Y'all, I made myself cry when writing what you know that's coming- I dunno whether to be mad or proud of myself for hitting that hard ;-;

Also gore warning, heads up (not a drawing, but there's a description of a mutilated body :^).

[Sabre's POV]

"What?!" I exclaim, terrified.

"What do you mean, the Kharaa is HERE?!" Orange says, hanging on tighter to me.

"It's out of the seal, and coming towards us from the lower parts of the temple." Red says, swimming past us and towards the door. "We need to leave, now. Come on!"

Orange and I quickly follow after Red, all of us swimming as fast as we can. When we get past the doors Red quickly takes the tablet-like object from the pedestal he put it on earlier, and the doors slowly start closing.

"That should buy us some time!" Red yells, catching up to us. "We need to get back to somewhere safe!"

"Can the Kharaa go on land?!" I ask, struggling a little to keep up with my friends.

"It can, think of something else!" Red says.

"Wait- Sabre!" Orange says. "Your pod! You can lock it from the inside, and if we can't break through it, the Kharaa definitely can't!"

"Good idea, hang on you two!" I say, taking out my Seaglide.

Red and Orange both grab onto one of my arms, and I start up the Seaglide just as we hear a loud, jarring noise behind us. I look back, and see a dark, green-tinted mass of humanoid figures coming up behind us. The Seaglide is going faster than it, though.

"It's broken out of the temple!" Orange says.

"And that means another outbreak is starting!" Red adds. "Focus on getting to the pod for now, then we can think of something to stop the Kharaa before it gets too bad!"

I start to swim faster, which in turn, makes the Seaglide go faster. We soon reach my lifepod, but the group of Kharaa is catching up to us.

We stop right under my lifepod, and I grab the hatch handle.

"Open it! Quick!" Orange says!

"I am! Hold on!" I reply.

I get the hatch open and quickly climb inside. Orange jumps into the pod behind me, and we both turn to help Red as he's halfway climbed in.

Just as we're about to hoist him up, he's lurched backwards and he grabs onto the sides of the hatch, panicked. He screams out a few seconds later.

"Red Steve!" Orange yells.

"Guys, i-it's got me! The Kharaa grabbed onto me!" Red says, fear in his voice, looking behind him into the water.

"Red Steve! What do we do?!" I say, scared for his life.

"Red, let me get you inside-" Orange starts, but Red cuts him off.

"No, Orange, Don't! It's too late for me!" Red yells, tears in his eyes. "If you touch me, you'll get infected too! Besides, they've gotten to me too much already! They're tearing my tail apart, if I survive I won't even be able to swim!"

"I-I can't just let you die, Red! I can't!" Orange yells back, also crying.

I'm frozen in fear, unsure of what to do. As Red keeps getting tugged back into the water, I see dark marks in his skin start to form on his arms, almost looking like cracks. He yells out in pain again. Orange also stands there, tears streaming down his face.

Red looks up at the both of us, his watery eyes turning from red to a darkened, sickly green. His expression is solemn.

"O-Orange Steve... I'm sorry." Red stutters, choked back by tears. "I'm sorry the line ends like this. The years I've been helping you live alone like me and just being friends... these have been the best years of my life. I'm sorry you'll have to spend the rest of yours without me."

"R-Red..." Orange quietly says, his voice shaking. "Red, please don't leave m-me out here alone..."

"I'm sorry Orange Steve... I'm not gonna make it." Red says. "But you won't be alone; You'll have Sabre, alright?"

I step forward and Orange grabs onto my arm, sobbing. I realize that I'm crying as well, as I kneel down to Red.

"Sabre..." Red says. "Lock the hatch once they pull me down, alright? I can't have them getting to you guys too."

"I-I will, Red..." I say. "I... I m-might not have k-known you for long, but I'll miss you. A-And thank you f-for all you've done for me."

Red gets pulled back a little, but he hangs on just a little bit more. He looks up at the two of us and gives a teary-eyed, small smile.

"I-I'm not truly gonna be gone, once I go... I'll be in the stars, watching over you two as you go on..." Red says. "W-Who knows, we might even m-meet again someday, in another l-lifetime... I've a-always wondered what a Stalker's life i-is like... But for n-now, just promise me, you two... p-promise me you'll take care o-of each other..."

Orange nods, unable to get a word out between sobs. I give Red one last look. He now has those sickly, dark marks on his face.

"Goodbye, Red Steve..." I say.

"Goodbye, S-Sabre... Orange Steve..." Red says, smiling as tears fall from his eyes.

Suddenly, Red is pulled back into the water, and he grabs onto the hatch's handle as he goes down. Once the hatch closes, I quickly lock it and back up. Orange hangs on tighter to my arm, burying his face in my shoulder.

We hear a scream echo from the water, and it scares both of us. Orange and I back into the wall of the lifepod, trying to block out the howls and screeches, mixed with cries of agony.

Orange and I hold onto each other, crying, as we wait for the Kharaa to pass. It's the only thing we can do...

...

—————————————————————————————————————

We've been waiting all day for those... things to leave, and by now it's much past sunset.

Orange Steve and I have been staying inside the pod. Just... waiting, not speaking a word. However, we both kept crying the entire time, still in shock of Red's... I don't want to say it.

The howls and screams would still happen every now and then, which made us jump every time. Eventually, Red's screaming stopped, but the shrieks of the Kharaa didn't quiet down until the evening. I keep going to check if they're still there. So far, they've still been there every time, and would start scratching at the lifepod every time they saw me.

