The next morning, a human corpse was found. The corpse was found in a long hallway, dark like they all were nowadays, laying in a pool of blood. The eyes were wide open, staring sightlessly out at the world, a terrified expression on its face. It was clear that it knew exactly what had killed it, and it scared the fuck out of it.
Ira was already awake by the time the corpse was discovered and was in the middle of cuddling with Silas when the screaming distracted him. At this annoying interruption, he blinked and looked up. It wasn't a noise he had heard just it in his head, he had heard it with his physical ears.
Because the corpse was found right outside his room.
Ira shook himself loose of Silas's embrace and walked over to the door, peering out the open doorway. To the left, barely 2 meters away from his door, was a dead human and a live one standing over it, looking terrified. "What's the matter?" asked Ira, annoyed that he had been interrupted during his pleasant time with Silas.
The human only pointed at the corpse and continued to silently scream.
Ira looked over at it. He squeezed his way through the narrow doorway and walked over to the living human, gazing down at the corpse. It looked like any other corpse. It was pale and mutilated and just gross-looking in general. Humans made very disgusting corpses. Still, it was pretty clear that he had been killed by one of those monsters, seeing as its stomach was torn out.
"I'll call the Captain," said Ira. The sooner they got the corpse out of here the sooner the humans would leave him alone again to fraternize with the enemy. It sounded very cool, that phrase, fraternizing with the enemy. And he wanted to get back to it. His cuddles were important, damn it.
The Captain headed over at once, once he found out why Ira had called him. He looked flushed and out of breath when he ran around the corner, his arms flailing in the nonexistent wind. He stopped dead in his tracks when he caught sight of the corpse.
"Fuck," the Captain swore and kicked the wall next to him. It seemed kind of dramatic for a response, but Ira guessed that tensions were running high what with all these people dying.
"How long has it been?" the Captain asked, his voice rough and Ira noted that he smelled like alcohol.
Ira shrugged. "No idea."
The Captain swore again. Just a couple of minutes later the highest-ranking medical officer arrived at the scene. She swore as well when she saw the corpse and ran over to sit next to it. Her hands floundered over it for a moment before she started examining it.
"Can I leave?" Ira asked, bored with it all.
The Captain waved his hand, "Yeah, yeah, go back to sleep."
With permission given, he decided to head off. Although it was like 8 in the morning so he hadn't even been asleep. Ever since he came to this world his sleeping schedule had been really messed up, now that he thought about it. But it was an excuse to go back to his room and lock himself in (though the lock didn't work, did it?) and not be bothered with human affairs, and also to cuddle with Silas. He was very warm, even if he was a little too muscly, so Ira didn't say anything against it. He waved cheerfully as he left, once again squeezing himself through the narrow doorway. The door still didn't work.
Silas was awake when Ira returned. He stared straight at Ira, his gaze focused and intense. Ira crossed the distance and clambered onto the bed, squeezing himself into the room between Silas's legs. He turned around so he sat with his back to Silas and made himself comfortable.
Another hour passed like that. He turned his hearing down so that he wouldn't have to listen to the chaos going on outside his door, and amused himself by watching an old movie. Because it occurred to him that he could do that. It was already downloaded and in his database.
Sometimes he was afraid that the stupidity of humans was infecting him, as he made non-optimal decisions that had more effective alternatives. Then he decided that he didn't have to worry about this, because even if he became stupid, he was still awesome.
But eventually, he had to get up. His body needed to be fed and he needed to pee.
Those were unrelated issues that were similarly urgent.
Silas made a noise when Ira got off again. In order to make sure that Silas didn't follow, since the bathroom was much too tiny for that, Ira patted him quickly on the shoulder before he left. Nylo seemed to enjoy the action, so Ira assumed that Silas would as well. And humans were pretty tactile creatures, he was pretty sure. Although Silas wasn't a human right now so maybe it didn't count?
Anyway, the action did what it was supposed to. Silas didn't follow him and waited patiently on the bed. So Ira counted it as a success.
In the future, he would be patting Silas's shoulder more.
Taking care of business in the bathroom was quick. Ira soon emerged and pulled on a stolen uniform. With all this stuff going on, it seemed to him like the mission was coming to an end, so he would act out his part properly. He was really curious about how it was all going to end, and he didn't want to get pulled from the world due to something as silly as people finding out that he wasn't human. More precisely, that he was a System. It would be fine as long as they thought he was something in line with the world's probability, like an alien.
