Captain's Log: 03:00 AM Sunday, 19th March 2263. Captain Kim Hongjoong on the SS Elysium.

Last night, grief befell our crew. To everybody's utmost shock and anguish, we had to find our Medical Officer Choi San drifting unprotected outside the spacecraft. We have yet to examine him to determine the cause of death. As of now, we are under the assumption that he passed from anoxia. While I am writing this, my prayers go to San, his family, and his fiance. May they find peace. More updates to come.

Hongjoong rubbed his eyes. He had barely rested long enough to concentrate on the holographic letters, and their blue shine agitated his eyes. He had stopped crying at least, but the numb hollowness of his body made resembled a lifeless doll that was hauled around on the strings called duty. While they were on a crucial mission and so close to reaching their goal, San was at first Hongjoong's friend before he was his crew member. He should be allowed the time to grieve. The idea of having to poke at San's body to rule out the possibility that they had encountered a dangerous virus in outer space made him sick to the stomach.

Like a coward, he had hidden away in the kitchen to start with his log. The few minutes it had gifted him between leaving his room and visiting the med bay were barely worth it, but they felt like a welcoming bliss to him. Now that he had no more reason to hide, Hongjoong rose from the bench dutifully. He took his tablet with him and carried it with an empty face. An absolute detachment was needed for him to keep writing during the procedure.

When Hongjoong finally entered the med bay, he found the room cooled to temperatures low enough that the bacteria in San's body wouldn't issue the decomposition process already. It was cold even in his suit, and even colder for Wooyoung, who perched on the side of the stretcher San rested on unmoving. The man was wide awake, and he stared at his stiff fiance with desolate eyes.

His hand cradled San's fingers that also wore the ring. Rings, that San had crafted within hours of secretive giggles and passion with Mingi's help.

Hongjoong swallowed. His fingers weakly rapped against the door, barely enough to notify his presence.

Wooyoung didn't mind him. With blue lips, he stayed right where he was as if frozen to the chair. He had been here for a while.

"Wooyoung," Hongjoong mumbled as he came closer. He had no words of consolidation, no comfort. The vacancy in Wooyoung's eyes wouldn't ever be occupied again. The sight broke Hongjoong's heart like shattering glass.

Wooyoung didn't look away from San. His chapped lips replied almost soundlessly. Scratchy, his voice had lost all of its sweet dynamic and usual enthusiasm.

"Did you come to examine him?"

Hongjoong nodded slowly. If Wooyoung resisted their check, then he didn't know what to do. Ripping the man away from his lover felt all kinds of wrong to Hongjoong. He would rather not know what had San driven to death and take responsibility than see Wooyoung scream and fight to stay with him again.

"I did," Hongjoong said since Wooyoung didn't glance up. His lidded eyes remained on San's contorted expression.

"Okay."

Hongjoong was surprised at the slow exhale. Carefully, Wooyoung wrapped his fingers around San's, sticking close.

"But I want to be here. I want to know."

It was a big step to take. If it had been Seonghwa, Hongjoong wouldn't want to know. He wouldn't want to be near in any form, unacceptant of the truth.

Impressed by Wooyoung's strength, Hongjoong nonverbally allowed him. Then, he pulled up the messaging system shortcut on his wristband. San's contact was still in the group chat, his icon smiling his dimpled grin as always. But he would never respond with too many exclamation marks again.

"Yunho and Yeosang, please come to the med bay. Jongho, crank up the heat while we are in here."

Before Hongjoong could dread the silence with Wooyoung's pale and hunched figure, Yunho and Yeosang were there already. They had been waiting, most likely. Both of them stepped in with deep frowns that only got sadder when they spotted Wooyoung.

"Don't mind him. It's okay that he stays."

No more traces of hysteria remained on Wooyoung. Only sickening emptiness.

Yeosang pulled a chair in, his face the same masked neutralness as Hongjoong's. They didn't view the body as San. Only as a body that needed to be studied.