Orange has just been huddled in the corner, crying, ever since we got in here... I didn't blame him. Around sunset, he had come back up to me while I was on the floor waiting for the shrieks to stop, and he grasped my arm again just like earlier. We stayed like that for a while, both silently comforting each other while hoping the Kharaa would pass soon.

Orange quieted down a while earlier, and I check on him. Looks like he fell asleep while he was crying, he's leaned against the wall and is holding my arm like a little kid holds a plush.

I need to check the hatch, though... I carefully slip my arm out of Orange's grasp, and quietly get up. Walking to the hatch, I see that the bloody handprint on the glass that's been there for a while now is getting washed away by the water lapping against the hatch. I don't see anything yet, so I peek through the hatch's glass...

And I almost scream at what I see.

At the sandy ocean floor, lies a mangled red corpse, covered in black fracture-like markings tinted a dark green color. His clothes are tattered, his face is almost unrecognizable with all of the claw marks and the lower jaw missing, save for the one bloodied, rolled-back eye still in its socket. His legs and one of his arms are torn off, nowhere to be seen, while the bones left behind stick out of the shredded flesh. His fish-like tail has all of its fins ripped out and the tail fin mutilated, nowhere close to the original shape of it, the tail itself looking like chunks got ripped out of it. His torso is seemingly ripped open, exposing his rib cage and a few organs. I can see a clear hole through his throat. I notice more tears drip from my eyes and onto the hatch, while I start to feel sick looking at the remains just underneath me.

I almost scream again when a group of creatures similar to small sharks swim into view and all bite into the corpse, their wide, teeth-filled mouths having no problem gripping the dead body. A few of them are already gnawing away when the group of creatures pick up the body from the sand and quickly swim off with it. All that's left behind is a few blood stains, that are quickly fading away as the sea's waves and currents move the sand around.

...I am so glad Orange didn't see that.

I back away from the hatch and go back to my spot next to Orange. As soon as I sit down, Orange grabs my arm again, but I don't mind. I wipe away my tears and lean back on the wall, trying to calm myself down.

Out of all the planets I've been to, this is by far the worst thing I've seen... and I've only been here for a few days. I just hope that the rest of the Aurora crew is alright...

I was on the non-essential systems engineer team, along with a few other people, but the most important part of that team was my four friends that were on it with me. I was the only one out of all of us that actually did engineering full-time, while the rest of them had other jobs too.

Lucas is also part of the research team, and he takes a lot of pride in his work. He was always making the full-time researches on the ship mad by going beyond their quotas, even though he's only part-time. And he always finishes all of his assignments really quickly, so he often passes the time left on his shift by either writing these stories he makes to keep the group of us occupied (and to compete with me, because I do that too), or he sets up pranks all around the ship with Ryan when he was also done with his work. He never took off his hat, and the rest of us would tease him a little bit about it sometimes.

Speaking of Ryan, he was working on the technologies department of the ship, basically starship I.T. He along with the rest of the tech department made sure all the computers were running and the Seamoths and Prawn Suits were in working order. Although... he's quite the troll. Ryan's known to put stupid little commands on other people's computers that would either make memes show up or make all of the noises random sounds, like an air horn, or do things like mirror the desktops of people's computers. He always wears this mask thing on the side of his head, he said 'because it looks cool'. Not gonna lie, he's kinda right.

And then there's Jerome. He's a pretty chill guy, so naturally management decided to put him on the security team to deal with angry other crewmates. He takes no garbage from anyone, not even that one lady from HR that's entirely clueless about the most basic things. He had to stop her from smoking near the fuel lines for the ship once, because she was hiding in one of the maintenance rooms for those because she didn't want to get caught. For being part of HR, she was kind of clueless about the Aurora crew's rules. Jerome would take every other shift with the other security staff, so he'd go around to each of us whenever he was off and keep us company during our own shifts. He's always got his headphones on, but is almost never actually listening to music.

And finally, Dropsy. She's basically the sunshine of the group, which fits along with how many plants she grew in her quarters. She's part of the medical staff, a nurse-in-training. Mostly just handing out band-aids or ice packs, she was often bored with all of that. I can tell she wants to be an actual doctor, but like the rest of us she can't afford extra college semesters. That's the reason we're all here; We joined Alterra so we could gather enough money to get better degrees, and therefore get jobs that weren't the worst. Dropsy would always try and make our days better whenever she had the time off, like surprising us with little chocolates she got from the vending machines or little origami things she makes, mostly paper flowers. Although, she's also a bit of a troll. One time, she let Ryan into the head doctor's office so he could change his laptop background to a looping gif of differently-colored nyan cats. She spent most of her free time in her room, taking care of all her plants however. She also always wears this flower crown headband that she got as a birthday present from her mom.

Heh... Thinking of my friends, I wonder how they're doing right now. Lucas would have a blast with all of the new stuff here... Ryan's probably already messed with his PDA and got it off emergency mode... Jerome would've loved that island I was on the other day... and Dropsy would go nuts about all of the new plants here... I hope they're hanging in there. Who knows, maybe we'll even find each other soon enough.

That... makes me feel a little better. I sigh and close my eyes, trying to sleep so Orange and I can figure things out tomorrow morning. Hopefully things get better tomorrow...

...Why did everything have to go so horribly wrong so soon?