Rintner Outpost

Personal Log #17

Mission Sol 48, 0355 local

Author, Dr. Amy Brinner

I'm only making this log to say that I am going to take my own life. If anyone reads this, Mom, Dad - I'm sorry. I love you. Goodbye.

Personal log #18

Mission Sol 48, 0453 local

Author, Dr. Amy Brinner

I can't do it. I'm sure I am going to die anyway, and with this thing on me it would be better to just die now, but I tried and I couldn't. Instead I broke down and sobbed for an hour. I think that's understandable. I'm in a med bay and the door is locked. The only window is on the door, and that's shut, so I can't see the others. The alarm is going off. I saw Tess go down, but maybe if we are lucky David got away and can help us, but I'm guessing if that were the case he would have turned off the Alarm. I tried, but it's security locked to just him, so I can't even see what the alarm is about.

Oh my god, I can feel it moving inside of me.

I finished writing that a little bit ago, the feeling of it inside of me led to me throwing up up for five minutes. I've got to try something.

Personal log #18

Mission Sol 48, 0510 local

Author, Dr. Amy Brinner

The alarm turned off about 6 minutes ago. I waited at first figuring that if David turned off the alarm he should be coming to help me any moment, but the longer I sit here the more I realize that probably won't happen. I'm trying to be logical and dispassionate about this. It's that or lose my mind. One of two things are likely. First, he doesn't have one of these things on him. Again, I saw Tess go down just before I got hit, so I think I can be fairly sure both she and I do. If that is the case, it would make sense for David to have locked us in here so that we can't contaminate him. I'm sorry, it's what I'd do if I were unaffected and they both were affected. Second, one got him too, and he's in one of the medbays as well. I can imagine him waking up to the same shock and it taking him a while to turn off the alarm. Hell, I guess I should just be glad I'm not the only one too afraid to kill myself if that's the case. Now I just have to see what happens. I'm working up the courage to describe what is happening to me in a scientific manner. I'm not getting off this world, I'm sure of that. Given this, it dawns on me as I write this that unless I log it all, nobody will know what happened to us. If I leave it like that, then this might happen again to somebody else. I guess if that as a mission can't let me focus past being raped by an alien parasite, then nothing can, so at least it's something to grasp at for motivation.

I spent another ten minutes trying to throw up and then another half hour sobbing. It's like 0545 now and I'm just now hitting enter. Maybe I can work up the courage to kill myself after all.

Personal log #19

Mission Sol 48, 0549

Author, Dr. Amy Brinner

Nope.

David is alive - I saw him walk past my window - but he didn't stop and curled up on my side like I was I couldn't see more than the top half of his head. He was moving slowly. I'm guessing it isn't good, but at least he is alive. I banged on the door and yelled for him to let me out. That was 5 minutes ago. He still hasn't come back. If he doesn't come back soon, I guess I'll start working on talking about this.

Ah, fuck it.

We went into the vehicle bay to load up into a rover, and half of the yard was covered in what looked like yellow moss. It took about 10 seconds to realize that it was centered on the isolation chamber that we left open and untouched since we got back. Without really thinking about it, we walked towards it curious to see what it was. Tess was in front of me to my left, I was in the middle, and David was just behind Tess. There were coils all along the ground, and suddenly like a whip one of them snaked out and slapped Tess on the neck. She fell like a rock. Before I could even scream, the same happened to me, and I was out so quickly I don't even remember it hitting me.

When I woke up, the first thing I noticed was that my thighs were sore, like I had a deep bruise. Then I felt it wriggling on my skin, another one of the alien parasites. It was over my worksuit, but I could feel it on my skin, so my best guess now is that it is secreting something that dissolved clothes. I felt it touching the skin on my lower back, my buttocks, my inner upper thighs, up and around my groin, and against the skin on the front of my pelvis and hips. My very first impulse was to tear it off me, but when I grabbed at the edges and pulled it felt like I was ripping out my own internal organs. The agony was horrific and lasted for several seconds after I let go of it. I felt my lower back, and sure enough it was fully attached there too.

The bulk of it is centered right on the tailbone, with the large petal up my lower back, one petal wrapped around each end of my hips and extending to my upper inner thighs, and the last petal nestled tightly against by body going down and around my groin, with the tip just above the top of my pubis. I can feel it fully seated between by butt cheeks, and yes, I can feel it inside of me. I can feel it in my anus, and it's constantly wriggling as it grows further inside of me. Occasionally I have spikes of intense pain from my abdomen, and I'm guessing that's from it making contact with my intestines or something as it grows. I can also feel it inside of my urethra, though that's more just a feeling of pressure where it shouldn't be. Finally, I can also feel it inside of my cervix. It was wriggling a good bit there originally as well, but thankfully that stopped early. If it hadn't, I'm not sure I wouldn't have stopped myself from suicide.

It is larger than the one on the dog. I'm not sure if that is because the one on the dog was just smaller, or different, or what. Given how it just barely reaches certain parts of my body where it is oriented, my guess is that it expanded itself to the size it is now after attaching to me. I was unconscious for much longer than the dog was before we found it, so it makes sense.

