 2 floors up taking the back stairs.

Deck C: The female gave a small cry of annoyance. She wanted to go off on her own. She wasn't hungry and just wanted to roam. The leader snorted and she took off with a loud scream that even sent his heart pounding. She was glorious, mean, and the perfect mate if he desired as much. He watched her dig her nails into the side of the wall and continue running. She disappeared when she rounded a corner running full out on the ceiling. He hoped she had fun.

Deck B:The leader continued going the opposite direction. If she found food she would cry out and he would come running. As the leader continued on the brute next to him looked at the stairs and glanced upwards. The leader just stared. It was cold on that floor, but if he wanted to go let him. The brute walked up the stairs already starting to regret this decision. They didn't come up here much, but maybe he'll find 2 or 3 food here. He opened the door and started down the dark corridor. His eyes easily adjusting to the dim light. He gave a cough as he slowly walked down Deck B.



note: I will put information regarding decks in bold. That doesn't mean that if you are on Deck B you should only read the Deck B Bold. It just means that is where the paragraph started. Notice the leader and the female are on Deck C. The Brute is on Deck B.

Kara

"Engineer with lack of another way up?" she suggested hopefully.

She shook her head and slowly moved away, walking towards the examination room.

Chuckling, Kara appreciated her new friend’s attempt at levity. She couldn’t shake her growing feeling of unease and her imagination wasn’t helping matters. It was her turn to follow now as it seemed Jasmine knew where she was going. Plus, the exam room they were entering was pitch black and she didn’t want to get separated, at least not until they found out what was going on.

"You seem to remember an awful lot..." she trailed off, seemingly lost in thought.

“What do you mean? Remember an awful lot about what?” Though she couldn’t see her, Kara looked towards her friend’s general direction with some concern. Now that she thought about it, Jasmine had seemed a bit deliberate in both actions and words – as if she wasn’t quite sure of herself. Yet at other times like now, she seemed quite certain with where she was going.

She was just about to voice her curiosity when she heard Jasmine stumble and felt her grab onto her chest for support. Kara backed up in alarm but the other woman simply followed her out of the room, hands still on her breasts. It wasn’t until they got back into the lit area that the other woman realized what she was holding onto and pulled back in a started gasp. Kara watched in amusement as her friend turned bright red and mumbled an apology.

“Buy me dinner and we’ll call it even,” Kara teased as she accepted the proffered robe.

“Wow, these things don’t leave much to the imagination do they?” Kara commented as she twisted around, cinching the ties around her form, trying futilely to keep the flaps in the back from flashing her bottom every time she moved. “Hopefully we can find something more functional before we run into the rest of the crew.”

“So, now that we’ve temporarily taken care of our clothing issue, what do you say to tracking someone down so they can tell us what’s going on?” She turned back to Jasmine for a response but just saw her standing there looking thoughtful but confused. “Well?”

Mark

The quiet was ominous. Nearly a thing physical, it pressed down around him, seeming to stifle even his own sounds. He realized that he was reacting to the sensation around him, trying to keep as silent as possible, but that didn't make sense. If he was going to find anyone, it didn't make sense to move so quietly. But that didn't keep him from tiptoeing down the corridor, his hand lightly trailing against the bulkhead to keep him walking straight. It was so dark that he couldn't always see anything until it was right in front of him, and he could not tell when there was a cross corridor unless his hand found a corner.

He remembered having waken up...what was it, 2, 3 days ago? He had been really confused at first, unable to remember anything. He had recognized where he was, though, a ship of some sort, in quarters. The room had been lit only by a dim red emergency light, very ominous in itself. He had been alone in the dark. Finally, he had remembered his name-Mark. He had started putting together other details after that. His first realization had been that he was naked. He'd found some lockers with clothes in them, but they were pretty well worn, practically rags, with some tears in them. He could not complain, though, it was all that there was.

