Sorry it took me so long to update, but the recent events have kept me really busy. Rest assured I have not stopped writing this story, and you can look forward to more updates :)

Review once you finish reading, you know it would really help me~

They were down there. Stragglers, survivors fighting got their lives just like him. Their plight was no different from his, but he had a much better chance of survival; that simple statement did not make it any better; innocent people having their limbs shredded off mercilessly, while he stood here, at less risk of suffering the same demise.

Far from understanding the motives of these monsters, – their nature was practically plastered on a big red sign that blinked – looking and thinking back to the carnage caused by the Necromorphs their motive, if they even had one, was unknown and shrouded in a fog of mystery.

Shaky fingers pressed on the holopad. The gates closed and the lift dragged across the smoke-covered chasm. The body at his feet made him quiver. He could see the lifeless eyes through the mask, burned with fear and shock. Ever brutally dismembered corps he came upon sapped his chances away from him. He was tired, thirsty, and not to mention very, very hungry; his stomach felt tight, begging for something to fill it. He wanted to sleep without his dreams becoming plagued with nightmarish visions. Would he make it out of her alive, or would he be another random casualty, his torn face worn by one of these dead creatures.

Isaac Clarke closed his weary eyes, hoping to ease if only some of the strain. His thoughts went to a nice soft bed, curling up under the blankets and sleeping for a near eternity. Even as he stood he started to nod off, his fingers slipping up on the Plasma Cutter. The lift closed in on its destination and before Isaac could fall asleep where he stood, a roar ended it all.

Once tired he was now alert, spontaneously switching out to the Line Gun. The south side was not safe. A sound he was more than used to hearing; the silence filled with roars and hisses and other threatening dins. The obscuring smoke ahead cleared and the engineer's eyes laid upon the Necromorphs waiting for him.

The gondola came to a stop and the bars opened up for him. Isaac needed no other sign when they move toward him and started shooting. The beam cut through them like paper, spraying the floor in blood. Arms and severed heads fell, bits of rotten skin and splashes of blood spraying his protective suit. Isaac's hands went tight around the tool as he fired blast after blast of energy, the acrid stink the Slashers let off made his nose and back of his throat sting sharply.

Across from him a dark shape came down the ramp, emerging from the haze. Yellow eyes and dark blue skin; just like the one that attacked him in the Morgue. It charged, barely giving Isaac enough time to react and hit it with a flash of Stasis, then shoot it all over with heated energy until it fell apart in a pile of limbs. The Line Gun was empty of charges.

Isaac stumbled off the small tram and took the Plasma Cutter back out, kicking the body parts at his feet. Even as they lay dead their eyes shined with bloodlust. They carried death with them like a woven black cloak, spreading it like a disease.

The other fueling station had to be further back, Isaac thought. All he needed to do was refill the engines, reactivate the centrifuge, and finally turn the engines back on so Hammond could restore orbit. He had no idea how much time he had until the fraction of the planet tethered to the ship would drag them down to Aegis VII. He had to hurry.

"Hammond, Hammond can you hear me?" Isaac tried to patch through communications to reach Hammond, going up the ramp to a more open area. "How much time do I have until our orbit fails?" All he got from the other end was the blazing of static. Isaac smacked his hand against his helmet. "Hammond? Hammond! Damnit!"

He closed the channel. "Communications is still bad. Could the busted Coms Array be causing some kind of interference?" Isaac scanned every channel available and all but one was bad. The one that was clear picked up now recent signals that he could detect. Isaac couldn't even pick up the source of the channel or use it for that matter; the channel was encrypted. "An encrypted channel…weird…if the Array isn't what's jamming my signal, then what the hell is?"

A lone body lay on the floor beside another ramp and a few explosive tanks, cut off at the limbs. An audio log was clasped in its hand. Isaac had to pry it from the cold dead fingers locked around the pad to retrieve it, then downloaded the information.

"Never should have let him live…never should have let him live…"

"Shut it, Danvers! Shut it! Engineering log. Temple reporting. Someone has shut off the fuel lines to the primary engine, and damaged the valves in the process. They need to be repaired before I can re-open them, but we're running out of time. With the engine offline, orbit decay will begin in less than ten hours. I just can't understand who would do this. If it's one of those crazy Unitologist bastards I'll break their neck!"

