Wed 03 Aug 2022, 11:10
Session 3
In the A deck corridor Cham removes his Mk.50 and squeezes through a vent into the air scrubber shaft. The filters are dirty, and some have fungal nodes growing on them, but it's not going to take too long to get them cleaned up. The shaft is noisy and Cham doesn't have comms, so he's oblivious to what's happening elsewhere on the ship.
In cryo the newborn neomorph turns its eyeless head towards Wilson and hisses. Wilson very, very carefully backs away. Miller fumbles for her pistol. Davis panics, lunges through the door and makes a run for the Montero. The neomorph leaps into an air vent and disappears into the depths of the ship.
The Cronus's security officer, Reid, demands Miller's firearm. Miller refuses. Enraged, Reid punches out the visor in Miller's helmet. Miller is stunned. She blinks away shards of perspex and sees Reid's arms are strangely long. Wilson slips into the corridor and locks the door shut from the outside. Reid lets out an inhuman roar, shoves her now over-sized hands into Miller's helmet and crushes her head to a paste. Miller's body crumples to the deck, her service pistol and the motion detector clunk down nearby.
The other Cronus survivors - Clayton, Flynn and Johns - have disappeared. Wilson yells for someone, anyone, to bring a weapon to cryo ASAP. Down in the bridge Rye tries to make sense of the commotion over the comms. Johns stumbles in, sees Rye has an incinerator unit and urges him to get up to cryo right away.
On the Montero, Davis has removed her Mk.50 and found a quick way to calm down. Realising she probably left Miller in danger, Davis grabs the shotgun and heads back down into the Cronus. She meets Rye and Johns coming up the junction from B deck and they all head for cryo. Rye sees Cham's suit on the floor and stops to poke his head into the vent to find out what's happening.
Davis and Johns find Wilson looking through the small window in the door of cryo chamber two. On the other side Reid is now monstrous, her head enlarged, arms elongated, eyes out of place on the sides of her head. She pounds and pounds on the door, but it holds. Davis yells at Wilson to unlock the door so she can blow Reid's head off and drag Miller out of there. Wilson refuses, Davis shoves him up against the bulkhead in frustration.
Rye and Cham show up. Johns hastily explains that the neomorphs grow in people who have inhaled the spores released by the fungal nodes. He also says that Dr Cooper developed an inoculation which prevents this. The surviving crew of the Montero react with scepticism and point out that Cooper himself has just birthed one.
Johns spots what looks like an unused inoculation among Cooper's personal effects. Johns can't understand why Cooper wouldn't have taken it. He has no explanation for Reid's mutation either, but recalls that other crew were affected similarly some time after surface exploration teams returned to the Cronus.
Johns stresses that the neomorph will grow much larger and is incredibly dangerous. He insists that the Montero crew be inoculated against the fungal spores. Rye and Wilson aren't totally convinced, but they all agree to follow Johns down to the medlab. They find Flynn recovering there. He inoculates Davis and Cham, Rye's next after some convincing, Wilson relents after Flynn takes one first to prove it's safe.
Rye and Cham mention that they saw fungal nodes growing in the science lab. Johns and Flynn are unanimous that the nodes be destroyed immediately. Wilson objects, explains the value of the flora and fauna on the Cronus and proposes capturing the neomorph alive. Rye is listening. Davis points out there are already samples in jars on the shelf, and that there's a live mutant locked in cryo above. Cham suggests Wilson could carry a neomorph in himself. Things get heated. Rye and Cham lose patience with the arguing and head to the science lab to deal with the fungal nodes.
Flynn and Johns break off into a tense discussion about what might have happened to Cooper. Wilson wonders aloud where his counterpart, Clayton, may have gone. As Davis has a weapon and he doesn't, Wilson asks her to accompany him to the corporate suite.
In the science lab Rye stands in the doorway with the incinerator unit. Cham opens the door, Rye unleashes a wash of flame. The now much larger neomorph screams from the far corner of the lab and launches itself towards Rye.
Last edited by
ripley on Sat 13 Aug 2022, 12:21, edited 2 times in total.