#statement given directly

Aside from that it was mostly normal, except... about halfway through the tutorial, we discussed the lungs and respiration. Inhalation, alveoli, et cetera. As I said, basic stuff, but I paused afterwards, just to have a think about where to go next, and I heard the sound of them breathing. That’s not abnormal, I know, but it seemed to fill the silence so suddenly, and all at once. I could... I could have sworn that I didn’t actually hear it before that moment. Like they’d only just then started breathing.

ELIAS: Yes. Well. I turned on the fire suppression system. And… that’s when I heard the scream. I can’t really describe it but… well, I’m sure I don’t need to, you were a lot closer to it than I was. JON: It’s the last thing I remember before blacking out. Tens of thousands of… things without mouths screaming as one.

Staring at the horizon. It never ended but kept getting closer. All the same... Time is like that, isn't it? It just keeps going. No matter what happens, it just carries on. And it strips everything away from you in the end. The good and the bad alike, until there is nothing left of either. This too shall pass. All good things must come to an end. Memento mori.

I didn’t stay long, ‘cause it had a lot of worms in, and they weren’t acting like the others. They were sort of... wrapping around each other, like they were trying to form a... thing, like a structure or something. A ring. I was probably still out of my skull, and half-hallucinated the whole thing, but it looked like they were trying to make a doorway.

So I asked him what he was. He laughed at this, the first sound I’d heard him make, and it sounded… unnatural. Like he was laughing very quietly, but someone had turned up the volume up so I could hear it. He said it didn’t matter what he was, that he couldn’t describe it even if he wanted to. What was the phrase he used… “How would a melody describe itself when asked?”

Her skin was pale, almost grey, and full of… sorry, it still makes me sick to think about it. It was full of holes. Deep, black holes just honeycombing every bit of flesh like a… wasps’ nest. I could see those… thin, silver worms crawling in and out, and their black tips twitching as they squirmed through that… pitted… meat. I mean, it wasn’t human. It can’t have been.

The heart in her hand began to spasm. Not like the regular, rhythmic pulse of a heartbeat, but like a balloon being rapidly squeezed at one end. Bits of it swelled and stretched and distorted seemingly at random, and blood began to flow haphazardly from the ventricles, dripping down Erika’s forearm and dribbling onto the floor.

In that moment, a sudden calm came over me. I understood it all. I could follow the line of the huge veins that incased the ship down into the water, leading off to a point almost a mile off to the southeast. There, that was it, that was our fate. Where we would always be. Because I was going to take us there. Running was pointless.