[Some brief collaboration with the Taacos on sorting through the alien words and maneuvering their way through several menus had Nate drifting over to one of a few enormous screens in the lab. Technology has never been his forte but picking up the patterns makes navigating things feel more like a puzzle, even if the noxious smell from the broken tube behind him is starting to make the bile rise in his throat. It's like sulfur and decay, burning the insides of his lungs and making his stomach turn when the stagnant air shifts.
He scrolls through the garbled options on the keyboard and selects one, flinching as some kind of camera feed flickers across the screen, accompanied by what sounds like an alien scream.
Bathed in the eerie light of the viewing panels Nate watches in horror as one of the shelled captives - an original host, he thinks, based on what he knows from his dive over a year ago - in the tank is subjected to what looks like experiments in electrocution. It thrashes wildly against the glass and stills when something black starts oozing from its body and swirling into the green liquid. He switches feeds.
Another recording shows an operating table, mechanical limbs stretching in to peel apart the insides of a long tentacle. Footage of metal panels being forcibly attached to shells and carapaces, drilled into place; complex diagrams of anatomical structures with photographs of internal organs; dissections of the hosts with notations in the margins; equipment installed into gray matter, sutured shut with lasers that make his old Null scars twinge.
The revelation that this is not an isolated incident - that this is the reason for the hosts' "return" - does not escape him.]
Jesus Christ.
[Nate runs out of files to rifle through, staring blankly at the flickering screen before turning back to look at the shattered tube.]
This could be us.
a good host
[Nate doesn't know if it's salvageable, the carcass floating in the dimmed chamber. The tentacles float limply in dull, almost cloudy fluid, and being this close to the rest of the tanks has his stomach lurching, but they have scientists back in the city who will want samples or, failing that, detailed drawings. He'd ripped a piece of fabric from one of his blankets and has it wrapped tightly over his nose and mouth, giving him the appearance of a woolen bandit, hunched in the half-light of the room and sketching the shell of an animal he knows has suffered.]
No wonder Hope was so mad when I found you guys,
[he chats conversationally, peering at a glassy eye and tracing the shape without looking at the paper.]
no subject
[Some brief collaboration with the Taacos on sorting through the alien words and maneuvering their way through several menus had Nate drifting over to one of a few enormous screens in the lab. Technology has never been his forte but picking up the patterns makes navigating things feel more like a puzzle, even if the noxious smell from the broken tube behind him is starting to make the bile rise in his throat. It's like sulfur and decay, burning the insides of his lungs and making his stomach turn when the stagnant air shifts.
He scrolls through the garbled options on the keyboard and selects one, flinching as some kind of camera feed flickers across the screen, accompanied by what sounds like an alien scream.
Bathed in the eerie light of the viewing panels Nate watches in horror as one of the shelled captives - an original host, he thinks, based on what he knows from his dive over a year ago - in the tank is subjected to what looks like experiments in electrocution. It thrashes wildly against the glass and stills when something black starts oozing from its body and swirling into the green liquid. He switches feeds.
Another recording shows an operating table, mechanical limbs stretching in to peel apart the insides of a long tentacle. Footage of metal panels being forcibly attached to shells and carapaces, drilled into place; complex diagrams of anatomical structures with photographs of internal organs; dissections of the hosts with notations in the margins; equipment installed into gray matter, sutured shut with lasers that make his old Null scars twinge.
The revelation that this is not an isolated incident - that this is the reason for the hosts' "return" - does not escape him.]
Jesus Christ.
[Nate runs out of files to rifle through, staring blankly at the flickering screen before turning back to look at the shattered tube.]
This could be us.
a good host
[Nate doesn't know if it's salvageable, the carcass floating in the dimmed chamber. The tentacles float limply in dull, almost cloudy fluid, and being this close to the rest of the tanks has his stomach lurching, but they have scientists back in the city who will want samples or, failing that, detailed drawings. He'd ripped a piece of fabric from one of his blankets and has it wrapped tightly over his nose and mouth, giving him the appearance of a woolen bandit, hunched in the half-light of the room and sketching the shell of an animal he knows has suffered.]
No wonder Hope was so mad when I found you guys,
[he chats conversationally, peering at a glassy eye and tracing the shape without looking at the paper.]
Maybe he knew what you went through.