Among Us: Hosts

Ch. 6

The lights slowly turned on to reach full brightness at the alarm the Captain had set earlier.
"Good day, STS-AU-17 is in hyperjump. Your tasks are listed on your monitors."

The crew yawned and stretched and cleaned up for the day quickly. Jessica put on her suit first and headed out.
"Wait, let me come with you," Matias said as he walked after her. Kandor followed.
"Simi, let's go!" Assisi groaned, annoyed at how long her husband was taking.

Chantelle watched the scene with bored indifference. Prem was fidgeting on his bed. Chantelle bit the bullet and just asked.
"What is it?"
"Where's Gan?" He spat out immediately.

She made eye contact with Chiedza.
"He wasn't here when we were getting ready?"
"No. Can you please message him?"

Raha narrowed her eyes. "Inter-crew comms are not working for me. Anyone else?"
Chantelle said, "It sometimes goes down during hyperjump. We can't do much about it."

"Let's go call him over the intercom then," Prem insisted.
Raha followed him by instinct as Prem started walking out. Chiedza stopped them. "We'll join you as well."

Prem crinkled his nose at the distrust, but shrugged and continued to walk. The four of them walked towards navigation in silence. The mood had clearly not lifted from the previous night.

As they rounded the corner of the hallway, they all got shocked to a standstill as they saw the blood splattered everywhere.
They all paused for a moment, trying to make sense of the scene. Among the gore and flesh plastered to the walls, they saw a pair of legs in a white suit attached to half a torso, cut cleanly off the top, mostly drained of blood. Prem screamed and stumbled, unable to take his eyes off of it, and Chantelle immediately looked away. Chiedza looked around frantically to see if she could find a head, or any sign of a dismembered torso, but there was none. Raha put a hand on the wall to stabilize herself and screamed out to the ship, "Code 1! Dead body!"

Immediately, the ship started blaring a loud alarm and ushering everyone to the cafeteria. All other doors closed and the vents were cleared. The ship began its body checking and cleaning process, and within a minute, everyone was standing around the center cafeteria table.
The alarms subsided, the lights turned to normal, but the doors would not open until the prescribed time was up.

"Crew-member codename White is dead. Warning: foreign organic matter has been detected onboard. Please address this immediately."

Gasps and screams were heard around the room. Kandor immediately rounded on Prem. "You! How could you? He loved you!"
The whole room turned silent, and only Prem's inconsolable sobbing was audible. "I didn't do it!"
Raha spoke, "We found him together... but I don't know where he was before."
"What do you mean?! I was in med bay! With the rest of you! If anything, Kandor, you left the room early!" There was newfound rage in Prem's voice.
"He was with us." Matias furrowed his brows.

"C-calm down. Where was... the body?" Assisi asked, trying hard to breathe evenly.
"In navigation." Raha responded.

"We were in the reactor room." Kandor said.
"And we were in the upper engine. Both are on the other side of the ship." Simi added.

"It could've been done at night. None of these alibis mean anything!" Prem responded.

They sat in silence for a while, everyone looking grim, some crying at the loss of their comrade. Finally, Simi spoke. "We need a system. We need to find the imposter."
Kandor slapped the table, "I agree. We need to find out who's the most suspicious and verify if they're the foreign organism with the AI."

"And how do we do that?" Assisi asked.
"We can eject them." Simi suggested.

"What?! Eject them during hyperjump? They wouldn't survive." Raha slapped her forehead.
"They wouldn't die."
"We would have no way of getting back to them. They're as good as dead."

"We're sitting ducks right now. We're as good as dead too! Look at Gan!"
"How could we enforce something like that, Simi! What if we kick out the wrong person!" Assisi protested.

Kandor shook his head, "As long as we have more humans than imposters, it's enforceable. It's a risk we have to take."

"You're imbeciles! You're just reducing the number of people we have onboard to deal with this problem!" Raha yelled at Simi.
"What's your grand idea then, Raha? Mass suicide?!"
"If it comes down to it, maybe!"

"No! We have a daughter back home we'd like to get to. Don't jump to such bizarre choices." Assisi put her foot down.
"My mother is waiting for me, too." Jessica said.
"I have family back home too." Chantelle chipped in.

"And I want to go on my next mission. We all have something we want to live for, Raha." Kandor added.
"But–!"
"This is worth trying out." Chiedza said. "We're all in danger now either way. At least this way we have a chance of force-ejecting the imposter."

"Well... how do we know who's suspicious?"
"How many of you were alone during our time outside at some point?"
No one responded.

"Okay... was anyone not alone at any point...?"
The room sat silently.

"Code 1 has cleared. You may now leave the cafeteria." The AI's voice boomed through the cabin.

Matias threw his hands up, "We're in trouble."
"Get to your tasks then... Stay safe." Kandor said, before turning to go to the East corridor towards the Upper Engine.

"Who put him in charge?" Simi muttered.
"Why's he going alone?" Assisi replied.

Jessica got up and followed in his direction.

"We'll be in admin," Assisi took her husband's hand and walked by too.

Prem headed away towards Weapons alone. Chantelle and Chiedza shared a look, and Chantelle got up to follow Prem. The other three sat around for a bit before leaving as well.

Raha looked determined, and walked south towards Storage. Everyone had simple tasks to complete, and bustled around the hallways, passing by each other, eyeing each other suspiciously.