The next was that whatever power source was used to open the door wasn't functioning. He had pressed the button that claimed to operate the door, and it had done nothing. Nor did any of the other buttons on that panel. His next urge was food. He'd found a decent supply of rations, and ate until he was full, before moving forward. As his brain slowly began waking up, reasoning more of what was around him, he realized that there was a comm system of sort on the wall, adjacent to where his bed had been, between it and the door. He felt confident THAT had been working-at least, there were active lights on the panel, and it sounded like he was getting some feedback when he spoke into it, but he had no idea what frequency to use to communicate. At this point, he knew that something had gone wrong on the ship, and perhaps that was why nobody was answering his requests for information. It certainly explained why the power was out.

He had not wanted to venture out into the corridors at first. When he had found the manual override hydraulic to pump the door open, it had been pitch black in the corridor. It lacked even the dim light of the quarters he was in. He had stayed there for hours, hoping someone would find him, until he fell asleep. After waking up, a bit more of it had come back to him. He realized that he'd been in cryosleep. There were other beds in there, which he recognized as cryotubes, and most of those were empty-except one. It was still locked down, and it still had power, and he could still see someone in it. But there had been no way to wake them up, try as he might. Apparently these were controlled from elsewhere on the ship.

Eventually he had decided that he couldn't stay where he was-the food he had would not last forever. Fortunately, there was backpack-again, tattered, but still serviceable. It had even had a roll of duct tape in it, so he'd take up the big hole in the bottom and another on the side, the dumped the remaining rations in it, along with the roll of tape. He decided that he needed to find...a control room, or the bridge, or something. It stood to reason that if anyone else were around, they'd be in the most vital areas of the ship. Not that he knew which way that might be, but he was sure he would know them if he saw them.

Which was how Mark had gotten here, having wandered this corridor for...what, an hour? He would have killed for a chronometer, just to maintain his sense of time. With no visual cues whatsoever, it was hard to tell if minutes or hours had passed. As he passed another cross corridor, Mark hesitated, looking left, and then right, before crying out, "HELLO?" down the corridor. He listened for a second, waiting for a response. Hearing nothing, he shrugged, and then continued walking forward.

Cooper

Cooper opened his eyes and quickly shut them again. His head was pounding and even though the lights were dim they made the pain that much more intense. The smell around him was awful and he got the feeling that something was very wrong. He opened his eyes again, trying to hold them open long enough to get a sense for where he was. As far as the eye could see were banks of cryo beds, some had been knocked down, some open many still closed. He closed his eyes again to get some temporary relief from the pain. When he opened his eyes again, he looked down at the floor and saw a stream of dried blood below his bed.

His eyes darted around the room, looking for anyone, but the room was empty. He got down and started to walk down the row of beds, keeping crouched and close to the side, following the blood, the smell getting worse with each step, until he reached the source. There were bodies, torn apart to a point that he couldn’t even tell how many. He ducked back between two of the beds and looked around again, before carefully starting back in the opposite direction. He moved quickly and quietly, trying to remain out of sight. His head was pounding again and he started to feel dizzy. His mind raced, “What is going on? Where am I? Who am I?” The room felt like it was spinning out of control and he had to stop and sit down for a moment.

He took a few deep breaths, trying desperately to get his bearings. His thoughts came slow. That damn headache. He realized that he was naked and would need to find some clothes but after the horrors that he just saw, clothes seemed secondary. The odor of the bodies was still torturing his nose, making his stomach turn. He knew he had to do something, but had no idea where to start. The room was still spinning. Sitting down hadn’t helped at all. He felt his eyes getting heavy as he fought to keep himself from passing out. “I’m Cooper,” he muttered to himself. That sounded right.

The Others

Deck B: The brute went down one hall and turned down another corridor. He stopped and stared thinking he had saw a shadow move. It could be his own kind or it could be another. He ran his nails clipping the floor like a dogs as his arms hands hit the ground first than his legs. He got to the end and looked, but there was nothing there. Just stairs that led to the Cold. The brute coughed again and turned back. He went into a nearby room looking in drawers and cabinets trying to find anything that could be food.

