The doctor's jumbled knowledge was still filling his head, but he was able to shove it to the back of his mind, in order to deal with the current situation. An unknown life form, an alien, had found its way on the ship.
He would have never thought something like that could happen. Of course, he was already damaged by science fiction stories of various disciplines for the past hundreds of years, but he never thought it was possible outside of fiction.
Like, people spoke of technologies growing exponentially right? But there was no travel at lightspeed, warp engine, or wormhole generator after so many centuries. The best humanity was able to do was genetic enhancement and cryogenic sleep. Why else would this travel take so long?
Who would think alien life forms were real? Bacteria, sure. Life on an earthlike planet, okay. An alien hijacking a spaceship mid-flight? Nobody would expect that.
Sector S-23 was near where the storage facilities used to be. S for storage. Led followed the cues on the map Ankara provided him to find the place where the sensors loft the creature.
Watching the recordings, it became clear what had happened. When the asteroid hit the Ankara, some kind of stone was flung down the hallway before the area got shut off.
This stone lay there for quite a while before something happened. When a creature similar to a slime fungus emerged from inside, it became clear that it was not a stone, but some kind of cocoon or shell. This was around the time Len was outside.
For a while, the fungus did nothing, except grow. When it started moving, Ankara's sensors detected it and the system reported it to Len. While the ghoul dealt with his headache, the fungus made its way into the air vents.
A creature that instinctively vented. Deplorable.
Len reached the place where he found parts of the shell and a slime trail leading to the vent where it had vanished into. What to do? it could be dangerous to enter the vents, with this thing roaming.
Len blinked. Slowly these foreign thoughts got a little annoying. He was a ghoul, for devil's sake. As if to prove it, his claws easily stabbed into the vent cover and ripped it away.
The moment the vent cover was gone, a flood of good jumped at him and enveloped his arm. He could things invade his flesh, but they stopped after just a moment.
Len wanted to swing his arm and fling the stuff at the wall, but the researcher in him, Z. Killian, came forward. His instincts told him, to put the thing in an airtight container. Catch it for research! Don't give it a chance to run away.
While the thing was uncertain what to do, the ghoul rushed to the next best laboratory. This was meant for botanical tests and had some long cylindrical tanks he could use. he decisively shoved his arm inside and- cut it off, above the elbow, before sealing it with his other hand.
The moment the airflow was cut off, the fungus seemed to have realized what was going on and platted against the glass walls of its new prison. Len looked at his cut-off arm wistfully. It would take some time to re-grow it.
As he was looking at the fungus and his arm, dozens of conjectures entered his mind. Besides the thoughts about his own, undying flesh were questions about the fungus and things he had to test.
The biggest question was: What was the thing's goal? It had immediately attacked him, but stopped whatever it did just as fast. There was also the question of why it didn't get active immediately after entering the ship or why it stay there in the vent, instead of hunting for prey. if that was what it did.
Looking again at the footage and time it got active, Len had a guess he could easily check. The current temperature on the ship was around 8°C. He took the container and started increasing the temperature within.
The fungus calmed down and fell into a state of growing between 10 and 20°C. However, above 20 it suddenly fell dormant and pulled itself together into a solid blob. When Len started lowering the temperature inside gain, it unfurled again and below 10 it became very restless, almost aggressive.
Below freezing, it returned to its compact solid state and the ghoul was sure it would start condensing a shell if he kept lowering the temperature. He was sure now, this creature was specialized to live in a very specific environment.
The biggest question remained, what was its goal when it attacked him?
Maybe it tied in with him being a ghoul? His flesh was technically dead, only moved by his will, bound to the dead tissue. he ate, sure, but it had nothing to do with sustaining his bodily functions. With the knowledge of Z. Killian, he came up with an apt metaphor:
He was a meat robot. He burned away what he ate and stored the created energy within him. With the crated energy he moved, repaired, and sustained his transformed body. There was nothing biological, or even logical about how he functioned.
Entering that track of thought he came back to his initial reason to eat a doctor. he wanted to know more about the changes in his own body. he looked back won at the fungus and decided to leave it in this dormant state.
He returned to the observation deck, where he sat down to meditate. Before he did anything else, Len wanted to thoroughly digest everything. The weird notions where he would sometimes think like a human were unsettling.
Maybe this was the danger of his new ability. If he didn't take his time to consolidate himself in the face of this foreign knowledge and experiences, he might lose himself.
The ghoul simply sat there. Alone, only him and the universe as time went by. He took his time to sift through the knowledge of the six people he ate, but he also reminisced his own past.
His short time of happiness as a human. the suffering when he lost everything and was forced to serve the creature that took it from him. The humiliation, the chases, the fights. Len had fought many enemies, natural and supernatural. Centuries of surviving among the dregs in the shadows of society, as humanity grew more and more extreme in their own hybris.
In the face of his life as a ghoul, the memories of the humans who lived such pitifully short, and partly empty, lives paled and stepped in the background. Only their knowledge stayed. The ghoul was assured, this was the right method to deal with these side effects.
"Ankara, how long have I been sitting here?"
-Answer: 73 hours, Captain-
"So something about three days. Good."
Three Days to completely deal with the residues of six people. To guarantee their arrival, there were 324 people left to eat, within the next 10 years. More than enough time to eat and safely digest them all.
It has also been enough time for his missing limp to regrow. The arm was still a little weak, but otherwise fully functional.
After internalizing the knowledge and experiences he gained, he had a rough idea about the reason for his sudden changes.
"Ankara, can you scan the field of debris again and look for organic parts?"
-Affirmative. Scanning- It took a moment before the computer continued speaking.
-287 organic parts found-
"Can you filter them and search for human remains? There might have been victims."
-Filtering. Three Bodyparts found-
On the bracelet's holographic screen appeared the 3D scans of three objects. An arm, a thigh, and what looked like the fragments of a torso.
"Jackpot. I will go to retrieve them immediately," he said and got ready for another spacewalk. There were no victims from the crew, there was only one humanoid in the storage facilities.: his master.
Len was sure to get some answers, once he got his hands on the flesh of a true vampire.