Chapter 4

Erma

Erma heard the alarms going off in the Signa, but she just didn't care. When she first started this job the alarms were her worst nightmare. When they went off her first thought would have always been "Welp. Today is the day I die. I never got to see or do anything cool... Well except for the time I accidentally made something explode in Captain Jaxon's face. Boy, he was pissed!" But that was a long time ago, now she was used to the sound and the sight of it.

"I swear the alarm needs to be reprogrammed. Always going off at a random time day and night, someday I swear it's going to screw us all over..." huffed Erma.

Erma sat up and gave out a long yawn. She lifted her arms and interlocked her fingers for a nice long stretch. She slowly lowered her arms onto the soft navy blue blanket and looked around her room. The red flashing lights always annoyed her but it also made her messy room look like some type of horror scene. It turned the pale pearl walls red every other second, the piles of clothes looked like used body bags, and finally, the floors that had trash and other things all over it looked like a portal opened up and blood was flowing through. Overall it would be a fantastic set for an old horror movie or something. Erma reached over to her nightstand and pushed around all of the plastic water bottles to find her holo watch.

"Holy fuck. When did I bring so many water bottles into my room?"

Finally after a lot of pushing and around half-empty water bottles and shoving off any that were empty Erma finally found her halo watch. Erma turned it on to see that she had a dozen missed calls and messages from Iko but the charge was also at 1%.

"Mother fuck-" started Erma when suddenly the alarms shut off.

Erma was happy that the alarms had been shut off but were a little bit worried about Iko. The last time she had sent this many messages was when she got drunk alone in her room off of some weird liquor she found in the dining hall, all the messages were about how much of a dick captain Jaxon was and how the crew would be happier and work more efficiently if the captain cared who died and who didn't.

Erma sighed and tossed herself onto the floor of her bedroom. The empty water bottles made a nice crunch when she landed on them. Erma slowly rolled onto her back and replayed and looked over all of the messages and calls from Iko and her face went pale after each one. All of the messages from Iko were about how something was wrong and if she was ok or alive. While it did make Erma worry a lot more than before it was a little nice that somebody cared about her and not just her reports.

Erma quickly got up and grabbed the random clothes that were hanging on her black office chair and overflowing her gray mesh laundry basket for who knows how long now. She got dressed in less than a minute. This was record-breaking compared to her usual fifteen-minute routine that consisted of looking for clean clothes and swearing that she would do laundry after she was done working but she was always far too tired. Erma raced out of her room and began searching for Iko to make sure that she was ok.

Erma also wanted to find Iko so she could ask if her new subject was ok but of course, she wouldn't bring that up. The sound of Erma's bare feet hitting the floor was all that Erma could hear while she raced down the long white halls. Erma's mind was racing trying to figure out where Iko could be when suddenly she heard a scream and then a single gunshot echo down the halls and then six more. Erma froze in her place and her ears strained to figure out where the gunshots had come from, if the shots hadn't echoed then it would have been easier to locate where they had come from.

"Fuck these long corridors!"

Erma began running towards where she thought the gunshots had come from when suddenly she tripped on a metal floor panel and fell forward to the ground she landed with a hard thud on her chest.

"Son on a cunt waffle on a Tuesday morning!" Erma cursed out while holding her now bleeding foot.

While Erma was holding her foot and silently cursing, she heard a hissing sound, Erma's attention immediately went to focusing on finding whatever had just hissed at her. Erma looked around the lower parts of the walls until she saw two metal plates that once were connected and looked as if they had been forced apart. Very slowly Erma crawled towards the hole and once she reached the opening Erma turned the brightness of her halo watch to its maximum and she looked into the hole just in time to see... Nothing. Just a bunch of wires and a few dusty pipes that helped who knows what around the ship. Maybe gas or water but Erma didn't care.

