Marvel Magic Case Files

They frantically opened their exosuit helmets, and Lieutenant Cooper's face, which had been constricted and turned blue, finally relaxed. He slumped onto the deck, gasping for breath, refusing to say a word. He still didn't understand the situation, and Captain Miller showed no intention of explaining, because they couldn't be sure what this malicious ship wanted to do to them.

"You're alright," First Officer Stark said softly, trying to reassure Lieutenant Cooper. If their information was accurate, Lieutenant Cooper should have been thrown into space in the explosion, and now he had accomplished an unprecedented feat in human spaceflight history. But this was nothing to celebrate, because they were still trapped on the edge of the solar system; all the praise would have to wait until they returned to Earth. "It's all over, Cooper. You're alright."

"It's not over yet." Captain Miller opened the airlock panel, which displayed a countdown timer. When the hyperspace engine activates, all airlocks connecting to the outside must be closed. "Will has activated the hyperspace engine; we must shut it down!"

"What do we do? The bridge is destroyed!"

"What about the engine room? Do you think you can shut down the engines from there?" Captain Miller asked.

First Mate Stark shook his head. The bridge's control computer used an inherited system to control the ship, but the engine room's control computer used specialized software to check and control the engine room's components. It was filled with a large number of electronic component names and data, and it would be difficult for someone without professional training and systematic learning to understand the details. Even if they picked up a troubleshooting manual, it would be difficult to figure out what those codes meant.

"I don't know. I'm not a software expert, Will is."

"I'd rather die than go there," said Lieutenant Cooper, finally catching his breath. He had witnessed the terrible things that had happened there: Justin, who had become a vegetable, and Dr. Will, who had attacked him with a nail gun, were both connected to that engine. The explosion of the Lewis and Clark had killed Justin, Peters (everyone believed that Dr. Peters had boarded the ship, and everyone on board had died in the explosion), and Smith. Even though he wasn't superstitious, he didn't want to go near something he couldn't understand.

"Okay, then we'll blow it up. Like Will said, blow up the corridor, detach the hull, and use the forward compartment as a lifeboat," Captain Miller said. "This was the ship's original design, intended to allow the data transmission register to receive distress signals. Prepare the hibernation pods, enter hibernation mode, and wait for rescue personnel to arrive."

"I saw a ship when I was outside, but I was a bit dizzy at the time. You know, shipwrecks spin really fast," Lieutenant Cooper said, panting. "It was too far away for me to see clearly. It must have been a big ship. Remember Will saying that other countries sent spaceships to acquire hyperspace engines? Maybe that was the ship I saw!"

"This is good news, meaning rescue isn't too far away." Miller blinked, his dark face devoid of any joy that good news should bring. He couldn't guarantee that the spaceship that had reached Neptune's near-Earth orbit would abide by the UN Outer Space Treaty, but he couldn't afford to say anything discouraging now. They were in dire straits, and nothing was more important than the crew's confidence. "Now I'll set the explosives. Cooper, you send a distress signal and then immediately return here. Stark, you stay here and prepare the hibernation pods; close the airlock after I leave..."

The first mate touched the dried blood on her neck and forehead. The wound on her forehead had stopped bleeding, but large patches of dried blood clung to her blonde hair, making her very uncomfortable. She could still feel a dull ache in her forehead and back; the decompression had almost ripped her eyes out. But they didn't have time to clean these wounds now; all they had to do was survive. She took a deep breath of the cold air. The ship's oxygen circulation and insulation had completely failed; their remaining survival depended entirely on the ship's temperature and oxygen levels.

"You don't need to..."

"I will be back. Now, everyone go and do your own mission."

Miller had read the relevant procedures when he took over the ship. As the captain responsible for the safety of all crew members, he would not overlook any emergency plans—at this moment, the ship's automatic broadcast announced that the hyperspace engine would be activated in five minutes—Captain Miller looked up at the engine room at the other end of the corridor and pressed the manual detonation setting on the controller in the corridor.

"Distress signal sent."

Lieutenant Cooper finally breathed a sigh of relief when the announcement came over his ear.

He had a premonition that rescue would come very quickly. His extensive experience in space travel told him that the ship he had seen might have already activated its retro-rockets to slow down and would arrive soon to salvage them. At that moment, something wet dripped onto him, and Lieutenant Cooper began to doubt whether this aging, unmaintained ship could fulfill Captain Miller's vision—until he felt the liquid was excessively viscous and warm—and realized it was blood. He looked up in horror and saw blood rushing into the lighting system, then overflowing from the ventilation ducts, sliding down the bulkhead, and finally submerging his shoes. The blood seemed to possess a living being, desperately trying to devour him. Lieutenant Cooper retreated in terror, then turned and ran, sprinting towards the airlock where First Officer Stark was.

