Chapter 1697: Something in human skin
Dr. Peters was dragged to a stop by a force from deep within her heart. Nothing, including the filter tank on her shoulders and the life and death of all the crew members, was not as important as the back she glimpsed. That little figure roughly occupied all her thoughts, excluding all emotions without scruples. She stopped, dropped the filter, and hurried towards the figure, like a hooked fish. She stepped into the engine room covered with huge spikes without hesitation. The slowly rotating spherical hyperspace engine occupied all her vision - as if to remind her of something, she saw her pale, thin and sick son. Opening his arms towards her - the idea of finding the boy became extremely urgent at this moment, making her breath quick. She subconsciously crossed the covered bridge above the cooling pool and got into the maintenance channel on the other side.
She saw the boy's figure flashing past, as if he was waiting for her to lead her to the end she expected. She came to the place where the figure disappeared. There was a straight ladder leading directly to the engine room. When she raised her head and saw the boy in the white down jacket running across the grid floor, she ran after him without hesitation. The climbing and chasing made her exhausted, and the maze of complicated and intertwined passages made her dizzy, until she saw the boy stop and stand there smiling at her.
At that moment, happiness overflowed throughout her body, and she couldn't help but relax.
She completely forgot where she was, Captain Miller's orders, the video she saw, Lieutenant Smith's fear, and even the bleeding and dying Justin, she just wanted to let him All the warmth in this world enveloped her thoughts. All she could remember was her son, that poor, skinny crippled boy who would never be able to stand up and play with his peers - and she saw that boy standing in front of her, perfectly healthy, in this moment. As a mother, she was enveloped in great happiness. She just wanted to hug the boy, kiss him on the cheek, hear him say that he loved her, and then tell the boy that she had been thinking about him - she wanted to tell him that he could enjoy everything that everyone his age should enjoy, and she would never will leave him. Because she is his mother and she will always love him.
She did not hear or see the nightmare dancing ecstatically in the shadows, spewing malicious and poisonous saliva and body fluids. They are eager to satisfy their insatiable hunger. They are waiting for weak-willed people to come up to the altar and offer their souls. In the sacrifice of the sea of souls, they blaspheme all the emotions, thoughts and emotions created by intelligent creatures that they think are higher and better. civilization. All she saw was the boy standing not far away, and she wanted to give him a hug, just as the ship said it expected.
That's what Dr. Peters did, she stepped forward and hugged her son.
The fall, the almost never-ending fall, seemed like another moment. The steel grid deck spun and rose before her eyes. She didn't realize she was falling until she hit the pipe. She only had time to let out a short, frightened scream, and even the severe pain from her fractures didn't have time to reach her brain before she crashed into the cooling pool in the engine room. The violent impact shattered all the bones in her body, and blood squeezed out from the damaged skin and broken bones. Her shattered body like a rag doll lay in the cooling pool full of blood, and her blurred vision could only see. To the boy standing tall.
He was squatting there, looking down at her, until she exhaled the last breath in her lungs, until the adrenaline could no longer push her heart, and he turned away with satisfaction. Time is meaningless to it, but the seven years of waiting at the edge of the solar system have taught it patience. It instinctively desires more prey, but it also knows that not concealing its hunger will cause it to lose more prey. But now it no longer needs to be patient. It has found a way to get more prey from the souls of sacrifices. There is a whole planet waiting for it to hunt. Soon its chosen apostle will be here, following the call to come.
When Dr. Weir ran wildly into the engine room, the first thing he saw was not Peters lying in blood and water, but the slowly rotating giant engine. Until the smell of blood and horrific corpses awakened him, the kind side of human nature was like a candle lit in a dark storm, providing a faint light.
He touched the body with residual warmth in horror, even though the mixture of blood and coolant covered his body.
He saw that Dr. Peters's eyes turned completely black. It might be the product of the coagulation of blood leaking from the ruptured blood vessels in the eyeballs, or it might just be a problem with the light, but no matter what, he felt that those eyes were extremely terrifying, and he just wanted to stand up. Get away from it all. But a voice stopped him, a voice he was very familiar with. He stood up slowly, looked around, and took a step forward involuntarily. He came to a bathroom with white tiles and a white waterproof mat.
