BASIC INFORMATION

Name: Jalbert O'Harris

Aliases:  Jalbert.

Age: 50.

Gender: Male.

Species: Human.

 

PERSONAL

Organizations\Affiliations: None.

Personality:  Albert is a roughneck who has grown quiet and resigned. He is stoic most of the time, but not angst-y. He likes to live a quiet life of mopping floors up and doing short contracts as a short shift miner. He is slow to anger and has a long amount of patience as a result of some events in his life leading him to reconsider his more redneck-y ways and try to be a better person.

Backstory:  [SPOILER="Backstory"]

Albert Greer was born inside of a habitat dome in the nation of Aucharia. Aucharia is a medium sized colony located nearby to the Proxima Centauri star. The ship landed on a planet with a toxic, sweltering atmosphere. The surface was grey and barren. The air was thin and sulphery. The colony was created from a successful ark-class ship that landed on the planets surface. Albert's family was situated inside of an outpost dome. The colony was decentralized, meaning that each dome was self-sufficient but was within the same colony of Aucharia. Aucharia was primarily invested in underground mining and excavation, the fruits of which were shipped out to local refineries and shipyards that were within the system.

 

Albert lived a quite average childhood. His mother and his father were both workers within the shaft mines, and though they didn't have much, they were proud of what they had achieved. The family lived a more or less happy life together in a small apartment block. Albert was sometimes sad that he had no siblings, though he understood  that fewer mouths to feed meant more for the rest of them, as well as a less-tight budget every month. Four days a week, Albert would attend school for five hours. The education was excellent, but as it was sponsored by various companies there were certain unspoken agreements between the benefactors and school administrators. Cameramen occasionally turned up and prodded the sleepy children into energetic and enthusiastic positions, gleefully holding up their school-issue decade-old tablets with their news outlet stickers plastered on the back, with a coerced  thumbs up and smile. Still, an education was an education, and if newsmen wanted to make their hollow companies seem family-friendly by occasionally pestering his classmates, Albert felt he could hardly complain. Weekends were alloted to the Aucharian children, four days were given to them for schooling, however the fifth day was work-day. Work-day was a five hour long, grueling experience. It was justified by the colonial administrators under guise of giving the children work experience and valuable soft skills. In reality, the children were used as a cheap way to make the adult miners work smoother. The adults would go about their tasks as the adolescents weaved their way around mine shafts, carrying metal drums of water, picks, cables, and generally fulfilled a role as all-purpose supply movers. The older kids were usually taken under a miners wing and shown how to actually do a lot of what went on in a mine. No one complained to the administrators about the children being made to work. Working in mineshafts was what the oblivious colonists had done since the time of their grandparents. Company scrip, company rations, company housing, company intranet; all were just facts of life that they were grateful to have. It wasn't hard to justify to themselves at all. 'Besides,' the parents reasoned, 'It's not like they're going to end up working as some hoity-toity doctor or get any other job on this planet.'

 

And so life went on. Albert went to his school and learned about working in the mines. His parents continued to be a positive influence on him.

Albert eventually reached the age of seventeen, and was legally an adult by colony standards. He picked up a job in borehole seventeen when the biannual workers lottery came around. Borehole seventeen, which was a deep industrial borehole that had been picked clean, and then had branching shaft mines dug every story down until the hellishly hot and unlivable bottom was reached. The bottom of borehole seventeen, or as Albert learned to call it from the veteran miners, 'ole widower, was so deep that the original machines massive drillbit had nearly melted off when it approached the bottom. Only specially built mining exosuits with industrial cooling equipment could be used at that depth, and even then the users needed to stay within their sealed pressure suits and have their temperature module hooked into the exosuits systems. Miners in regular pressure suits without an exosuit would boil like an egg in a pot. Albert got his certification in using an exosuit, and got a regular shift working on the lower levels. The pay was better than what was given to normal miners due to the hazard of the work. More than one miner had been killed in a collapsed shaft, or slowly cooked to death as his exosuit sunk into a steaming pit of magma, desperately banging against the exosuits canopy for help. Albert even saw a few of these, and all of those times he either had a quiet cry before bed or vomited up his tin of re-hydrated eggs and ham while dwelling on their expressions. Still, it toughened him up somewhat and let him face the realities of life.

