Ominous Signs (2)
The cargo bay?
The team leader hovered outside the cargo bay door for several minutes. Only after confirming that no one was coming did he punch in the passcode, and the moment the door slid open, he darted inside as if afraid of being seen.
The cargo bay had its own caretaker, but the Material Management Team Leader outranked him by position, so it was hardly strange that he knew the code.
But what could he possibly be hiding like that?
There was no reason to sneak around on guard like that when he could simply walk in. It was unmistakably unnatural.
Whatever he was doing in there, thirty minutes passed and he still hadn't come out.
When my auxiliary organ tracked his movements, I saw that he kept circling from one end of the cargo bay to the other, over and over.
He repeated this pointless routine for a full hour before finally leaving.
I slipped into the now-empty cargo bay. Dust and the scent of metal mingling in the air flooded into my senses all at once.
The smooth alloy plating I had walked across only moments before was gone; a rough grating floor greeted me in its place.
My body had grown, and now every step I took made an audible sound. Cockroach hunting was clearly no longer an option.
Not that it matters now. Humans and livestock are on the menu from here on.
My larger frame came with greater strength, but my caloric needs had grown to match.
I began tracing the traces the team leader had left behind. The sweat he had shed, the residue stuck to his shoes — each mark became a signpost guiding me forward.
The place where he had lingered longest was in front of a particular container.
Needs an ID card and a fingerprint scanner.
The container connected to the team leader was equipped with security of a considerably higher grade — nothing like the other containers, which asked for nothing more than a caretaker's ID.
And my senses can't penetrate it either.
The panels were absurdly thick; even my enhanced auxiliary organ couldn't tell what lay inside.
One thing was certain: the team leader was hiding something important.
Curiosity had been the starting point, but now that curiosity had curdled into something sharper.
Maybe the Material Management Team Leader should be my next target.
My original plan had been the Medical Team Leader. Judging by the current situation, though, that would be difficult. He of all people knew that one of his subordinates had died a mysterious death — he would be on maximum alert.
In that case, going after easier prey was one perfectly valid strategy.
Between the cargo bay caretaker and everything else, the Material Management Team as a whole seemed like a lax, sloppy outfit.
Which meant that even if their team leader vanished, would anyone really suspect anything?
And so my target was decided.
"Team Leader, that's enough drinking for today."
"Just one more. Just one more glass, and I'll go."
"Honestly, why are you being so clingy today of all days?"
Lately, the Material Management Team Leader's life didn't feel like living at all.
Besides his official duties in materials management, he had a small side business: acquiring prohibited creatures and selling them to the upper crust.
Before boarding the ship, he had acquired something on the black market.
The eggs of a mysterious creature unregistered even in the Mega Corp databases.
He had traded in every kind of rare animal, and even he had never seen eggs like these. According to the Cult merchant who sold them, they'd been recovered from some forgotten ancient ruin.
Ancient lifeform, my ass….
Whatever their origin, he smelled money. After buying the eggs, he contacted his buyers, and they took immediate interest.
They agreed to make the trade on a planet the research vessel would stop at along the way, and he smuggled the eggs aboard in secret.
Right up until then, he'd believed everything would go smoothly.
Until the morgue fire happened, that is.
When he overheard a passing team leader's remark, he thought: surely not.
The suggestion that it might be the work of an alien creature.
He rushed straight to the cargo bay to check.
The container door was slightly ajar. Of the eggs that should have been sleeping quietly inside, one was completely hollow.
Damn it all — I should have checked sooner!
After boarding the ship, he had checked on the eggs exactly once.
If only he had closed the container door properly that day, nothing would have happened even if an egg hatched.
No — more than that, if he hadn't been drinking that day, he never would have made such a mistake.
"…Liquor is the enemy. Liquor."
"Team Leader, let's call it a night already."
One careless lapse in locking a door, and three people had suddenly become the dead.
And among the dead, mind you, was a Noble Capital.
