Deploying the shield before he turned the corner immediately saved his life as incoming energetic and physical projectiles slammed against it.

He squatted lower to cover himself completely with his shield before drawing his sword and moving forward. Some of the incoming angles would turn bad as he drew closer but he wasn’t about to stand still and let them figure some other way around it.

“Cease fire, cease fire!”

It trickled off and Jack risked standing but didn’t retract his shield.

“You’re the pink-shield guy, Jack.”

“Yeah, and it’s not pink, it’s salmon-colored.”

He got a few strange looks at that and ignored them, it wasn’t his problem that they couldn’t properly tell the color.

“How do you know my name?”

Instead of answering they found themselves under attack from behind and turned to return fire.

Jonah looked like he was on an emotional rollercoaster, “What in the ship-damned hell is going on here?”

“Ugh, meat. I thought you were the smart one.”

“I don’t know either.”

“Of course you don’t know, you only know how to eat, get electrocuted, and are, somewhat impressively, difficult to kill.”

“I liked you better when you didn’t talk.”

“Well if you want that 0.49% then you’ll learn to live with it!”

He ignored the SI, it was annoying how it knew exactly what he was thinking about, the .49%.

“Let’s go help, once they recognized me, somehow, they stopped shooting.”

That seemed at least marginally more friendly than the rest of the ship had been so far.

“Keep an eye out for mushrooms.”

Jack nodded, “Good point.”

Humans attacked the defending group in waves of pure silence, except for the clash of metal swords and the crack of projectiles. Their silence was unsettling. Jonah fired off metal balls that punched through multiple bodies.

Jack walked up and past the line of defenders, shield raised. He shifted and caught a blade on the edge of his shield then slashed across with his blade, gutting one. Then he swung again and his blade cut through another’s neck. A bullet lodged in his shoulder and bounced off the bone, he could feel it move through his shoulder muscle, no doubt effects of the Constitution Upgrade.

The gutted enemy stood back up, so he drove his blade down into the middle of its head. It sliced in, then popped in a splash of gray matter. Something leapt out during the head pop and started to bite into him, he only felt the drain of electricity before it splashed with him a small burst of gore.

He backhanded another silent attacker and then, it was done, they were gone. He ran to the last one he knocked down and held him down.

One of the Humans on ‘their’ side shouted, “The head! Destroy the head!”

He drove his middle finger into the man’s skull and when he withdrew it there was a small, worm-slug creature trying to bite through the tip of it. He pulled it closer for a look then shot back his head as it leaped and clamped onto his chest. Its teeth whirled as it broke through his skin and drank down a flood of viral blood and toxic electricity that charred to a crisp and then turned it to flaky ash. The wound was still healing but was doing so slower than he expected.

He stood up and turned around and was met with a wall of guns and steel.

“Don’t move, don’t fucking move!”

“Did it get you? Did anyone see?”

“Look at his chest, it burrowed in already!”

“Do we shoot, do we shoot?”

“Should we kill them, meat?”

Jack debated if he should raise his shield or not, but decided to shake his head which both started a rash of fire as well as solving the debate on whether or not to bring his shield up.

“Jonah, are you going to explain to them or should I?”

The older man finally seemed to have broken through whatever mood he had been in.

“What are you all so concerned about?”

“What? The worms! Them!”

“That’s it? Put down your weapons, just put them down. Jack is fine.”

“How do you know that old man? Wait, why are you old?”

Jonah spoke the next words through his teeth, “If you knew the things that man has absorbed into his body, then you wouldn’t be panicking. Is this your first day on the ship or something?”

The crowd shared a chorus of looks with each other, one stepped forward, “Yes, actually it is.”

“Seven hells of this thrice-damned ship! A bunch of jumpy, unauged defrosties. Just what we need!”

“Wait. You all just got woken up?” Jack was already back amongst their ranks.

A chorus of screams and shouts greeted him but were trampled down by the majority keeping calm. After all, he wasn’t attacking them and was communicating with them audibly.

This time it was from a woman, “Yes, yes we did.”

“Well don’t go into too much detail stupid-meat!”

She raised a shaky finger up to point at Trash, “What’s… what’s that?”

Jack looked over to his shoulder, “Him? This is Tra- the Waste Disposal SI. Answer his question, what’s the deal with all of you?”

“We want to ask you the same!” Another voice cut in.

Jack’s grip on his sword tightened as the temperature around them started to tick up.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

“I’m going to try this one more time. If you don’t answer it’s going to be… very bad.”