Deck C: The female was on the ceiling hanging upside down between the beams. She had no hair and she remained motionless blending into her surroundings. She was just sitting there. Barely breathing. Barely moving. Her eyes open, alert, attuned to the ship. A small noise had her head turning to the left. She let go and at the last moment before her head would slam into the floor she flipped landing on her hands and knees. She sniffed the air and slow crawled with her ass high in the air in the direction of the noise.

Food. She could smell food. She moved faster suddenly her stomach growling for sustenance. She turned down a corridor and another before the stench hit her. She had forgotten this room. The door was bent awkwardly and she had to climb up and over from the ceiling to get in. She gave a small moan almost in pain as she picked up the first limb and bit down. The blood wasn't fresh, but the meat was still there. She pulled the meat from the limb, chewed, and swallowed. She heard another odd noise, but ignored it for the meal. She preferred her meal alive, running, and screaming, but she would take this smorgasbord laid out in front of her.

The leader walked on two feet down the hall. He had a long metal pole that had a sharp tip on it. He was very good with it. Strong. He let that pole drag behind him creating a shhhhhhhhh sound as he walked. He liked that sound of metal scraping on metal. The pole got caught on a metal edge as he walked and there was a brief pause, clang, and then the sound continued on. He sniffed the air, but there was nothing different here. He turned down the corridor just as Mark came upon the corridor he was on.

There was a door with the bottom right side pulled up. Small enough for a child to slip through. He could slip into that room if he dragged his body in. The leader got down on his hands and knees and poked his head into the room. The sudden blinking light had him cry out harshly before he got his sights under control. He couldn't hear Mark cry out through his own cries of surprise. The leader backed up not liking that room. He was still on his hands and knees low. He looked back to the corridor he was on; head tilted thinking. Should he go back that way or continue down this bad hall?

She woke in the dark, flailing blindly up from a nightmare, digging her nails into her own flesh to ensure that she was truly awake. Her hands ran over her body and her pack as her heartrate slowed. She did not know if she had cried out as she awoke, doused in a cold sweat. It might be dangerous to move. It might be dangerous not to.

Evangeline bit down on her clenched fist and swallowed down a rising sob as fresh panic roiled in her empty gut. The futility of her circumstances, her loneliness in this drifting can of hell, sometimes it took her breath away.

It was two weeks since she had awoken from cryo, though Evangline had no way of knowing this. She slept when she was exhausted and forced herself to keep moving when she wasn't. She had woken alone, the only surviving occupant in a rack of cryo pods that looked like a truck had side-swiped it. She knew her name because it was on her dogtags, along with the fact she had come aboard this ship as a peacekeeper or space-cop. She didn't look like a cop, she was petite and slightly built but the first time she had encountered another human, Evangeline had been so terrified it was one of them that she had instantly and reflexively beaten the man to death, crumpling his temple with the hilt of her hunting knife. So she wasn't as defenceless as she first thought, but her memories had yet to return to her.

The locker beside her cryo pod had been looted but whoever it was hadn't fitted into her clothes or tiny steel toed boots. She had pulled on combats, a black bra and vest and her boots. There was a photo of her with her arm around a guy, tall and muscular with the look of the military about him. She had no recollection to the guy but clearly he was important to her. She had scavenged a flashlight and knife on her travels but the light had died days ago and she had found no batteries.

Evangeline had wandered from the cryo bay while she was still disoriented and had since failed to find her way back in the dark. She moved blindly through barely lit steel corridors, more silently than she would have thought herself capable, heading always towards warmth. Warmth meant the possibility of light, of heat and food and people. She had no clue where she was in the ship right now.

The last time she had been awake, she had encountered one of the hideous things that hunted here. She had heard it moving and there had been enough of a dim glow to ascertain that it wasn't human. Evangeline couldn't say what it looked like but it definitely wasn't anything she wanted to meet. She had crawled into an air vent and sat very very still, breathing shallow and quiet through her nose until it heard a dull thud elsewhere and hurried away. After that, Evangeline had lost her mind for a while. It had been too much; two weeks of dark, silent, isolated, virtual starvation. She was weakening by the day, psychologically as well as physically. Soon she would be easy meat for one of those things. She had staggered around blindly, sobbing uncontrollably like a child, till exhaustion forced her to find a corner, hugging herself and shuddering till she passed out.