The monster that had crawled out of the egg and killed people was surely still roaming the ship — but the team leader had nowhere to lodge his complaint.
He was more afraid that the captain would lose his mind and kill him outright before the Noble Capital's retribution ever arrived.
That was why the team leader drowned his nights in liquor, day after day.
"Sheesh."
His teammates shook their heads and left the bar, while the bartender clicked his tongue beside them.
"We're closing up."
"Just one glass. One more glass and I'm out of your hair."
"Phew. Fine."
Every time he gulped down the synthetic liquor, his anguish grew a little more diluted. His mouth called liquor the enemy, but his body kept to its usual routine.
In the end, the team leader left the bar dead drunk once again.
"Shhhhit… huurk. Whaddaya mean, wha's it t'you…?"
He let out a slur-leaden, profanity-laced burp.
The corridor where he stood alone was steeped in silence. Aside from the faint hum of the reactor — the ship's beating heart — almost no other sound could be heard.
Night had fallen in space.
Space knew no such thing as day or night, but humanity's ships artificially created a set period of darkness. It was for the crew's rest.
The research vessel under Yu Seong Samuel was no exception, and an artificial night now settled over the ship's interior.
The team leader staggered across the stillness.
It was a corridor he walked every day, yet tonight it felt strangely unfamiliar.
Maybe it was the drink. In that familiar space, he felt an inexplicable chill.
A grim premonition gripped him — the sense that some terrible danger was lurking just beyond the bright lights of the corridor, coiled and waiting.
"Ah, damn it all… whatever."
The team leader denied his own instinct.
Hurling a slur through his tangled tongue, he made for his room.
His footsteps rang out through the corridor of high-strength alloy paneling that offered not a single crack of cover.
Hm?
A strange sound reached his ears. At first he thought it was his own footsteps, but something was different.
Far too quiet for a human. It was small and low, like some great beast walking on the tips of its toes to muffle its advance.
Unease crawled over him, and the team leader stopped in his tracks. The following footsteps cut off instantly.
The corridor sank into silence.
Goosebumps erupted across his entire body.
Something unknown was following him.
"Wh-who's there?!"
He shouted, but no answer came back.
It felt as if someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over his head. The liquor burned off at once, and he quickened his pace.
His shoes struck the hard metal floor in a discordant clatter.
Tap. Tap.
As if racing him, the grotesque footsteps behind him quickened too.
Padpadpadpadpad.
What the hell is that thing?!
Maybe one of his teammates was playing a prank.
Even if it wasn't a teammate, there were ways to confront someone pulling a revolting stunt like this head-on.
But he didn't.
From some corner of his alcohol-soaked brain, a flicker of intuition was screaming at him.
Never, ever face that thing.
After rounding a corner of the corridor, the team leader stole a glance backward.
He saw it — clearly.
The shadow of a long, serpent-like tail flickering past in an instant.
Son of a—!
It was the thing.
The alien creature that had been killing the crew.
The butcher of space that had swallowed the research team leader and the guard whole — and now it had him in its sights.
The team leader's movements turned desperate. He dragged his alcohol-numbed legs forward by force.
He looked like a deer fleeing with an arrow lodged in its flank.
Shit shit shit shit shit!
His face was a wreck of spit, tears, and snot. His clothes had long since soaked through with cold sweat, abandoned to uselessness.
A sound, light as scattered taps.
Behind him, the thing's footsteps drew closer.
The sound that had been faint moments ago was now loud enough to mingle with his own ragged breathing.
The presence of the thing pursuing him sharpened into clarity. A growl that belonged to nothing human licked along his spine.
That icy sensation seared itself into his mind, unmistakable even in his drunken state.
The team leader wanted to scream, but he couldn't.
The instant he made the slightest loud noise, he was certain the thing would pounce.
Barely reaching his door, he punched in the passcode in a frenzy. He had never entered the keypad this fast in his entire time aboard the ship.
"Shhit! Open, damn you, open!"
