Chapter Text
There was nothing out there for a thousand miles, nothing but stars and rocks and specks of dust. The journey would take four years, give or take. A long time to be awake in the expanse. It made his stomach twist. Something was going to go wrong in all that time, something that would undo everything they'd done. No, no. No spiral. Not now. Thank god he had every movie ever made, right? There was nothing but time to kill.
Well. There were also repairs.
Ryland Grace took his feet off the front console of the Hail Mary, releasing the buckle of the seatbelt to float aimlessly up and out of his chair. His enjoyment of his morning pouch of coffee was only slightly dampened by how little of it there was left. Rocky had assured him that the Eridians would be able to synthesize caffeine for him, "is a simple arrangement of chemicals" were his exact words, but he had a feeling that whatever they made would be somewhat similar to the kind of caffeine pills he had taken in college. Sharp and right to the point. It just wasn't the same as his beloved beans, which were roasted to the point of being super dead while back on Earth and would simply not take for regrowth, no matter how much soil he managed to fertilize with his own poop. (Yeah, realizing he'd have to grow the Hail Mary's sample veggies in soil he helped 'season' was a fun little surprise. He almost wished he hadn't researched it.) It was worth it, giving up small comforts from home to save Rocky and his people, but that didn't mean he wouldn't miss them.
It also didn't help his impending sense of doom that Erid felt like it was getting farther away, not closer. Relativity was a fickle mistress and she kept her own rules.
The shimmying had started after a few weeks of slow building acceleration from the spin drives- one of the replacement fuel tanks Rocky had crafted, one of the ones that wasn't xenonite, was rattling against its screws. Resolving the problem would be a simple matter of epoxying connector braces to the struts, something made with the fresh supplies they'd taken from the Blip-A, but it meant bringing the Hail Mary to a full stop. And THAT meant the time dilation would have to be restarted, and arrival to Erid would take even longer than originally planned. Four years might be five now, a mathematical calculation that he was, for once, avoiding. He would definitely be rationing out the last of the coma slurry by the time they got to the Eridian home system, or eating some flippin' taumobea cereal. If he could figure out how to make that work. Rocky seemed confidant in his biology skills, and Grace at least felt confidant in the quality of his lab equipment. He had nothing but time.
It took the ship the same amount of time to accelerate and decelerate. Really, they were lucky the shimmy had started so soon, if they had been a year into the trip it would have taken just as long to bring themselves back to a full stop. Of course it would be nice to just hit the breaks, throw the spin drives into reverse and pull the whole thing up, but unfortunately that would turn him into a liquid. He liked being a solid, so slow and steady it would be. He and Rocky had Space Catan- which they had created themselves with magnetically movable pieces and which they were getting quite good at- and he had an ever decreasing supply of coffee.
Focus on the positives, Ryland. The ship was finally accelerating so slowly that there wasn't enough thrust for gravity without engaging the centrifuge. He was a pro spacewalker, especially in zero-g as god intended. Rocky had scrapped every bit of xenon resin from the Blip-A and mixing that sucker up would be a piece of cake. I'd like to have a piece of cake. His thoughts were drifting. No cake in the ol tin can on the one way voyage. Thanks Stratt.
"Ready to try repairs, or want to lose more times at Catan first question?" The top of Rocky's carapace poked into his bulb in the control room, and Grace rolled his eyes at it.
"That's a bold claim from someone who literally learned how to play from me."
"Grace not teach Rocky how to play Space Catan. Grace teach Rocky how to play Earth Catan. Stupid game, pieces do not make sense. Rocky much better than Grace at Space Catan."
"That's just because you don't have wheat on Erid."
"Have rocks on Erid and still Grace lose."
"Don't you have some- glue to be mixing or something?" Grace grinned at the familiar chirping laugh, turning away so he could use the console to get readings on the area of space where they'd stopped. It was supposed to be dead air, and it was. Generally empty, for a thousand miles or so. There were a few small asteroids, but nothing that wouldn't get vaporized if it crossed the lines of Hail Mary's engines. Not much light out here either, not compared to being the distance from Tau Ceti they'd been a month ago. The cameras weren't picking up much, and a quick stop by the domed window yesterday confirmed nothing but the epic void of space and the looming shadows from the few external lights. Maybe not the as comforting for EVA work as having the pleasing light of nearby stars, but it would do.