The first man stepped forward, “Is that a threat?”

“Yes.”

“Who do you thin-”

The SI’s laser bored a hole in the man’s forehead.

“Thanks, Trash.”

Jonah shot the next person to move, aiming for his firearm and taking out the gun, and a few fingers.

“Listen! Shut up, just listen. You’re all Humans, I’m a Human too. I don’t want any more Humans to die. Especially if you aren’t infected or half-consumed, mentally subverted, or a hybrid.”

He was losing them, or distracting them maybe. He plowed on, “I’ve been awake on this ship for a long time now and so has my friend here. We don’t have time for your bullshit, we need to get to the Bridge or this ship is going to find itself inside of a star.”

There were mummers at that, their Pods had mentioned an Emergency Activation. It hadn't been specific.

He pointed to the woman who had last answered, “Can you give a complete answer or do I need to talk to someone else?”

She nodded.

“Does that mean someone else? Or that you can?”

She was about to nod again so Jack ignored her immediately and pointed at another person. A woman who seemed to have eyes that were a bit more calm, more knowledgable maybe, she was somewhere near the back.

“You, step forward.”

She paused but warily moved to the front of the group. She had body armor, it was damaged but it was definitely an uparmored ship-suit. He had one of those once, in the BioPrison. It lasted about as long as it took him to put it on.

“I’m Jack, what’s your name?”

“Jenn. Sure that’s your real name?”

“Trash, don’t. Not yet. I’m going to ignore that, you get one for free. Okay, someone mentioned my Gauntlet. Who told you about it?”

“The group that went ahead, they called themselves the ‘Clan’.”

Jack smiled, good. “Was there a sort of short woman with them? Shoulder length, black hair, kind of curly? Wavy, I guess?”

Jonah looked askance at him when he mentioned that, but his eyes were on the woman and the group, she looked around her fellow Humans, but eventually just shrugged and shook her head, “I don’t think so,” she saw the dark look on Jack’s face, “But there could have been, it was pretty chaotic.”

Jack nodded at this, “Okay, good. Did they leave a message?”

“Yes, they said that you should find them further north. They're trying to push to the Bridge.”

He kept nodding, “What are these things? The worms?”

“You mean, you can’t hear Them?”

That confused him, “They don’t say anything. It’s pretty creepy.”

Now she looked confused, “They speak in your mind, like its broadcasted right in there.”

He looked to Jonah, “Did you hear it?”

Jonah shook his head, “No, I don’t think so, but I’ve been near you.”

“Why would that matter?”

“More or less, you have a Psy-null field around you.”

“I do?”

“Yes, since the death-run with the Ratmen. Likely from whatever you ate from that crab's brain.”

“Death-run? Ratmen? Crab brain?”

Jack waved away the questions from the Humans around them.

“I was wondering why the Master couldn’t do anything to me.”

“Immune from mind-rape. Lucky! Damn you. I should have eaten one of those”

“Mind rape?”

Both Jack and Jonah continued to ignore the questions, Jack had some questions for the Humans here, “Ok, so they are psy-worms that… control your body and pop out of your head. Anything else I should know?”

“Aim for the head and don’t let them touch you.”

Jack nodded, “Not worried about that, but thank you.” He was about to step away but on second thought they looked pretty confused.

He raised his voice slightly to address the entire group, “I’m an Emergent Security Personnel Team Leader, my name is Jack. This ship… the ship is fucked. It’s my job to unfuck it. I know you don’t know exactly what’s going on, but trust me. You really don’t want to know. This ship has things worse than,” he kicked a headpopped corpse, “than this. Much worse.”

He went back and picked up Leanne’s body then walked past the Human group, he pointed, “That way?”

A chorus of nods responded to his question.

Jonah stopped his study of one of the bodies and moved to join Jack, he stopped then turned back to the group of Humans, “Oh, don’t enter through that Door we just came through. Not unless you want to be mind-raped and forced to join a mycelial hive-mind.”

The Humans were trying to process the sequence of words that the elderly man had just said to them.

The woman in the armored jump-suit, apparently named ‘Jenn’, ran up to Jack.

“Hey.”

Jack gave her a raised eyebrow in response.

“Can I join your group?”

“No, thanks.”

“I’m Emergent Security Personnel too.”

Jack couldn’t help but laugh, “Fooled me. Is that why you were hanging out with the rest of the defrosties?” He liked that word when Jonah had used it.

“No, they just got woken up a little while ago.”

