Chapter Text
“Grace Simon see anything, question?” Rocky asks, fidgeting.
“Still nothing, bud.” Grace says, trying his best to stay calm. This was their best bet, and it doesn’t seem like it’s turning out to be a winning hand.
“I’m going to fly us back around. Maybe our trajectory was off and we missed it.” Simon says as he heads back to the pilot’s seat. Grace buckles in too, but he’s not feeling super hopeful. Simon loops them back around, but no ‘whatever a wormhole looks like’ manifests outside the ship.
“Simon. Monster changes what eyes hear, question?” Rocky chirps.
“Yeah.”
Rocky is quiet for a moment.
“If monster not want Grace Rocky Simon to leave, could just make humans not able to hear way out.”
A silence falls over the group.
“Then we sweep the area until we hit it.” Simon suggests, grip tightening on the controls.
“Have extra fuel, but not that much extra fuel. Area too big!” Rocky chirps.
“Well how the fuck else are we supposed to find this wormhole?” Simon growls.
“Wormhole is only hypothesis. Might not exist.” Rocky points out. “Grace Rocky Simon have unlimited time. Hail Mary does not have unlimited fuel.”
Grace, who has been silently thinking over this discussion, sits forward with enough force to tilt his flight chair as he claps his hands together.
“The fuel!” He says, suddenly enough to make Simon jump. Rocky whistles, tipping his carapace to one side.
“Astrophage uses starlight to migrate between star systems. Not only is it sensitive to starlight, but it can tell which lightsource is closest. Even if our view of the the stars is being manipulated, the astrophage will still be able to sense it.” Grace explains. Simon crosses his arms.
“Wouldn’t a cell’s ability to see be easier to manipulate than ours?” Simon asks.
“Not at all. The process by which the human eye transforms light into information we can use is complex. There are a lot of places where the signal can be hijacked and manipulated. But it isn’t like that for astrophage. It doesn’t have to think about what it does next. The eyespots are directly wired to the organ that moves it.” Grace snaps his fingers. “Besides, our spindrives are still working. They use astrophage’s attraction to the CO2 emission spectrum, so that means the astrophage can definitely still see stuff. And I’m betting if Miss Cthulhu out there could manipulate it’s ability to detect light, we would have been dead in the water the moment we got here.”
Rocky jumps up, waving his hands.
“Rocky build sensor! Use astrophage sensor to find direction light is coming from! Follow astrophage to wormhole!”
A deep, guttural groan shakes through the ship. They go still. Seems someone isn’t very happy about this discovery.
“Alright, I’ll go get the astrophage ready while Rocky builds the sensor. Simon, try to keep us within about a 10,000 kilometers of where we thought the wormhole was. I get the feeling we’ll want to make a quick exit.” Grace says as he unbuckles, and the others find no need to deliberate further.
Remaining in the pilot’s seat, Simon flips the *Thruster Burn Announcements* on. Don’t want to be throwing the others around while they’re trying to work. He keeps an eye on his readouts, gradually taking the Hail Mary into a circular path around where they hope the wormhole is. Focused as he is, he almost doesn’t notice the crackling pops in the nearby speaker.
The monster hasn’t spoken to him since he woke up in the Iron Lung. Strangely enough, the thing’s absence has been just as unnerving as it’s torment.
“So, you didn’t forget about me after all.” Simon grumbles.
“I could never forget about you, Simon.” The voice coos, making his stomach curdle. A long silence stretches between them, and the question that’s been on his mind since the monster started affecting the others burns it’s way onto his tongue.
“Why have you left me alone?”
The thing chuckles.
“Oh, so you noticed?” She says in a singsong tone. “I was wondering if you would. I’m sure the others have noticed to.” That makes Simon raise an eyebrow, though he keeps his attention on his pilot’s readout.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” He scoffs as he pushes the Hail Mary into another gradual turn.
“I didn’t make myself known to the others until they brought you aboard. I doubt it will be much longer before they put two and two together.” She says. “Once they start giving up hope, the finger pointing will start. And it will be obvious who is to blame.”
Simon feels his pulse quicken. They wouldn’t really blame him for bringing the monster’s influence onboard, would they? Memories of accusations press against his concentration, but then something else occurs to him.