At last the door unlocked, and he scrambled inside.
The moment he pulled it shut, something slammed into it and the whole door shuddered violently. The impact sent the team leader sprawling across the floor.
He froze where he had fallen.
Beyond the door, not a single sound — as if the blow moments ago had never happened.
The team leader could feel it.
The thing was still out there.
"Th-the phone! I have to call…!"
Gathering his wits at last, he remembered the emergency phone kept in the bedroom. But terror had turned his legs to water and they refused their master's command. He had no choice but to crawl across the floor like a worm.
That was when it happened.
A sound he should never, ever have heard rang out.
Beep.
Like a puppet dangling from its strings, his head creaked around toward the door.
The thing was entering the passcode.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. B-b-beep.
A jaunty chime, utterly wrong for the moment, echoed through the room. The doorlock disengaged, and the door swung slowly open.
The hunt went off without a hitch.
No — could it even be called a hunt?
All I'd done was corner a drunken, senseless fool into a dead end.
His routine was so simple it made everything easy.
Two days of observation, and the Material Management Team Leader's daily schedule hadn't deviated by a single hair. By day he lolled about in the materials management office; by night he drowned himself in liquor at the ship's bar.
With a superior that pathetic, his teammates couldn't have cared less where he was or what he was doing.
All of which worked out nicely for me.
I had originally planned to watch him for three or four days, but there was no need. I decided to strike while he was dead drunk.
And sure enough, he wasted away his evening at the bar again today. I had already confirmed there were no surveillance cameras between the bar and his room.
All that remained was to savor the drive at my leisure.
I deliberately didn't attack him right away — I wanted to herd him in. Simply letting him glimpse me for a moment or two was enough to send him trotting along exactly as I intended. His drunken, sluggish escape speed irritated me, but otherwise everything went perfectly.
He fled with all his might and barricaded himself in his room. An iron door that no weapon short of a laser firearm could breach now stood between him and me.
He was probably feeling pretty smug behind it. Surely a hyper-strength titanium alloy door would keep him safe.
He wasn't wrong, exactly. Clawing my way through it was still beyond me.
But when the body struggles, the mind steps up. My faithful servant of an auxiliary organ read the fingerprints smeared across the keypad.
Never in his wildest intentions, I'm sure — but as far as I was concerned, I was now a guest holding a personal invitation.
The door opened with absurd ease, and behind it appeared a face frozen in terror.
An unarmed civilian resisting an Amorph? Not a chance.
Thanks for the meal.
He became my prey without lifting so much as a finger.
Frankly, the Material Management Team Leader tasted mediocre. Plenty of fat, but the stench of alcohol was so overwhelming that any real savor was lost beneath it.
Still, I don't discriminate — so I ate everything except the thumb I needed for the fingerprint scanner.
Now, where would he keep his ID card?
Picking my teeth with a small arm, I surveyed the room. A stainless steel bed held a mattress that looked reasonably plush. A cabinet and a desk sat against the wall.
Oh?
A poster of a half-dressed woman was stuck to the wall. She was fairly attractive, but with my body as it was, I felt absolutely nothing.
Losing interest in the poster, I approached the desk. Bottles of empty liquor and a mountain of paperwork were piled on its worn surface.
Somebody should clean this place.
While rifling through the papers, an ID card dropped out into my grasp.
With everything I could use now acquired, I left the room — ID card clutched in one hand, the finger in the other.
Shall we head over right away?
I had everything I needed, so I made for the cargo bay.
Standing before the container, I first pressed the ID card against the reader. The terminal above it flicked from red to green, and a prompt appeared instructing me to proceed. I pressed the team leader's thumb firmly onto the scanner, and with a heavy clunk, the door opened.
What kind of treasure trove is in here?
As I stepped into the container, a cold chill swept over my body.
Inside stood a row of cryo-pods, and within them were all manner of living creatures.
So this bastard really was a smuggler.