Satisfied by the continued scans, Grace pushed off from the mended control room chair and floated down into the lab. Rocky skittered along in his tunnel, joining him by the model of the fuel tanks he'd built during deceleration. "Right, so we're putting the glue over the outside of the strut-"
"Over screws, around outside. Wrap joint at least three times. Will take an hour to set."
"Right. So, doing the first one, then the third one- you're sure it doesn't need to be the second one after that-?"
"No. Ask many times still no. Order important for fuel mass distribution."
"Okay, okay, Geez. I'm just saying we shouldn't've named it the second if it was going to be the third-"
"Yes, yes. Put on suit. Go do task."
"Okay bossy I'm scooting I'm scooting."
While pulling on the pieces of his EVA suit, Grace found his thoughts wandering to Stratt again. It was hard not to think about her. He had trained so much for this mission without ever knowing it. Tested tools in the suit, helped design systems to allow the astronauts to do complex mechanical work while outside of the ship with huge puffy suit hands. Put on the damn suit so many times it felt as natural as breathing. That training had saved his life of course, but it was only in danger to begin with because she put him there. Being the savior of Earth with four beetles buzzing home carrying taumoeba farms somehow did not dull the edge of Eva Stratt's blade, slicing away at his autonomy with every zip of the suit. It was probably one of those trauma things, the things his old therapist had told him bent your brain into a shape that changed every thought you had afterwards. The things that rewired your chemistry. Made you jump at shadows, made you reword yourself to avoid offense. Permanent damage. A betrayal that stayed tattooed on his eyelids and the back of his throat even when he became a person who would die for others. A person who might starve on the way back to Erid.
"Grace friend okay? Have not moved in long time."
Grace jerked back to his senses, focused on the gloves, finished locking the joints of the suit into place. "Yeah buddy, sorry. Lost in thought. Ready to go."
"Not understand. Lost thinking?"
"Yeah, yeah." Grace clipped his first tether into place, double checking the positioning of the xenon resin boxes locked to his belt and the airlock pressure settings so that nothing would accidentally be blown into space. "Like, you know. Sometimes you're thinking about something really hard and you sort of… forget. That everything else exists."
"What is Grace thinking about question?" Grace punched the button on the airlock door. Pressure correct, nothing exploded out into the void.
"Oh, you know. People back home. People on my team, who helped build the Hail Mary."
He wasn't sure quite why he was avoiding telling Rocky the truth about what had happened. Rocky already thought he was a hero, no strings attached. And he was, wasn't he? After all, even with the promises and the promising look of the taumoeba, there was no real assurance he wouldn't starve. The thing is, though, one act of redemption doesn't erase an ocean of shame, and he had been adrift in it ever since he realized what he would have been willing to give up for a chance to live.
"Oh yes. Grace have many friends on Earth. Tell about." He tastefully avoided asking Grace about the dead crew, for which he was grateful. Talking about the designers wouldn't be too hard though, and it would give him something to do while he was wrapping the struts.
"Well there was Doctor Dimitri Komorov. He designed the spin drive engines. Brilliant guy, very funny. Loved to drink." He remembered genuinely laughing with Dimitri, comparing calculations, mocking Stratt's accent in Grace's toilet paper closet of an office. He remembered him sitting at the table with his eyes on Grace, not speaking up to defend him. It made sense. Every part of it made sense. The survival of the entire race was up for consideration.
"Would like to talk to him about spin drives." Rocky chimed in, breaking Grace's spiral, for which he was grateful. Man, he was embarrassingly contemplative these days. He had never been a good with people person, with just a few friends and fumbling connections with his coworkers. He got along best with the kids, who rolled their eyes at his corny jokes but genuinely looked up to him. Cared if he showed up. Probably cared that he died- no. Nah. Wrong direction. It was the lack of human company, probably, that was making him feel thin and stretched and philosophical. The lack of a cold beer with a friend, a steak on a regular weeknight at the regular spot. It had been years now, and even if he hadn't been totally alone for much time, he longed to smell another person again. Feel the brush of skin on skin. "Who else question?"