She popped open a ration and ate half of it, washing it down with a couple of mouthfuls of stale water that she had found in an area full of living quarters some days ago. That would suffice until she felt faint again.

Unable to remember in which direction she had been heading in, Evangeline moved away from her corner, checking by touch to ensure she had forgotten nothing, edging along the wall to her left with her knife in her right hand.

Wendy - Deck C

Wendy crawled in the close, warm darkness of the ventilation system. Her movements were slow, careful, and sure; trying not to make even the slightest sound. For all she knew, the monsters were in the corridor below her or even on the ceiling below the shaft she was crawling through.

She had estimated it was five days since she had come to in this...this horrible place. Four days since Rachel had died. She only knew that because one of the gadgets she'd scrounged up in the abandoned and ghost-like quarters near where she'd come to was a small alarm clock. She'd found a few other such things, other gizmos as well, a music box, a little hologram projector of some smiling family, but little that was very useful. Still, she'd taken them with her. Maybe they'd be handy as decoys for the monsters.

She made herself not shudder at the thought of them through sheer will. A shudder might make a ripple in the metal of the duct and that would make noise and noise would bring Them.

She stopped moving, seeing it again in her mind's eye. Rachel's lush body was exposed, her dark skin slick with sweat and saliva from the beast atop her. Her hands flailed against it as she screamed again and again, her blows doing nothing to the huge, roughly man shaped monster. It's cock was huge; thick as her calf and longer and it hammered in and out of Rachel's battered, stretched pussy over and over as the creature took it's pleasure from her. She screamed and sobbed, and over all the noise, Wendy heard her shriek, "Wendy! Help meee! PLEASE!"

Wendy fought back the urge to cry or to vomit; both were noisy and dangerous. God knew she'd cried enough and she could again later, but only if she survived now. Which made what she was doing SO stupid. She'd heard noises through her vent. Sounds carried well through the ducts as they were designed to make air travel easily. She'd heard voices, human voices, talking.

They were dead. So dead. They would hear it and They would come and...and she should have listened to her instincts and just gone the other way, maybe crawled back up to the upper, colder areas and hid. But...but after Rachel...

Wendy shook her head and crawled on. The voices were clearer now, and she could vaguely see an end to the duct where it had been opened; a darker space in dim light that seemed to yawn open like a hungry mouth. She crept to the edge of it and peered down carefully, one hand holding her glasses to her face. There were two other women down there; pretty, both of them and wearing very little and looking confused.

Wendy shook her head as she pulled on a somewhat ragged jumpsuit, "This is all so strange...what could have happened?"

Rachel looked grim as she tugged on a similar garment, "I don't know. But we'll find out together."

Wendy pulled out one of the gizmos she'd discovered; it was a mobile communicator. It couldn't call out or send a text or hook up to the ship's computer but some of the stupid games and other functions still worked. She could still type on it. She tapped a message in large print and then stuck her hand out of the gap in the vent, waving it in the hopes of attracting the women's attention. The little screen read "Up here. DO NOT TALK."

She pulled it back, cleared the message and typed another, longer one out. She stuck her arm and the mobile device out again, "Very dangerous here. MUST BE QUIET!!! I'll help u into vent & u follow me to "safe" place. But BE QUIET OR WE WILL ALL DIE."

Leo

The man tilted his head slightly, hearing just the slighest shuffling from in front of him. Inside the shaft. He started to crawl back slowly, but stopped as a thought went through his mind. A realization, if you will. The Others didn't use the air vents, and if they did, they wouldn't be so quiet fitting their bodies into such a small space. With this knowledge, he started to crawl forward again, slowly and silently. If it DID happen to be one of them, he wanted to see it before it saw him. Not that he had a chance taking one of them on, of course. Or, at least, he hadn't tried, and didn't exactly fancy trying it.