“Why would you tell me that?” He asks. Rocky and Grace are far from giving up. Now he has plenty of time to pretend he’s hallucinating to prevent them from blaming him. Is that what it wants him to do? But why not just make him actually hallucinate then?
She doesn’t respond. Hopefully they’ll be out of here before he’s able to figure it out.
Down in the lab, Grace and Rocky are both working diligently to get their means of escape put together. As Rocky is putting together the detection device, Grace is measuring astrophage out into little capsules the device will use. They need to be veeeery small amounts, as to not blast the thing apart.
“How many capsules do we need?” He asks Rocky as he seals another couple nanograms of astrophage away. That makes five so far.
“As many as Grace can make.” Rocky says.
They continue to plug away at their tasks, the intercom occasionally announcing another port-side yaw burn. After carefully pulling more astrophage up into his nano-pipette, Grace realizes he doesn’t hear Rocky’s claws clicking away with his xenonite printers anymore.
“Wow, that was fast even for you, Rock.” Grace says before looking up and seeing that he’s not in the lab anymore. Around him are four blue walls, decorated with landscape paintings. In front of him is a wooden desk whose plush white chair is currently unoccupied. Looking back down at where his work was(and supposedly still is) he sees that he’s currently strapped into a wheelchair. Right. The monster wants him to think he’s been put under psychiatric hold. This must be the followup to that. Can’t wait to see what will happen on this episode of ‘Things That Didn’t Happen’.
Leaning back, Grace lowers his hands into his lap. He doesn’t want to go knocking things in the lab around by accident.
“Hey Rocky, I, uh, I might be down for the count for a bit.” Grace says to the empty room, mouth feeling dry. “Hope six capsules are enough, because I am no longer perceiving reality correctly anymore.”
Even if he can’t see or hear Rocky, he trusts that his friend can still hear him.
Behind him the door opens, and Grace resists the urge to twist in his seat to look. Stepping around the wheelchair and taking a seat at the desk is a woman in a white coat.
“Good morning, Dr. Grace. How are you feeling today.” She says. Grace turns his attention out the window. There’s a nice courtyard filled with flowering bushes and trees. He can even hear birdsong. Given that this is the only way he’s going to experience those things again, he decides to take a moment to enjoy the view instead of answering the imaginary woman.
“Do you know where you are, Dr. Grace?” She asks after a long pause.
“Yup. But you’re not going to like it.” Grace says, finding himself unable to keep quiet. Curse his sassy mouth!
“Let me guess, you believe you’re on the Hail Mary?” She asks. Grace snaps his fingers and points at her.
“Bingo!”
She nods, writing something down.
“And do you know who I am?” She asks.
“Miss Cthulhu. Though I suppose right now you’re pretending to be someone else.” Grace says.
“You can call me Dr. Elizabeth. I’m your psychiatrist.” She says, to which Grace shrugs.
“Sure you are.”
Miss Cthulhu playing the role of Dr. Elizabeth writes something down.
“You seem very present this morning Dr. Grace. How are you feeling?”
“Fit as a fiddle. You should probably just let me go at this point.”
She nods, with more writing.
“Good, good. You seem to be responding to the new medication well then.” She says before looking up at him with a warm smile. “Now, I know you hate beating around the bush, so lets talk about your understanding of what’s going on around you. You say you’re still on the Hail Mary. What do you mean by that?”
Grace scoffs, looking around in disbelief.
“Wow, are we really going to play therapist here? Why would I tell you anything?”
Dr. Cthulhu nods, hands folded over her notes.
“I understand that you don’t trust me and the staff. You believe us to be servants to some sort of monster you encountered in space.”
“Sure, that’s an approximately correct version of what’s going on. Though you already know that.” Grace says, crossing his arms. She thinks for a moment.
“Is there anything I can do to prove to you that I have your best intentions at heart?” She asks. Grace shakes his head.
“Nope. Nothing. I’ve made up my mind about what’s real. I’m sure Stratt told you how stubborn I can be.” He says before quickly adding. “Not that you actually talked to Stratt, of course.”
The woman is quiet again, and Grace looks back out the window.
“Ok. Lets say you’re right. You’re back on the Hail Mary right now, and I’m a space monster. Talking about things would still be good for you though, wouldn’t it? You’ve been through a lot.” She suggests, which draws a curious gaze from Grace. That seems like an awful idea, but a different idea makes him pause to consider it. Given that the creature can’t literally read their minds, beyond pulling from their memories, he knows it’s not all powerful. There’s a chance that if it’s focused on him, it won’t have the bandwidth to bother the others. Rocky has to finish that detector, or their goose is cooked.
