You head is spinning. You're in Dead Space. Dead. Space. Jesus Christ you're in—
You stop and take a deep breath. Easy, you can't be freaking out from the start. There are so many other things to freak out about later like the Marker, and the Necromorphs, and the fucking Brethren Mo—
Breathe!
Right.
Dead Space.
You know Dead Space.
You've played the games, the DLCs. Extraction was the one rail shooter you ever intentionally bought – don't think about the money you wasted on the Rambo game – you read the comics, saw the movies, and skimmed one of the books. You knew about all of the setting's secrets and you had a 26th century's physician's understanding of biology, what you had to do was find a way to leverage that into a way to stop the oncoming apocalypse.
No pressure.
Okay, first things first you needed a plan. It was easy to say you were going to save everyone, but how in the world were you supposed to survive a literal horror show?
You pause as you realize that for the latter question at least, there is a rather straightforward answer. If all you want to do is to live then all you have to do is leave the ship. You wouldn't even need to steal a shuttle to do it, all you would have to do is cancel your current employment contract and the Concordance Extraction Corporation would charter you a shuttle flight – naturally paid for out of your pocket – that would take you off the Ishimura.
It would be a permanent black mark on your employment record and your short two day stint on the planet cracker would hardly be the glowing recommendation on your resume that you had originally wanted it to be, but it wouldn't kill you, not immediately.
Isaac would have to do the heavy lifting when it came to supporting the two of you.
You were smarter than to think it would be 'until you found another job.' You wouldn't be finding any decently paying employment anytime soon after unilaterally quitting a job handed out by a major corporation that didn't involve skirting the law.
As much as you rather wouldn't have had to, the truth was that neither you nor Isaac were flush enough in credits to ignore the sad reality that the two of you lived in a corporate dystopia. Not that either of you previously had the vocabulary to describe your society as such despite both of you being college graduates, which, you just now realized was super fucked now that you were aware of it.
You opted to set that troubling revelation aside for the time being. One setting damning issue was sufficient for you to try and wrap your head around at once.
So, you could leave the Ishimura and skip the events of Dead Space altogether. It wouldn't be without consequence and it would lead to a difficult life afterwards but it was doable. It kept you alive and it gave Isaac no reason to have to come to the Ishimura. The black mark on your employment record might not even happen.
The CEC had been eager to stuff the Ishimura full of Unitologists. You leaving would open a slot for them to shuffle aboard another of their preferred people, into a rather high ranking position no less.
The company might instead go out of its way to keep you employable in exchange for seeing you off the ship. You vaguely recall Dawn mentioning to you Andrew being offered a bonus for being rotated out, though he ended up not taking it. If you were lucky there would be no downsides to leaving, if anything you might even benefit from it, save one...
...leaving everyone else to die.
An electronic chime drew your attention before you could dwell on that last thought. To your front a holographic display sprung into existence, the monochrome light teal display showing two lines of text in brackets, the top reading 'Incoming Call' while the bottom listed the caller's name. It was Perry, your assistant, one of your people.
Most of the Ishimura's doctors and nurses were, in fact, your people. Other departments had been gutted and their personnel replaced with Unitologists, but that hadn't been true for medical. When you were assigned to the Ishimura you had been able to bring aboard the majority of your team with you with few objections, sixty plus staff, individuals that you personally knew and trusted and in turn trusted you.
With a flick of your wrist you prompted another display to pop up, this one showing ship time. You instinctively cringed. You were five minutes late for your shift. Of course dutiful Perry was calling you.
[ ] Pretend to be asleep and don't answer.
[ ] Go do your job. You're Senior Medical Officer, unless there's an emergency that requires your direct involvement that means administrative work, which leaves plenty of time to do other things in between reading paperwork.
[ ] You're already late, you might as well stay in and plan. Tell Perry you're taking the day off. Get ice cream while you're at it.
[ ] Write-in.