“Oh yeah? You’d wake up with them?”

She shook her head, “No, I was in the Cryo-Labs.”

His foot hitched before continuing to walk, “How’d you get up here before us?”

“I found what looked like a maintenance pathway that went down the spine of the ship.”

Shit that would have been so much easier than the crap they’d had to go through.

"Did you see anything back in the Labs?”

"Besides the crabs and the insane giant… thing calling itself the Head of Security?”

“You actually saw the Head of Security?”

“Yes, well no, I don’t really know. I didn't get a good look. Just that he was... big.”

“What do you think, Jonah?”

“Why not?”

“If you want to follow, fine. You're responsible for your own life. And this body, here you go,” he slung Leanne into her arms, “She's your responsibility now, you can come as long as you carry her.”

“Who’s she?” She couldn’t help but flinch a bit, the woman had an outrageous amount of wounds on her. Worse yet, many of them looked to be from different periods of time.

The blue glowing head on Jack’s shoulder turned toward her on facsimile crab legs, “The last female-Human Security Personnel who joined his Emergent Security Squad.” It continued to cackle long after delivering that line before Jack bopped a fist down on its head.

“Focus, Trash. Hey you-”

“My name’s Jenn.”

“I’d rather not get attached if you’re just going to die in the next few minutes. Anyways, how long ago was the Clan here?”

The hallway branched apart, they continued following the largest corridor. Guess that answered why groups of Humans and Them were all spread out.

“Why are the rest of the Humans following us?” Jonah looked annoyed.

He took a deep breath and turned to see the rest of the Humans following the oddly confident two individuals.

“If you’re going to let them follow then why did you make it sound like such a big deal for me to come with you two?”

“Three, new meat.”

“You…three?”

Jack just shrugged, “I’d rather not have any of you following me but it’s not like there’s anything to guard back there and it’s not like I’m going to kill a bunch of Humans for no reason."

He slotted the AI disk and peeked into an oversized door.

“A Hangar, maybe a way out after the Bridge. What do you think?”

“Hmmm, the ships seem to be in decent enough condition. Extremely dated though, I wonder if the internals haven’t decayed entirely.”

“Wait. I just woke up today, what do you mean ‘decayed entirely’?”

Jack locked the door with the AI disk and continued onward and Jonah withdrew his portable and began fiddling with it. At Jonah’s request, Jack tapped the AI Disk onto his portable.

"Did you catch that energy the Ark-SI was using? The shiny green one?"

"Not as well as I would have hoped-"

Jack tapped the AI Disk again on Jonah's portable before the white haired man tuned out the world.

Trash seemed to be the only person willing to answer her, “You’ve been asleep for a veeeeery long time, new meat. What’s your memory?”

“Yeah I guess I have, wait, how do you know about that?”

She swore she saw the swirling eyes of the robot head roll up and across, “Did you just-”

“‘Roll your eyes?’ So predictable. Yes, now answer the question or I’m done talking with you.”

“Ah, uh yeah. It was leaving for a military academy. I was saying goodbye to my parents but I can’t remember their faces. I just know it was them.”

She was silent at that, it was a nice memory, and she had another too. The second one was the day they set off on the mission, although it was more vague. Just a general sense of clandestine excitement. However, It felt like that wasn't the entirety of it.

Jack could tell through his Affinity that she was looking at him.

“What is your memory?”

There it was.

“Don’t have one.”

She looked accusingly at the SI, “I thought you said everyone had one!”

“Everyone does, except him. Silly meat.”

“So everyone does, except you? Do you…”

“Jonah.”

“Jonah, do you have a memory?”

“Don’t ask him about his, he doesn’t want to share.”

At that, the older man looked a bit scandalized but seemed to settle quickly enough.

“So why don’t you have a memory then?”

“I’m special.”

“You’re special?”

“Yeah, why not? So is Jonah. We’ve survived this long while everyone else is dead. That’s pretty special.” He shrugged like he didn’t care much about it at all.

“I guess that is kind of special.”

“Maybe you’re just lucky-meat. There’s a whole lotta meat on board, it makes sense that some of the meat would be lucky.”

He nodded and shrugged, “Sure, why not.”

“Wha-”

Jonah interrupted her, “Quiet.”

“What are you picking up? I don’t hear anything.”

“I can scout, that’s what my role is-”

“Just hold Leanne.”

“Quiet!”

The seconds ticked by as they stood there in silence.

“Ten, maybe more, coming in fast.”

“Brain worms?”

“Likely.”