"They were killing themselves?" Catherine exclaims. "Why? Who?"

"Robin--that's the one I met outside, the last thing she remembered was being scanned and she'd been planning to die afterwards--and someone called Konrad, and at least a couple others. It sounded like Strohmeier wanted you to stop scanning people over it." Which is super counterproductive, in terms of keeping people alive, unless the people other than Catherine were doing something really important that Margaret doesn't know about.

"Why!? I can understand feeling like...it wasn't worth going on, but why get in the way of the project over it?" Catherine says. "I...it just doesn't make sense to me."

"At least some of them seem to have thought they couldn't wake up in the ARK unless they were dead out here. Like they didn't understand that they could just be in both places. And maybe some of them just couldn't stand forming memories they wouldn't get to keep."

That feels a little less relatable than it did an hour ago. Her first life mattered, to her and in general, even though everything she learned and felt is gone and she's still here. But maybe a month of despair and decades of normal life are importantly different, for that.

"I guess I can understand that, but to let it get in the way of the work? And really, who doesn't understand forking?" Catherine says.

"I don't know. I wouldn't've done it. Anyway, I should go down to the server room." She backtracks to the cargo hold and follows the sign for the server room.

"Yeah," Catherine says. "What happened to Theta? No real sign--the last staff security report mentions struggling with something they called a 'proxy'." Her voice cadence changes, reading off from a report, 'The proxy we killed was blind, just like Akers, but it listens. Be careful--we spotted two more by the infirmary.' Hmmm. 'Be quiet, the proxy listens.' " There's a computer approximation of a sigh. "Thanks, Strohmeier, that's a really useful report. Be alert, Margaret." 

"Will do," Margaret mutters as she goes. A proxy of what, though? She doesn't ask; it doesn't sound like Catherine knows and it does sound like she should be watching out for something that relies on sound. She keeps her footsteps as soft as the footsteps of a diving suit on a metal floor can realistically get.

The door to the server area leads down a flight of stairs, which might be normal enough institutional staircase, if not for the gigantic wall of WAU polyps growing above it, the stygian blackness it descends into, and the large tentacable which has almost knocked part of it off its structure. It's hard to tell the distant groans of stressed structure from...whatever sounds a "proxy" might make. It takes care to make the way down what must be multiple levels before reaching a small lobby with four doors. One is sealed off by a leaking crust of structure gel, two are closed but unlocked, and the fourth stands open, looking into a mazelike server room. Giant racks of green-glowing computer front panels provide most of the light in there.

She goes through the open door first and works back and forth along the aisles, hunting for anything that isn't lit up green. What did they even use this many servers for, she wonders.

Whoever designed this server room should be fired. It's not aisles so much as a maze of racks, haphazardly arranged in a way that seems calculated to block easy access. Everywhere Margaret looks, though, there's signs of trouble--a knocked-over chair near the door, an upended rack of some kind of physical peripherals, a dripping puddle of structure gels, and someplace in the maze....footsteps and what sounds like labored breathing.

Maybe it was less of a mess before all the awfulness started. 

That breathing is probably the "Proxy" but might be an injured person and that is a really unpleasant combination of possibilities. For now she steers away from it like a coward.

The way back leads through more serves, past small objects scattered on the floor, and finally to the "Main Server Control" panel--the only spot in the room which is decently lit. It complains about the servers being out of synch, and needing a manual reset to restore synchronization.

She gives it what it wants and hopes it doesn't beep about it.

Unfortunately, it not only beeps, it deedly-deeps about it. A scroll-bar starts across the screen, labeled "Server Booting, manual confirmation required after reset," but as it works its way across the screen, the footsteps and breathing draw closer along the other aisle (?) from the one Margaret used. Whatever it is--the proxy?--screeches as it approaches.

Yikes! Margaret goes the other way and hides between a wall and a server rack.

The proxy draws closer, and stops in front of the server access console. It stops and twitches around, listening for the source of the sound. If this thing was able to hear the beep of the console from the other side of the server room, over fans, dripping water, and its own idle moans, Margaret's glad again she doesn't have a heart to pound or breath to have to hold. Finally, after another moment, it screeches again questioningly, and wanders off, down the twisted "aisle" Margaret used to get this far back in the first place.

Once it's out of sight she sneaks back and hits the manual confirmation on the server.

There's some kind of countdown going when Margaret gets back to the console, with 25 seconds left when Margaret slaps the confirmation. With a click, several red lights on the server go green.

What's it in such a hurry for? Even her bank always gave her fifteen minutes before assuming she wasn't there anymore. Doesn't it know she has scary entities to run away from.

She starts making her way the server room, by a different and less Proxy-laden path.

The path leads back to the front via a way about as clear and straightforward as the original path back on the other "aisle"--which is to say, not at all, winding around server racks arranged in random walls and clusters. On the way, creeping along, Margaret almost trips over a WAU structure stuck to the wall. Oh...not just a WAU structure. There's what looks like a person embedded in it, even more encrusted in polyps and dried structure gel than Amy was back at Upsilon. The person's eyes are closed, they don't seem to stir when Margaret practically trips over their legs, and yet, despite that, they're definitely breathing.

Oh no. 

She tries poking them some more, though she's not sure they'd feel it even if they were conscious what with all the gel, and murmurs "Hello? Hello?" as loudly as she dares. And then shines her flashlight at them for a few seconds.

There's no reaction from the person in their cocoon, but there is a screech from the other corner of the room to the click of the flashlight, and the footstep of the proxy start coming around from the end of the room with the server. It's circling back, fast.

Nope nope nope sorry questionably-a-vegetable person Margaret is g o n e.

Margaret's feet pound on the floor, and she can hear the monster behind her. It takes a struggle to clear the near-break in the stairs, but maybe it'll stop the proxy from climbing after her. It didn't look like it had arms on its (mutated?) body. The climb up the rest of the way is accompanied by the screeches of the monster down below.