"Fuck me! Fuck me! Stark!"

First Officer Stark noticed the temperature dropping again, frost clinging to the porthole. She looked up warily, surveying her surroundings. After seeing Dr. Will's state, she had certain intuitions she couldn't explain, much like the inexplicable Smith. The supernatural events on this ship had completely overturned all previous understanding; the flames of science and reason had been extinguished by the coldness of space, and witchcraft and superstition, using the bodies of the dead and fear, had made a comeback. Anything could happen here.

She could sense something enormous, damp, cold, and invisible slithering through the ship's interior like a snake, poisoning their souls and bodies with venomous thoughts, twisting and deforming the metal, making it creak and groan. She could imagine a cold, sticky, black giant snake crawling through the pipes.

She remembered Dr. Will's words: this ship was alive. She believed something parasitized it, something that had come from another dimension. It hibernated within the steel, leaped through the cables, and the life signal she detected on the Lewis and Clark was the monster's heartbeat. That invisible, unseen creature was now observing them, maliciously reveling in their fear, waiting for its chance to hunt them down. Now she saw the viscous blood slowly spreading in the decompression fluid pool, as if that unseen thing's malevolent thoughts had come to life. The ship's pipes seemed to transform into blood vessels, injecting the unseen creature's malevolent thoughts into reality. The pure white lights in the hibernation pods became murky, as if polluted, and even the air was thick with the stench of blood.

The glass of the decompression fluid tank suddenly shattered, and a massive amount of blood-red fluid slammed into her like a tidal wave. The sea of ​​blood slammed her headfirst onto the gangway below, until she and the wave of blood crashed heavily onto the lower deck. Lieutenant Cooper had arrived at that moment, shouting as he pulled the first mate out from under the waterfall-like gangway, himself covered in foul-smelling, slippery blood.

First Officer Stark wasn't seriously injured; she hadn't lost her mind. She vomited a mouthful of deep red, foul-smelling liquid, the stench of its putrid sweetness almost making her gag. "Our fear gave it form; it feeds on our thoughts," First Officer Stark thought. But she couldn't utter a word. Her eyes were blinded by the thick, stinking blood, her nostrils filled with the putrid stench, and fear spread uncontrollably from the depths of her soul.

That was a nameless, ancient fear that descended upon Earth from the depths of space a million years ago, before the birth of Paleolithic civilization, before animal hides and fire warmed the body, a fear so distant that any historian could only speculate with sparse evidence. This fear, hidden in the shadows outside the cave and in the darkness of night, was a secret lurking in the dim genetic memory and the depths of the soul, a secret that even bloody inheritance could not erase. Compared to the technological development and beliefs established by the human race in the last hundred years or so, it was as weak and powerless as an infant.

She heard a voice in the blood.

The vocal organs evolved by Earth's primates are insufficient to fully pronounce their names, and their weak organic information processing organs cannot fully comprehend their existence. They can only perceive them through fragments revealed in the material universe, like a four-dimensional object manifesting in a three-dimensional world, like a fleeting moment in a vast expanse of time. It is something humanity can never comprehend; she doesn't even know if it possesses life, or whether the narrow, human-created term "life" can adequately describe its existence.

All she could do was scream.

"Run!"

Captain Miller walked to the other side of the jet bridge and pressed a few more buttons. A black box locked with a combination lock immediately popped open and unlocked. He took out a device resembling a 1990s Motorola phone, with a small screen in the center and a thumb-sized red button. It was a detonator, and the jet bridge's announcement confirmed that he had successfully switched the detonation mode to remote detonation. "I'm ready to detonate," he said into the intercom on the jet bridge pillar. "Repeat. I'm ready to detonate."

"Miller! Can you hear me?" A blood-soaked face suddenly appeared on the screen. First Officer Stark stared at the screen in panic, while Lieutenant Cooper looked around behind her, fearing something terrible might emerge from a corner he couldn't see. "We have to get out of here, now!"

Captain Miller didn't have time to answer, as blinding flashes of light and intense heat exploded around him, forcing him to step back from the communicator. He saw the charred corpse again, flames leaping over the burnt flesh. The corpse screamed, spewing forth a torrent of fire that filled the entire corridor. The flames relentlessly pursued him, the approaching heat even singeing his hair. Captain Miller was forced to turn and flee, diving into the anti-jamming device in the engine room—a machine that shredded light like a meat grinder. Whether it was the program's setting or the ship being manipulated by some malicious consciousness, the door to the hyperspace engine room slowly closed in front of Miller, its jagged edges meshing like teeth.