Erma sighed, her curiosity fading but her annoyance rising because something hissed at her, and Iko was still somewhere on the ship missing! Erma glared down the long corridor that she always thought was way too bright with the gray metal walls and the bright lights reflecting off of the walls and the multiple windows. Suddenly the throbbing in her foot brought her attention to a deep cut that ran from the bottom of her middle toe down to her heel. While it didn't look too bad it would need some stitches and to be disinfected because who knew what was on the hundreds of boots that have been touching the floor. Suddenly the hissing sound was back and this time it was right next to Erma's face.

Erma directed her attention back to the hole just in time for a giant blur to shoot past her face. Erma's head followed the blur and she casually watched as it hit the other wall with a nice solid thud. Quickly Erma stood up and raced over before the little vermin could escape. Erma slammed her uninjured foot into the little bastard and leaned down to see what it was. The feeling of her foot on the thing's back was revolting. To Erma, it was like thousands of tiny slugs and other weird yet slimy creatures were moving across the bottom of her foot very slowly.

Suddenly the 'thing' began wiggling to try an escape attempt but that wasn't going to happen. Erma casually reached down and picked the thing up by its weird slimy tail and as she picked it up lines of black slime and goo came up from the floor in little strands until they were just dangling in the air like an ice cycle from some type of nightmare.

"The fuck are you?" questioned Erma.

Erma peered at the creature and looked it over. It was one of the weirdest things that she had seen in a while. The 'thing' had six legs, a long tail, long needle-like claws, no eyes it seemed, and a massive mouth like a leech. Erma noticed after a few seconds that his mouth had blood around it and it wasn't dried blood, it was fresh.

"What the fuck did you do and what have you been eating ya tiny little cunt?" questioned Erma.

The little monster was wiggling around like crazy and suddenly Erma lost her grip on his tail because of all the black slime. The creature made a nice splat on the ground and began crawling as fast as it could to the small pool of Erma's blood on the floor from her still bleeding foot. Erma watched the creature as it shoved its weird mouth into the blood and it began drinking it.

"The fu-"

As the creature was drinking it began to grow. With each gulp of blood, it grew an inch or two. Erma quickly grabbed it and made sure that she had a fantastic grip on it this time to make sure it wouldn't get away.

"Aside from the blood-sucking and needles for claws... You're kinda cute compared to the other things I have seen. I shall call you gluttony and you shall be mine. Come along you bastard, let's go find Iko!

Erma took a step forward with her uninjured foot and immediately cringed. She slowly dragged her foot along the floor in an attempt to get the weird substance off of her foot. Once she felt that she had gotten most of the disgustingness off of her foot she began on her quest for Iko once again. Erma began walking with a limp while holding her brand new pet. The now larger gluttony began hissing at Erma as they again tried to get away but Erma wasn't letting go of her "friend" yet! Erma lifted gluttony to her face and hissed back. This seemed to confuse gluttony but it went quiet so Erma continued on her quest to find Iko and show her off her new pet.

Erma turned the corner and saw Iko sitting in the middle of the corridor on the floor, her back was to Erma she couldn't see Iko's face but she could see a small glint of her reflection in the window to Iko's left. Her face looked weird because the colors from outside changed the color of her face and gave it a weird shadow. But even then Erma could easily tell that something was wrong but at the moment she didn't quite care, all that mattered was that she finally found Iko.

"Iko thank whatever I found you! Are you ok? Also, I have a new pet. It's a bit ugly but I love him," called out Erma.

Erma quickened her pace to get to Iko but she slowed down when Iko didn't respond.

"Iko? Hunny? Are you good?"

Erma stopped moving and watched Iko. Iko slowly began turning around as if she was in slow motion, she turned around about a fourth of the way then stopped. Her head began tilting towards Erma until her face was in full view. Her face... it was covered in blood. The light from the corridor lights glinting off the blood that was slowly running down from her forehead down the sides of her cheek until it fell to the floor with a silent plop. Iko smiled.

"Hey, Erma."