“Guess it wouldn’t hurt.” Grace says, steeling himself for whatever the monster has planned. She smiles sweetly.
“I’m glad you agree.” She says, picking up her pen again and pressing it’s waiting ink into the paper. “So, you believe you’re still on the Hail Mary. Where is your ship heading?”
“Erid. It’ll take us a few years to get there.”
She notes something down.
“So you believe that you went back to rescue the Eridian, and are going to his homeworld. Do you plan to return to Earth once he’s back home safe and sound?”
“Nope. It’s a one way trip. I’ll spend the rest of my life on Erid.”
“You don’t think they would refuel the Hail Mary and send you home?”
That gives Grace pause. He… Hadn’t really considered that.
“If I may, Dr. Grace, it almost seems like you don’t want to come back to Earth.”
Grace shrugs.
“Yeah, well, why would I? Even in my hallucinations I don’t have any friends here.” Grace huffs, resisting the urge to gesture around himself.
“Well, you have been very sick, Dr. Grace.” Dr. Elizabeth says with a sympathetic look that forces his gaze down to the ground. “It’s stopping you from living your life. The life that you’ve earned.”
There’s a long silence. Grace squeezes his eyes shut, trying to keep himself centered. Grounded. But it’s hard. The illusion is convincing, and he feels his subconscious starting to accept his surroundings as the monster keeps feeding him sensory information that says You’re On Earth! to a brain that is hardwired to recognize that kind of input.
“Dr. Grace, can we talk about what happened after the Taumeba leak?” She asks. Grace opens his eyes, staring at his folded hands, dread welling in his chest. He knows where this is going. He wants to tell her no. To send him back to his room or wherever they’re keeping him. But in the interest of possibly distracting her from the others, he presses on.
“What do you want to know?” Grace says, voice cold.
“I can’t imagine how hard that must have been for you. You and the Eridian were close.” She says, giving a pause for him to respond, but Grace didn’t hear a question so he isn’t giving an answer. “Anyone would understand having regrets, but no one would blame you for choosing Ear-”
“I didn’t! I wouldn’t have! I wouldn’t have just let Rocky die! Let all of Erid die!” Grace finds himself saying, hands clenching as he glares at her.
“You didn’t let Erid die, Dr. Grace. Don’t you remember reprogramming the beetles to go to Erid?” She says with a hint of pity in her voice. “Eridani has returned to full luminosity. You saved both stars”
Grace shakes his head.
“No, no way. I wouldn’t have left Rocky to die!”
“I know you miss him, Dr. Grace, but Rocky wouldn’t have wanted you to die on Erid to save him.”
Grace presses his face into his hands. It’s not true. He knows it isn’t true. He wouldn’t have been a coward this time. He did the right thing, he went back for Rocky. For his best friend. Even if he could reprogram the beetles to go to Erid, he wouldn’t have let Rocky die thinking he failed. He shakes his head, tears pricking in the corners of his eyes, their movements governed by gravity.
“No! NO! Shut up!” Grace shouts, trying to shake away the specter of his past self. The coward who would have gone back to Earth. “This isn’t real! I didn’t go back to Earth!”
Dr. Elizabeth takes a deep breath, making a few more notes before setting her pen down.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Grace. But you are on Earth now.” She stands, walking behind him. He hears the breaks of his wheelchair click as she starts to push him towards the door. “Maybe we should take a break, get some fresh air.”
Grace watches his surroundings, looking for glitches in the matrix that will confirm that he’s hallucinating, but finds nothing. Just the halls of what appears to be a fairly well funded psychiatric hospital. Doubt starts to plant itself in his mind as Dr. Elizabeth hands him off to a friendly aid named Susan, who takes him to the garden.
The dreams about Erid never went on this long. But this one just keeps going. After being rolled around the garden, Susan takes him back to his room. It’s obviously a hospital room, but it’s been outfitted with the creature comforts of an extended stay. His quilt from Hail Mary is set out on his bed, which Susan ushers him into. Whatever they’re giving him is apparently affecting his ability to walk. Though that’s probably because he’s actually in zero Gs. A clever way to hide what she can’t change. Susan gives him food that he refuses to eat.
