dark//matter

mckinley had spent most of the day going through everything that had happened during the expedition. he was in the forest with the others. watching a creature he’d never even fathom before, try and make contact. how khan just took it upon himself to fire his gone. renzo was clearly the best person to come to for this type of thing.

“i know.” he sighs, keeping his eyes low. “we’ve got some trigger happy individuals with us.” the dangers of having soldiers come on a science trip. mckinley might be a dumbass but he’s worked for scientists for over a decade.

“I mean-- Shit. Do they have any idea what type of events could have unfolded had they not gotten the gun back? For all we know this could have been a peaceful species for centuries, and then we come along, and...” his ramblings trailed off as he moved to dry his hands. His brain was running too rampant with possible, terrible, implications, and he couldn’t keep up. Nil was overwhelmed. 

“And now who has to deal with it? Me.” He scoffed. “Well, Scott and I, but you get what I mean.” Mckinley always did. “It’s an opportunity to learn about the species hands-on, from the inside out, but at what cost?”

The moment Echo had noted the crew’s return, she begun prepping the decontamination showers so as not to waste any time. Step by step she took equal measures to systematically lead them to the strip-down then to the wash-down room. When each person was accounted for in the shower and when, for all intents and purposes, she could tell none of them were hurt, Echo exited and prepared to issue clean clothing as they made their way to the re-robing quarters. 

Almost everyone had filed in when she notices that Renzo had started raising his voice at a seemingly composed Ryo. She steps closer and takes in all that he has to say as she ushers the mech-pilot out the room. For a moment she does not know how to proceed. She doesn’t even know what had happened down on Gaia.01278 to say the least. But her programming kicks in and she says what she’s coded to when sensing distress. “Renzo…” she starts evenly but firmly, “I need you to calm down before we can assess this situation.”

Nil chuckled sarcastically as the android approached him, clearly in whatever mode would make her diffuse a tense situation. “No, no, no... Echo, you’re great, nice to see you, but there’s nothing to assess here. The damage is done.” 

And he certainly wasn’t going to try to listen to a man-made, company-run product try to level with him. No matter how firm her voice was made to sound. There was a reason he was brought along on the trip, and if they weren’t going to take him seriously then they should have made a pit stop pack to Earth and dropped him off.

“I’m calm, by the way. I’m calm. Pissed the hell off, but calm.” He wasn’t.

Lo had already clawed herself halfway out of the suit. It sloped off her shoulders, bottom half still clinging. She hadn’t seen the vertebrate yet, but she was secretly excited by the opportunity to take a closer look. It wasn’t ideal that they hadn’t found the creature dead, instead had actually made it so, but it still presented a valuable research opportunity. She paused.

“I agree,” Lo said. “Both counts.” She pulled on a loosed strand of hair, rubbing it between thumb and forefinger. She needed to get herself cleaned. Even with the protective suit, her medical training was kicking in. “Meanwhile, we didn’t even collect any of the aquatic organisms.” Just dead things. 

“Finally. Thank you,” Nil sighed. He was beginning to think he was the only one with some common sense on inter-species communication until Lo spoke up. Someone on his side. He made a mental note of that for later. 

“We can always go back to grab them if need be. They weren’t too far away, and with the state of decomposition of that monkey by the lake, they should be there for a while.” Nil dried his hands and leaned against the sink. “Though, really, if we do go back out there, I think we should make a case for no super soldiers accompanying us.” 

He almost snaps back a snarky response, but catches himself. His crew member had caught himself coming off too intense, he should do the same. Ted keeps his cool as he listens to Renzo, trying his best to interpret and analyze what is being said to him. Upon the comment about his attitude, he holds up his hands in a sign of surrender. “Okay, you’re right, I’m sorry. We all need to work together in order to figure out what happened and move forward.” 

“Did you see the bodies themselves? I’ve heard from other crew members that they were humanoid.” He cocks his head, curious to hear what invaded their ship so suddenly. “Could they be identified as human or were they…something else?”

