There were fewer chunks of entrails but essentially the same amount of fluid on his face, now haphazardly redistributed. She felt his eyes fall on her with That Smile of his as he held an Electro-Kill Zappa sparking electricity into the air. She knew what those were, decent against Humans, pretty much useless against the isopods.
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He saw her start to struggle again, and this time with a slightly higher EQ he realized that testing his Zappa while staring and walking right at her might not have been the best idea. He took his finger off the Zappa’s button and dropped his hand. Now that her wide eyes were no longer locked onto his he noticed that they had dropped down a tiny bit. He wondered if there was something on his face and brought his hand up for a second before cooly wiping The Smile off of his face. Come on though. It wasn’t THAT creepy.
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The Smile was absolutely that CREEPY but at least he wasn’t grinning like a serial killer anymore. She slumped her head back once she saw him fully pocket the Zappa.
Jack walked up to her then quietly looked around the room. It was utterly and completely silent. “Stay still I’m going to wipe off the Medjel.” It didn’t come off. Huh he wondered, she must have cut her lip or the inside of her mouth.
“Ok so I can’t wipe off the Medjel,” she squirmed a bit and murmured something unintelligibly.
“And I’m not going to untie you,” her squirming picked up a frantic pace, “right this moment.”
Her struggles slowed, ready to pick up again at any moment.
“I’m going to sleep right here and I’m not leaving you to run around while I do. I don’t know you and I’m not about to get woken up by crab claws digging into my chest or my own claw-blade for that matter. When I wake up I’m going to untie you and then you can use the Terminal.”
With that, he threw himself onto a table one removed from hers and instantly fell asleep.
This is a great start so far, she thought, settling her head back against the hard metal of the table, at least I’m less itchy.
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He woke with a start, face in a grimace, eyes wide and scanning blankly across the room. He froze for a moment and seemed to come to a realization. Jack walked over to the woman, “Ok so you didn’t try and kill me in my sleep so I’d say that we’re getting along better here. I’m going to untie you now. This thing is sharp as hell, don’t move.”
After cutting her free he took careful steps backwards. He didn’t have his claw-blade raised but he didn’t put it away either. The woman warily followed him with her eyes as she stood up shakily. She wavered and Jack called out, “I think you have to keep moving or your heart will stop.” He felt slightly chagrined at the look she shot him.
“Listen just shake back and forth or up or down, I don’t know, just go check on the Terminal.”
He watched her walk over, place her hand on the pad and scroll. He dropped to a squat and waited.
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Sometime later he broke from his distracted stare at the floor and saw that she was still at the Terminal, now giving him a complicated look.
He didn’t know what it meant, “Yeah?”
She pointed at the screen and raised an eyebrow. He raised one back. Slowly he got up and stood next to her. Her finger was pointed at “Cannibal.”
He held up the back of his right hand to her, bereft all fingers but the lonely middle. Her eyes widened and he couldn’t help but laugh. She started to step away from him as her face lit up in horror.
“Don’t worry, you only ate this one” pointing with his left hand to his missing index finger.
She gave him a funny look until he stepped back a few paces and she brought her focus back to the Terminal.
She hadn’t touched the Terminal screen for long minutes now, just staring at it, her hand still connected to the pad.
“Listen lady I have some questions and we need to get out of here.”
She ignored him.
“Hey, whatever your name is, time to listen up or I’ll tie you right back onto the table.”
This time he caught that she was pointing to something on the screen, warily he approached.
Yumata #B-5429
“Ok B-5429, you done here?”
She tried to slug him in the arm but he grinned and dodged backwards just quick enough.
“Fine, Yuma. You ready to answer some questions and get out of here?”
She glared and jabbed onto the screen a few more times.
“Listen I’m not going to call you Yu-Ma-Ta. It’s too many syllables. My name is one. Yumata is 3 long ones. Instead of calling you ‘B’ or ‘Yu’ I’ll meet you halfway and call you Yuma ” he said as he crossed his arms and met her glare. “You should feel lucky you’re alive for anyone to screw up your long name anyway.”
Her eyes flashed, softened and recovered back to baseline so quickly that he missed it with only 5 in his Senses. Her hand waved at him to get on with it.
“Help me search the room first.”
They found a couple of semi-hardened Medjel packets, an old rusted handgun that looked almost useable until she tried to cock it back and it froze then essential looking bits started to crumble off of it. The magazine next to it was in some sort of oily looking plastic wrap. She grabbed that and stored it on her belt loop. It looked nicer than his, her belt had pockets.
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He found some lengths of metal that would be good to use as a blunt weapon but ended up discarding them. He was pretty happy with his claw-blades.
“Do you know how to get to the Cryo-Core?”
She thought and slowly nodded.
“Good. Take me there.”
She shook her head violently from side to side arms up and crossed her arms in front of her.
“Yes, I have to go there, my Terminal AI needs to connect to the Ship.Net.”
At the mention of “AI” her arms dropped and the eyes behind her stare widened. She pointed at the Terminal then at him with an arched eyebrow. Eventually she spelled out the letters A and I on the wall.
“Yes it’s an AI, so what?” He brought out the disk and she brought her finger up to her lips in a shushing motion.
Ok so I won’t tell anyone about it, he thought.
She continued to play charades as he dumbly stared at her.
“Listen listen, it’s a lot easier to pantomime answers than questions so let’s stick with that. Do you know where we are?”
She stared blankly at him then rocked her hand back and forth. He had never seen that expression before but he somehow understood the intention behind it.
“Are there more people like you?”
She nodded eagerly.
“Were more people woken up from Cryo?”
She arched her eyebrow at this then nodded affirmatively.
He walked over to the door next to the windows. He hadn’t seen any shapes moving on the other side in quite a while.