Looking at his bed-stand, he sees the xenonite figures of him and Rocky. For a moment, he lifts his hand to reach for them, but then reminds himself why he hasn’t been moving his hands much and stops. Susan bids him goodnight, and he closes his eyes, hoping he’ll wake up back in the lab.
Grace chokes out a sob as he wakes up right back where he fell asleep.
꒷꒦︶꒷꒦︶ ๋ ─ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─ ๋︶꒦꒷︶꒷꒦
Thankfully, designing an astrophage light detector isn’t an incredibly complex task. Rocky just needs to make an injection chamber lined with sensors made from xenonite-20 that will indicate the angle the microbes moved from their source. They already have all the pieces it will need. All he has to do is fit them together. They’ll have to be in eva to use it. If they use it inside, they’ll just get the direction to the nearest window, something they can figure out well enough on their own. Rocky figures the task will be up to either Grace or Simon, as he has yet to garner any eva experience himself, so he designs the thing to be easy for them to hold.
“Hey Rocky, I, uh, I might be down for the count for a bit.” Grace speaks up from his side of the barrier. Rocky’s attention shifts sharply over to the human, who is sitting back in his chair, astrophage tube and nano-pipette still in his trembling hands.
“Hope six capsules are enough, because I am no longer perceiving reality correctly anymore.”
“Grace still hear Rocky, question?” Rocky asks, to which he gets no response. It’s ok. Six capsules should be enough to find the right heading. But that’s only if he can finish the detector. Grace starts talking to no one(worse than no on, Rocky supposes), but Rocky tunes out what he’s saying to focus on his work. Eridians, being used to working in close proximity to each other and with a 360 degree scope of senses, are very good at tuning information out. It hard though, his periphery hearing detecting the distress in Grace’s voice.
But if he wants to save Grace, he has to focus. Progress feels agonizingly slow, but piece by piece the detector clicks together. Rocky can do this. Rocky fix.
“Are you two alright?” Simon’s voice comes over the intercom, and Rocky huffs out a curse as it pulls his attention away from his work and back into the lab at large. He can’t help but take a quick listen to Grace, and immediately wishes he didn’t. The man is hunched in his chair, shaking as tears float off his face. Astrophage covers his one arm, having spilled out of the open tube.
“I wouldn’t have left Rocky to die…” He mutters in a trembling voice. Oh. Rocky feels his carapace sag at the implication of what Grace must be seeing, but pushes his thoughts away. There will be time to unpack all of that later.
“Grace hallucinating. Rocky ok.” Rocky replies, refocusing on his work. There’s a pause before Simon speaks again.
“Check in every 3000 seconds.” Simon says, to which Rocky chirps an affirmative.
꒷꒦︶꒷꒦︶ ๋ ─ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─ ๋︶꒦꒷︶꒷꒦
It’s been two days since Grace woke up in Our Lady of Mercy Psychiatric Hospital. They keep injecting him with something each morning. Susan says it’s what’s keeping him from hallucinating. Grace wishes she would stop. He would rather live in a delusion than be here.
Doubt and desperation are constantly at odds within him. But at this point he’s so uncertain about his own perception that he would be lying if he said he wasn’t starting to believe in his new reality. The reality where he left Rocky behind and went back to Earth.
Susan comes into his room with breakfast. He still hasn’t eaten anything. No appetite. She sets up a bed tray and puts it in front of him, but he just turns his head to look at the xenonite models on his beside table.
“Good morning Dr. Grace. Do you want to try some of the oatmeal today? It has fresh strawberries from the garden in it.” She says, walking back over to her cart to fidget with something Grace doesn’t care enough to pay attention to.
“Not hungry, thanks.” Grace says. Coming over to sit on the edge of his bed, Susan gives him a sympathetic look.
“It’s been days since you last ate, Dr. Grace. We don’t want to have to put in an iv.” She says, putting a hand on his arm. The arm that has the scar from where Rocky touched him.
“Then don’t. If this is real, I’d rather starve anyways.” Grace says coldly. He’s supposed to starve to death on Erid. Might as well make the endings match. Susan is silent for a moment, which is nice. But it doesn’t last.
“Dr. Grace, Ellie wants to start you on some new medication. It should help you manage your emotions while you process all of this.” She says, holding out a little cup with six white pills in it. Grace glares at her.
