Episode 109 - Windows

## Windows

A black background with a white border that possesses two white dashes in the centre of each side. Within the border a panned glass window is depicted in white with a red mark in the top left that runs down to the bottom left pane. It can be assumed that this mark is meant to represent blood. Bellow this image but still within the border the words "109.Windows" are depicted in white

### Author

William A. Wellman

Creep finds something in the ice, Melvin fails a mission, and Liv has an epiphany. The theme of tonight’s episode is Windows.

> ***Content warning**: Suicide, Graphic Blood, Death + Injury, Body Horror, Violence, Gun Mention, Drowning, Heartbeats, Animal Death (a fish, a not unsizeable quantity of marine life)*
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## The One Who Sings

Nikignik narrates to the Dreamers Creep (though it as not yet taken on that name) while it resided bellow the ice of the Antarctic, unaware. He narrates it as it become sentient, conscious for the violent and frightening excavation of the ice which it nested in.

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Creep finds itself in a glass tank in a laboratory, quiet and dim, with a scientist who is a thousand times its size who sings to it when they are alone. It forms a bond with him as the days past and it begins to grow and develop appendages. Creep yearns to know him better, being aware of its physical changes at it grows and becomes more complex. The Scientist begins putting marine life - fish - in the tank with Creep, which Creep kills and absorbs into itself, adapting to itself becomes more fishlike as well as taking on the fish's memories.

The other scientists become angry with the one who sings, as they hate Creep, but the one who sings defends it, and when they are alone again talk to it, the other words which Creep retains being "You", "Me", "Discovery", "Science" and "Understand". Creep understands that it was in danger, and so was he while the others threatened them. It thinks that while it may be small, it would find a way to protect the both of them. Creep hears as someone else comes into the lad, but it is not the one who sings, rather Melvin, one of the other scientists muttering about how it creeped him out. He attempts to kill Creep by freezing the water in its tank, but it breaks free and does to him what it did to the fish, becoming him.

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After killing and becoming Mel, Creep becomes aware of all that life could be from the perspective of a human, not just fish, as well as all Mel's memories. It knows that the other Scientists would not let it and the one who sings be at peace after this and were a danger to them both. It leaves the tank while puppeting Mel's body, passing another scientist - Liv - in the hall who notices its strange behaviour and asks if it'd been drinking again.

Creep kills and morphs with her as well, Mel's skin becoming her skin becoming its skin. This kill is explicitly not lacking in bloodshed, and with it Creep learns how the machines that kept the lives of the scientists sustained in the harsh conditions of the artic. It begins dismantling the electrical boxes and power systems, momentarily encountering a dog and opening the door to allow it to run outside into a raging blizzard. It finds the One who sings with who is presumably the leader of the expedition, they were expecting it but the one who sings flees, leaving the leader to fend for herself. She wields a flamethrower, stunning it before cutting a rope that causes a palette of metal pipes to drop on it from above, scattering it physically.

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This only causes her to get covered in splattered droplets of Creep, unable to even scream as it begins to reform on and in her, until she too is one with them. It takes them hours to completely reform, and when they do their shape is fluid, but they choose and appearance that is anthropomorphic so that they might be recognisable to the one who Sings. The ones who threatened them were dead now, and they could leave together. It finds him, senses him behind a door and calls out to him in language that they could understand and communicate in now, it break down the door telling him that it was nice to meet him, only to find him dead on the other side, having taken his own life hours ago, it kneels beside him and begins to morn, goes to caress his face only to accidentally fuse with him. In absorbing his memories, it finds that the one who sings name was Creep, and had become convinced by the other scientists, so much so that when he had noticed Melvin going into his lab, he had allowed him to. It finds itself emotionally lost and distraught, deciding that they had been right in telling it that it should go back to the ice. It does, pretending that it was small and not a mass of several humans and dreams of the lives that it had absorbed, and the Heart of Marolmar.

It awakes to kind that the ice had disappeared and dissolved into the ocean, remembering how to swim it does, stricken with grief at not being allowed to sleep. It hears the song of the heart, finds belonging in it, that it is not alone, falling in love with the melody. It knows that this it could protect, an so it does as the heart stirs and shapes the sea around it. When the crew of the Ruth Esther Barns arrive, it kills Bartholomew 'Barty' Chum easily, and the rest of the crew follows soon, although not managing to absorb them in whole it does take some. It tells itself that it was okay that it did this, they would have ruined everything, and it's only mission now was to grow and protect the heart. It does this for years.

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Creep witnesses the first snow of winter also witnessed by the expedition crew in Episode 108 - Apprehensions.