 

As with most roughnecks, Albert was an obnoxious roughhouser. He spent his twenties trawling through honkytonks, stripclubs, bars, and less-reputable establishments in search of fun and a way to blow through his paystub for the week. He spent his thirties slowing down and trying to enjoy life a bit more. He read e-books and trawled the galactic web. Company parties were a favorite pass time, and it seemed that every week someone in the labour department was having a birthday. Less time was spent at his favorite drinking spot, and more time was spent reading the news and trying to get as dressed up as an Aucharian redneck could get to attract a lady friend.

Sadly for Albert, and not for a lack of trying, finding a nice wife to settle down with just didn't work out for him. He continued to work in the 'ole widower, maneuvering his exosuit around the dark passages for hours on end. The days seemed to slowly blur together. A small benefit was that as he got older, the miners that had once seemed old to him as a child began to retire. Some of those that retired managed to save up enough to spend their days in a nice retirement neighborhood off-planet with other similarly-aged individuals or go traveling. Others who had no spare credits were sent to mercy homes which were subsidized by, you guessed it, the mining company. Albert began to see the writing on the wall that the mining companies and the Aucharian colonial government were hand-in-hand, and that the company executives weren't that different from the colonial administrators who arranged kickbacks, gave paycuts to workers to feed more credits to the company stooges, and were known to abuse the security teams and their own authority for personal gain. Albert wasn't surprised that he hadn't noticed this during his childhood or through the drunken party-filled haze of his twenties. He picked up smoking, and eventually got up to a pack a day.

All in all, however, he wasn't dissatisfied with his life. He purchased a package of watercress seeds for an exorbitant price and cultivated them within his hydroponics tray. He resold the watercress on the down-low to other hungry families to make a profit, never mind the fact that black market sales were forbidden by the administration. Eventually he was caught, and fined heavily, after a dissatisfied mother alerted the security team. They were none too gentle in barging into his house in the middle of the night and smashing the growing tray against the floor. The security team left, but not before grinding the plants against the floor under their boots, and cleaning out his stash of dehydrated fruit while the other guards pushed Alberts struggling form into his bedroom. Alberts complaints went unheeded no matter who he turned to. Eventually after further harassment by a lone blonde man on the security team who in no uncertain terms used his baton to bash Albert in the gut during break time, and also hissed a warning about how he should know his place in life. Albert took the message and clammed up. Good news did eventually help to cast a shadow over the outrageous actions that the security team took against him; his exosuit got upgraded from the old clunker model that he was used to. Originally, he drove a PHE Model Two. The PHE stood for 'power hydraulic exosuit'. It was a clunky and unwieldy beast, but it had come to him easily. He knew its every nook and cranny, and the tough burlap seating had eventually softened under his decades of sitting in it. It was familiar to him. The new exosuit that was phased in for general use, however, was sleek and new. The PHE Model Two's canopy was made of temperature resistant ploy-carbonate and enamled glass. The new exosuit was entirely enclosed in metal, and relied on advanced scanners and cameras to provide the user with a full range of vision. It had more displays, and a greater ranger of motion, not to mention a longer battery and lift support charge retainment. This did serve to cheer him up for a while, but he had still been changed by his experiences.

 

Cautious and overall less cheerful, Albert continued with his life.

The decades trudged on. He went through his fourties. Work. Eat. Sleep. Repeat. The monotony began to gnaw away at him. He felt trapped and woefully isolated. No amount of books, booze, or movies could distract him from the fact that he felt inadequate. He felt less-strong than his coworkers, as much of his time was spent cloistered inside of his exosuit. In an effort to feel more like a 'real man', Albert enrolled in a boxing course and weightlifting class. He did good work, until his areobic training suddenly had him coughing and spitting up wads of thick grey phlem. He went to see the staff physician. The staff physician was a grey haired old man who had served the colony in a quite selfless and un-corporate-like fashion for as long as Albert could remember. His name was Greyson, and he seemed to know almost immediately what was wrong with Albert. The x-rays confirmed that he had bronchitis and some scarring in his lungs. He was advised to drop smoking altogether. Albert did so, eventually switching to nicotine patches. The coughing became only an occasional fit, though it did never seem to go away entirely. The scarring, however, was untreatable. Albert was told that although modern medicine was capable of repairing serious tissue damage with vat-grown organs, attempting to replace the damaged sections of his lungs could just make the scarring worse long-term. He was told to take his exercise at a relaxed pace and to focus more on stretching. Again, the symptoms of his ailment eased considerably. Albert passed through this worrying stage with a lighter-heart, happy that the scary moment of illness hadn't been something more serious. He continued to use nicotine patches, and eventually slid towards using dip as a substitute.