"Henderson said they were coming! We never should have let him live."

"Shut up Danvers! Help me with the tools. Temple out."

They managed to get this far. Isaac praised them for it, but upon examining the body that lay before him there was no doubt about the fate of Danvers. But as for Jacob Temple, there was no sign of a second body. He must have made it further. He sounded like a smart man; anyone who hated Unitology as much as he did was a friend to him. Hopefully Jacob made further progress through the Ishimura, but as for the log itself, there was strangely no time recorded on it, so Isaac could not see how long ago this was recorded. Time was running short, that's all he knew at this point.

The further into the ship he went it seemed to get darker. Every noise and movement set him off He knew people would call him crazy for going on this fool's errand and putting his life at such great risk, but he just wanted to get out alive. He, Nicole, and Hammond. He had to get them out.

At the top of the ramp a silhouette tore off a vent in the wall. It didn't see Isaac, nor did it look around for any potential prey; it just slid its way into the vent, and out of sight. The engineer didn't want to admit that he was scared for his life; that would just make things harder for him. Twists and turns of dangerous corridors put him at risk of an attack, until he found himself overlooking the chasm and the refueling station. He gave an exasperated sigh, and then relaxed himself a bit; the schematic he found laying on the floor helped a bit too. He latched onto the magnetic lever with the Kinesis Module, then dragged it down the small tower with a click as it hooked into place.

"Refueling sequence activated. Sufficient fuel to fire primary engine."

The fueling mechanisms roared to life, sliding over and attaching to the other ends of the machine, slowly spinning as they filled the engine.

"Whatever you did it's working Isaac." Hammond suddenly shocked in. "I have a reading. It's only a quarter full but that's enough to restore orbit once you bring the engines online. What the hell..." Hammond was silent for a moment. "False alarm, thought I saw something..."

Isaac was relieved to hear Hammond; he wasn't alone in this mess; he had someone to go through all this shit with him. Isaac opened a blank journal log and cleared his aching throat.

"Okay, I managed to get the engines refueled. Now I need to go down to the centrifuge and get it operational again." Isaac took a pause and drew in a slow breath, pursing his dry lips. "God only knows what's lurking down there…"

Soon the engines finished refueling and the mechanisms came to a standstill. Time to go Isaac, time to go. He didn't know how much more of this he could take. A man could only take so much. Where would his breaking point be? At this point he seemed far from it; at least he hoped…

Isaac wasn't sure what he was more afraid of; the Necromorphs, or the Ishimura herself. There were plenty of machines that could kill him if he wasn't careful and it was a known fact that on these kinds of vessels the Engineering and Mining deck were the places a crew member was most likely to have an accident. The threat of the Necromorphs ripping him apart did not make things any better.

Isaac forced it out of his head. He had to stay alert and stay confident. But…was he getting paranoid? For a second he swore he heard a faint hissing. Was his mind playing tricks on him? He took slow steps down the corridor he just came, but the hissing stopped. There was something near, hiding in the shadows. The creature leapt in the air with a shrill scream, going for his head but clinging to his arm instead. He heard the scream before he felt the pain as he looked into the beady yellow eyes of a Lurker. Tentacles bashed against his helmet but didn't pierce the armor, but Isaac reamed his arm against the wall as hard as he could before it could try another attempt.

The infant jerked and gurgled, its tiny claws grasping for something to hold on to. Isaac gritted his teeth, and repeated the process of pinning the Necromorph between the wall and his arm several times before the harsh shrieking finally ended. The Lurker went limp like a ragdoll, puking yellowish blood before it slid off on the floor.

Isaac ran.

He ran as fast as he could to the lift. They were no longer human. They were aliens infecting humans, why should he feel bad for killing something that's already dead? Isaac Clarke was no murderer, but he knew this would get easier as time went by, and that's what truly scared him the most.

He was out of breath when he made it back to lift and he was off. Pain throbbed through his arm but his RIG meter was down only a small fraction; he could only find and use so many med packs so saving them for when he needed them most was vital. His overall hopes were low but he had to try. Isaac opened the channel Hammond used to communicate with him.

"Hammond…Hammond do you read me?" Again there was nothing but hissing and a lot of static. "Hammond are you there?" The screen flashed before the signal vanished all together. "Damnit what's wrong with this thing?"