This is his home.
"Claire?" He held his breath and called his wife cautiously. He saw himself in front of the mirror - a middle-aged man with messy hair and a frightened expression, with blood and water on his dark blue astronaut uniform - and he saw not only that, but also his wife. She was wearing an indigo printed nightgown, and her face was still so beautiful under her short brown curly hair. Dr. Will said with a smile on his face, "It's me, I'm home."
The woman didn't hear it and was applying lipstick in front of the mirror.
"I couldn't be with you when you needed me." Dr. Will walked to the woman and tried to speak softly, "I'm sorry, I let work get in the way of us." The next moment, the woman came to the bathtub Next to it, put your hand in and fiddle with it. Dr. Weir couldn't remember how Claire ended up sitting next to the tub, but he knew what happened next.
"Claire, no!"
As Dr. Weir begged, the woman took off her bathrobe and lay in the warm water.
I don't know how long it took, Dr. Weir can't remember clearly. He only remembers that he kept begging and in pain, but he couldn't stop Claire from slitting his wrists. When he came back to his senses, he only saw Claire's pale body lying in the crimson blood, her eyelids slightly opened, and her beautiful brown curly hair spread out in the water, just like what he saw when he returned home that day. But by that time Claire had been in the water for several days, and her bloated body filled the bathtub. Huge pain and guilt swept through his body, like poison poured into his blood vessels. He could only kneel on the ground and cry bitterly, praying that he would not experience it again. Then he saw Claire again in the mirror, real and beautiful Claire. Time and time again, she always lay in a bathtub full of blood, and he could only watch her gradually swell, rot, and emit a stench.
"I'm always sorry..."
"Billy, it's okay." The voice eased the pain. He saw a pair of clean, slender feet belonging to a woman stopped in front of him. He raised his head and saw Claire looking at him with a smile with her empty eye sockets open. "Stay with me, okay?"
She stretched out her hand towards Dr. Weir, and he shook it without hesitation.
Dr. Will, who was kneeling in the engine cooling pool, used all his strength to squeeze out a crazy scream from his throat that was impossible for humans to make. He saw everything. He saw the insignificance of human beings and the intentions of this ship. He saw the fate of all intelligent creatures in the universe that they thought they could escape but could never escape. He saw the end of the complete collapse of the universe and time, and the absence of time there. and the crazy, nameless gods laughing loudly in the ruins of the atomic hot soup of space. He saw so much that he had to dig his eyes out with his fingernails while screaming, just like he had done with the scarred body they'd seen when they first boarded the ship.
Just like Claire.
The place they were going to did not require the inferior visual organs evolved by earthly creatures.
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Lieutenant Smith smashed all the canisters he got on the table, and then hurriedly pressed the call button on the center console. He was the first person to return to the Lewis and Clark. No one wanted to leave that evil ship more than he did. He felt that it was not a good place from the beginning.
"Cooper, how much longer will it take? I want to get out of here as soon as possible!"
Lieutenant Cooper, who was wearing a spacesuit, used a nail gun specially designed for space maintenance to nail the last piece of skin. With the help of special glue and rivets, the Lewis and Clark's airtightness can be restored. Lieutenant Cooper glanced around to make sure there was no white condensation coming out of any of the patched skins. He nodded with satisfaction, "You can kiss my ass now, because I'm almost done with it. Just pack up your tools and leave. Two minutes max."
"knew."
Lieutenant Smith stuck the gum in his mouth to the call screen. He also wanted to replace the filter canister, but the sound of the airlock opening attracted his attention. Taking a few steps forward, he saw Dr. Will through the observation window with his back to him, standing in front of the connecting arm airlock. "Dr. Will!" he shouted after him, "Stop! Get back to the ship quickly!" No matter how he shouted, Dr. Will walked through the airlock and into the connecting arm without looking back. "Damn it." A bad premonition swept through his body, and Lieutenant Smith quickly pressed the call button, "Captain Miller, please answer if you hear me!"
"What's the matter, Smith?"
"I think Dr. Weir has tampered with the Lewis and Clark, sir."