Yunho gave everyone but Wooyoung gloves and rolled the cart with utensils close San used for routine checkups. None of them was as skilled as the doctor in these matters, but they had received basic training, and their AI wouldn't fail them.

"I'll record." Yeosang placed his tablet on his lap as he gingerly picked up San's free hand and studied his fingernails. Around them, the room gradually warmed.

"Outer appearance shows severe bloating, burst blood vessels, and signs of suffocation. Presumed cause of death is the lack of oxygen and extreme pressure in space." Hongjoong listed with a glance at Wooyoung. The man didn't react to them treating San like a corpse. His understanding of the situation had settled scarily fast.

"Do we know how he got there?" Yunho mumbled as he carefully pushed San's lips apart to take a peek into his mouth. The stiff body moved unwillingly like wood.

"Through the airlock, I'd assume. Did you check the cameras whether it was opened prior?"

"I did," Yeosang claimed. Dead, Wooyoung's eyes rose to him to look through him rather than at him. Shuddering, Yeosang glanced at Hongjoong.

"It wasn't opened."

Hongjoong came up short, his brows tightening in confusion. Yeosang carefully extracted blood from San to test it for hints. Then, he slipped his arm back under the covers. They had undressed him already, probably to get rid of his soiled clothes. The vacuum outside got all liquids inside of him moving.

"New assumption. San was dead before ended up in space."

Wooyoung stiffened in his chair. Hongjoong sent an incredulous look at Yunho.

"Based on what fact?"

As a reply, Yunho gently tugged on San's tongue until all of them could see it and the roof of his mouth.

"If entering space unprotected, the minimal needed temperature to boil liquids drops to zero. This means his spit would have burnt his mouth once it got super-heated by his own body heat. He isn't burnt, so we can safely assume that his body heat was already at a freezing point by then. Which means he must have died at least 12 hours before we found him."

"During the time frame when he was locked up in his room," Hongjoong stuttered. Once more, naked horror had found its way into Wooyoung's eyes. The idea that he had been knocking at the very door behind which his dead lover laid for hours made Hongjoong nauseous. He sat down again. Yunho respectfully adjusted San.

"Good point. He was stiff when I found him, too. If he died outside moments before we found him, it would have been too soon for Rigor Mortis."

Their triumph was short-lived. This added more questions to the prior dilemma. San had still landed in space through mysterious circumstances that involved maintaining the door out shut.

"Then what killed him?" Hongjoong prompted once more to get the conference back going. Until now, Yeosang had been prodding at San's neck curiously. Now that Hongjoong gave him an opening, he motioned at it.

"Look at this."

Both Hongjoong and Yunho came closer. Disinterested, Wooyoung remained on his chair and clung to San's slack hand.

The skin on San's neck was rubbed tender and ripped off in some places. Little wounds had spread out all over in a pattern of spots that wrapped all around.

"Do you think he committed suicide by hanging?"

"I think suffocation plays a role. But no rope would leave a pattern quite like this. I think he might have choked on something and tried to claw it out with his hands." Yeosang compared San's nails with the marks. His hum didn't convince any of them. While a plausible theory, those wounds didn't look like the ones fingers left. Especially not all around his neck.

Once more, Yunho peeked inside San's throat. He needed a flashlight this time as he lit up the man's mouth.

"The inside looks the same. Did he have allergies? They can lead to rashes and choking."

When Wooyoung shook his head without a word, Hongjoong scratched his chin. He also couldn't remember San ever disclosing anything about that.

"Then maybe it is a virus? It's focused only on a certain spot, but maybe it attacks the breathing ways. We are close to uncharted territory, too, who knows what's flying around here."

At Hongjoong's assumption, Yeosang stood from his place to put San's blood in the analysing machine. After a glance at Wooyoung, Hongjoong carefully pulled down the sheet so they could access San's chest. His skin still had some faint love marks on them, custody to Wooyoung. Hongjoong didn't point them out as he felt over San's sides for broken bones. Yunho got the little hand x-ray and did the same.

