= ◬NEBULA STORM ⓵.⓷◬ =
⦴ Flashback ⦴
Aidan is yelling something in his mother tongue; Zaida is bleeding and holding the side of her ribs like she just got struck by something; Charlie is cleaning his lips with the back of his hand like he just puked, and seems to be shaking a bit; the only thing Kathy can figure out right away is that everyone is just as confused as she is, but for apparently different reasons.
Kathy: "Gosh darn it… what… what… are you guys ok?"
Charlie and Zaida reply at the same time:
Zaida: "F### no, I am not ok, what the f### was that?"
Zaida: * looks at her hands and shakes her head realizing that the wound in her torso is real *
Zaida: "One of the flying s###s hit me right through the left side"”
Chas: * shakes his head in negative *
Chas: "Oh, that was terrible… I think one of those things just tried to r*** my face!"
Chas: "Jesus Christ, is she ok?"
Before they have time to finish any assessments Aidan switches the yelling to English:
Aidan: "Listen to me for f### sakes! WE ARE GOING DOWN!"
⦴ Flashback ⦴
= ◬NEBULA STORM ⓵.⓷◬ =
A couple of hands came crashing through the tiny window by the door that Kathleen just slammed behind her after dashing to the control room looking for safety.
It was definitely a bold choice to sprint like that in front of the possessed crew, as they immediately reacted with focused violence towards her person and were almost able to grab her as she ran past them.
Kathleen: Physical Finesse roll result (17) - dodged all attempts to grab her while she ran
Her idea was to divert attention away from her wounded teammates. It definitely worked: she could feel the empty eyes fixating on her as she jumped and slid around before getting to caged ladder going to the upper corridor.
She could also feel all sorts of limbs and unidentified appendages reaching out to hurt her, coming from all sorts of unexpected angles.
There were things moving out from rooms, from underneath boards and plates of the ship, from the crevices and dark corners, there were even some unknown random objects thrown at her, barely missing the target. The path from her initial corner by the locker to the control room was not too long, but it felt like a crowded war zone regarding the intensity of action she saw during those brief moments before closing the control room door behind her.
From the dim emergency lights, she couldn’t distinguish exactly what were all the things moving toward her, but she was sure much of those were not human at all. Kathy was not sure of how many of the attackers were from the crew that lost their minds and how many of those attackers were… something else….
Kathleen: Physical Finesse roll result (7) - Kathleen was not able to focus enough to distinguish specific traits on the attackers, count their exact numbers or focus on anything else other than reaching the control room.
She definitely had to step on a few tentacles on the way up, and she was almost sure some of the objects thrown at her were biological in their origin, with a meat-like texture and colour. An eyeball, a dead mice, a disembodied hand, an unidentifiable human organ… she was not sure what was real anymore, it all seemed like a unending nightmare.
As she approached the final steps on her dashing effort to the control room, one young gentleman stood in front of her trying to block the door with his own body. He was shrieking terrifyingly while holding a knife in one of his hands. In the other hand it seemed like he was holding his own guts, all bloodied and recently torn from his body.
The shrieking disemboweled young man looked like a zombie from a movie, and judging by the damage done to his body, he shouldn’t be standing up at all. Whatever is keeping that young man standing up is not human anymore, which made de decision of shooting the young man’s face much easier on Kath’s mind.
Kathleen: Physical Finesse roll result (15) - two shots, one on chest, one on the head
As the bloodied young man was falling down he posted awkwardly agains a rail and still tried to grab Kathleen as she ran by; Kathleen was able to push herself between the young man an a corner on the corridor as she kept running, and successfully shut the door behind her.
Now, feeling a little safer inside the control room, Kath stares at the couple of hands on the window trying to grab her.
Unlike the young man that looked very much like a zombie or a possessed human, those last hands reaching out to her were definitely not human.
The hands had humanoid skin, and humanoid fingers, with short fingers and thick nasty nails, the proportions were all wrong and it was somehow unsettling just looking at that thing. The fingers were not spaced or configured like a human hand and they opened and closed in circular fashion like those claws in toy pits for carnival attractions. Some fingers were moving fast and erratically and some fingers would move slowly taping around the edges of the window, like a dog sniffing something on the walls.
It was too dark to see anything more than the monstrous circular hands and a big shadow behind them, blocking a good chunk of the emergency lights from the corridor outside. Kathleen could somehow feel that the creature was happy or excited to see her, and definitely in a good way. She could feel hungry eyes staring at her.
Moving as far as possible to the opposite side of the room, Kathleen starts taking mental notes of all objects inside the control room to plan the next step. At least she can catch her breath for a second.
Kathy’s hopes now are that her diversion was enough to get the focus off on her, so her team could find a better hiding spot and tend to their wounds.
For the moment, her diversion seem to be working, as she can see more suspiciously dangerous shadows grouping outside the door of the control room.