"Hmm. There was Doctor Lokken. Also brilliant, but we totally did not get along. She was kind of a witch sometimes you know?"
"Rocky not know word."
"Like, a mean lady who can zap you."
"This is a thing on Earth question?"
"I think you're missing the larger point here, which is not the fine details of witchcraft but to represent that she was mean to me." Which he might have deserved for antagonizing her.
"Why mean?"
"Oh, well." Grace clicked another tether onto the hull and moved his boxes along with him. He was always careful with the tethers, even now after months of practice. Not having two on the handholds was not an option. "She disagreed with me on the Panspermia theory of seeding life. She believed humans and astrophage evolved unrelated, and I argued that they didn't." He also called her some choice names.
"She was wrong." Rocky said, matter of fact. "We now have evidence of common ancestor. Adrian lifeforms also share common ancestor."
"For sure, and I would looove to rub that in her face except for that she will probably, unfortunately, be super dead if I ever make it back to Earth. She was already in her sixties."
"What she design?" Rocky asked quickly. He did not like to talk about human's short lifespans, it added to an ongoing anxiety he seemed to harbor about Grace's fragility.
"The centrifuge system." Mixing resins in space was a weird task, but he had sort of gotten the hang of it, especially using Rocky's xenonite tools. It was like trying to knead rubber in zero g with no hands. As soon as the two resins were thoroughly combined they would become briefly pliant, able to be rolled into shapes or wrapped around struts to create support, like he was now doing. He wouldn't have that pliability for long before it would lock up into a substance he couldn't get through with a diamond bit, so he needed to work quickly. An hour. "Which, honestly, is an amazing system."
"Yes! Amaze! Make all the science equipment much easier to use. Design is very good even if she is wrong about species evolution theory."
"Design is very good, yeah." Finishing the first ball of goo, Grace used the tongs to wrap it around the strut and press it into every place the metal plate was floating even slightly away from the bolt. It wasn't a bad tank, mind you. Nothing Rocky made was bad- he just should have tightened it down better before leaving to begin with, since he was the one who could go into space. Now his lack of focus had cost them the month of slowdown and another to speed back up. Carl used to call it- what was it? User operator error. Good car, bad driver.
You're the savior of the known worlds, Ryland. You're not a bad driver. The reminder helped fight off the shame. Dr Wickland would have been proud.
"Does Grace miss having Earth friends question? Rocky misses Eridians. Had many friends also."
Pushing off the hull, Grace floated to the opposite side strut and attached another tether.
"Yeah. I mean. I do miss people from Earth. But I sort of think it's more that I just miss- humans, you know? Earth is so full of life. Billions of little stories. I miss teaching my kids, talking to them about their little dramas and getting them as excited about science as I am. I don't miss a specific person or- specific people.”
"Understand. Miss Eridians greatly. Comfort in the like."
"Similarity. Yeah. I don't like- regret anything." Well. Not true. He regretted not saying yes with dignity and walking himself aboard the Mary. He regretted the way he'd cried like a baby while being pressed into the grass, so terrified he nearly pissed himself. He regretted the existence of the pedestal he had assumed he deserved to place himself on, the heroic self image his amnesia had given him until the cruel reality seeped into his memories. But he didn't regret making the choice to go back for Rocky. It was bigger than him, and he finally understood that. "I'd do it all again."
"Grace very good human. Best of humans. Earth designers very proud."
Grace snorted as he wrapped the second- third- strut and locked it into place before feeding himself more line to float down to the third- second- one. "I guess. Stratt would probably say she always knew I could do it." Stratt. Now there was a witch if there ever was one. He hated himself for missing even her.
"Stratt correct. Grace is very brave."
"Okay, jeez, you're gonna make my head so big it won't fit in the helmet anymore." Grace was smiling despite his urge towards melancholy, despite the guilt swirling in his stomach. He busied himself mixing the fluids for the next batch of wrapping.
"Not possible!" Rocky sounded suddenly worried. "Pressure very good seal, double checked. No holes. Head will not expand."
"Earth expression bud."
"Stupid expression."
They floated there in comfortable silence for a few minutes as the final strut was fixed into place. How frustrating, to slow down the ship for a month and add delay to the saving of an entire world just to do a basic task that an hour or so of labor would accomplish. Thus was the way of science though. It was the simplest things that could most royally screw you if you didn't pay attention.