While they were busy, Hongjoong compiled all of his courage to formulate a single sentence. After mulling over his word choice in his head several times, he just delivered it.

"San texted me in the morning before he disappeared for the day. He asked me to have a talk."

Hongjoong consciously had to avoid Wooyoung's eyes that bore into him. The room was quiet, safe for Yeosang's tinkering at the machine.

"I reacted to him a few hours later when I woke up, but by then he already didn't read the message anymore."

The question lingered in the air. Of what had happened, why Wooyoung and San had fought. Being alone had been San's demise.

Neither voiced it. The guilt gnawing on Wooyoung's heart was already too much to bear for any of them. And if Wooyoung chose to protect his privacy, he had every right to. No truth he could offer would change the outcome of San's tragic accident.

"There is something weird in his blood," Yeosang announced surprisedly. Yunho stood to join him and together they correlated the pictures of how it should look and what stats were strange.

"It's like a virus, attacking his blood cells and messing with him to grow. Well, not anymore. Whatever it was, it died when it entered the vacuum. So it might as well be a human illness that mutated after we came here." Yeosang flicked through the book in the search for answers. None of them was an expert. Their expert laid dead on the stretcher in front of him and wouldn't help them define the medical principles.

"He never showed symptoms..." Wooyoung breathed barely audible. "Although he was feverish before he left. Eyes glassy. His mind all over the place. He mentioned he needed to talk to you."

Yunho and Yeosang lowered their volume to listen in but didn't stop talking to encourage Wooyoung of his careful advance. With his entire attention dedicated to him, Hongjoong nodded along. His gentle features calmed Wooyoung at least a little.

"I... He never mentioned feeling sick. But maybe he felt it evolved. And wanted to tell you. Maybe he could feel his death approach and distanced himself because he didn't want to hurt me." His voice cracked around the last few words.

When fresh tears burst from Wooyoung's eyes, Hongjoong pulled his gloves off and came over to his side. He hugged Wooyoung to his middle, both hands squeezing the shaking man tightly. He feared Wooyoung might fall apart under his fingers and shatter like a glass vase. Every sob transferred into Hongjoong's core to stab at his heart.

Yeosang and Yunho had fallen quiet. Their empathy reached over without words as they mutely felt with them.

Wooyoung needed ten minutes to calm his heart-wrenching sobs. Once they died down, he gingerly placed San's hand down at his side again and covered it with the blanket. Before he pulled away, his shaking fingers brushed over the ring one last time.

"We'll decontaminate ourselves and lock this room for the time being. We need to search everywhere around the ship for the indicator. Most likely he developed it among his medical research somehow, but we want to be safe. We don't need another person to die of the virus."

Grave nods answered him. Yunho and Yeosang readied the process of full-body disinfection and told Mingi to clear the path over to the shared bathroom. While the man scrambled around outside to get everything ready and comfortable, Wooyoung went through his last sniffs in Hongjoong's chest. He wiped his eyes profusely before anyone could tell him not to touch them after handling San.

"Only two out of seven more to cry on. I'm setting a new record," Wooyoung tried to joke weakly, but it didn't bring a smile even to his own lips. As Hongjoong hauled him up, he held him close in a soothing embrace.

"Let's get some rest. Thank you for your strength here."

They all went over to get their bodies clean. Yunho suggested they called the virus Saturday Virus, or SV since it had appeared first then. When Hongjoong patiently warned him under his breath that S wasn't the appropriate letter to associate the virus with, Yunho promptly changed his mind. He left it at Alien Virus, AV, and they resolved on that.

Hongjoong focused every cell of his being on ways to get rid of the potentially infective sickness. He wouldn't allow any other member to die of it, and he would make sure that Wooyoung could grieve in peace over the man Hongjoong had failed already.