 

Albert turned fifty. He felt old, and little useless. His work in the exosuit had given him an ache in his back. He was constantly being moved to the back shifts to let younger miners move into the more dangerous and unseen areas. This was fine with Albert, but he began to get subtle pushback from the site manager of Ole Widower and the pay manager. It was small at first. His rig wasn't maintained as well as the others, so he'd always have to track down a maintenance staff member to ensure that a fissured hydraulic line was immediately fixed instead of put on a wait list. He found his locker marked up, and his pressure suit covered in cooking oil. At first he surmised that another employee was just being obnoxious, but it didn't take him long to figure out that it was the management trying to push him out. He'd been working the mines for almost fourty years, and in that time he'd been collecting serious pay grade benefits. He took a look at his retirement and benefits coverage, and found that it was very high compared to the younger miners. Those younger miners must have thought he was some old geezer who was sucking up all of the juicy paystubs and best assignments, or must have been given some extra scrip to get in on the nudging by the management. Perhaps both. The next thing Albert knew he was being threatened by the younger men routinely, both physically and verbally. The men who were harassing him seemed big and broad enough to go through with their threats, and soon. Albert was tough and mean, but he was no mans fool. He knew that management wouldn't do anything to make the other miners back off. As Albert recollected, it used to be said that one needs to know when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em. Albert sagely chose to fold. He decided that he needed a vacation; a long one. Perhaps he'd never come back. 'Yes,' he thought 'Never sounds like just the right amount. It's time to see some stuff before I kick it. To hell with this place.' So he packed his one suitcase and prepared a small feast the night before his shift began. He maxed out his company credit card purchasing expensive deserts and meats from the commisary. He gorged himself like a tick on blood on fine food, until his stomach hurt. The fine wine and, as much as it embarrassed him for liking it, chocolate milk, flowed like a river going downstream that night. He waddled to bed and slept his food induced stupor off for five hours. Thirty minutes before his regular shirt was scheduled to begin, he scrawled out some transport authorization papers, and took a shuttle ride towards the nearest spaceport. He decided that for once, he'd like to wander. He knew he'd find where he was really going soon enough.

 

Eventually he did. His shuttle swung into orbit around an abandoned space station as the shuttles pilot came over the microphone. The pilot was the very essence of composure as he gently quipped, 'Attention passengers, we're currently making an emergency stop. Retro-trusters two and four gave out a few hours into our journey and we lost a bit of liquid fuel. Nothing to be alarmed about, but we're going to take a little pit stop and assess the damages at this depot. Due to the nature of this event, we are providing you in-flight entertainment, snacks, and drinks at no extra charge. Remain seated, we should be back on-course in a few hours.' Albert, however, did not hear any of this. He was snoring loudly in his seat much to the annoyance of his fellow passengers.

 

The space station was a massive hulking abandoned thing, orbiting a tiny pulsar star that was nearing the end of its life span. The station was previously an exotic gas refinery that sent advanced probes to investigate passing asteroids and stars for the gas so that a skeleton crew could quickly extract it, refine it, and shoot it off towards a different station in a probe so that it could be sold. The station had fallen onto hard times as the gas had became less and less needed, eventually able to be replicated cheaply in a laboratory. The station was mothballed and left to orbit the star since it was too far out for anyone but a junker to take interest. It floated silently, slowly falling apart.

 

While Albert slept, two technicians who normally were gruff stewards stepped out of the shuttles airlock while wearing orange EVA space suits. They were older models, but provided the wearer with great protection and life support system capacity. Creed, Tweed's supervisor, touched a hand to his wrist comm. 'T, check number four. I'll go see what's left inside this wreck.' Tweed nodded his assent and gave Creed the 'okay' hand sign, before jetting off towards the rear of the shuttle, past the windows where the passengers were watching their movies and clamoring for more popcorn.

 

Creed shot towards the station. It's steel corpse loomed closer and closer as Creed shut off his suits thrusters and drifted slickly towards a docking platform. Tweed took no notice of this as he fiddled with the number four engine, thinking to himself that it looked like a hydraulic tool of some kind had intentionally clamped shut all of the waste gas ports.