Was he being oversensitive? Perhaps. It wouldn’t have been the first time. Unfortunately, for as smart as Nil was, he seemed to lack the type of self-awareness to notice. Thankfully, Ted seemed happy to cool off a little in his approach.

“As far as I saw, they were human. H-humanoid, at least. I wasn’t able to get a good look at them since we were on a lockdown.” His tone cracked at its edges from the nerves as he spoke. They’d briefed them all about the dangerous possibilities of space travel before the excursion, but he never actually expected something like this to happen. “Do you have any idea what it was?” 

Renzo furiously scrubbed his hands beneath the running water. While his skin never made any actual contact with the dead body, nor the eggs that sprouted from its decapitated head, he couldn’t get the sensation of what they felt like out of his head. It was a nervous habit, if anything. 

“This isn’t the way that we need to be researching this area!” He muttered to himself, mostly, but at the presence of someone else joining him in the small quarters, his voice became louder. “If anyone had bothered to listen to me, we wouldn’t have an alien carcass on board with us. Killing an innocent creature isn’t okay!”

When: 4 hours after the crew returned to the inferno 

Where: The Mess Hall

Open Starter

Ryker had woken up from his cryosleep late, there had to have been a bug in the system or something. Otherwise, he would have woken up with the rest of them. But no, here he was, catching up on the expedition and the attack. He was frustrated that his pod had malfunctioned and caused him to miss out on so much. He knows there’s not much he could have done, but he can’t shake the idea that he should have been on the expedition team. 

“I should have been with the rest of the crew.” He sits in the mess hall, tray in front of him, but he isn’t hungry. When the words come out of his mouth, he’s mostly talking to himself, forgetting that he’s thinking allowed. “I’m trained in combat, I could have helped! I should have been there.” 

His exclamation is soft, as he realizes that people can indeed hear him. He doesn’t want to startle anyone.

After about a week of really forcing himself to stomach the food aboard the ship, Nil was able to get through about an entire meal. That was not to say he wasn’t hungry, he was, he just found the food aboard the ship (especially the vegan options they gave him) were subpar. Something is better than nothing, he thought, scooping a bit of potato into his mouth. 

He’d noticed the other man wasn’t eating, but due to his own aversions, didn’t think much of it.

“Be thankful you weren’t.” “It wasn’t a combat scenario---at least not for our group. It was more of a, uhhh, goop and grime situation. Real slimy. ” 

The inferno x is still suffering from aftershocks caused by the attack. Ted had been lucky enough to be performing a routine checkup on the ship guts when said event had happened. What had happened to him was the second the ship system registered intruders on the ship, it went into lockdown, effectively locking him inside. Ted couldn’t(or wouldn’t) override the lockdown, so he had been isolated from the attack.

Nonetheless, he couldn’t pretend that the event hadn’t happened. It was a later date and it was his job to figure out what happened, both for his sake and the crew’s. His anxiety had spiked when the attack occurred, but he was going to put on a brave face when investigating. He was the captain, other people couldn’t know that he was afraid.

“I need you to tell me every event that took place during the attack, I need all the details. Where were you and what did you do?” He has been going around asking everyone this question, attempting to gather as much information as possible.

“Okay, first of all--” Shit, a little too bold right out of the gate. Nil kept his hands up, submissive, to show he wasn’t there to start an argument. He was more than willing to comply with the captain’s wishes---despite still getting used to the idea of answering to a captain---but he wasn’t exactly liking the tone. Especially not so soon after such a traumatic event. “Your energy is, just... incredibly toxic right now and not conducive to an environment where we can figure out positive solutions.” 