He really wished he was better at paying attention.
It happened when he wasn't looking at all, focused on getting that last coil of xenonite around the base of the fuel tank's connection point- but the burst of radio static followed by the sound of Rocky's terrified chirping was unmistakable. The entire Mary lurched, Grace clinging onto one of the ship's handholds to keep from losing his hold and tumbling backwards to the length of his rope.
"Grace! Grace!! Much noise in console!" Even through the radio Grace could hear alarms beeping and whistling in sudden protest, the ship itself groaning at a rapid change in- gravity??
Something was pulling on the ship- heck, something was pulling on him. It was suddenly hard to hold on as some unknown force tugged the entire rig forward. Looking around wildly, Grace felt his stomach drop in shock. Inky blackness spread out in front of him as far as he could see, void of any of the points of light he had been previously using to navigate. The stars? Were the stars- gone?? Without realizing it, his fingers on the handhold were becoming looser as he stared at the emptiness with a slack jaw. It was impossible. It was happening, it was-
"Grace!!!" Oh fudge- his fingers came loose and he fell (fell!!) off the side of the ship. It didn't really feel like falling, more like floating in a defined direction. How he imagined a feather might feel, drifting slowly towards the ground. Whatever this force, it wasn't remotely the pull of something like Earth or Tau Ceti. With no small effort Grace managed to tangle the thick, ungainly gloves into the nylon tether lines and catch himself before he got too far from the ship. Which shouldn't be a problem, because the ship is also falling. Oh god. The Hail Mary is falling.
"I'm okay!" His helmet radio was crackling with static again, interference as if crossing with dozens of signals, but he could still hear Rocky shouting back to him. "I'm okay! I'm caught, I'm gonna climb back up to the airlock okay?"
"Careful! But hurry! Ship is moving without engine- speed is 1.09 m/s2!"
Which sounded a lot like gravity. Really, really weak gravity. After sustaining the kind of g-forces Adrian was throwing out during the fishing mission, 1.09 was like, a ninth of what they'd have with the centrifuge. Didn't matter. Any force applied in space was enough to generate movement and would travel forever. If they were falling, they were falling towards something. Grace's muscles strained as he pulled the weight of his entire body- and the freaking EVA suit- up the handholds in the tether until his fingers wrapped around the handhold of the Hail Mary's hull. Pulling his way up the side of the ship until he could get his feet into handholds too, he clung to the side of the vessel for dear life. It was true what they said. Didn't know what you had until you lost it.
"I'm on the hull." He gasped over the radio, dragging himself up and over. It wasn't terrible but he just couldn't keep up as easily after a few months without practice. Rocky chirped with worry.
"Scanners are picking up big object. No objects before. Big big big object right in front of us." The worry came through in those high notes, pinched at the end.
"Makes sense" Grace huffed as he pulled himself up and onto the airlock, which was thankfully pointed 'up' now. "That's what's pulling us in- oh jeebus, thank you." Cresting the top of the Hail Mary, stars were visible on the other side. They had not disappeared, not had some sort of Star Trek shadow blanket tossed over them, not been flushed out through some portal. There was just some huge freaking object that had - what?? appeared somehow right in the path of the ship?? It felt equally ludicrous, but as he hit the button to drop himself back into the ship no other explanation was presenting itself.
Rocky was waiting in the tunnel just on the other side, claws clicking with worry as he depressurized the airlock and started taking off his suit. "Do you have any idea what we're coming up on??"
"Not detecting as blip-e. Bigger than blip-e. Very big. Computer does not understand it."
"Well, we need to get away from it. Enough force to counteract this gravity- if we stay on this course we're going to crash into it." His mind was whirring with options as he ran through the halls for the control room. Everything was a mess, none of their projects were any more locked down than they had been in zero-g, and now everything was all over the floor. Slip stumbling, he pulled himself into Mary's cockpit, strapping into the pilot's chair with the usual chirpy pilot detected! recording playing.
"I can't see anything." He muttered, looking out the huge bay window.
"Can not hear anything." Rocky agreed, pacing back and forth, his little feet clattering on the walls. "Space too far. Can only feel gravity."
