Revelations

JP with Omni, Jaxx, redsword_7, Kudzu, and CS

Hearing this, Roberts spun, pointing his shotgun at her. "Drop it now!"

“Glenn, it’s for your own safety. Everyone, off the ship! This place is a death trap and I’m tired of waiting around... I need to get into the Cryochambers. So you're either going to help me, or get out of my way.”, Roku demanded.

"Roku, what the hell is going on?" asked Roberts. "I thought we were helping you?" Clearing the eggs will help the other crew, right?"

She started to raise her voice and tremble uncontrollably, “Yes, but we are running out of time and you are all in danger! Myself and the Captain don’t want any harm to come to the crew of the Montero, and the longer YOU stay, the worse things are going to get. My sister is in there, Glenn. I have to get her off of this ship... I’m sorry I didn’t tell you all sooner, but there is no time to explain. It didn’t seem real until we found this man here in the hallway and I saw Ava again... The card, Jensen... Please...”, Roku sobbed.

"OK, take a few deep breaths, relax" Robert put his shotgun to his side, hanging on the combat sling. He lifted his hands free. "OK let's work this together." Like a pro, the Marshal managed to keep his nerves in check, but Roku wasn’t relaxing.

“Look, I know this is... shitty, and stupid, and ... and just wrong. But I didn’t sleep 53 years in Cryosleep, then wait another 20 to find this ship AND my sister, just to lose her all over again.”

"The best chance of helping her is letting us work together. It is my job to get her off this ship if I can." said Roberts

Capt. Kenny then butted in, "Roku, you are letting your feelings cloud your judgment. It's clear you know more than you bothered to share with us and I am not too keen on that idea. Now I get you want to save your sister, but if she was infected by anything you can't save her with hopeful wishing. This was why I wanted them to STAY in cryo to begin with. So if you know what we are dealing with I need you to tell us now. Otherwise the history of the Cronus will end up repeating itself on the Montero."

Roku put one hand on her helmet as if to brace her head. “I didn’t... I didn't know. I can’t... Everything is like a half remembered dream. But... I know it was bad. There was an emergency... and the adults were screaming... I was waiting with my brother in the Mess Hall... and Chichi... Papa... he came in and tried to take us to the Cryochambers... but there was a man... God, he was... he was all wrong... his arms were too long... his mouth twisted and... and his head was deformed. He came at us, so Papa braced the doors and put us in the EEV with Mama and he... he left us.”, Roku cried between gasping breaths.

Capt. Kenny rubbed his chin as he pondered her words. As he tried to sort out the mess that was Roku's head he knew he needed to choose his words carefully.

"Is she a twin?", asked Roberts.

“Yes.”, Roku wept, looking him in the eyes with a look of desperation.

Roberts let out a sigh. "Ok... I get it now. Let's get her out of there. Safely."
Jensen let out a breath he'd been holding and muttered to himself. "Why do people always point a gun at me? Not personal, Just business?", he said jokingly trying to make people relax.

Capt. Kenny said, "Make sure you check those Cryo pods for tampering. We need to know if anyone was infected or has a parasite in them."

If there were such a thing as an empathetic command, that is what the Captain ordered as he gently said ,”Hikari, listen to Roberts.”

Finally, after hearing the responses from the others, Roku felt compelled to breathe, relaxed her tense shoulders, and put her gun down. “I’m sorry, Bruce...”

"It's alright... People sometimes point guns at me. It's how it goes when you're on the company's dime. But I'd appreciate it if you don't do it again." Jensen winked and smiled at Roku.

Roku swallowed hard and nodded. There was a moment of silence.

“The air scrubbers, if there is something in the air... they will need to get into compression suits if we don’t get the air clean.”, she pleaded.

"Can we get the air cleared? Can civilian ships clean bio out of the air?", Roberts asked.

Ogai spoke up, “Yeah, the air scrubbers are supposed to be pretty good at that... I’m thinking that cleaning the filters isn’t an option. We are probably going to have to replace them and incinerate the old ones.”

Robert smiled, "We will just space them."

Ogai nodded.

"Now can anyone open the first door to the cryo chambers?", Roberts asked.

Jensen pulled out his key card. "Hopefully this works again." He swiped the card and the keypad flashed green and chimed. He pressed the pad to open the door and it hissed upward. Inside the passageway were three more doors: left, right, and straight ahead. All three doors led to separate Cryochambers.

Roberts looked in then stepped back. "Check for fungus and flame them! Do not open the doors to the chambers yet!", he ordered, walking towards the elevator with his shotgun at the ready checking the elevator again.

He peeked into the open elevator shaft and looked down. Between flashes of orange light, Roberts could see the elevator crumpled two decks below. It looked like someone had thrown an incendiary grenade or two at it after it fell, just for good measure.

Roberts let out a sigh. "Looks like incendiary grenades." He put the shotgun at his side. Grabbing one door, he pulled it to him. It made a loud scraping noise. Making sure that it was clear he pushed and pulled until the other doors were both closed. He struggled a bit but he got them closed. Then, grabbing his shotgun and readying it, Roberts backed up and joined the others.