“That being said-- I was sleeping when it happened, until your watchdog was shouting at me to get to the pilot’s bay. Which I did. Other than that, I have nothing.” Navigating successfully around his own nerves, Nil was surprisingly calm. ”There were bodies, but they were dead by the time I saw them.” 

mckinley wanted to know what the company did to get so many people from his personal life into his mission. then mckinley just realized that he… involves a lot of people into his personal life. still, it wasn’t like seeing renzo broke his heart. maybe a little. maybe when he still looked good and they were now stuck in space light years away. but it was better this way. he knew that much.

he crosses his legs and looks back out to the large windows, the vastness of space making it’s appearance, front and center. “not that i’m typically one for being a recluse but yeah, it sure beats most other places on this tin can.” he chuckles.

“There aren’t exactly a lot of options,” he muttered, close enough to the window now that his words left a little fog against the glass. “I've heard the bathing quarters are a sight to see.” 

Nil tried not to look at him. At least not directly, as the circumstance of being confined in a metal tube hurtling through space with his ex made him laugh every time he thought about it for longer than a second. He would have thought it was all one big setup had he not signed up for this himself. 

The good thing was that they were amicable. No hard feelings. Right? 

“So,” he started, turning away from the window and slowly making his way around the bay, fingers floating over buttons and switches. “Are you, like, running this whole thing, or what?” 

When: 29 hours after waking

Where: The ship’s galley/mess hall

Open to all

Four years, fourteen hundred days, and over thirty three thousand hours. Back on Earth to ensure her fitness for expedition she’d gone through small periods of time under cryosleep with her functions, especially her heart, closely monitored after stimulus. Those trial runs had done little to prepare her from the reality of this. The restive edge of her muscles coming out from hibernation, her nerves sparking at random intervals as they remembered their purpose. She’d felt sick for the first twelve hours, then ravenous, and finally seemed to settle down her digestive tract. She’d read up on all the proper journals about the side effects of prolonged cryosleep but there was nothing logical or scientific about getting reacquainted with your body.

She didn’t sleep the first night. She actually spent most of it in her laboratory checking in on the long term experiments that had been running while she was asleep. The ships telescopes had been scanning passing star systems throughout the journey checking for habitable planets and moons and collecting data that she could sort and relay back to the company. Her own speciality on nanorobotic technology had been left to gestate over these years. She’d been trying to create targeted drug systems that would recognize and attack cancer the moment it developed. There was also, of course, the backlog of data coming in for Gaia. Increasingly more intricate analysis of it’s atmosphere, density, and circumference. Her next two weeks would be anything but restful.

Eventually she’d found tired her body out but not her mind. She’d come to the galley, still unprepared to fall asleep and set on a pot of coffee. She was just taking her first sips when one of the other crew members stepped in. Apparently she wasn’t the only insomniac on board. “You know for all the billions of dollars this ship cost, you’d think they’d have thought to get us better coffee.”

Nil moseyed his way into the mess hall with a bowl of half-eaten something in his hand, and a book tucked below his other arm that he dropped onto one of the little tables situated about the room. It was still a bit of a surprise to see someone else on board when the whole situation had yet to feel like reality, but rather a strange dream that he couldn’t wake from. Nil gave her a smile anyways.

She was the doctor, right? Huxley, like Brave New World. How fitting.

“If you think that’s bad you should see what they’re calling orange juice,” he said as he dropped his bowl into the sink and began to rinse out whatever mixture of foods made up the slop that they called the vegan option. 

“It’s no longer for taste, so much as it is for sustenance.” He sighed. “Something I hadn’t considered before signing my life over.”

When: Four hours after the attack

Where: The Cryosleep Chamber 

Open Starter

Mila sat cross legged in front of Michaelangelo’s cryopod, her tool box laid open beside her. She grimaced at the hack job she did when preforming the manual override of the pod. Nothing had been detached properly in her haste, which meant it all had to be replaced to get up and running again, unless someone wanted to be awake for the four year trip back to earth. Pulling her wire cutters out of the box, she began carefully sniping out the damaged wires, reaching all the way up to her elbow into the machine, squinting into the dim opening. The sound of the door sliding open made her pause to look up at the person approaching. “What brings you down here?” 

