"Brief Stalemate"

In the relatively quiet bridge, a low hum echoed through the metal framework like the heartbeat of a giant beast.

Sui Meng stood silently before the observation viewport, his towering body, over five meters tall, encased in layers of armor—heavy and imposing.

His gaze pierced through the viewport and fixed upon the immense "derelict ship" in the distant void—

The Ishimura.

That engineering vessel looked like a refuge abandoned by Reaper.

Its hull was utterly ruined, massive cracks like deep wounds splitting across it.

Exposed steel beams and bulkheads stretched beneath the starlight, spitting dazzling electrical sparks and thin jets of gas.

It floated in the void without lights or signals, nothing more than a tomb adrift in the abyss, solemn and sinister.

The desolation did not make Sui Meng hesitate.

On the contrary, his expression was cold and focused. He had already reviewed all the intelligence his father had uploaded, even repeatedly going over the supplementary records from the Intelligence Department.

The information was simple.

Necromorphs.

Markers.

Sui Meng knew that those Necromorphs were not ordinary malformed monsters.

They came from human corpses, yet some bizarre energy had corroded and twisted them into slaughterers that had lost all reason.

They knew no fear and felt no pain, driven only by endless aggression and the urge to "reproduce."

Once they spread, they would devour entire colonies, planets, even galaxies at the speed of a plague.

And the Markers.

They were an even greater cause for Sui Meng's vigilance.

His father's intelligence had clearly stated that the Ishimura contained a Red Marker, a version replicated by humanity.

Even an inferior imitation still emitted an abnormal psychic resonance, capable of influencing thought on a level invisible to the naked eye and inducing madness and mutation.

It was a blade hidden deep within