"S'not enough light out here. Turn on your sensor plate, I'll see if I can pick it up on the scope." Grace took control of the directional engines, which thankfully emitted plenty of force against the pull of this unknown- astroid? heavenly body? something huge- thing, to allow them full range of motion. He rotated then ship end over end, chair pivoting to compensate and Rocky turning over in his tunnel. Even just a flare from Mary's engines should be enough to wash this thing in IR light, and then he could use the Petrova scope to get an idea of whatever bounced back. Maybe he could even put on some of the floodlights at the back of the ship, see if he could shine them far enough to get any look at the giant space rock. What was it orbiting? If it was traveling fast enough to appear so suddenly, how had it not shot past the ship and tossed them out of it's pull already?
"What you see?" Rocky asked worriedly, attuning his crystals to pick up the sonic vibrations of the electricity on Grace's screens. Grace tapped the buttons to cut off the engines, allowing the use of the Petrova scope again.
"Give me a minute, it's almost- it's- what the…" it was… a planet? No. Not a planet, but large enough at this distance that it might as well be, the IR light reflecting off the huge flat surface expanding quickly in front of them. No atmosphere to speak of, nothing bouncing off the kind of gasses that might be visible if there had been. It was a vast expanse of- something? Something that was rippling and moving, sending back inconsistent light. "Rock, buddy, I don't know what this thing is but we need to get away from it right now."
"Escape forces will damage xenonite before sets. Fuel tank will separate again. Harder to repair. Set properly in one hour."
"I do not wanna wait an hour here. I don't know what the hell that is, but it's moving and we're in space."
"Sound like liquid." Rocky touched the surface of his sensor screen with one claw, feeling the ripples of the image created by the reflected light. "Move like liquid."
"Liquid can't stay together without an atmosphere. Not possible." He was running math, flipping switches to turn off the scope and prime the engines. They were gonna do a hard burn to get out of here, hard enough that it would make a lot of work for him later when he had to redo those struts. He had full faith in the ship, and even more in the engineers who designed her- even if they had sent him to his death, they had done it with every advantage they could possibly give him. Right now he needed to use those advantages to get away from the strangest thing he'd ever found in space- and he had found a lot of strange things. This was beyond strange. It was an anomaly.
"Engines firing up and 3… 2… 1…go!" The ship lurched, pulled, and snapped away from the grasping tug of the anomaly. The engines roared, producing heat on a scale probably never before experienced by this part of space. He flipped a few switches to shine the hull lights down below.
God, the surface was so close, so much closer than it should have been. It was terrifying. If he had been farther from the control room, if it had taken them longer to see the approaching void and taken them longer to react to it, they would have crashed right into that surface. "What am I… seeing??" He muttered, looking at the screen that showed the rear cameras.
"Not hear anything. Liquid surface so big." And it was- a huge expanse of- what the fudge was that? Some sort of oil, red as blood in the spotlights and churning as the IR light from the spin drives boiled it to a churning mist. It was grotesque. The bubbling, frothing, chunky surface seemed almost to scream at the retreating Mary, though of course it had no voice and sound couldn't carry across that distance anyway. Grace shook himself, focused on getting the heck out of there.
Both of them felt the wrenching as the half-set fuel tank pulled awkwardly at it's bond, rattling and stretching the new connections to form ropes of xenonite that would harden into super steel without actually helping the tanks stay in place. "Fudge fudge fudge…" Grace whispered to himself as he held the stick steady, tried to keep from making too many erratic maneuvers- more erratic- and shaking loose the entire tank.
"Rocky, start orbital calculations. We can't head away from here until I get another go at that tank." But it was a relief, at least, to reach a distance from the source of gravity that they were floating again. If only there was light out here, it would be so much more useful than circling the anomaly, watching the stars disappear against one edge and reappear against another. "I'll run some surface scans. Surely we can get something on the spectrometer."
