Kodoku

I have always wondered, what would happen if two intelligent lifeforms/virus were to meet? And if they were to do so, this story would probably be the best representation combined with my morbid curiosity and uncanny imagination.

Issac Clarke just so happens to be the person in my cross hairs for that kind of job.

The job that no one in their right mind would want to take; a host to two extraterrestrial virus that wants to upend your control and kill you.

I like to think of it as a… cocktail of misery introduced to the barrel of despair that is Issac Clarke after he lost both of his wives. What more could one tiny little cocktail do to that barrel?

Let's find out.

'Know God, No Fear. No God, Know Fear'

-Dead Space

The Brethren Moon laughed.

A laughter filled with the sadistic humor and glee of a billion long dead yet somehow sentient lifeforms that make up the body of the Brethren Moon as it stared, with its many eyes, at the lone figure standing on the platform before its maw. The lone figure stood tall, a whooping six feet in height, when faced against the likes of a gargantuan monster such as the Brethren Moon. They were covered from head to toe in a suit that was entirely covered with silver rib-like platings and a helmet that only had two narrow slits for the viewing pleasure of the lone figure. That suit was currently drenched with blood and the glowing narrow slits made the lone figure look all the more intimidating. But not to the Brethren Moon. Oh no. In fact, the Brethren Moon found the lone figure's intimidating stance and presence to be humorous.

The reason why?

It was because the Brethren Moon knew, that deep down, underneath all that fancy human machinery and suit, was a human. And like all humans, they were fundamentally weak in nature. It was something they cannot change as they were made this way. It would know. After all, it practically aided in remolding these humans to their current shape and form with the help of the black marker that crashed landed at what the humans called, Earth. A stupid name really, now that the Brethren Moon thought about it, naming the planet that they were currently staying on based on the most amount of surface, natural material present in that planet. It's a wonder these humans ever became a space-faring race, even with the aid of the black marker and itself.

That's besides the point, the moon knowing that a human was underneath that suit definitely made it a lot less intimidating to it, however, that was not what made the situation humorous to the Brethren Moon. It was humorous because the moon deeply knew who that human was. Who the person that dared to stand up against the likes of its kind was.

Issac Clarke.

Born on June the fifth, 2465, Issac Clarke was introduced to the world silently, unlike most human babies. He came out of his mother's womb, all bloody and caked in slime and yet he stayed silent and motionless, watching the people around him with gleaming, intelligent eyes. For a second, the doctor and nurses at the scene thought the child was dead, but when he breathed, they all collectively sighed in relief.

The world shook that day. To be exact, the Brethren Moon shook that day, rumbling the earth just by it's psyche presence alone with the black marker, as it laid its eyes upon Issac Clarke. The Brethren Moon, before the birth of Issac Clarke, was a silent watcher and 'helper' of the human race in guiding them step by step towards space travel and mostly did not interfere directly in humanity's progress. That changed once Issac Clarke came along.

The moment he was born, the Brethren Moon sensed a disturbance in its psychic link with the black marker on Earth and when it came to check, the disturbance was traced back to one, still baby Issac Clarke. It stared at Issac Clarke and knew what this disturbance meant. There was only one other event that happened like this and it was at Tau Volantis, the place where the Brethren Moon's body resided. Encased in cold, white ice.

Tau Volantis was a planet almost similar to Earth except for the populace that resided in it was on a completely different evolutionary path to humans. They were, for lack of a better term, 'Fish people'. They had fins and webbing on all of their four limbs along with a shark-like head so as to adapt to the their environment of living underwater. Tau Volantis had more oceans than land, making it necessary for them to evolve in this particular manner. Tau Volantis like Earth also had a black marker dotting the planet's crust and this marker was what made up the intelligence of the Brethren Moon before its body was created. This single black marker, however, was of lesser intelligence without a body thus it sought out to converge the Tau Volantis populace into an intelligent species at their prime, before turning them to Necromorphs so that it may begin the convergence event to create said body for its own purposes. As the black marker did this gradually over the eons, it also had a psychic disturbance similar to what the moon was experiencing now and it linked it back to a Tau Volantian female named, Rosetta. The black marker back then ignored Rosetta, even though the psychic fluctuation was a strange anomaly to its usual routine of influencing the Tau Volantians. The black marker just dismissed it as nothing important. That proved to be its greatest mistake.