 

Creed, or as he liked to call himself, just C, landed on the gas platform. He bypassed the many dozens of gas tanks, heading inside of the station and disappearing into the darkness, irregardless of Tweeds increasingly more urgent calls to Creed, once he had realized that his friend was no longer answering comm's, was nowhere to be seen, and that he was alone.

 

Albert could tell that some time had passed when he woke up. He was not expecting to be shaken awake and look right into a gruff mans face. A man in an EVA suit stared down at him. His electronic name tag read 'Creed'. The other passengers were still enamored with their movies and popcorn. One man in particular let out a resounding 'Yeeeeehaw' as one of the movies bearded main characters produced a flamethrower and burned a monsters still-moving severed head. Creed hissed down at Albert, 'Listen. This is important. You got EVA training?' Albert nodded in the affirmative. Creed hauled him up and started marching his still sleepy body down the aisle towards the staff-only area.

 

They passed a blue security door and entered the ready-room. More EVA suits hung from the walls here, and to the left was a large airlock that Tweed and Creed had used earlier. Creed began to pick up an EVA suit from the deck plating where it had been dumped, and stepped into it. He pointed to the wall, and went back to suiting up. 'Get a suit on, stranger. I need your help.' Albert dumbly stared at Creed. Creed shot him a withering look, cursing under his breath before exclaiming, 'I have a missing tech and I can't tell the pilot. You know why? 'Cause then we're stuck here for days waiting for a rescue shuttle like company protocol says, and then I don't get my bonus and we're all stuck here. Get it? So you're gonna help me find my guy and get back here before that awful goddamn movie is over and people start asking questions.' Creed pointed to the cockpit door. A fat man with a doughnut resting on his large belly was half-asleep in the cockpit while the same movie that the passengers were watching played on the canopy of the cockpit. 'See him? My supervisor. That stupid asshole is waiting for us to report progress, so I can just bullshit my way through it until we get it and we'll be in the clear. Got it now?'

 

Albert's head was swimming, but he found himself stepping into an EVA suit and zipping up the internal layer as he wondered why he had ever left home. Creed snapped on his own helmet and gave Albert a not-so-friendly smile. 'Now you're getting it, stranger. This is just business and you're all I've got, so get it in gear.'

 

In a minute, Albert and Creed were standing in the airlock together. Air rushed out for a split second as the exterior door split in half and slid open. Creed keyed his transceiver and pointed to the station. 'Last read his telemeter heading there before switching off. We need to get in there and get him. He must have been trapped without oxygen for a bit, so I brought this.' Creed held up a blue gas cylinder. The side label read O2. Albert gave Creed a thumbs up, and the pair began to jet towards the station while linking arms. Their combined thrust brought them up to the main deck where Tweed had landed. The pair landed on the steel deck and activated their magnetic boots. Albert wobbled in place, and stood up straight. The staff must have left behind the stations gravity generator and most of the electrical grid. Gravity was still on for the station, weaker than Earth's, but present enough to be equatable to a stations reduced power state gravity mode. It took Albert a moment, but he got the hand of it. The gas tanks were mostly ruptured and old. The meters were large, and while some where broken, those that were still active read that the undamaged tanks were totally empty. The darkness of space had never seemed more oppressive before, and Albert yearned to at least be inside the old station as Creed lumbered forward towards the open access way to the station. Albert hurried behind, looking down the rows of gas tanks as he walked along. Neither said anything until they came up to the access way. Creed switched on his shoulder lamp, and then reached over and turned on Alberts. They shone brightly, but illuminated nothing beyond the doorway. Albert felt a sinking feeling, regretting his wish to go into the station and seriously debating whether or not to just go back and tell the fat pilot what the issue was. Creed seemed to read Alberts face, and wagged a finger at him without keying on his transceiver.

 

The pair slowly walked forward, past the threshold of the stations access way. The scenery became clearer. This was a maintenence area for smaller vehicles meant for EVA work; haulers, tugs, and the like. Creed touched his transceiver key and broadcasted, 'Tweed, Tweed, come in Tweed. We're here to get you. Are you hurt?' He released the key, and Alberts bandwidth picked up nothing but static in reply. Albert could see Tweed curse in the tiny atmosphere of his helmet. The pair kept moving past the rows and rows of empty vehicle bays and debris. It was very old and dilapidated here, thought Albert. Finally, they came to the end of the hall. Above them, a metal crate filled with I-beams was suspended by a damaged metal chain. The stations gravity was letting the crate strain against the chains, but not enough to pull it free. Albert wondered how long it had been hanging there.