He reached a cross junction in the vents. Going by memory, the sound had bounced from the right. He inched his way forward until he was right next to the opening. Pulling himself up forward with his forearms, he poked just his head around the corner, his eyes making out a faint shaped down the vent a short ways. It didn't appear disfigured, and had its arm extended through an opening in the vent. He pulled back around the corner, laying on his back, staring at the top of the vent. If it's another human, there's usually safety in numbers, no?

But if it wasn't, and his eyes were decieving him, he could have a certain measure of trouble on his hands crawling through the vents before it got to him. They were quite fast, though the small space might well restrict it enough for him to get away. Coming to a decision, he reached a gauntlet around the corner and flashed the light on the palm of his hand once. He waited, and flashed it again before pulling it back to his side. He didn't like using that light, as it emitted a small hum of power when it clicked on, and that small hum could give him away. There was no other source of light on him at the moment, so he had no choice.

He leaned just his head around the corner again, his helmet lighting up the vent in front of him and no doubt showing the figure where he was. For better or worse, someone knew where he was. The first person he had seen in days.

Well, the first live one, at least.

Jasmine

“Buy me dinner and we’ll call it even,” Kara teased as she accepted the proffered robe.

Jasmine just blushed a brighter red at the words, fitting on her robe.

“Wow, these things don’t leave much to the imagination do they?” Kara commented, fixing her robe. “Hopefully we can find something more functional before we run into the rest of the crew.”

Jasmine nodded, glancing over at her. She felt her cheeks cooling and sighed, suddenly lost in thought. The rest of the crew? From what she had seen so far, there wasn't much of the crew left. It was all just too quiet. Too quiet for anything to be around. Or, what WAS around was just really, really quiet.

“Well?”

The voice snapped her back to the present. Her eyes focused on Kara. Clothing issue not so much rectified just yet. There was still much of her form showing that she didn't quite want to flash to everyone she met. The robes dipped down quite a bit into her cleavage and showed the sides of her breasts. Then of course there was the problem that Kara already noticed, and the shortness of the gowns. It was a good thing it was so warm here or she might have been freezing.

She opened her mouth to respond, but stopped, narrowing her eyes and tilting her head in confusion. Something was sticking out of the vent shaft she had noticed earlier. Kara's back was to it, so it was no surprise she didn't see it. It was a communicator. Jasmine stepped up to Kara and put a finger to her lips to stop the inevitable question. Something wasn't right. Pulling her along with her, she walked towards the device, being held in a human hand. Feminine by the looks of it.

Up Here. DO NOT TALK.

How strange. Jasmine exchanged a glance with Kara. The phone and arm retracted, then appeared again a moment later.

"Very dangerous here. MUST BE QUIET!!! I'll help u into vent & u follow me to "safe" place. But BE QUIET OR WE WILL ALL DIE."

Dangerous? Dangerous in what way? None of this sounded good. Why couldn't they talk? She shook her head and glanced over at Kara again, waiting to see what she would do.

Wendy would have sighed with relief as one of the women saw her waving arm and turned her comrade's attention to it. Wow...those robes were not leaving much to the imagination, were they?

Focus, girl! They are coming.

She pulled the mobile back and tapped a new message before crawling forward to the opening. The women could see her now, up in the vent where it had been wrenched open. She held the device toward them again, it reading, "Get on the tube and I'll give u a hand up into vent. Careful & quiet is best. Crawl over me and get behind, then will move forward and lead u." They were going to have to be very friendly to get out of here to one of the "safer" places on the ship. Not that anywhere was really safe, as far as she could tell.

Then she reached back to slip the device into a jumpsuit pocket. Then she stiffened up as there was a sudden faint illumination behind her. Light? In the vent? What the hell?