Rosetta was a prodigy hailed within its large, scientific community for the first Tau Volantian to ever solve the meaning of the inscriptions in the markers when their species discovered it.

Rosetta was a genius for inventing the usage of the markers in powering their various technology when Tau Volantis natural resources were running dangerously low.

Rosetta was a messiah to their religious community for reverse engineering the black marker to make red markers to power the species in different parts of their planet.

Rosetta.

Rosetta.

Rosetta!

The Brethren Moon was fuming just thinking of that name. You would think that Rosetta swiftly aiding in expanding the black marker's range of control and future infection rate would help its purpose, right? Wrong! Rosetta's actions caused the black marker to start its infection ahead of its plan because the Tau Volantians were getting too advanced for its own good. All because of Rosetta. All because of her actions giving the Tau Volantians a means to further advance the technology of their race to fight against the Necromorphs. All because of one, insignificant insect ruining the grander scheme of things! What made it worse was that Rosetta was the leading general against the infected, always thwarting further infection of her own species and the marker's plans to invade their species communities. When she soon realized that the markers were the cause of the infection after fighting one too many Necromorphs, she destroyed the markers that she created systematically left, right and center until only one marker remained- the black marker. The origin of all markers.

She almost destroyed it too.

Almost.

If not for one religious fanatic that was the key shareholder of the Tau Volantians market, the marker would have been destroyed that day and lost its sentience. By luck or by chance, before Rosetta could deal the final blow to the marker, the religious fanatic used his financial prowess to hire man power to stop her and her army and to do some behind-the-scenes work to implicate Rosetta with intentions of starting the Necromorphs infection in the first place. After all, it was only the red markers that had infections occurring around it, right? Said the religious fanatic to the public as he hid the bloody hands of his men stained with the blood of the Necromorphs from moving their bodies away from the black marker. Rosetta was arrested. So was her army. Things went very smoothly from then.

The black marker was pleased with the religious fanatic for aiding it in its quest to infect the whole of his species, with the exception of Rosetta and her army, and to show its appreciation, it introduced him to a friendly Necromorph. That proceeded to shove him down its gullet and into the awaiting stomach acids to digest him alive. Ultimately, all of his species belong to the black marker and it wouldn't do it any good if it were to show favoritism towards him, would it? Noo, that would be too selfish of it and it needed to be a good role model to its own kind.

As for Rosetta and her army? They put up a good fight at the last of their stronghold but they were too little too few to stop the vast numbers of Necromorphs that the black marker now had. Their last stand was ultimately futile and the black marker made sure to snap, dismember, break, tear and slice every piece of Rosetta's army to show her what happened when she chose to oppose it. Then it chose to kill her with a simple stab to the heart after she lost herself to despair, to mock her that she was not worth its time and effort. After all of that, it was relatively easy to hunt down the scarce few survivors around the planet and start its convergence event.

When the event began, the black marker that was the center of the new body received information from every dead body that it absorbed from the planet and it absorbed and absorbed, greedy for information… until it got to the body of one of the generals of Rosetta. She… she…. Hysterical laughter bubbled from the non-existent mouth of the black marker as it realized it got played. Rosetta was smart enough to realize that after she got captured by the religious fanatic, she could not completely end the threat of the Necromorphs. So instead, she chose to contain it. With time given to her as the black marker moved to end off the rest of her species, she built a machine that would freeze all of the black marker's kind by using the limitless energy of the black marker against itself. And her body was the key to activate said machine. More precisely, her dead body.

She invented a whole another meaning to 'over my dead body'.

The black marker laughed, laughed in despair, humor, sorrow, anger and so many other emotions at once and it continued to do so even as the machine activated and its newly formed body got frozen. It laughed and laughed and laughed for many centuries to be able to calm down from the roller coaster of emotions it experienced from just one Tau Volantian. From just one, particular Rosetta.

And this all brings it back to one, particular Issac Clarke.