Whatever it was, and Grace could feel his heart beating in his throat even as his mind raced to consider the possibilities of what a thing like this could be, it had not moved in with any kind of momentum. This was impossible, of course, but nothing in the last twenty minutes felt like it fit well within the realm of possible. The object- planet- moon maybe- had simply appeared from thin not-air. It was spinning very slightly on its axis, the computer showed that much at least as Mary continued to pull calculations from the data it was rapidly collecting, but it was not moving otherwise. Where had it come from? How could an entire moon arrive from nowhere and have no momentum? Everything in space moved, everything. Even if this had been flung from the orbit of some planet a hundred thousand miles away it would still be moving at the speed of that fling. It would not be floating, bubbling, boiling-
And what in the heck was that liquid? A thick, viscous oil or resin might have enough surface tension to hold together on a rock with no atmosphere and weak gravity, but oil or resin wouldn't boil like that, turn to mist from the heat of the engines. And the COLOR, why was it so horrifically red? Maybe it was a trick of his lights, and the iron-rich deposits would actually be beautiful if properly lit by a sun. It must be iron. That must be causing the color, though the spectrometer was still working its magic.
"Orbit stable. For now." Rocky interrupted his considerations, as he nodded and made sure to adjust the vectors to keep them moving in just the same way. "We should not stay in orbit. Move away, back into full space. Make repairs there."
"Just worried about the damage." Grace rubbed the back of his head ruefully. "You're probably right."
"Am right. Thing not natural. Why not move?"
"Why not move indeed…" the scientist muttered back, floating free of his chair and going to the window. The ship was far enough away from the surface now that the lights did very little, their photons scattering wildly into space instead of traveling directly to the roiling surface. Yet as he squinted, he almost felt like he could make out a few tiny pinpricks of light in the black. Just a few. Maybe it was something burning down there from the heat of the engines. Maybe it was his eyes playing tricks on him. It made him feel queasy. "I should go back out there. Maybe I can reset the xenonite before it gets too hard."
"Probably too late." Rocky skitters over to get a better look- hear- at the screens with the spectrometer readout. "What is made of question?"
"Still trying to get a good lock on that. Spectrometer's been acting up since Adrian." They were starting to get size calculations though, data from the scanners taking in what visible light it could from the stars and using it to judge the distances. "It's really huge, dude, it's like the size of a moon. It is, pretty much what I would consider a moon. Except, it doesn't meet any of the definitions of a moon including it orbiting something-"
The radio crackled and both of them fell silent, fixed on it. Their intercom between each other was turned off, but they kept the one in the console on. They were still way too far from Erid to be picking up any kind of signal, and yet- they were picking up something. Could it be from the anomaly? What else could be sending a radio signal, besides a species that understood radio?
"sssshhh…. sssssssssshhhhhh" the radio continue to fizzle static. Grace felt a tiny bubble of near hysteria rising in his chest, pushing at the base of his throat, threatening to upend his ramen. Nothing happening made sense right now. It felt like the laws of the universe had been tossed in a pickle jar and shaken up for punishment purposes. On some sort of gut instinct, he leaned forward and pressed the comm button.
"This is Doctor Captain Ryland Grace of the Hail Mary…" he said, slowly, not sure who he could possibly be speaking to. There was no life on this strange moon. "If…"
"Open to all channels Grace friend." Rocky urged, float pacing back and forth in his bulb. Grace nodded, widening the range of channels which the Mary could get- and give- information from.
"If there's anyone there… anything there…" but even with Rocky's reassurance he couldn't bring himself to say anything. It was probably just a burst of random static.
The radio crackled to life again- and started screaming.
Simon was going to die here, knee deep in blood, watching the only person who had even bothered to ask his name be crushed in the jaws of a talking monster he still could not comprehend. Oh Father, Father, let this be over. He begged silently as he white knuckle gripped the edge of the light box that showed the photographs. Mom, if you can hear me mom, please. I just want to live. I just want this to be over.
Those two things no longer felt particularly compatible, as different as trying to jam together the philosophical perspectives of Eden and the Consolidation. Ava was screaming about the black box, and he understood her desperation. Understood how it felt to want something so badly, with every part of your soul, and watch that hope get ripped up in front of your eyes. He should save the box. He knew it was better for everyone, better if he closed his ears to the soothing whispers of his hallucinations, better if his screaming flesh were sacrificed finally, fully, as had been intended from the moment he was welded into the Iron Lung. But he did not want to swim down into that blood and fight the box free.
As if what he wanted had ever mattered.