Wendy rolled to one side in the vent and looked back, shielding her eyes against the light. It was still dim but in the dark twilight she'd gotten used to it seemed startlingly bright. It was...a metal head? A helmet! That was...she used to know what that was...some of the crew wore those suits...

She nibbled her lower lip. Was he human? It wasn't charging, shouting and attacking her...hell. Hell, why couldn't it have been someone with a normal head and a flashlight?

Wendy took a deep breath and pulled out the mobile again. There was a quick flurry and she held it out to the figure with another message, "Wendy. 2 grls need help up here. Pls help if u can when get them up." This was a risk. She knew nothing about this person.

But what options did she have?

Wendy then turned and gestured to the women below, leaning down and holding out her hands. If they got on the tube, she could reach them and help them get up. After that...well, after that they'd see. She just had to hope that They weren't on the way.

She gestured with her hands again; her eyes impatient.

Kara

She looked at Jasmine, shocked that she would even consider going up.

“Errr…no way! We just woke up to this mess, there’s something obviously wrong with the power in this part of the ship, no one’s been by to brief us, and you want to go crawling around in a vent?!?”

“Hey you up there, come down this instant and explain yourself.” Kara admonished in a low but irritated voice. “What the hell is going on?”

She knew she was being rather rude, but she was upset and almost at wits end, nothing was as it should have been. The more she looked around, the less sense everything seemed to make. There was no way she was crawling into an air vent with two other people without a damn good reason. If this was some sort of prank, it wasn’t funny anymore. The only thing that kept her from going off on the woman in the vent was the warning… of possibly dying? If they made noise? Again, more things that didn’t make sense – is it possible that she woke up in the middle of a mutiny?

Summoning as much authority as possible in her barefeet half-dressed state, she crossed her arms under her breasts and tapped her foot waiting impatiently for the woman to come down, determined to get her answers.

Cooper

Cooper opened his eyes. His instincts told him that he needed to move, but he didn't know where or why. His only thought was to get as far away from the bodies as he could, despite the fact that he had no reason to believe that away from the bodies was any safer than towards them. Still dizzy, he stuck his head out from between the beds where he had been hiding and looked around for anything that might seem dangerous. To some extent, it seemed like a waste of time to him since he had no idea what he was looking for and wasn't really sure what might be suspicious. He started to make his way down the row, occasionally stopping to hide and check out his surroundings again. He passed bed after bed, empty locker after empty locker, until a robe in one of the lockers caught his eye. He grabbed it, and put it on. I suppose some cover was better than nothing.

Then he heard a voice from just ahead of him. He ducked back between the beds.

He was curious and moved a bit closer. He could hear the sound of two women talking. Was this some kind of trap? He followed the sound of the voices until he could see two women wearing robes that covered very little. He laughed a bit to himself. Good thing the one I found was a little bigger than that. They couldn't have possibly been the ones that killed the people he had seen. As he listened in, he could tell that they were just as confused as he was. He stepped out from where he had been watching taking care to look for anything suspicious, and whispered to them, "Hey, what's going on here?"

As Kara spoke in a clear if low voice, Wendy's face changed dramatically. Her eyes went wide and her features fell, moving from impatient to terrified on the verge of panic. She waved her arms in a gesture of negation and then pressed a finger to her lips in a shushing gesture frantically. Fuck, fuck, fuck! She understood why but this woman was going to get them all raped and torn apart!

Whatever she wanted, Wendy was not getting down. But this had to be done fast, and if she wouldn't move without explanation...shit. Wendy let out a muffled whimper and pulled out the mobile again, tapping furiously at it before holding it out for the women, and now some guy who stumbled in, to see.

The display read simply: "No time now. Monsters r real & kill. They find noise. SHUT UP & come or stay & die. Last chance. I won't die 4 u."

She slipped the mobile in between her breasts, the zipper of the jump suit pulled down just enough for her to use nature's pocket. She might need it close at hand. Then Wendy gestured for them to come up and held out her hands again. At the same time, she strained her ears, listening. There was no way that if any of Them were around that They could have missed all this.

