Quarantine Breach

He slammed his hand onto the button to close the weighted sliding door as he threw the rest of himself through the opening, his other hand slamming onto the wall and yanking himself forward, turning as he passed the threshold. Mag-boots desperately trying to get enough momentum to move him backwards as his eyes were transfixed on the shuddering outer hatch.

It was as though he was hypnotised by every buckling crack that yanked a section of the layered metal outward. It was with such a force that even though he could not hear the sound, it caused his sternum and ribs to feel as though they were moving, jarring within their cartilage and muscle housing.

The inner door slammed shut, securing with a pneumatic hiss. Panting heavily, acknowledging the green light that winked on and off on the panel, he was just about to pull himself upright when he felt... something. An itch somewhere on his palm. Looking down, he swore at the sight of the rip. Something he'd need to get a nano-patch to repair, which'd cost him precious credits. Credits that he would have even more difficulty earning due to the repairs needed. His mind had leapt at the problems, clinging to the issues with a dogged desire for what, although troublesome, was fixable. What was not the cold and leaden weight of the airless cosmos.

Huffing in irritation, he had just opened the door to the interior proper when his hand panged with a sharp pain. Hissing on the inhalation, he looked at his hand expecting to find a cut that exposure to the filtered air was now aggravating only to see something writhe into the break in his flesh. A flicker of movement, barely visible, just within the possibility of his sight and as though dust, dark and with a metallic sheen. Panic encircled his heart and throat as though it was in a vice, gripping and suffocating.

Looking at his hand and then at the nearest sign indicating the level and corridor he was on, he pulled a cable before looping it around his hand, then up to above the elbow. Panting out, he then jerked it tight to the point where his veins were raised slightly under the skin and every pulse of his rapid heartbeat strained against the improvised tourniquet. Taking the corridor ahead of him at a run, he tucked his arm close against his chest, guarding not it, but others in the protective gesture.

Almost falling down the steps, he jumped the last three and did not bother to correct his momentum, gasping hard. His wrist now felt like shards of glass and metal fraying wires were pushing apart the bones, forcing the ligaments to split and reknit together in an uncanny configuration. Hurling himself into the medical bay, the surprised scientist in the room looked up and before he had time to try and get enough air to pant out a warning, they had reached the door, turned and slammed it shut.

It was only when he heard the pneumatic note of finality that was the door sealing closed that he righted himself properly, looking towards the window. Erika's distraught features looked back at him even as she hit the ship-wide communication button and activated the warning. The words were robotic and brassy, duplicated and copied so many times from their original recording that they had lost any sense of humanity.

He did not dare loosen the tourniquet. Just as he began to eye the equipment wondering what on earth he could even begin to do to help.... whether that was help himself to survive or help the medical team that would assess what had happened to him... did a jolt of minute but needling, repeated, numerous expressions of agony course through his body, as though every part of him was protesting. No, not protesting. Screaming.

Screaming in warning, in horror. He did not stifle his articulation of the pain, sweat beading and dripping from his hair as his body protested. He dared a look. What he saw almost made him evacuate what little he'd grabbed to eat in the mess that morning on the way to his station. His skin had split into layers, layers that were refolding themselves, as though his epidermis had become a horrific origami. His blood, ink... black, black but thick like oil, and it moved with a latticework pattern before shifting to coil as though a rope around a ligament, pulling it into a new configuration even as he yelled out the unbridled panic.

UNKNOWN INFECTION. CONTAINMENT PROCEDURES IN PLACE. QUARANTINE NOW IN EFFECT. UNKNOWN INFECTION. NANITES ACTIVATED FOR CONTAMINATION PURGING.

The voice giving the warning repeated, again and again throughout the sensation that was a pain that he had no word to put to, and he could dully hear the sound of hurried movements as the crew moved to stations, to rooms, to quarters in response to the warning. Nobody in living memory had heard the warning but it was ingrained into them how to respond, but rusted.

UNKNOWN INFECTION. CONTAINMENT PROCEDURES IN PLACE. QUARANTINE NOW IN EFFECT. UNKNOWN INFECTION. NANITES ACTIVATED FOR CONTAMINATION PURGING.

Grasping the edge of the desk with his good hand, he gritted his teeth against the sensation of writhing as it crawled up his arm, exploratory, investigating... into his shoulder, flourishing like a horrific bloom within the joint. Before he reached his goal and was about to begin to panic on how to open it, he saw the light flick to green. She'd activated it. She knew what he was going to do. Clenching his jaw to the point where he thought he might fracture his teeth, the lowest drawer again flicked to green before he grabbed the syringe. Pulling off the cap with his teeth and spitting it to one side, he shared one last fleeting look with the scientist on the other side, seconds if that, before raising the needle's point to his neck, pushing it uncomfortably in, determined but wincing ...

"Fight this… you…!"

But then his hand froze and the expletive that was going to come from him was snatched from his throat. Not just his hand but his wrist, elbow, shoulder. He was unable to move any of the muscles. Not even a twitch. Panting heavily, he then yelled out in a combination of fear and frustration as the last, desperate, move within his control was taken from him. Another surge of nauseating pain, and he dared not look at what distorting, destroying and reforming re-purposing of his body was going on with his limb...

UNKNOWN INFECTION. CONTAINMENT PROCEDURES IN PLACE. QUARANTINE NOW IN EFFECT. UNKNOWN INFECTION. NANITES ACTIVATED FOR CONTAMINATION PURGING.