Isaac had never witnessed this big a failure in the comms system before. Somebody had to be causing the obstruction, but he couldn't imagine who would be behind such a thing. While it seemed a little farfetched that someone on the ship would purposefully tamper with their mission, somehow Isaac couldn't dismiss it.

When the lift finally came to a stop, Isaac forced himself to get off. There was just the matter of the centrifuge and the engines, he kept telling himself. He made it further than he ever though he could, but how much further until he would collapse from exhaustion, or fall victim to the Necromorphs?

He went up the next ramp where the north refueling station was and turned left up another steep ramp. Just as he could see the next platform a panel in the floor flipped open and two blades pulled up a grotesque form. The sounds of little creatures came with it, the ones he saw on the Medical Deck. With no hesitation Isaac switched to the Line Gun and tore through the tiny Swarmers, then did the same with the Slasher. Gurgling and collapsing its body parts fell down the open hatch, a single arm staying behind. Picking up a few credits along the way Isaac ran up the next few ramps. That was behind him, and somehow he knew he would never lay his eyes upon that corner of the Engineering Deck for the rest of his days.

Eventually he saw a wide window and he knew he was just outside the control room. He side-stepped in front of the window and headed for the door, but he stopped.

A bat-like torso crawled across the floor. He hoped he wouldn't have to see another one of them again, but he couldn't fool himself. The shapes and sights of the hellish Morgue suddenly played through his mind like a recording as the creature hovered in the air, its tentacle wrapping around the dead corpse sitting in the chair over to it. In a flash of a second the sharp proboscis stabbed through the forehead and dug into the skull. Yellow ooze gushed out until the body moved, a deep roar as arms shout out from the bones of its shoulders, legs elongating as most of the uniform tore away. The infectious Necromorph flew off its new comrade which hunched over on the floor, struggling to its feet.

Isaac stiffened in fear. The head turned just enough so when the mask fell off, he could see the face beneath. The dark Slasher stood there for a short while before lumbering away from the station. Both Necromorphs disappeared out of sight toward the Tram Station, and then everything was quiet. Isaac didn't want to move, but he swallowed the hard lump in his throat and passed through the door to the control room.

But he wasn't safe.

The Infector came crawling back around the bend as soon as Isaac stepped inside. Three shots was all it took to make the small beast fall apart but in a split second the Slasher came running in with no warning, thrashing its arms maniacally. The Plasma Cutter flashed with each shot. Bits of dead flesh flew from its shoulders and torso before it collapsed unceremoniously to the floor. Splashes of blood stained the floor, running down the wall. Everything was happening so fast Isaac couldn't see how he could keep up with the intense speeds these corpses seemed to possess. But the control room was quiet after that, and he prayed for a few minutes of safety as he prepared for the next part of the mission.

Isaac activated the store. Another weapon might help; what could he expect down there? A new type of Necromorph? Some other kind of hazard? One couldn't be too careful…

He scanned through what was currently available and his eyes rested on the Pulse Rifle. He thought back to the gun, and how it seemed ineffective against the Necromorphs, but so far it seemed to be the only military-grade weapon available.

"I could use the rapid fire…" Isaac thought aloud, his finger trembling above the panel. "What the hell, I can afford it…" The gun was downloaded into his RIG, then he took the weapon in his hands. This wasn't an alien thing to him; he used a Pulse Rifle plenty of times during his training days at the academy, so he could say he knew how to use it. Many memories were brought back; his dreams of valor when he was just a young adult, the stories people used to tell of the greatness and distinction from all others who strived for the same…

What would his father want of him? The greatest dream for a man in these times was watching his son become a proud member of the Earth Defense Force. Would he want that? Wherever the man was, Isaac didn't care. Nothing could change the fact that he left, and never came back…

Isaac held the handle of the rifle tightly in his hands. Focus, don't let distractions get the best of you…

Before heading out he purchased a few pulse rounds, just in case. The cylinder was warm in his hands and he hoped this would be as reliable as the Plasma Cutter.

Everything was silent around him, save for the ambience created by the hull of the ship. He stood before the door of the rusted elevator in the nook tucked away in the corner. The door slid open with a strident hiss, and Isaac stepped inside the empty, hollowed lift. The elevator descended into the depths of the Ishimura.

But it felt like he was falling into the dark gates of Hell.

R&R