Witness to Doom (Patreon)

It all happened in a flash. The systems suddenly went haywire, computers shutting down, vents ceasing to blow, sinks and toilets flushing on their own. At first it seemed like maybe there was some kind of system bug, and it was treated as such, tickets being submitted to IT, repair crews, and engineering staff... but then the biological sector went offline... Security couldn't even reach the staff of that section, even worse yet all the doors seemed to be locked up tight for some reason, as though the on board AI had gone haywire... The maintenance tunnels seemed relatively open still, and so some engineering and repair crewmen were sent in teams to see what was the matter, some accompanied by security personnel... But they never quite got back to the rest of staff...

Then all the systems went mad. The IT deck was squared away around the biological sector, and resultant all technological staff were unable to be contacted. Luckily, a handful of programmers and a trained systems hacker were at the cantina during these events. Ushered into the security's terminal center they quickly got to work. Though meant for security usage, they worked fine, the group rattling off about all the sudden things that were going wrong on the ship. With every error the palpable sense of fear in the room rose and rose. Of course, lacking the time to just stare at the problems and do nothing, the hacker plugged himself into the system, yanking his monocle over his eye and jacking in, his fingers seemingly typing of their own accord at the keyboard before him, sweat dripping down his brow.

The shock only arose as it appeared there was a malicious attacker on the system, and they were making impressive work of all the safeguards the IT team had put in place, cracking firewalls and opening backdoors like it was nothing. Nobody could believe it, the computers on board the ship were state of the art, protected with military grade security systems, there should be no way anybody is making such fast work... and then, they saw it... A scream shot through the earphones jacked into the hacker's terminal, a blurry object flailing off camera before blood was sent over the walls around it, pooling on the ground below. Heavy metallic clangs were heard, as though someone was stomping away from the camera before it could in time turn to face down the tunnel where nobody but a deceased crew member laid... When the camera panned back more stomping came into earshot, two personnel coming into view.

They were repair staff, taken from their previous role repairing filtration systems in the cantina and instead sent as expeditionary staff to the biological level. They moved at a steady enough pace, wary of their surroundings, when they both stopped before the blood, the man on the left shocked, while his crew mate reached for his radio, forgetting that the systems had seemed totally jammed beneath and around the biology deck. He kept yelling into his radio about the corpse, something twinkling in the cameras behind them in the tunnel. His mate looked down it, his eyes widening like saucers as he grabbed onto his friend's arm, attempting to alert him... but his coworker just wasn't having it. All the while the hacker's fingers flew just as fast as his neural implant had been through the network.

It was then that the power was cut, a loud long droning groan heard through the ship as lights went black, and then the emergency lights came on, bathing everywhere in a warm red hue. Luckily the security room, and the ship's network, was built for this sort of outage, immediately being routed to backup batteries. What everyone who'd crowded around the hacker's computer saw next shocked them, some even vomiting as strange lumbering ghoulish creatures emerged, the clattering rising and rising. Just before the two men could be caught, the feed cut, a message blinking at the bottom of the static-coated screen as the hacker jacked out from cyberspace. "Hello hacker. Security teams have been notified. Good luck." It was then that everybody huddled in the room noticed they'd stopped receiving updates from other decks of the ship...

Furthermore, they hadn't received an update on the on-board robotic security drones for hours... From behind the security door they then heard it, low mechanical whirring, beeping, and clanking... Everyone looked to each other, and then to the hacker's monitor... Then came confirmation of the message's meaning as banging was heard at the door, a loud synthesized voice screeching out, "Attention, attention! All persons within the security monitoring office, expose yourselves for immediate amputation! Repeat, repeat! All persons within the security monitoring office, expose yourselves for immediate amputation! It is futile to resist, emerge and receive punishment immediately!"

They hadn't known it earlier... but they all could now tell... Those security monitors, those terminal error codes... they weren't just witnessing freak systems failures... they'd been witnessing the beginning of their end.

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I'm super happy with how this one finally came out. After a few days of constant working on it it's finally properly ready to show, along with a bunch of versions without varying levels of visual effects~! I think the monsters came out pretty cool and I think hiding them mostly in the shadows was a good call, initially I planned to show more of them but I think this "slight peek" look makes things marginally better. Also........ this totally isn't me copycatting and elongating the Many from System Shock... Anyways! I'm gonna get cracking at making my ref sheet since my birthday is coming up, expect that September 7th. I may be a bit quiet because I'll be hosting a friend for a bit and attending a convention, so I hope you all have a very lovely month~!

Here's inarguably one of the best System Shock songs!

Cheers~!