The taste of bile still burned in the back of his throat. Nerves had a way of bringing the worst out of him, quite literally, and the attack certainly didn’t help. What brought him down here? Privacy, mostly. Maybe a quiet place he could pray where nobody could interrupt. While he’d been briefed like the others on the potential risks of the mission, Nil thought that was just a courtesy thing; certainly nothing that would actually happen. 

“Oh-- Uhh, you know, I just though since da Vinci was up and about, maybe I could shove myself into one of the unused chambers and conk out until this whole thing is over.” 

“So your telling me Angel took care of it all and left none of the fun for us?” 

There had been a training manual tucked along with the  excessively long legal documents that required his signature. A manual about cryosleep and aftereffects that he’d neglected to read. The basics of it, he’d assumed was that it was a bitch. He hadn’t been wrong. The pretty doctor on board had checked him out thoroughly, but when he’d been deemed fit he didn’t follow her directions. Fluids, rest, bland diet. Screw that he was collecting the cigarettes he’d stashed. 

They weren’t exactly something he’d gotten permission to bring aboard but the company didn’t expect him to be spending any of the next eight years actually awake and in need of them. He pulled them from his stash, took a seat in the common area, dangled them from his fingers, and got up to speed.  “maldito infierno”

“I’d hardly call any part of what happened ‘fun.’” Dead bodies strewn about the ship? Not his idea of a good time. There was no time to stop and count how many there were when all was said and done, as the moment the coast was clear he ran as fast as he could to the bathing quarters to vomit. 

Nil watched as Felix got himself situated with a cigarette, one of the few guilty pleasures he’d been forced to drop just to be on this mission. He didn’t know how Felix got them in, and he didn’t much care so long as the other was willing to give one up. “Got a spare?” 

> open starter  |  pilot’s bay

since waking up, mckinley’s body has been taking it’s time getting used to being awake again for the first time in four years. all he’s been able to think about since rising is food. and even though he filled himself with a meal, it’s hardly been enough. so he’s found himself a mushy snack to take with him as he catches up on the navigation logs from the ship. his leg pulled up to his chest, ballancing his bowl on his knee, he takes a bite, scrolling past data entries. he hears the cling of metal, turning around to see someone’s come to find him in his spot.

“welcome to the most exciting place on the ship.” he gestures around, “as you can see, it’s a party in here.” he smirks, looking down at his bowl, taking it and holding it out. “do you think this is mashed potatoes?” 

Nil took one look at the slop and gently tapped the bowl back in Mckinley’s direction. “I don’t think it’s meant for human consumption.” 

Was he meant to be in there? Probably not. Honestly, he figured he was in the wrong place until he saw Mckinley there, sitting alone with his slop. There should have been a little more pizzazz to the pilot’s bay, or at least a few more people, right? The moment his dark eyes caught the panoramic view before them---darker than anything he’d ever seen save for the freckles of starlight---he disregarded all disappointment, and his company-issued socks made soft swishes as he dragged his feet towards the window. 

“I get why you’ve become a recluse with your potatoes...”

NAME: renzo nil [chosen name]

CODENAME: dark matter

GENDER/PRONOUNS: cis male; he/him

AGE: 39

DOB: march 27, 2148

ZODIAC: aries

RELIGION: neopagan-ish. 

ORIENTATION: ???

STATUS: single

LENGTH OF EMPLOYMENT: has worked for the company on and off for around 5 years

POSITION: extra-terrestrial specialist

RANKING: lowest in command

let’s keep this short and sweet, shall we? no time for long bios when we’re all dying in space. below you’ll find a short background explanation for my lil nature fanatic. long story short, he’s basically the strange NPC in the shadows of every video game mumbling nonsense that might actually be foreshadowing.