 

Tweed and Albert walked further into the room. A few left-behind waist-high crates were here. Tweed peered over the crates and froze. Albert stopped just short of the crate. Behind his face plate, Tweeds mouth was moving slowly, like a fish out of water. His eyes were fixated on what was behind the crate. Albert felt a cold sweat break out on his brow as he mouthed a prayer and looked behind the crate, expecting to find the battered body of Creed.

 

Except there were two bodies.

 

Creed, or what remained of him, was grey and empty. His eye sockets were empty holes and his mouth was a sunken abyssal slash across his face. The second body's face plate was smashed in. His face was a bloody ruin and little droplets floated just outside of the smashed plastic composite of his helmet, eternally suspended. The bodies name tag read, 'Tweed'. Albert slowly looked up to see that Tweed was much closer to him now. His face was a grinning mad visage. His smile was ecstatic and his eyes were unfocused. Albert screamed and tried to step back, but the person who Albert had thought was named Tweed grabbed him by the collar and hurled him up and over himself. Albert went soaring back towards the entrance to the room, crashing into the floor. It was reduced gravity, but it still hurt, even with the suit on. The Tweed-impostor was still smiling horrifyingly as he ran towards Albert. Albert tried to get up, but the impostor was faster still. He grabbed Albert again, smashing a fist into his suit-covered abdomen, causing Albert to let out a 'Wumph!' noise as his air was knocked out. Albert convulsed in pain and the impostor threw him yet again past the rooms threshold and out into the hallway where the vehicle bays were. The impostors transceiver keyed on as Albert stared dazedly at the ceiling and tried to catch his breath while doubled up in pain. The impostors voice was not like it had sounded earlier. It was discordant and erie. 'You are a fool, Albert. I am Creed. I am Tweed. I am many.' Albert rolled over on his stomach, crawling away from the horrible monster that had killed Tweed and Creed. Suddenly, he saw a panel on the wall with a large lever on it. It reads, 'Release Clamp'. Albert looked up, spying the suspended metal storage crate and a desperate idea came to him. He could hear the creature coming closer. He began to crawl towards the switch, trying to block out what his earpiece was relaying to him.

 

The monster of a man drew closer. It was walking, its victory assured. It watched as the pitiful human drew itself up against the wall like a small animal that was cornered and felt a gnawing hunger rise up in every fiber of its being. Its throat squirmed and contracted, beginning to secrete potent digestive juices, meant for liquefying prey, into the porous membranes of its digestive tract for later use. His smile was so wide now that it was human. His teeth looked sharp and predatory. His pupils were slitted like that of a snakes. He was within twenty feet of Albert now.

 

Albert stood up, drawing a ragged breath in, barely managing to ignore the protest from his badly bruised diaphragm and the ribs he suspected were fractured. He grasped the lever. The thing was nearly upon him now. It was terrifying. Albert strained to pull the lever. For an awful moment, he thought the mechanism had been stuck shut and that this was the end of him. Luckily, the lever shot downwards. He could not detect sound in the vacuum of space, but he suspected that the crate would have made an awfully loud noise as the chains finally let it sail downwards towards the monster below it. Albert watched as the crate squashed the man flat, and the giant metal links of the chain pooled on top of the crate. Albert gasped and tried to key on his intercom. He found that it was busted. He realized that it must have been broken when he had been tossed around by the creature. The creature! Albert suddenly realized that it had been killed. He was safe, but he had to get back to the shuttle to tell the others what had happened. He held onto his pained abdominal area, stumbling towards the distant archway with the inky blackness of space beyond it. He immediately tripped and fell forward on his hands. Whatever he had tripped up on, he couldn't immediately see what it was or feel anything through his thick EVA suit. He maneuvered himself around and lost any inkling of cursing in pain at his bruised belly when he saw a web-like mass of flesh attached to his boot. It was moving. It was moving up his leg, and it felt strong. Albert began to howl in fear and tried to kick it off. He was unsuccessful. The mass of flesh wriggled and moved further up his leg, over his groin, towards his chest. Albert began to run on instinct, punching at the creature and trying to tear it free while screaming himself hoarse. It would not let go and showed no indication of being hurt. It wormed towards his suit atmosphere access cap. A tendril reached out towards a valve and began to intelligently unscrew it. Albert felt something in his chest seize up suddenly. This was not his damaged diaphragm or fractured ribs. This was different. A blooming pain erupted behind his sternum. He heard a rushing noise in his ears.

