The undersea parasite out in the open.
The undersea parasite is a fluid-based parasite found within the waters of the Bermuda Triangle.
History[]
Episode 1x09 - "Requiem":
This type of parasite is by far one of the most bizarre abnormals ever encountered by the Sanctuary team. Helen Magnus believed it was something entirely new based on her theory that the parasite potentially feeds off of cranial fluid and adrenaline. It exists as a colony of clear marine-dwelling microscopic organisms that possess a hive mind. Outside of water, its' collective 'body' takes on a cylindrical shape that forms a watery looking translucent snake-worm as it moves across a flat surface.
The parasite is a waterborne pathogen. On first contact, it can enter its' victims body through physical exposure to their bare skin. It can be communicable between an infected host and another potential victim by exposure through sharing bodily fluids, such as blood.
Once the parasite has entered a host's body, it will begin to attack / feed off of the hosts' brain stem and limbic system. As the parasite prefers living at ocean depths of over 1,500 feet or more, it'll exert pressure on the brain if the host tries to rise above that depth. Whether this is just instinct or a sign of intelligence is unknown. After a certain amount of time of continual exposure to the effects of the parasite, it begins to affect the host's normal brain functions gravely; leading the victim to display increasing bouts of heightened emotions (aggression), paranoia, and psychotic behavior which will ultimately result in the host turning into a killer as the processing center of their brain is being destroyed. Infection of the parasite eventually led the merfolk population of the Bermuda Triangle to rip each other to shreds. Over 100 of these rare creatures died this way by Magnus's count, catastrophically devastating their numbers as a species. In Magnus's case, it forced her to almost kill Will Zimmerman by independent means as well as to almost kill the both of them by trying to make her scuttle the Nautilus, forcing it to travel far below it's maximum dive depth. They got lucky in that the vessel landed on the shelf edge of the trench just at about crush depth. Had it keep descending further, it would have surely imploded and caused their demise.
Death appears to be to the only way to forcefully remove the parasite from the host's body. Attempts to try to evacuate the parasite from a living host's body by making it chemically inhospitable does not work as the parasite is too resilient and overcomes it. In order to save Magnus, Will was forced to asphyxiate her by carbon dioxide intoxication / hypoxia. The parasite exited from Magnus's lifeless body en masse via her left ear; freely flowing out of her onto the floor, forming a puddle shortly before taking shape and slithering off in search of its next victim. Before it could try to infect Will, he quickly froze the parasite with a supply of on-board liquid nitrogen. Magnus was then successfully revived moments later. |
Notes[]
- It is unknown if the freezing of the parasite killed it or just simply temporarily immobilized it for the time being. Based on the parasite being found in warm tropical waters, the sudden cold temperature change (transforming it from a liquid state to a completely solid state) may have potentially killed it.
- Helen Magnus was able to fully recover from this incident based on a brain scan taken around a year later. The scan showed no signs of deterioration to any of her brain structures.[1]