The Monsters Inside Us (An Among Us Story)

Vain Hope

Pink held the Medbay vent shut, leaning all his body weight against it, while Cyan slammed into it, his now-numerous tendrils oozing up through the slanted holes. Across the room, Blue and Purple were trying desperately to keep Yellow strapped to her bed as she writhed around, blinded with the same rage that had compelled Pink to murder Brown when he was first introduced to the parasite. Red was waiting anxiously at the closed doors, hoping for any sign of Orange, who had somehow gotten lost in all the commotion.

We have to kill Cyan if we want to have a chance at saving the rest of them, the parasite said. Pink was more unnerved now that it seemed to be trying to help him than when it had been actively fighting him. The sudden change of heart didn't make sense and he feared that it was an elaborate scheme that would come to fruition with him killing the rest of the uninfected crew at the behest of the parasite.

At this moment all Pink could find himself hoping was to once again feel the calm of a snow storm on a winter's night where one's biggest worries were deciding what to drink and how many blankets to pile up. The last time he had felt such a calmness had been during the storm that had delayed their departure from Earth and gave the crew the gift of one last New Year's Eve on their home planet, before the passage of time would come to mean almost nothing at all.

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The station was running at half-power in an attempt to conserve energy after the local power plant had been knocked out and they had been forced to move operations to the emergency generators. As a result, there was a persistent cold forcing its way into the very core of Pink's being, leaving him to crave the summer heat that he had so despised in its habitation, all with only half the normal amount of lights being powered on, casting large swaths of shadows around.

He walked through the wintry halls, his intentions set on the window seat of the conservatory. He would be damned if he were to miss what may very well be the last snowfall he would ever see. His feet shuffled along the ground awkwardly at times, having turned numb to cold while he had been fine-tuning the Skeld's remote camera controls. There was the hush of new snow like a blanket on the station when he sat on the lightly-padded window seat overlooking the dense pine forest below the hill on which the conservatory sat.

An all-enveloping glow illuminated the world outside. Pink knew it to be due to the clouds reflecting light pollution and the white snow magnifying the effect, but sometimes he liked to pretend that it had more to do with magic than numbers. As though it were a gift from some benevolent entity to help the denizens of Earth cope with the falling frost. There had been a time, many decades ago, when light pollution didn't reach so far and the land surrounding the station would have been pitch black on a night like this, but those days were long gone. Now all that was left was inconsistent and extreme weather, climate refugees, and an overwhelming sense of dread. That was part of why they were being sent away, in the vain hope that the solution to Earth's problems would be found on the surface of an alien planet.

Pink drew the blanket that was draped over his shoulders tight around him and pulled his knees to his chest, trying to protect himself against the cold's ever-grasping clutches. Despite the fact that the storm system that had refused to resolve itself for over two weeks had made more work for everyone, he couldn't help but be quietly grateful for the extra days on Earth. Although, he was afraid that if it persisted much longer he would begin to have second thoughts about leaving in the first place.

"Hey."

Pink jumped, whipping his head to the conservatory doorway. Blue was standing there, her arms laden with blankets, backlit from the hallway lights that spilled into the blacked-out conservatory.