Abyssal Ascent (Part IV)

Ingvar lived by one very simple rule: your comrades are everything. This is as true in surviving piracy in space as it was for surviving a war. When things look tough it’s solidarity with your comrades and the trust that you’ll have each other’s back that gets you through the day. Originally he learned this ideal from Ramona herself, making it all the stranger to him, that she no longer seemed to pay the golden rule any heed. She didn’t even seem that interested in looking after herself beyond raw necessities.

As he walks down the webbed corridors of Engineering desperately trying to avoid getting his boots stuck in the mass of viscous silk, he couldn’t help but remember Ramona in her youth. He tried not to think about it as he kept following the signs to Electrical. Ingvar had heard none of the strange skitting in the ducts or scratching amongst the web that seemed so pervasive up until moments ago. It was so empty and eerily quiet.

His every heartbeat was as audible to him as each step he took. Somehow this made his skin crawl even more than the Arachnomorphs stalking him. Part of him kept hoping he’d find a survivor who hadn’t been twisted into one of those monsters. He was running out of optimism fast until then he found what he was looking for; though he soon wished he hadn’t. “Who… who!? I feel footsteps! Why do I feel footsteps?!” a voice cries out.

The older man stops dead in his tracks right before the entrance to Electrical. The inside is dark and cavernous and in that silence he can again hear his own beating heart. At least the reinforced windows offered some meager natural lighting from the moons and stars in the hallways. Electrical didn’t seem to have a single window within. Ingvar lights his flashlight up and points it into the gloam, “Who’s there? You okay?”

The beam of light shines a light on several circuit breaker boxes but there wasn’t anyone to be seen immediately. Cautiously Ingvar started to make his way into that Stygian shadow, his bones jolting as he finally heard a reply; “A survivor… can you kill me? Please? I’m begging you. They’re eating me alive on the inside.”

“What’s eating you? The spiders?” Ingvar stops in his tracks. The voice seems like it’s echoing from all around Electrical but he couldn’t locate it’s source. He snaps his flashlight around several times before eventually zeroing in on an emaciated man in the corner. Several dozen lumps or cysts of varying size can be seen crawling across his skin and sinking into his flesh. “You… holy hell, no, your skin is crawling.”

Dozens upon dozens of squashed spiders and their smeared guts are strewn around the nigh skeletal man. Upon closer inspection Ingvar can see a broken cocoon above him and scraps of silk patched all over the poor fool’s flesh.

“I am in so much pain,” he dryly rasps before dryly weeping. “It’s all that bastard, Friedrich!” He is too weak to open his eyes, too weak to move his limbs, but he weeps with what remains of his strength. “That bastard! He’s why I’ll never see my kids again. Why I’ll never see my wife again. He’s why I’m going to die here on this God forsaken station. I hope I die at least, I don’t want to become one of those things.”

Ingvar comes to one knee and runs a hand over the thinned hair of the afflicted soul, their dry sobs came to a halt. “Tell me everything… who are you? How did Strauss infect a whole station? Did clawing your way out help you avoid changing into these mutants-these Arachnomorphs?”

There’s a long silence after his question. For a moment Ingvar wonders if the man died right then and there, but finally he draws in a deep rasp, his chest undulating as it expands with those terrible creatures crawling under his flesh.

“My name is Doctor Jing Wu,” he finally rasped in response, “And if you’re calling them that… you’ve probably met the monster yourself. Do not trust him.”

Ingvar scoffs, “You don’t have to tell me twice.”

For a moment his dry cracked lips curl into somewhat almost resembling a weak smile. “Dr. Strauss convinced the Chief Medical Officer that physical inspections were necessary of all employees. We all figured we were simply being screened to ensure the xenobiology samples hadn’t entered our systems.”

“And then he used that as a pretext to inject spider eggs into your system,” the older man was starting to piece two and two together. “That explains why the whole damn station is infected. I’m guessing you escaped a cocoon?”

He lifted his hands, the fingernails were utterly broken off revealing a bloody mess, his lips peeled back to reveal a nearly toothless snarl. “...I chewed and clawed my way out of that silk cocoon. It hurt so much, the silk was so strong, and yet it wasn’t enough. As long as they’re in me and I live, they will try to cocoon.”

Ingvar sighs and glances over his shoulder at the entrance to Electrical bleeding very little light into that gloam veiled room, “No transformation without being cocooned. Good to know.”

“I simply can’t remove all the spiders within me… they multiply, I kill them when I can, but then they eat my tissues and reproduce,” again Jing broke into dry sobs, coughing up blood as they did. It took him a moment to collect himself as the crimson ichor drooled from his cracked lips. “I studied them under Friedrich as an Intern. I know what these wretched things are capable of. But to experience it… the worst part is Friedrich’s voice, in my head, commanding me, compelling my body to act. He’s telling me to transform.”

Ingvar frowns, running his metal hand over the thinned hair of this poor soul, being eaten away by those terrible spiders within, “He’d do the same to Ramona and me wouldn’t he?”

Jing didn’t waste a second responding, “In a Martian minute. Though… I smell steel, you have a prosthetic don’t you? He hates prosthetics. He hates robots, cyborgs, and androids. He hates anything that isn’t fully organic.”

“That… explains a lot,” the older man stands up, checking the ammo in his pistol’s magazine briefly before snapping it back in. “One last thing. Are you sure there is nothing I can do to save you? If ending you is the only way, I’ll do it, but it’s always a last resort.”

“They’ve already webbed my nervous system,” Jing tries to push himself up but his bony arms could barely hold his weight. “Even if you surgically remove every last spider and egg sac, I’d never get rid of Friedrich’s voice in my head.”

His milky cataract eyes plead up in Ingvar’s vague direction. He brings a single bony finger up to his forehead and points between his eyes. ”Please, just end my torment. I beg of you.”

Ingvar puts the barrel of his gun against Jing’s head. The emaciated man sighs with a deep sense of relief. He visibly relaxes and lets his milky eyes flutter shut. Even as the creatures crawl under his flesh he seems to be at peace for the first time since he’d found him. Ingvar frowns as he’s reminded of the dozens upon dozens of wounded comrades who begged him to take their life in the absence of medical attention. In some ways the War never truly ended for him. “At ease, relax, sleep tight Doctor Jing Wu. Think of your wife, think of your kids, think of never seeing another one of these damned bugs again.”

“Mmm… thank you stranger,” his cracked lips curl into a weak smile. “Put a bullet in Friedrich when you’re through with me would you?”

Ingvar pulled the trigger and blew the dying man’s brains out quickly and with a magnanimous blast. The insects under his flesh stopped moving and went completely still. Spiders begin crawling out of the wound, his mouth, his eyes, some of them chewed new wounds to worm their way out.

The older man sighs and stares down at the last stationside survivor’s remains. He gawks sullen and silent for several seconds before putting his gun in its holst. “If I hadn’t planned on killing him before, I sure as shit plan on offing the sucker now.”

Ingvar lived by one simple rule. His comrades were everything.

Ramona was his comrade even if she didn’t act like it and right now he had to turn his focus to killing that restaurant’s power. Her life depended on it.