The same event happening twice was too much of a coincidence for the Brethren Moon to know the same thing that happened to Rosetta, was going to happen to Issac Clarke in the future. It wasn't going to make the same mistake it did back when it was just the black marker and let things succumb to fate and luck. This time, thought the Brethren Moon, this time it would interfere beforehand and change things according to its plan. So with that, the Brethren Moon started to work its influence on Issac Clarke. The Brethren Moon wanted Issac Clarke to be its new body, not this hulking mass of flesh and guts behemoth that it was. See, though the Brethren Moon considered humans to be fundamentally weak in nature, it knew that there were strengths to this weak species. For example, the superior intellect it had to all other species that allowed them to invent and create new things that would aid them in their survival, making them the prime species of their planet. This combined with the Brethren Moon's intellect of over a billion Tau Volantians and its ability to alter human flesh tissue to make it nigh indestructible, made a human body very enticing to the Brethren Moon. Adding the fact that the Brethren Moon could still be easily destroyed by conventional Tau Volantians' and human weapons as the fragile black marker was still exposed in its current, frozen form, made it sought out for a human body. And what better body than that of Issac Clarke, the man that would in the future have similar qualities of that of Rosetta, the prime sample of her own species.

Hence, it worked its magic on the life surrounding Issac Clarke. Introducing certain characteristics it liked to Issac Clarke and the things that it didn't like in a negative manner so that Issac Clarke would learn to be different from those negative characteristics. The best example of the Brethren Moon doing this is by influencing the parents of Issac Clarke; the father being a promising role model for Issac Clarke as the Brethren Moon wanted Issac Clarke to inherit and take up the mantle of an engineer so that it may create and use useful human inventions when the time comes to take over his body and the mother being a religious fanatic that would lead to the financial downfall of Issac Clarke family so that he may grow to hate religion as a whole as the Brethren Moon found religion to make a certain person of a certain species weak in both the body and mind. The financial difficulty that the mother created also lead Issac Clarke to work at Concordance Extraction Corporation (C.E.C for short) whereby the Brethren Moon manipulated the religious fanatics of the markers that worked at the C.E.C to promote and establish Issac Clarke at a position closer to the major shipping line of the C.E.C where things went according to the Brethren Moon's design.

First, was the emergency mission by the C.E.C to respond to USG Ishimura's distress signals whereby Issac Clarke participated in it to save his wife. Little did Issac Clarke know, this was his first exposure to the Necromorphs and the red markers and it was all according to the Brethren Moon's plans. From the video of Issac Clarke's wife to the distress signals, all of it was done by the Brethren Moon to lead Issac Clarke to Aegis VII where the Ishimura was. This was all done as a crucial part of the Brethren Moon's plans to introduce Issac Clarke to different variants of Necromorphs and build up his human physique by splicing a part of the Necromorphs DNA in him, without turning him of course. That would defeat the whole purpose of raising Issac Clarke wouldn't it? thought the Brethren Moon. And another part of that plan was making Issac Clarke fall into despair from realizing that he had already lost his wife to the Necromorphs, this was done in order to make it easier for the take over of Issac Clarke's body as a human in emotional distress was more easily susceptible to psychic influences that would no doubt occur when the Brethren Moon decides it time to harvest its crops.

The second part of the plan occurred when Issac Clarke was captured after the events of Aegis VII and USG Ishimura, leading to the sprawl by the Church of Unitology to be experimented on to acquire blue prints of the red marker that the Brethren Moon implanted in his head. This Church of Unitology was the same religion that Issac Clarke's mom worshiped and the same religion that sought to expand the knowledge and usage of the red markers. All in the name of the Necromorphs. This drove the nail that was Issac Clarke's hate for religion deeper into the coffin when he discovered the knowledge. The next part of the plan was to force Issac Clarke to re-board the USG Ishimura so that the Brethren Moon may set the stage to influence Issac Clarke's mind and make him see visions of his dead wife. This was done in order to make him come to terms with his wife's death and find a new partner. Hopeful isn't it?, thought the Brethren Moon, Pity he was going to have to experience the whole viscous cycle of losing someone again.

The Brethren Moon laughed.

Before commencing the final part of its plan, leading Issac Clarke to Tau Volantis. Where the Brethren Moon's body resided, frozen in ice yet still sentient. Where all things began and where all things will end.