"Please Simon! Please tell me you have it!" she screamed again, the voice that had tormented him for hours now shredded like claws into his soul. She was going to die down here, forgotten just like him, just for the chance to get that information to someone who could use it. Fuck the monster. Fuck the COI. Fuck his brothers, who left him to behind to die in this bloody coffin. It's bigger than us, his mind whispered. Please, please let me go, his mind whispered. Please, I've been through hell.
This was hell. Hell was the depths of the boiling blood. Hell was watching impossible vines pushing their way through the solid metal, twisting around the buttons and gears, taking away control of the one thing left he thought was still his, the buttons on his dashboard. "I've got it." He whispered to himself, wondering if somehow she could hear him before she vaporized from the loss of pressure. I promise. I won't give it to the light. The hungry light, whispering, begging for him to come closer. Screaming with the voice of ten billion dead humans, sharpened into a knife and digging into his bleeding mind.
But- if he did this, he would die. Somehow it stunned him into lack of motion, even now as the liquid blood was pouring in rivulets down the inner sides of his ship.
"Simon you have to go, now! What are you waiting for?" Ava screamed at him again.
"What… are you talking about?" His voice sounded alien to his own ears, sounded like it was coming from a thousand miles away, filtered through the blood. His tongue felt thick and fuzzy. "We had a deal… you were supposed to get me out of here…"
Give us what you stole from our ship. The voice in his mind was far louder than the voice in the speaker, talons pinning him in place, keeping him motionless. Simon knew better than to be still. To stop moving was to accept death. Even now, his body begged him to get up while his mind reeled.
"Not everyone gets to live!" Ava shrieked, and he knew she meant herself this time. "It's worth it! This is bigger than us!"
He couldn't believe it it. She would die, and with her the only chain that could have reattached his ship to anything that could pull it free of the depths. She would die, and so would any possibility of his innocence coming to the light. His freedom. He was losing his mind. His skin was bubbling. It was hot, so hot, steam was wafting from the floor. It smelled like horrible, horrible iron. It smelled like it was poisoning the tiny ration of air he had left.
But I want to live. His mind whispered, tuning out the screaming. Ignoring the monster. Ignoring the CO2 poisoning him, just one more of many things. The smell and heat were becoming unbearable. Every time he thought it couldn't get worse, it did. The steam stank, made him wheeze and choke. The blood pouring down the walls was bubbling, the heat causing it to cake into a hard black residue while the vapor whistled around the space. Simon roughly pulled what scraps fabric he could from his shirt up over his nose and mouth, struggled to take back the controls from the encroaching growths and still go somewhere. Go anywhere. Away from Ava and the monster. God, Ava was still screaming, he could hear her screaming and screaming and-
Simon paused, looking towards the speaker with watering eyes. That isn't Ava screaming. That's- that's- it. The creature. He pushed himself off the control panel hard, stumbling towards the back to slam his fist against the capture button. The flash of light illuminated the growths, the blood pooling through the grate, the metal warping and bubbling from the heat- the heat- he was going to die. He was going to be cooked inside of this tank like some old world food. Yet he could see Ava's sub again, floating on its' side. It didn't look punctured. Had it… released her? Where was it?
Pain. Humans and their pain! The monster was screaming in his head again and he dropped to his knees, covering his ears. Every part of him that had a sense was screaming too, nothing in this world was good. Why did he want to live when there was nothing worth living for? His skin bubbled in agony, his eardrums bled from the shrieking, there was blood in his mouth, in his eyes, the stench of it in his nose so horrible he would vomit if he'd eaten anything in days. Doubled over, Simon choked and coughed anyway. Always taking, always taking! Stealing from us, as if you were us, as if you were equal to us- hurting us! HURTING US! Give us what you stole!
The sub began to lurch and rumble. Simon clung to the seat with his arms, unable to pull himself off the floor as the entire thing spun and shook. It was going to implode. It was going to burst. It was going to cook him until his eyeballs popped and fell out. Something was popping now, it was-
-it was his ears. He was rising, fast. The sub was rising. Not smooth and controlled like the descent had been, but bubbling and shaking. Gas bubbles, he thought bleakly of Ava's warning. Ava who was probably being cooked right now too. There's no true bottom, just coagulated blood and gas bubbles. The sub was being shoved higher, the force of some kind of explosive change thrusting him upwards and upwards. If he thought it would get cooler near the surface where there was no air for anyone, he had been lying to himself. The blood ocean was boiling, reaching temperatures he couldn't have imagined in his worst nightmares. If he vaporized in this thing well- that would be alright. At least he wouldn't be in pain anymore.