Lieutenant Smith's intuition has always been frighteningly accurate, just like his dislike for the Event Horizon from the beginning. Both Justin's encounter and the restored logbook prove that Smith's intuition is very trustworthy, especially on this ship. Miller believed him without hesitation. As soon as he lowered his head, he discovered that one of the directional blast bombs used to separate the cockpit and the engine room in the Event Horizon's long bridge was missing. The exposed wires collided with each other, short-circuited, and flashed with sparks. Thinking back to what Dr. Will said before leaving, this discovery made him feel extremely frightened.
"Smith, get out of there!"
"Say that again, sir?"
"There's a bomb missing. Will probably put it on the Lewis and Clark!"
"No way, the ship has just been repaired!"
Lieutenant Smith swallowed and began to rummage around. At the same time, Captain Miller immediately ran towards the connecting arm. "Where the hell are they?" Lieutenant Smith rummaged through the maintenance tools and found nothing. Just when he was sweating profusely, he discovered that the label of the cabinet where he stored his uniforms was covered in blood. , even the canvas on the surface has a bloody handprint. He opened the dark green canvas and underneath was a white warning label.
"Don't mess around, Smith! Wait for me!" Captain Miller yelled and ran towards the connecting arm.
Lieutenant Smith flipped the flashing switch and the label popped up, revealing the timer underneath.
00:00:06
00:00:05
00:00:04
Lieutenant Smith lowered his head and closed his eyes shakily.
Captain Miller lay on the airlock's frozen observation window, roaring and pounding on the airlock.
He saw the violent flames and shock waves slamming out of the control room and smashing the Lewis and Clark's main structure and skin. He saw the continuous explosions igniting the fuel tanks and accelerants on the Lewis and Clark. The powerful impact was like a deafening bell ringing in low-Earth orbit, and the tooth-piercing sound and huge tremors were transmitted along the connecting arm. The airlock not only flipped him directly onto the deck, but also threw Lieutenant Cooper, who was still standing on the surface of the spacecraft, out. When Captain Miller got up again, he saw only the wreckage outside the airlock that was engulfed in flames. The support structure of the spacecraft and various pipelines stretched helplessly into the still burning void.
He staggered out of the airlock, despair almost making him unsteady. All hope was lost and they could never return safely to Earth. Then anger burned like oil in his veins, like the fire that set off the Lewis and Clark. He checked his watch and pressed the intercom next to the airlock.
"D.J.!"
"What's up?"
"The Lewis and Clark is destroyed, Smith and Cooper are dead." Before Major D.J could accept the sudden bad news, Captain Miller roared, "It was Will who did it. If you see him, kill him." .”
"I know." Major D.J picked up the bone saw.
"Careful, D.J."
"Don't worry Will, I'll take care of him."
When Major D. J turned his head, he found Dr. Will standing in front of him.
E. He looked at him with his empty eye sockets open and his face covered with deep scars scratched by fingernails. Before Major D.J could react, Dr. Will grabbed his neck and lifted him up, using a strange He grabbed his throat with ordinary strength, and then punched out the bone saw he was holding tightly in his hand. D.J felt like his finger bones and metacarpal bones were all broken. He was lifted directly up, and the blood vessels and trachea in his neck were squeezed with huge force - judging from his professional knowledge, he would fall into black vision and coma due to cerebral ischemia in less than five seconds. He tried to attack Will The doctor's arms or face, but Dr. Will just grinned and looked at him with terrifying eye sockets.
It's not Dr. Will's power, it's the power of the thing wearing his skin. The sound of his struggle reached the other side through the microphone. Although he couldn't see the situation here, Captain Miller still instinctively sensed that something was wrong.
"D.J, what happened? D.J!"
"It's calling you."
Dr. Will, or what was once Dr. Will, swung his arm and smashed D.J against the bulkhead. He was like a doll, being grabbed by Dr. Will and smashed anywhere. In his remaining sense, he judged that his ribs had been shattered. If he could see his twisted arm, that would add another diagnosis. On the other side, Captain Miller left the airlock and ran towards the infirmary. He stopped when he passed the cabinet where repair tools were stored, and took out a wheeled gun with a gas tank from under gas masks, fire extinguishers and other items. Nail gun.
"Okay, Dr. Will. If you don't want to leave your ship, don't even think about leaving."
