

After the recovered fragment of the Red Marker is destroyed, an assault team extracts them, and interrogates them on their ship. A Necromorph outbreak occurs on Stross’ vessel, forcing him and a group of survivors into battle. They find a shard on the planet, and bring it back on board for study, but Stross develops his dementia here, as his continued exposure to the marker causes him to hallucinate.

As is explained in the movie Dead Space: Aftermath, Stross took part in a cleanup on Aegis VII where he and a small group of CEC engineers were assigned to collecting Red Marker fragments scattered across the surface after the events of the original Dead Space. Nolan Stross was another test subject in the same project as Isaac. Since he had come into contact with the fragment and was affected by it, Stross was then held in cryogenic storage on Titan Station for research. He was later apprehended by a rescue team and interrogated. Isabel took the fragment from him and destroyed it herself. The group moved towards the ship’s reactor core to do so, but Stross could not bring himself to throw it into the core. Stross explained that the Marker fragment would have to be destroyed for the outbreak to end. He was found by Isabel Cho, whom he had been having an affair with, and taken to other survivors of the outbreak. During this he saw them as if they were infected. Shocked and distraught he fled to his cabin where he then slaughtered his baby and wife. Still in shock over his apparent failure he fled watching the Necromorph slaughter his assistant and two engineers.

With mind failing him he snuck into the medical wing to find a dead body and with this act he doomed his ship and the crew. Eventually it revealed its secrets to him and with this he began to fall into madness. Once the fragment was in his possession he began to grow more and more obsessed over it. Nolan was to wait for a team of engineers to find a fragment from the Red Marker and observe it. Nolan Stross was the highest ranking scientist amongst the crew of the USG O’Bannon and was the only one to know of the true intentions of the mission. Nolan Stross was a scientist who appeared in Dead Space: Aftermath and Dead Space 2.