“This a good door to take?”
She shrugged. This team-up was a huge pain in the ass. She continued her improvised sign language.
She pointed to her chest, that meant “Yuma.” She put her palm facing downwards and pantomimed and swished two fingers back and forth, “Running.” Then another “Yuma.” She pointed to the side of her head and nodded with her eye-brows slightly, “knows,” he guessed.
She knew where she was running. She waved her hand over the room and shrugged.
He readied up next to the door. She didn’t.
“What now?”
She pointed to the claw-blade at his hip. He pointed to the sling-shot looking thing on her hip. She shook her head then emoted snapping a twig. He looked closer, it did look broken. He debated a few seconds then settled somewhere on “at least she’s not a crab.” He stared at her closer to make sure that his assumption was correct. No no, very unlikely that she is a crab. She seemed to slightly wilt under his scrutiny then recovered as he handed her his extra claw.
“Don’t worry about the blood, it’s mostly yours anyways.”
He turned back, slapped the handpad and deployed his shield by pressing the sparking Zappa into his chest.
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He stopped in the doorway. Then the Zappa stopped and his hand dropped, shortly after, the shield disappeared.
Yuma started to dry heave then thought better of it as her mouth still refused to open.
Being as cold as it was in the room there wasn’t much of a smell, the salt and the moisture assaulted taste more than smell. The room was long, much longer than the room they had come from, 4 or 5 of those rooms could have been end to end to end and still not have reached the entire distance. The room had 4 well spaced rows of Cryo-Pods facing the center path that stretch six or seven feet until it reached another 4 rows of Cryo-Pods. Occasionally there were pathways that led perpendicularly to the main path. One of these side paths is where they entered the room.
Each of the Cryo-Pods were in a slightly different state. More than a few had large eggs inside, the same complexion as the eggs in the room he had carried Yuma through before, just much bigger. Human-sized. Others were in different stages of gestation, and still even others had Humans in various states of dismemberment strewn around the room, hanging out of pods, crushed by Pods, missing chunks of essentials. Stepping over either a liver or a heart, one of the Pods nearest them as they walked slowly towards it had a human torso hanging half out of the broken front glass of the Cryo-Pod. Only the individual’s back was visible and visible was used very loosely. Their back, running from their hips to their neck were flayed open to the bone. The flaying turned into a scalping as the cut continued up to show the white of the skull reflecting harshly in the blue light of the surrounding Pods. On the back of their skull was a hole an inch-wide bored directly through to where should have been the brain. They were pretty sure the Human brain wasn’t supposed to look like that.
Yuma looked at Jack’s back after getting over her initial shock. He was tense and she didn’t need her Sense stat to tell her that. As she followed him and they weaved between the Cryo-Pods she noticed the temperature had started to rise. She looked for a source as she followed closely behind him and they weaved between the rows keeping an eye out while trying to not completely process the house of horrors this Cryo-Bay had been turned into.
They wove between the Pods searching for any Human that looked like they could still be alive. She finally figured out the source of the heat as their walking took them closer and further from each other.
He was the source of the heat. She could also see, in real-time, the tension warping his Body, like a bow-string being pulled to its absolute limit. She stepped slowly and gently into his vision and indicated that they should split up to search by waving at all the Pods and then pointing between herself and the man and waving towards the Pods again.
She did want to find survivors but a more immediate concern than that was her gut feeling before had turned into a stomach churning pain that told her to get away from this man as soon as possible.
He hadn’t said a word since they entered and he didn’t during her pantomime either, he didn’t even stop moving, his eyes pacing back and forth. Without looking directly at her he nodded then stalked off in a different direction. She went through her own row of Pods but always making sure to keep him in sight. The only thing more dangerous than a beast was a beast that you didn’t know where it was, this she knew. Even after losing an Allocation point in Dexterity her steps were silent.
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These crabs, these crabs had gone too far. He just wanted to fix this ship so they didn’t all die and these crabs, these fucking crabs couldn’t just leave him alone for even a minute so he could solve it. Look at this, he kicked aside a half-crab, half-man that had been lazily strewn in front of its Pod, no respect for anything these crabs. He wiped his brow, what was with the temperature control on this damn ship. First it was cold then it this unbearable heat comes out of nowhere.
He was sweating, a lot. She saw him wipe off some of it from his face and fling it to the side. With her Senses at 10 she managed to catch the tiny electric sizzle as the sweat hit the ground. She fell back a bit further and crossed over to the main walkway. Keeping him in line of sight was too dangerous, she could hear his stomping feet now anyways. Ahead of her about 40 feet, at the end of the room, the door slid neatly in halves and three humans walked in.
Yuma and the three were both caught off guard and they spent an awkward second staring at each other. She only had time to take in the small rounded crab that was secured to the top of each of their heads before her Electric Constitution felt a resonance fire off in a ring a row over.
This is only the Cryo-Lab, if this place is this bad then how awful is the rest of the ship, he bitterly thought, what a freak show, as he stepped through what looked to be the upper body of a young Human and the bottom of a crab that were terribly spliced and shoved back into their Cryo-Pod before trying to crawl out again. He looked surprised when he found his left hand only holding pieces of shattered chitin. Wasn’t he holding something?
God it was Hot. It didn’t make any sense to keep the room this warm, would they not all rot? It further pissed him off how these crabs felt like they could play around with Humans and do these terrible experiments and not only that they didn’t even know to keep the room cold. What a nightmare. It made no sense.
In the grim silence of the Pods a familiar sound pierced through the edges of his mind as he felt an electric tingle buzz through his Body. Through the swampy fog roiling in his head his eyes scanned in front of him. He felt the Electricity skipping and moving through him. It was unsettled, agitated.
There.
I smiled, Perfect.