The skin of the parasite is leathery, but touching it makes me freak the fuck out, even though it is literally inside me. It feels cold on the skin, but I can feel warmth from it over my ass, even though my skin everywhere it touches is tingly and sore.

The dog started showing really bad signs pretty quickly. I'm not calling this good, but I haven't gone through any of the cycles the dog did. Is that because I'm a bigger animal? I hope I get out of here soon. I hope I die quickly. I can't stop thinking about what yesterday was like for the dog. I really wish I could bring me to kill myself.

Personal Log #20

Mission Sol 48, 0652

Author, Dr. Amy Brinner

David just came back and got me out. We're still in the clinic. He has one on him too, and it is even bigger than mine, which sort of confirms the whole "grew to the size it needed to be" hypothesis. Tess also had one on her. She cut her carotids open with a scalpel. There were cuts on her legs where the thing had attached to her, and several broken off scalpel blades in it as well. She clearly tried to cut it off of her before she killed herself. David said she was dead when he first got out and that the blood was already black then, so she must have done it as soon as she woke up. I can't say I blame her. The thing is still attached to her, and I have no idea if it is dead or alive. Don't have any intention of finding out right now.

First thing David said when he overrode the security lockdown on my door was "help me." The cycles I've been dreading the start of for myself, they've started for him. I'm starting to understand why the dog was so distressed. The thing is making him ejaculate. Not orgasm; ejaculate. Every 20 minutes. He said he thought he was losing his mind when it first started, which was just before he let himself out of his own medbay. It's now been almost 90 minutes since it started and he says that it wasn't pleasant at first and now it is starting to be extremely painful. It must be using it's fibral connections to his lower spinal cord to send electrical signals to force him to ejaculate. I'm horrified at the implications, not just for what my parasite will do to me but also what these parasites might do in addition to what they're already doing. I've witnessed two ejaculation events, separated by 18 minutes, and in my initial examination I haven't found any semen leaking out, so it must be storing it. Or consuming it, I guess. I shouldn't make presumptions. So, on that front, I guess I should also not presume that it isn't using the semen for other reasons either. Perhaps it's mating with him, for all I know. Perhaps mine is mating with me.

Another round of vomiting is in order.

Personal Log #21

Mission Sol 48, 0801

Author, Dr. Amy Brinner

They are definitely mating with us. We figured this out pretty quickly after my last log entry. I'm being as clinical and detached about this as I can. It took a nearly hour long panic attack after watching the security footage before I could enter this, but I've accepted now that I am going to die and in the interim I need to log as much information as I can for whoever might come back here. That is my only reason to continue to live.

We found the dog, first. By accident, really. The pain killers that David took weren't working, so I was going into the animal handling area to see if I could find some tranquilizers that I could administer manually. The medbay's heavy duty shit is command authorized only, and the only way David could enter that authorization would be to relay through Discovery, which is gone. I'll get to that. Anyway, I noticed as soon as I walked in that the data relay showing the dog's information - relayed from Quarantine 1 - were all dark. That meant that either the transmission was being blocked, the sensors were no longer reading him, or he was dead. I grabbed some Kenaphine, and decided to swing back by the Quarantine chamber to check on my way back - the whole base is a grid, and even though it's the other direction from what I came (I think it might be understandable if I'd prefer not to be reminded of what was happening to the dog), the way back by the chamber was the same distance.

Anyway, the chamber had been breached, the plexiglass next to the door punctured with a roughly six inch side by one foot tall hole. We found an alert for this later when we went to watch the security footage of the breach, but it had been disabled when the general alarms were disabled. The footage...

Okay, where to start.

So, at 1114 the parasite detached from the dog. It and the dog had both been motionless for a while, and then it just sort of fell away fairly suddenly. The skin under where it had been was hairless and slowly wept blood. It looked like the skin was so thin that blood vessels were just slowly leaking blood over the entire area. There were tubes with small nodules coming from right above the dog's femoral arteries. It appeared as if they had detached from the parasite and closed before it detached completely from the dog. The abdomen of the dog at that time was highly distended, and there were now three clearly visible bulges under it's abdomen. By 1129 we could see them starting to move, slowly at first but by 1149 they were shaking the body of the dog with their motion. At 1201, the dog's abdomen broke open and the first of them spilled onto the floor. It was about two feet in overall length, though a third of that was taken up by it's head. It was technically quadrupedal and roughly dog shaped, but had the appearance of a desiccated body of a dog that had been stored in formaldehyde. I say technically, because it also had a row of 8 of what appeared to be vestigial limbs along its torso, 4 per side, though their spacing wasn't that even. It was wrinkled and pink and covered in the bloody entrails and bile of the dog. Within one minute all three were out. They were functionally identical, with slight variations in size and coloring. They were able to walk within five minutes, and at 1212 they began to eat the dog and the parasite. The three of them consumed both in their entirety by 1228. They were growing visibly, and by 0110 they were over three feet in length, two feet in height, and appeared to at least quadruple in overall weight. At 0111 the largest of the three began attacking the plexiglass next to the door. At first it opened it's jaws impossibly wide for a dog, a full 180 degrees open, placing the teeth of both the upper and lower jaw against the plexiglass and trying to get a grip. It then started to lick, for lack of better term, the plexiglass. It's tongue appeared to have rasp like qualities, and left long gashes in the plexiglass. It then began to get its teeth into the gashes and rip out sections of plexiglass. At 0121 it broke through, and by 0124 it had made a hole large enough for it to exit. The other two followed quickly after. The three wandered around for a while till at 0148 one of them tripped a motion sensor which opened a door and all three quickly converged and ran outside. They ran into the woods, and we lost them on our sensors. There is nothing left of the dog or the parasite. David was catatonic after we finished watching. I locked the exterior doors, and have been begging with him since to command override the base into lockdown, something only he can do now that Discovery is gone.

