After the discovery of the Black Marker, EarthGov began researching the extent of its capabilities and structure. The research team, which originally featured Michael Altman, studied the Black Marker and reverse-engineered a Marker for their own use. When the Secession Wars began and the Sovereign Colonies recovered the Black Marker that Altman buried (as evidenced by logs in Dead Space 3), they too reverse-engineered copies of it. One copy, Marker 3A, was sent to Aegis VII for study, research, and experimentation. Through an accident in basic decontamination, the team discovered that the genetic code written on the Marker was the code for the Necromorph contagion. Further experiments also observed that Marker 3A emits a field or "dead space" that prevents the Necromorph DNA from initiatin