 

Albert realized that he was having a heart attack.

 

His vision narrowed to dual pinpricks as his suit chirped out an atmospheric warning. He felt something extremely cold and dry move against his chest. Albert could only think about how unfair it was that he had escaped that creature only to keel over due to his heart giving out, before losing all consciousness.

 

Albert awoke again. He was in the shuttles airlock, still inside his suit. His brain didn't seem to be sending the correct signals to his body. He took in a shuddering breath and felt his heart beating very hard, but he soon regained his senses and looked around. He really was on the shuttle. He almost felt his heart leap with joy, and immediately realized how wrong the situation still was. How was this possible? How was he here? Albert coughed against the inside of his suits visor, spraying greyish-spittle against the plastic composite. He rolled over onto his knees, coughed again, and took off his helmet, staggering into the ready room. He cast his helmet to the floor, gratefully drinking in the processed air of the spacecraft. For the first time, Albert realized that the pains in his upper and lower body were gone. He felt better than okay, he felt better than he had felt in years. He looked around the ready room. There was no one here. Albert thought immediately about going to the rest of the ship and telling them to call for help. They could get the authorities out here and they could figure out what had happened. He would be taken in for questioning, perhaps even have the murder pinned on him. What would he say? Some sort of monster had taken over a man and killed another, shedding its skin like a snake? That he had teleported back onto a shuttle? He would be thrown into a jail for sure, and even if they believed him, he'd probably be locked up anyways. Albert shuddered, and a new idea popped into his head. Perhaps, he thought, he could merely go back to his seat. No one had seemed to have noticed that anything was amiss yet. Albert peered through the one-way glass that offered a view of the passenger zone. The passengers were still watching their movie, but most seemed disinterested. He still had time. He could go back to his seat and hopefully no one would notice.

 

Albert thought very hard for a moment. This was clearly a moral decision and someone had died in the process of whatever had happened, but at the same time Albert didn't want to risk the rest of his life being behind bars for a murder he didn't commit. He growled lowly, coming to a decision. He would claim ignorance. Albert quickly stripped off his suit and wiped off his helmet, hanging both up inside of the suit storage alcove. It looked just like all of the other suits on the racks. It was perfect. Albert slipped past the employee only door, back into the passenger zones. No one took notice of him as he unsteadily made his way back to his seat and sat back down.

 

Albert felt conflicting emotions as he waited. His insides felt strange. Stranger still, was a voice that suddenly spoke inside of his head.

 

"We are symbiote and mean no offense."

 

. . .

 

Time passed. The pilot searched the entire ship for his missing technicians. He found nothing, and tried to track the two missing suits transponders. He found two beacons. Two battered bodies were found floating in open space off towards the station, burned badly and nearly unrecognizable. The passengers could see this from their windows and were sent into hysterics with no movie to distract them. The pilot hurriedly came to the conclusion that there had been an accident while they were working on the engines, and decided that they would not be recovered or brought onboard. This was compounded by the fact that he himself didn't have EVA training and was too round to fit into a suit. The two technicians were listed as deceased due to workplace hazard on the ships manifest, and the transport company quickly informed their relevant supervisory government body, who were used to these types of reports in this day and age of commercialized space travel and shipping. Tweed's family was informed of his untimely death and his life insurance policy was payed out as well as a settlement payment from the company in exchange for dropping the admittedly mysterious matter. Creed strangely had no family, life insurance, and was missing a lot of mandatory details on his company file. The matter was quietly closed and scrubbed from all systems by nervous company executives who did not want such an odd thing being leaked to the press or seen by anyone besides themselves. The incident was quickly forgotten and passed from memory. Except, from Alberts.

. . .

 

Albert found that the thing that had tripped him was called a symbiote. It had no other name and no other memories. It merely had the instinct to survive and serve. Albert had been unconscious when the organism had settled into his body and attuned itself to his entire bodily system. It had stood him up, and forced him to toss the two space suited corpses into open space after burning them with a torch to make their cause of death seem to have been an engine repair accident instead of a brutal monster's handiwork. It had taken him back to the shuttles airlock and woke him up there. Albert wasn't sure why, but he could not bring himself to panic and scream about the fact that a voice was in his head, or that he couldn't make his legs move when he tried to walk to a hospital to get whatever it was taken out of him.

