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Kuttner finds a Marker shard, which causes a horrifying hallucination, making him murderously unstable. While the engineers work the gravity stabilizer, Kuttner's crew split up. The group land on Aegis VII, which is now unstable. Campbell secretly tasks Kuttner's crew to bring back pieces of the Marker, which are worth millions of credits per kilo. Assisting are soldiers Rin and Sergenko, along with two additional engineers, Borgas' cousins Noah and Omar, a Unitologist. Kuttner is interrogated first and gives his account of the events: he, Cho, Borgas, and Stross are assigned by the O'Bannon's commanding officer to stabilize the gravity on Aegis VII. The head interrogator is told by the Overseer he has seven hours to get information from the survivors. The survivors are imprisoned in a holding cell while the ship is en route to the Sprawl, a station built on a shard of Titan. Despite the carnage of Dead Space, four survivors are found: Nicholas Kuttner, a security officer Alejandro Borgas, an engineer Nolan Stross, chief science officer and Isabella Cho, chief medical officer. The Marine battleship Abraxis is sent next. When contact with the USG Ishimura and the Aegis VII colony is lost, the Concordance Extraction Corporation sends the ship USG O'Bannon to investigate, but contact is lost with them as well.
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