Vera stepped into the antechamber and did a sweep for spores. After searching the room, she called out "I didn't find any in this room."

Roku impatiently peeked into each window, searching. She stopped at the door straight at the end of the hall. "Roberts... ...they're waking."

"You should have a comms panel at the door, right?", Roberts asked. Tell them to suit up. If you can."

Roku pressed the comms button and the indicator glowed orange for standby mode.
"Everyone... stay calm... if you can, find an EVA suit... or masks... ...there is... hello? I don't think they can hear me..." She pressed the comm again. "Hello?... ...It's no good. It doesn't seem to be operational."

Inside Cryochamber 3, an athletic woman with brown hair stood in her underwear, shivering, wrapping her arms around herself. A man was sitting up in one of the pods holding his head in his hands.

"Oh shit they are already awake, how long can they stay in there before they die?", asked Jensen.

"Cap, can MUTHUR talk to them?", asked Roberts?

Capt. Kenny rubbed his chin then replied, "MUTHUR can you help the crew of the Cronus get the suits or safety equipment they need to survive these conditions? We are still concerned they are contaminated too, so let us know if you discover anything dangerous."

“I can see two of them...”, Roku started as MUTHUR interrupted over the comms.

...Temporarily rerouting emergency power from climate control to internal communications for 5 minutes. ...scanning... ...Unable to detect pathogens and contaminants using the scanning systems installed on the USCSS Cronus... ...please try the Medlab...

Jensen looked at the crew in cyro. "Umm. Hey! I'm Bruce... Bruce Jensen of the USCSS Montero. We are here to save you. Can you tell us quickly if you know where any safety equipment, breathing apparatus or containment suits are?"

The woman squinted and looked around in confusion until she saw Bruce at the window. She walked over to the door and pressed the comms button
“Uh... Just... give us a moment, please.”, she said in a British accent. She shook her head in confusion then walked over to the door at the back of the room. She exited the door, then the man walked over to the comms and he pressed the button.

“What’s going... - cough - on?” He let go of the button and silently coughed into his fist several times then took a deep breath. After his coughing fit, he pressed the button with his other hand. “Did we lose...”, he held back a cough. “...life support?” Have we reached home?”

Looking at the man, Roberts said to himself, "We don't have time for this." He walked up, not really pushing Bruce out of the way, more like stepping in front of him.
"This is Colonial Marshal Roberts. If you have compression suits you need to don them NOW. The air is not safe. Be quick about it. We can explain the rest later. You Must. Don. Compression suits. Now.", he said sternly.

The bearded man nodded and shuffled out of the other side of the room while holding himself from the residual cold of decades of Cryo. After that, a dark skinned man emerged weakly from his cryopod despite his strong physique. He went to check on the other pods.

“...Tsuki, please be ok.”, Roku prayed quietly to herself.

Roberts steps away and to the side, getting out of the way of Bruce.

Soon, two others, a man with a mustache and a woman with dark hair rose from their slumber. The dark skinned man said something to them and pointed at a few of the other pods. He then lifted a little girl and carried her out the aft door.

"Did we lose one?", Roberts asked out loud. "Hey, does anyone know about a little girl on this trip?", he asked everyone. "Cap?"

“That’s her... that’s my sister.”, Roku said to Roberts.

Roberts finally pieced it together. Roku was a child when the Cronus set out. She had escaped 73 years ago and remained in cryo for a large number of years before being thawed. She was technically older than the rest of the crew.

Roberts remembered back to the rumors he had heard from the marines about the Cronus years ago. When Hydr8tion was being tested on the marines. A rumor circulated of one of Weyland-Yutani's dark secrets. Three survivors were recovered from an EEV from the Cronus back in 2163 or so. A female scientist and two of her children, the mother died shortly after waking from Cryo and the children were comatose. In an effort to save the children and recover any information they had about the fate of the ship, Weyland-Yutani created Hydr8tion using the children as their test subjects. Those children were two Japanese kids. So Roberts had this mess of a woman in front of him to thank for the wonders of Hydr8tion.

"I think they got the hint of what we want them to do. Hopefully they get suited up."

"Maybe we can head down to B Deck and see if they come up out of the junction there?"Jensen shrugged, but was soon cut off.

“Um... Captain... Roberts... we’ve got movement on A Deck... behind us.”, Roku said nervously, eying the Motion Tracker and then the doorway to the hallway from which they entered.

"Flamer right side," Roberts pointed next to him as he walked down the corridor back to the hallway they came from. "Move by twos! Close the door after us!"

Paddy Lohan leaned over the captain’s shoulder, glaring at the video feed from the data tablet.

"Target range?", asked Roberts.

“...Just outside the door...” Roku whispered, her voice trembling.

Roberts peeks out the little window keeping the shotgun ready. He saw nothing but white... The pale white, almost translucent skin of some... thing, standing right outside the glass.