 

Albert learned to deal with the symbiote in a few days. When the organism realized that its master would not normally accept its presence, it began to subtly adjust his various levels of hormone output and encouraged his neural center to output signals of calm and acceptance when regarding thoughts of a symbiote. This was highly effective. Within a week, Albert's body began to change. He grew stronger, faster, and healthier. He found that he could now make his body do things that were beyond the realm of science fiction. Albert rented a hotel for a few months and burned through his savings while ruminating on what to do now that he was living with another entity inside of himself. Albert asked the symbiote for advice. Surprisingly, it reported that blending back into society quietly and in a position of much distance from larger society would be beneficial. Albert and the symbiote selected an application for a vessel that required crew, signed on, and awaited a reply.

 

For better or worse, Albert's life was rapidly changing, whether he wanted it to or not.

 

[/SPOILER]

Hobbies: Albert likes to read. He has trouble focusing, but tries to force himself to sit down and read because that is what his perception of a normal intelligent member of society is.

 

PHYSICAL

Appearance:

 

Gadgets, Weapons & Items: Albert doesn't carry any weapons or sentimental items.

 

Skills & Abilities:

EVA certified.

Certified exo-space miner.

Certified custodian.

Biological Traits:

Vacuum resistant - Albert will die and his body will enter a death state from which to attempt to regenerate from if sucked into space, for example. He is more resistant to vacuum, but it will hurt him all the same. The same goes for oxygen. His body may have been improved many times over by the symbiote, but it is not immortal.

 

Enhanced healing - Albert's healing isn't like that of the superhero Wolverines speed-wise, but will heal at a reduced rate compared to it. For instance, it would take him a day to regrow a lost arm. The symbiote will protect him from bleeding out due to avulsion or gunshot wounds, but this is resource intensive and still will damage his body overall. Minor wounds heal very fast. He could even regrow his head and stand up once more if given enough time. However, Albert cannot regenerate if his body is totally destroyed or in small enough pieces. Alberts immune system is neigh-impervious to bacteria, parasites, and virus'.

 

Pain tolerance - Albert's pain receptors are turned down by a lot. He could get stabbed and continue to fight his attacker, but it will still be painful. He can still feel pain, just not as much.

 

Darkvision - The ream of cells coating the back of his eyes have been intensely added to by the symbiote. Commonly referred to as the Tapetum Lucidium, the cells are responsible for reflecting light back to the pupil for humans and other animals to allow them to see in low light levels. Albert can see very very well in the dark.

 

Supersoldier - Albert isn't really a super-soldier, but the symbiote has augmented his body to the upper limits of human ability. His muscles are flooded with testosterone and myostatin which have given him a powerful build. His white muscle levels are higher. He is very fast and very strong.

 

Regenerative stasis - If Albert dies, the symbiote will attempt to restart his body once it has regrown his form. Albert regenerates faster when he is sleeping and the symbiote can dedicated more resources to its work.

 

Devour - Albert can extend a proboscis from his mouth to an extent of one foot, and stab a dead organism to consume it. The symbiote has been unable to convince Albert to try this on a living organism no matter how much behind-the-scenes adjustments it makes or hormones it adjusts. Albert refuses to perform this on even a dead body on moral grounds. Were he to do this, he would be able to take on the appearance and total likeness of the person he absorbed for half of a day before needing to return to his regular form and being unable to do this again for a week, as well as needing something new to consume.

 

Helpful Friend - The symbiote is an animistic intelligence that lives as a part of Albert's body. It can speak into Alberts mind and help him, but it has trouble trying to force Albert to do anything. It doesn't remember anything from its past. He will fight against it if it were trying to do something he did not want it to.

 

Negative Aspects: Fire is very effective against him in combat. Albert has no combat training. Albert has no engineering or technical training. Albert must eat two times the normal amount a human would eat to keep both himself and the symbiote well fed. Red meat is preferred as it contains much iron and protein. He will grow weak if he is not given enough to eat and his healing will slow. Albert has a big fear of fire due to the symbiote recognizing it as something extremely dangerous to itself.