Fear would breed cowardice and hesitation. He would either be burned alive by the flames behind him or severed by the closing airlock. But fear was not for a captain who had carried out many dangerous space missions. He leaped through the not-yet-fully-closed airlock, crashing heavily onto the mesh deck. The last thing he saw was the charred, burning corpse squeezing through the gap in the airlock—he rolled quickly, and the flame slammed onto the control panel behind him—the airlock closed completely, leaving only a wisp of flame burning at the joint. Finally, even the flame went out, leaving only a plume of smoke.

"The hyperspace engine will activate in two minutes."

Captain Miller gripped the detonator tightly, forced to confront a stark reality: if the monster remained outside, he was destined never to return to the cockpit. But as flames and heat surged from behind, he realized the hyperspace engine bay behind him was engulfed in flames. The massive spikes protruding from the spherical bulkhead and the slowly rotating hyperspace engines were now ablaze, as if doused in gasoline.

"Miller!" the voice shouted beside him. Captain Miller turned around, and the charred corpse that had suddenly appeared swung its fist and flames at him. A supernatural force pulled him, slamming him heavily against the burning spherical bulkhead. The searing pain instantly snapped him back to reality, and without hesitation, he rolled into the cooling pool, trying to extinguish the flames on his body. "You abandoned me, Miller!" the charred corpse stepped into the cooling pool. "You owe me."

Miller lay trembling beside the cooling pool. "You're not him. I saw him die with my own eyes." The flames on the charred corpse gradually died down, and the bones throughout its body were deformed. The face was covered with countless deep scars composed of incomprehensible symbols. "Will?"

“This ship brought me back,” Will chuckled. “I told you, this ship won’t let me leave, nor will it let anyone leave. You really think you can destroy this ship? It has defied time and space; it has been to places you can’t even imagine. Now it’s time to go back.”

"I know, to hell." Captain Miller lay panting in the cooling pool, gathering his strength.

"You know nothing. Hell is just a word. The reality is far worse than hell." Will, or rather, what was once Dr. Will, reached out and caught Captain Miller's fist. He grabbed the latter's head, forcing Miller's eyes open with supernatural power. "Let me show you... hell!"

He saw First Officer Stark, her skin slashed and bleeding profusely from barbed wire bound to a cross. He saw Engineer Justin hanging upside down from a massive spike in the engine room. He saw Lieutenant Cooper impaled by a black octagonal bramble that appeared out of nowhere and hung from the top of the engine room. The blood-soaked cooling pool water slid over his eyes, forcing them open. Everyone was screaming, the dead and the living alike.

All he could do was scream.

"Did you see that!" The thing that used to be Dr. Will released him. "Did you see that!"

"They...are not dead!" Captain Miller struggled to his feet, lying in the cooling pool.

"Not yet, they'll die sooner or later."

Miller groped around in the cooling pool. He touched a cold, soft body and a cylindrical piece of steel. It was a carbon dioxide filter canister. He knew Dr. Peters had died here. He roared and swung the canister, smashing it against the face of the monster in human skin, again and again, filled with rage. "Don't even think about it!" he shouted, each word accompanied by a blow to the monstrous face that profaned human emotions. "Kill my crew!"

The monster caught an attack powerful enough to kill an ordinary person, then slammed Captain Miller into the cooling pool. The burning hyperspace engine stopped spinning, and the intricate, flower-like mechanical structures on the bronze sphere's surface gradually opened, emitting indescribable, foul light. "They're not your crew, they belong to this ship!" the monster roared. "The hyperspace engine is activated; they can't leave."

The excruciating pain prevented Captain Miller from standing up again. He saw the remote detonator lying on the mesh deck, flames burning on the water's surface. With all his might, he scrambled towards the detonator, clinging to the edge of the cooling pool, each movement accompanied by a scream of agony. He felt as if his ribs and leg bones were broken.

"Take me away and let them go!"

"No. Everyone belongs there. The portal is open, you must all come with me. Do you see?" Countless terrifying visions crashed into Captain Miller's mind. He saw countless nauseating and horrifying scenes; he saw the true purpose of the massive spikes in the engine bay; he saw himself impaled on those spikes, the blood-soaked, bronze spikes protruding from between his deformed jawbones. The monster roared again, "Do you see?!"

Captain Miller screamed in agony, reaching through the flames to grasp the detonator on the mesh deck. He saw maggots crawling all over Dr. Peters' body, her lifeless eyes staring at him. "Do you see that!" He saw Major DJ lying on the medical bed, eyes wide open, watching himself being dissected. "Do you see that!" He saw Lieutenant Smith's lower body fused to the bulkhead, his upper body spread out like a sinner nailed to a cross.

"Yes, I saw it." Captain Miller glared at him angrily. The threats couldn't sway his mind; without hesitation, he pressed the button. "Go to hell, you and me!"