Kara’s expression went from annoyed to incredulous as she read the handheld display.

“Monsters…?” She cried out before she could stop herself. Her hand flew up to cover her mouth as turned to look nervously at Jasmine who had obviously read the same message.

There are no such things as monsters… but the look of terror on the woman’s face as she peered out from the vent was all Kara needed to convince her of the severity of the situation. Nodding her head in confirmation, she scampered up into the vent and turned to assist the woman in helping the remaining two up. Not being part of the previous exchange, she knew the newcomer would have the same doubts as she did about crawling around in a vent but hoped her eyes communicated to him the urgency of the situation.

Hopefully the vents hold, it was doubtful that it was designed for 4 people to crawl around in it at once.

Wendy helped the newcomers up, one at a time, and for each one she spoke. Her voice was a soft, low whisper but it sounded terrifyingly loud in her ears, "Keep moving to spread out the weight and I'll come after to lead. If something comes, just go and crawl away, head up when you can and reach the upper decks. Don't stop and don't look back."

Her heart was pounding so hard in her chest she was afraid it could be heard or that it would crack her ribs. They needed to get moving and soon, but carefully so that their mass didn't wreck what so far had been the only safe-ish way to move around.

If they spread the weight out, it should be fine. As long as they kept moving ahead and spaced themselves, it should be fine. God, let it be fine. For once, let something work out all right in this hellish place. Wendy palmed the holographic photo she'd picked up in the one room. If she heard anything, it might be enough of a distraction for them to get away.

The women were focused on something up by the ceiling and then Cooper saw it too. A woman’s arm was holding some kind of electronic device, but from his angle he couldn’t make out what it was or what she was doing with it. He moved closer, as the women started climbing up into the vent.

He hesitated to follow. Going it alone would be dangerous, but then remembered the pile of bodies again. Maybe a group wasn’t that much safer. Either way, climbing into a vent made him uneasy. If whatever is out there found them, there would be no options for escape. He looked up and saw that the brunette was looking at him and her brown eyes screamed that this was the only choice. He knew that he wasn’t safe on the ground, how much more dangerous could the vent be?

Two of the women helped him up into the vent, and he could hear the fear in the voice of the one wearing glasses, so he started moving along the vent like she instructed, keeping his distance from the blonde in front of him. He moved as silently as he could and was suddenly very thankful that he hadn’t found any shoes or boots that would have made noise. He assumed the other two women were still behind him.

Stretching was a good idea, every day on board this god forsaken ship involved hard work, and by the end of the day you would always be happy you stretched beforehand. Issac however, never remember to stretch until after he had crawled his way out of his little safe haven, which is why his first act upon determining he was alone in a random hallway in deck C was to stretch out all the kinks and twists in his muscles.

His little display went on for a good two minutes of him acting like he was in a body building contest, and while he did his best to listen for any sign of an approaching enemy, there were a few distant sounds that he couldn't identify for the life of him. By the time he was done his body felt better, but his mind was on edge, he had been quiet, but he had still been immobile in the open for far too long, so he quickly set about advancing.

Issac set off in a stealthy walk, curving and twisting his feat as he went to hide the sound of his boots on the ground, he didn't know how he knew how to do it, he didn't even realise he was doing it for the longest time, but when he wanted to move quietly, he just instinctively fell in to the same stride.

For a while he was walking aimlessly, it was always hard to know where to start looking for supplies, sure, he could go to A deck, but he hated going to A deck, and the chances of finding what he actually wanted were slim. A sound gradually worked its way in to his ear, metal scraping metal, it was an other, no human would be stupid enough to be making the noise.

He cautiously closed in on the noise, running through what he knew in his head, it sounded like it was being dragged along the floor judging by the length between the clangs, so it was some kind of spear, only the big ones had weapons like that, he did not like the big ones. But he kept going, still cautious as he came up to the opening to the corridor the sound was coming from, he may not have liked the others, but they were usually able to find the aftermath of their friends playtime, and they normally left the poor bastards stuff behind.