Something this serious going wrong on the ship should have been reported to someone, yet he'd just been quietly stewing on his own — turns out this was the dirty little secret behind it all.
As I examined the pods, something I knew very well caught my eye in one of them.
An Amorph egg?
Two of the cryo-pods held Amorph eggs.
One was plump and full of life; the other was completely hollow.
An empty egg. A flustered team leader searching desperately for something.
Could this be... the egg I hatched from?
Something about it had felt off all along.
In the game, the Amorph's starting location was never a steel ship like this — it was an unidentified ruin.
So he was smuggling me.
Judging by the cryo-pods, the Material Management Team Leader had been planning to sell the Amorph eggs somewhere. I couldn't know what went wrong along the way, but one of the eggs had hatched, and whatever emerged had escaped the container.
Most likely, my body's original owner had died shortly after getting out.
And then my consciousness entered it.
The reason the previous owner died was easy to guess. It had been born mere moments before, starving for nutrients.
Which explains the cockroach eating, too.
No matter how much I loved the Amorph, devouring cockroaches on sight isn't something human sensibilities allow easily.
Most likely the body had acted on raw survival instinct.
….
Looking at the traces left behind by my body's first owner, an odd bittersweetness rose in me.
None of it had been intentional on his part, I'm sure — but thanks to his desperate struggle to survive, I had been able to start in a rather decent situation.
I bowed my head before the egg he had been born from. He was dead either way, and he couldn't have understood a human gesture — I just wanted to do it.
Mourning over. Time to be an Amorph.
Human gestures concluded, it was time for Amorph ones.
I cracked open the remaining pod and began tearing into the healthy egg.
The Amorph hatchling sleeping inside it, I devoured as well, leaving nothing behind.
The Amorph regards every species as an enemy. That includes its own kind.
The one who hatches first eats all the other eggs — that's just how it works.
If anything, the Amorph might be the very embodiment of survival-of-the-fittest taken to its extreme.
Eating other hatchlings or eggs right after birth carried two advantages.
First, it replenished the nutrients a hatchling state so desperately lacked. Second, it allowed the rapid acquisition of Amorph Genetic Essence.
When a trait like Super Sense was reinforced through Genetic Essence of the same origin, it became enormously powerful in the early game.
I had hoped for essence from this meal, but sadly no predation message appeared. As I clicked my teeth in disappointment, another cryo-pod drifted into view.
Come to think of it, there's quite the buffet in here, isn't there?
The owner of all these pods was currently sitting in my stomach.
The pod's owner had been a smuggler, which meant no one else aboard this ship knew this container existed.
Which meant no one would say a word if I ate every last thing inside.
I opened the pods one after another and devoured the creatures within. For all his outward sloppiness, the Material Management Team Leader had clearly been decent at the smuggling business — rare creatures were everywhere.
Thanks to him, I managed to secure several rare Genetic Essences.
[Currently, 2 Types are available for specialization.]
[Physical Enhancement Type (8/10), Psionic Enhancement Type (2/3)]
Yes. Just two more.
I only needed to secure two more traits to claim the Physical Enhancement Type.
Honestly, I'd been a little disappointed when I ate Kisaragi. I'd hoped for a psychic power ability, and all I got was that useless Psionic Organ.
And then the Material Management Team Leader hands me a gift this precious.
If this had been the game, acquiring a trait this powerful — one you wouldn't normally see until mid-game or later — this early would have been an enormously promising development.
Of all the traits I possessed, this was the most effective one for killing crew members.
With this ability, I could start moving far more aggressively.
There was a route of hiding in the shadows and slowly strangling the crew over a long stretch of time, but my rendezvous with the Space Dogs wasn't far off. I had no idea how dangerous they would be, so I needed to become as strong as possible before they arrived.
Genetic Essences — just you wait.
Scream all you like in the void of space; nowhere out there is anyone left to hear it.
This research vessel was no different.
The pitiful wails of the crew would be swallowed, unchanged, into that black abyss.