Oh yeah. So, it was at 2056 where all three of us got hit by the parasites. Took fourteen seconds, Tess and I almost right away, and then David when he tried to help Tess. The base's autolog immediately noted that we had all three lost consciousness, and began to take action to send in the medbots to triage us. Discovery would have received the autolog - that's how it's designed to work. Before the medbot ever even reached us, though, Discovery began to leave orbit. It's gone now. They left us.

I have zero doubt about what happened. They knew already. When the three of us went down, they left to make sure nobody else got infected. There could be a thousand specific variations to how that happened, malicious and negligent both, but it's obvious that it's the case. I'd expect that it's likely somebody else will come back though, and if they didn't tell us then I doubt they'll tell them, so that means I have to.

So yeah, I'm definitely going to die. I guess I'm probably going to die with my abdomen being blown open by a chest buster. All that I have let is to spit in the eye of the corporate fucks who sent me here by warning whoever they send next.

Update on the parasites, I guess. Even though it is now 0814 as I write this and David is still catatonic, I know that the ejaculation events are still ongoing. He whimpers and tenses up a bit whenever they do. The time between event is down to 12 minutes now. One just happened, which is what reminded me to include this.

I haven't experienced any of the same symptoms, but I am definitely feeling some. First off, thinking about this logically, if it is making him ejaculate, would it be making me ovulate? I can feel it entering me at the base of my vagina, and I felt it moving around inside my cervix and deeper, places where I can feel it but I don't have any frame of reference what it is touching. Presumably my uterus, but I just cant say for sure.. It's just sitting inside of me like that, same with it being up and in my anus. Each appendage feels like its about an inch in diameter - large enough to feel, but not so large as to be otherwise uncomfortable beyond the fact that an alien parasite has alien tentacles up my pussy and my asshole, just chilling. I have no idea how long each appendage is. I really need to go get some equipment now that I realize that I'm on the clock.

Tess' parasite appears dead. It's still attached to her, but it's totally dessicated. She's starting to decompose too, a lot faster than I think she probably should be. I left the door locked, but I intend to disable power to it and then weld it closed once I take care of a few other things. Sorry Tess. You deserve better, but that's the best I can do.

Personal Log #22

Mission Sol 48, 1134

Author, Dr. Amy Brinner

David's not catatonic anymore. I had hooked him up to a portable EKG earlier so I could more accurately monitor the ejaculation events. He hadn't eaten or drank anything for some time and was appearing emaciated, and I used the opportunity to get some IV fluids into him. After doing that I wrote and posted my previous log, then went and got some equipment from the med bay and brought it back to security where I had left him. I checked the EKG and saw that there hadn't been any events for about 24 minutes. I brought out the portable ultrasound to check his abdomen for growths, presuming the same pattern of behavior with him as with the dog. I guess I've been talking to myself out loud to try to cope as I do things, and I said that and he suddenly freaked out.

He slapped the ultrasound out of my hand, ripped his needles out, and started hitting me in the face and head a whole bunch of times with his fists, and then while he had me on the ground trying to protect myself he ran out of the room, and then out of the base. I watched it back on the security footage and he looked wild. I'm not even sure it was him really doing it. I mean, I took some of our blood earlier and ran chemical analysis on the samples and there's all sorts of exotic shit in our bloodstreams that the parasites are dumping into us. I've been feeling light headed and a bit spacey, and lord only knows how he was feeling while it milked his prostate till his balls were dry.

I closed the exterior doors, but now I won't be able to lock shit without his bionics. I'm going to have to figure out options to manually seal the doors. With just me, there's more than enough food and supplies here to last me far longer than I'm likely to live anyway. On my own, and presuming normal rationing rates, 414 days to be exact. I could stretch that indefinitely if I went and got a recycler from Kilo to rig up, though power might be an issue. Even then, there's plenty of wire and I could probably rig a hard line the 2.3 kilometers from here to the closest hardpoint for the colony's solid state backup reactor. It would just take time. And exposure to whatever else is out there now.

But that means I would have to live long enough for any of that to matter.

Most of the last few hours was taken up with trying to jam the exterior doors and disable outside entry points. It's time to examine myself and see if I can verify some suspicions. Maybe 'fears' is probably a better thing to call them. I'm not willing to put them into writing till I learn more.

Sometimes I almost forget it is there. Then I feel it shift just a bit, moving deep inside me like it's restless, and I lose it.