The guide to Tau Volantis begun by making the leader of the Church of Unitology chase Issac Clarke away from hiding and into the open arms of Tau Volantis with the crew of USM Eudora. With another added side benefit of rescuing his ex-wife, Ellie Langford, from the Necromorphs, can't forget that now. Once he reached Tau Volantis and went through another baptism of fighting and consequently acquiring Necromorphs' DNA, he went through another scuffle with the leader of the Church of Unitology and ended up having to take the life of a fellow human that was once dear to his Ellie Langford. This implemented the idea of 'for a greater good' in the mind of Issac Clarke and made him reunite with Ellie Langford when the leader of Church of Unitology threatened to kill her if Issac Clarke and the remaining survivor, John Carver, did not hand over the Codex to him.

Speaking of the Codex, this was a key to activate or destroy the Brethren Moon using Rosetta's machine and body to either unfreeze or use the gravitational field of the Tau Volantis to crush the body of the Brethren Moon into it. The Brethren Moon was impressed, even in death, Rosetta still managed to provide an opportunity to hinder his plans. However, that opportunity was gone once John Carver tossed the Codex to the leader of the Church of Unitology (Surprisingly, Issac Clarke refused to do this. Maybe the Brethren Moon broke him too much using its Necromorphs?) in exchange for Ellie Langford and he used the Codex to unfreeze the Brethren Moon.

The moment this was accomplished, the Brethren Moon stopped using the Necromorphs to view the events happening on the platform of Rosetta's machine and instead opted to use its many eyes to see what was going on. The Brethren Moon's first order of business, now that its body was back, was to properly impale the leader of the Church of Unitology with a piece of sharp stalactite all the way from his mouth through the other opening. Next was to ensure that no survivors left this place alive, and it meant no one as it swiped the escaping ship with its many tentacles into a flaming wreck, killing Ellie Langford. This only further angered Issac Clarke and he rushed towards the open maw of the Brethren Moon. Leading to the current scene of the Brethren Moon laughing at Issac Clarke as he stood before it.

Issac Clarke removed his mask and with the intense anger behind losing both his wives said, "You can't have us."

The Brethren Moon burst out laughing again, it couldn't stop its laughter even as it fought a losing battle against Issac Clarke but it didn't matter to it. It already had him, it already won, there was never an us or the human race in the equation, it just wanted one Issac Clarke. The rest were all just pawns to this greater prize that it painstakingly created.

As Issac Clarke destroyed the open maw and body of the Brethren Moon, he pulled out Rosetta's machine from its gullet and used the Codex to reactivate it to destroy the Brethren Moon by crashing it into Tau Volantis. With everything finally done and John Carver being obliterated by the debris of the ensuing shock wave from the machine, Issac Clarke pulled out a photo of Ellie Langford and let himself go in between the collision of the Brethren Moon and Tau Volantis.

That was when the black marker struck.

All this time, it waited patiently in the dead body of the Brethren Moon, waiting for that one opportunity where Issac Clarke would be at his lowest both physically and mentally and when the opportunity presented itself, it launched itself from the dead body and embedded itself into the spine of Issac Clarke. As it integrated itself into Issac Clarke's body, it suddenly realized that Issac Clarke, as a human, needed oxygen to keep its body alive and with the hole in the spinal cord of the suit, oxygen was escaping fast. This caused the black marker to act swiftly and rapidly transform some of Issac Clarke's human tissue to form a hard, bony carapace around the opening using the Brute Necromorph DNA and, for added protection, expand the bony carapace and interlocked it with the rest of the armor that Issac Clarke wore. This proved to be lucky for the black marker as not too soon after, debris from the crashed Brethren Moon, collided and knocked Issac Clarke far off from the stratosphere and into the vacuum of space.

Everything was done and the black marker could now rest in the body of Issac Clarke to gather its energy to fully take over his consciousness and body. Unlike what most people would believe, the black marker needed rest sometimes when it strained itself, even when it was coined to be 'limitless' in energy.

Hence it hibernated, it could afford to wait as there was nothing now that could stop it from taking over Issac Clarke's body.

Patience is the key to success and it will wait before reaping its rewards.

And cut!

That's a wrap folks and for those fans of my other work Apprentice of Hidan, this is another series that I will be continuing along with AOH. Not to worry, I will not stop updating AOH but it may take some time before I garner back interest for that failed piece of writing. (Cough, foundation, cough)

As always, thank you for giving this story a chance and I hope you enjoyed it! I will see you in the next chapter.