Twitcher

Twitchers were a specialized and incredibly fast variant of the Slasher Necromorph, typically formed from hosts who had been equipped with built-in Stasis Modules. When the infection fused with the module, its time-dilating effect was reversed, and the resulting creature moved several times faster than any other Necromorph. Isaac Clarke first met them in the ruins of the USM Valor and faced them again on the Sprawl and on Tau Volantis.

Creation and form#

Twitchers were created when the Necromorph infection took the corpses of people who had built-in Stasis Modules installed in their RIG suits, as soldiers and security personnel often did, or who had high levels of adrenaline in their bodies. The disturbing side effect of the transformation was that the Stasis Module could become fused with the resulting creature, and its effect was strangely reversed. Rather than slowing the body, the fused module accelerated it, so that a Twitcher could react and move several times faster than any other Necromorph variant. This made them very hard to hit before they reached melee range, gave them highly erratic and spastic movements, and caused their features to blur as they moved when seen close up. They made distinctive jabbering noises as they approached.

The name came from their constant twitching and spasmodic behavior. Their underlying design was that of a Slasher, with heads, legs and bodies that retained a vaguely human form, though some appeared chunkier and more muscular than ordinary Slashers, likely because infected soldiers and security personnel tended to be more heavily built than civilians. Twitchers would often bend themselves backward and walk on their human legs and their slashing blades, holding the talons protruding from their stomachs in the air. This posture protected the blades and made the creatures harder to dismember.

Variants and outbreaks#

The first Twitchers were EDF Marines of the USM Valor whose RIG suits carried Stasis units. These variants were encountered only after the Valor collided with the USG Ishimura, and in the original telling their transformation tore their armor away entirely, exposing intestines and shoulder blades that spread outward like wings. In the later account of the Ishimura outbreak they retained parts of the Advanced Soldier RIG. The same EDF strain also appeared on the Aegis VII Colony, presumably formed from colonists who carried Stasis modules.

On the Sprawl, Titan Station Security officers fitted with Stasis units mutated into Twitchers that looked much like common Slashers but moved with superior speed and strength, most of the uniform remaining intact. A rarer and more heavily mutated form, the Oracle Twitcher, was created from two members of the Oracles who had tried to abduct Lexine Murdoch for further experiments. These bore an entirely new set of bladed arms grown from muscle and bone, with the original arms locked against the chest and a swollen, reddened head bearing two glowing eyes and two mouths. On Tau Volantis, Twitchers were formed from miners of the Science Division of the Sovereign Colonies Armed Forces, men who had used adrenaline units to perform extended work shifts; when they were killed, the infection merged with the excess adrenaline in their corpses. These wore the miners' original uniforms and a shoulder-mounted flashlight that had grown into a blade, and they retained a trace of their living behavior, retreating a short distance after each strike.

A Twitcher's speed could be turned against it. An outside Stasis field overrode the reversed effect of its own fused module and brought it down to the pace of any ordinary slowed Necromorph, which made the Stasis Module the surest counter to the strain.