The screaming. It was going on and on and on- even as his radio crackled wildly. Maybe David could hear it on the radio, the voices screaming. His. Hers. Theirs. The monster was in agony, he was sure of it, though he didn't know how other than feeling some vast connectedness to it. As if because he had seen the light with his eyes, felt it ripple through him as he approached the SM-8 and fill him with hunger, he was a part of it now. An eye the creature had lost. A hand. A knife. A butcher. He thrashed wildly on the floor, feeling the ocean churn around him. The depth gauge might have been able to tell him where he was, but it had flooded with blood and showed no sign of anything. He didn't have the capacity to read it anyway.
Kill me Father. He begged, crying blood, rolling on the floor. Please just fucking kill me. Use me as soil. Use me. Just don't make me endure anymore. I've had enough. I've had enough.
When the ship stopped he barely felt it. It must have broken the surface, the whole thing moved in uneven shaky ripples like the churned up surface of the ocean. It was still so, so hot. He still wasn't dead. The screaming sounded strange in his ears now, and he realized with some dazed bemusement that he was the one screaming, his raw voice echoing around the ship with the hissing of the steam and the popping of rivets as the whole thing started to warp. Bend. Melt. The surface was hotter than the depths had been. The radio was going haywire, he could hear disjoined voices. The Consolidation trying to find Ava, trying to find out what had happened to make the ocean churn. Maybe she had risen to the surface too. They would rescue someone as valuable as her.
The monster's voice had ceased, a silence that must have been brought on by distance, though he still felt a thread of connection from his mind to its simmering, hateful thoughts. Simon rolled onto his side and curled up in the fetal position, rocking gently, waiting for it to pass. Waiting to die. The metal was burning him. He stopped screaming. His voice simply couldn't go on any longer.
"Shshshhhhh… hello??? Hello??" There was a voice coming through the radio, crackling and broken, garbled by the blood in the speaker. "Oh god is there anyone there? We heard you screaming-"
"Trapped down here too?" Simon managed to choke. When he managed to lift himself enough to look around he could see chunks of black viscera clinging to the floor, the walls. Hell was a place where the blood boiled into burnt and twisted proteins. A place where things refused to end.
"Oh my god- hello??" It was a man's voice. Simon wanted to ignore it. If he ignored it he could die in peace.
I don't want to die. That voice in the back of his mind reminded him. Fuck. Fuck. That was the part of him he wished the monster had bitten free and swallowed. He just didn't want to do it anymore. Dying here would be a fitting end, all the souls of the people dead because of him finally at rest because he wasn't around anymore. But I don't want to die.
"Yes David…" he wheezed, dragging himself closer to the speaker. "I'm… fucking here. Still fucking… alive." He coughed and retched, propping himself up against the bloody wall for support until he hissed and pulled away from the burning metal. Maybe after this he would be too damaged to feel pain anymore. Could you still feel pain when you died?
"Oh- oh god- you're alive down there- there's someone alive down there!" The voice came through sharp and squeaky, not cool and angry like David. Well, maybe he was excited.
"Yeah… bet you thought you'd seen the last of me…"
"Where are you?? I'll get you- Rocky oh my god-" some sharp musical notes played on the the speaker, and Simon let his head loll back onto the grate. Not his problem anymore. Not his problem.
"I'm right where you… fuckin left me…. right on the surface. We had a deal…"
"On the surface???"
"We had a deal…" he muttered one more time, as the darkness started to take him. Warmth bloomed in his chest, a whole other kind of warmth from being cooked alive. A comfortable, numbing warmth that gave him just the slightest relief from the pain. Like there was something living in his ribcage, placing healing hands on his bruised and broken insides.
We have a deal. The thing in his mind whispered back. The thing that is not him. The last thing he hears is the radio crackling and David shouting more questions. He sounded so desperate. Well… good. With the data from the SM-8, maybe he was valuable enough to save after all.