He peaked his head in to the corridor, eyes straining in the low light to see the source of the noise, he couldn't make out details, nor could he see the smaller one slinking around a corner, but he could see a silhouette, and as soon as he did he knew it was time to go up a level or two, where was the closest way up?... Shit, he would actually have to go in to the corridor to get there unless he wanted to add forty minutes to his travel time.

Luckily the big guy was going the other way, and was distracted by a broken door, so Issac took the chance, moving as quick as he dared along the side of the corridor as the big guy crouched down to inspect the door, Issac didn't know why, he also didn't care, so it worked out nicely.

Without warning the bastard bellowed and Issac dashed for his turn off, not knowing it was the same one the other one had taken. He crushed himself against the wall to hide, his heart rate picking up as he prayed he hadn't been spotted, but it didn't sound as though he had been, so he calmed himself and went on, focusing on his breathing to the detriment of all else, if he didn't get himself under control he would start to sweat, the more that happened, the more they could smell him, he didn't want that.

And that's how he ended up walking right by the busted door without a second thought, without hearing the slow munching sound coming from within, all he knew right now is that he was a two minute walk from a way upstairs and away from the big bastard would would snap him in two, hopefully with his arms instead of... Issac shuddered at the thought.

LeoHawk35 said:

The man tilted his head slightly, hearing just the slighest shuffling from in front of him. Inside the shaft. He started to crawl back slowly, but stopped as a thought went through his mind. A realization, if you will. The Others didn't use the air vents, and if they did, they wouldn't be so quiet fitting their bodies into such a small space. With this knowledge, he started to crawl forward again, slowly and silently. If it DID happen to be one of them, he wanted to see it before it saw him. Not that he had a chance taking one of them on, of course. Or, at least, he hadn't tried, and didn't exactly fancy trying it.

He reached a cross junction in the vents. Going by memory, the sound had bounced from the right. He inched his way forward until he was right next to the opening. Pulling himself up forward with his forearms, he poked just his head around the corner, his eyes making out a faint shaped down the vent a short ways. It didn't appear disfigured, and had its arm extended through an opening in the vent. He pulled back around the corner, laying on his back, staring at the top of the vent. If it's another human, there's usually safety in numbers, no?

But if it wasn't, and his eyes were decieving him, he could have a certain measure of trouble on his hands crawling through the vents before it got to him. They were quite fast, though the small space might well restrict it enough for him to get away. Coming to a decision, he reached a gauntlet around the corner and flashed the light on the palm of his hand once. He waited, and flashed it again before pulling it back to his side. He didn't like using that light, as it emitted a small hum of power when it clicked on, and that small hum could give him away. There was no other source of light on him at the moment, so he had no choice.

He leaned just his head around the corner again, his helmet lighting up the vent in front of him and no doubt showing the figure where he was. For better or worse, someone knew where he was. The first person he had seen in days.

Well, the first live one, at least.

Click to expand...

Evangeline fell totally still as she heard the first indications that she was not alone. She had hoped that by sticking to vents she'd avoid anyone or anything bigger than she was. It was slow going though, crawling through the tight space occupied in places by power and supply lines without making a sound. Her pack caught on a pipe however, and she knew there was a scuffle of sound.

That was when she became aware that a very faint sound further on that she hadn't even been aware of, had fallen silent.

Evangeline's blood thrummed in her ears as adrenaline kicked into her bloodstream. It felt like she was being deafened by her own terror.

Then she was suddenly blinded and couldn't suppress a gasp of pain and fear as she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to reverse back up the tight space to the last junction she had encountered. After days and days of almost total darkness, the two blasts of light were like a hot knife on her eyeballs. It never even occurred to her that this could be a peaceful act. Someone or something wanted her blind and trapped!

She yanked her knife from her belt and brandished it sightlessly in front of her as she desperately attempted to back away. Evangeline wanted to scream at whatever it was to leave her alone but she had schooled herself too successfully to be silent at all times. The last thing she needed now was to attract more enemies.