Unfortunately, Systems were rarely in line with a world's probability. And so they had to hide and disguise themselves as something else. This was not something that Ira particularly enjoyed, but he had learned to work with it over the eons.
Properly clothed and disguised, Ira left his quarters and stepped outside the door. The corpse had been removed from the hallway but they had not yet cleaned up the huge pile of blood and entrails that littered it. Ira frowned at the sight; if he wanted to walk that way he would have to walk right through it. Which would undo all the work he had recently done to get rid of the blood. He decided to turn the other way and take the longer route to the cargo hold.
It was time for breakfast.
Ira had a rarely seen spring in his step when he arrived at the cargo hold, his excitement level having risen the closer he came.
He barged in through the doors and stopped in his tracks, suddenly face to face with chaos. Again.
The humans were shouting at each other. The highest-ranking medical officer, a woman that Ira could not for the life of him remember the name of, was pointing wildly and screaming loudly at the Captain. The Captain, in turn, raged furiously, saying something through clenched teeth, his hands trembling with rage. Ira would assume that they had been fighting for a while now, seeing as everyone around them were looking tired of their bullshit. One of them even waved at him once he arrived, and Ira waved back out of politeness.
He walked along the wall to the other side of the room, so he would have a better view of the humans' facial expressions. As they shouted at each other with loud explosives and very vivid imagery of unmentionable things, Ira passively observed and felt his energy to deal with stupid stuff rise even higher. Watching human discord and seeing them self-destruct was like a balm to his wounded soul.
"Hey," the crew member said when Ira stopped next to him. This was the crew member who had greeted him when he entered, and he now realized that it was also the crew member who had found the corpse outside Ira's room in the middle of the night. Since none of them were apparently in touch with anything resembling time anymore, he supposed that it was fine.
It had been kind of funny when the human screamed outside his room even though it annoyed him because he had to leave Silas behind, so Ira said, "Hey," back.
Then he stopped speaking to him because he didn't have that much energy.
The Captain and the medical officer continued fighting for an additional 45 minutes before they finally ran out of energy. Whatever problem it was that they had with each other they did not seem to have resolved it, based on the way they were still glaring at each other as the medical officer left to return to her Infirmary.
Now that they were no longer occupied by the arguing people, the line for the food had finally started moving again. Ira shamelessly squeezed himself in at the front and ignored the people who glared at him for it as he waited for his turn. He was hungry. He didn't know when he had last eaten, and he didn't particularly care but his body was disagreeing with him about this. Ira was getting a little tired of this rations food that was disturbingly tasteless, but sooner or later all the humans would die and he would be able to eat whatever he wanted. So he would endure.
While he was eating, Ira checked in on Silas. Instead of killing people as Ira had kind of been expecting based on Silas's prior actions in this world, Silas was in the middle of cleaning up Ira's room. Right now, he was in the process of mopping the floors. Where he found the mop, Ira did not want to know.
But the sight was absolutely hilarious.
Ira took lots and lots of pictures.
He finished with his meal fairly quickly and deposited the cutlery on a crate. The Captain nodded at him when he walked past him, and Ira nodded back. Slowly walking through the dark hallways, he came ever closer to the storage units that he had been inventorying before. He whistled slightly as he walked, pleased that this body had that ability. Not every body had.
When he arrived at the closest storage unit, Ira picked up the inventory list and got back to work. Being as it wasn't his actual job and was just something he did for fun because it was amusing, Ira surprisingly enjoyed himself a little. It was not altogether awful.
Still, he did get bored and distracted every now and then. On such moments, Ira did his other duty and checked in on his Host. His Host, who was continuing this trend of disappointing him.
His Host was in the middle of a conversation with another crew member, the two whispering to each other as if they were being listened in on. Granted, they were, because Ira was spying on them, but the way that they whispered with their heads so close together and their eyes glancing all over — it was annoying for some reason. Ira frowned at the sight. Also, his Host was waving the USB drive he had stolen (the one with classified information) around like it wasn't a big deal.
The Captain would go absolutely mental if he knew.
Finally, his Host said something that made the other human startle and jump back a little. Ira could zoom in and raise his hearing so that he would actually hear what they were saying, but he wasn't interested enough to do that.
He did wonder a little, what his Host had planned. But he was sure that he would find out soon enough. A little patience went a long way.