“I ran from everything else. But I’m not running from this. If I… If I left him to die then I deserve to feel this way.” Grace snarls.
Rocky died all alone, thinking he failed. He deserves to die alone on Earth too. Grace isn’t sure he believes in karma, but it feels right. Susan gives him a soft look.
“It wouldn’t be running away Dr. Grace. We want to help you face what happened.”
Grace looks back to the scar on his arm. Susan sighs.
“I watched your log tapes when the government released them. I could tell that Rocky loved you a lot.”
Grace tries his best to bite back the sob that shakes in his chest.
“I don’t think this is the life he would have wanted for you Dr. Grace.” Susan says. “What would he have said, if he heard you talking about yourself like this?”
Grace takes a shuttering breath, turning his eyes to the window. Birds are hopping around in the courtyard, rolling in the dust.
“He would say I was being dumb. Ask me when I last slept.”
Susan nods, holding the cup out again.
“I know you regret not dying for him, Dr. Grace. But, maybe you could try living for him?”
Chest aching with grief and self loathing, he looks at the pills. It hurts. It hurts so much. The pain of having to live with himself after betraying the only person who ever loved him burns like hellfire in his soul. But… maybe Susan is right. It would be even more selfish to let himself waste away after trading Rocky’s life for his own.
What’s the harm in running away one more time.
Reaching out he takes the cup and swallows the pills.
꒷꒦︶꒷꒦︶ ๋ ─ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─ ๋︶꒦꒷︶꒷꒦
Rocky is just putting the finishing touches on the detector when Grace suddenly moves. Thinking the hallucination has warn off, Rocky chirps excitedly. This excitement is short lived, as Grace grabs the astrophage cartridges and swallows them.
“You’ve got to be shitting me.” Rocky huffs. That’s fine! That’s totally fine! He can walk Simon through using the lab to-
Rocky takes a good look at the lab, and realizes that it’s covered in the strange growths from before. Did he not clean it well enough? The lattice of flesh creeps over Grace’s workstation, clinging to his body like hundreds of tiny claws. Focusing where it’s touching him, Rocky recoils as he hears how much softer his flesh has become. It almost seems gooey to his senses. Turning more, he notices something he hadn’t before.
The growth is on his side of the barrier too.
Shaking away his sense of horror and disgust, he picks up the finished sensor and starts heading over to the little airlock they use to move materials between habitats. After a few steps, he finds himself walking down the xenonite tunnel instead. A loud whistle of anger pushes from his vents.
“Your parents should have crushed your egg!” Rocky shouts at the monster, stamping his feet. “Simon! I’m hallucinating!” He shouts, following Grace’s lead.
“Don’t shout. I’m right here.” Simon says, walking up beside him in the Xenonite tunnel, holding a coil of wire as Grace carries his light array down it. One of the Taumeba farms is tucked under his other arm.
“I can’t believe we’re finally here!” Grace says, a giddy smile on his face. “Erid! An alien planet! Oh, I can’t wait to see what it looks like on the surface.”
The two pass him, and Rocky finds himself walking alongside the pair, even though he knows they’re not real. The illusion of Grace glances back at him, frowning.
“You ok, bud? You’ve been pretty quiet.” Grace asks. Rocky doesn’t want to answer, because he knows this isn’t actually real. But he feels his will to resist wane as the expression of worry on the image of Grace deepens. “Rocky? Everything alright?”
“Yes. Rocky is fine, statement.” Rocky says, not liking how easy it is for the monster to use his companions against him. The hallucination might not be real, but the way he feels about his humans is.
Approaching the end of the tunnel, Rocky recognizes the space elevator station’s airlock. The illusions of the humans stop in front of it. It wasn’t built out of xenonite-20, and the monster is showing enough attention to detail to make them unable to see the space beyond. Not that there’s much to see. Just an empty array of interconnecting hallways, with the elevator itself at the center.
No one is waiting for them on the other side, which doesn’t surprise Rocky. He has a pretty good guess as to where this is going.
“Sooo, is the welcome party over there?” Grace asks, setting the taumeba farm down in order to set up his light array.
“No. No one is here yet.” Rocky says, shifting uncomfortably. “Docking detected by vibrations on surface. Will take time.”
“Ah, but that’s not true, is it?” The monster’s voice sounds from inside the space elevator. Turning his attention back to the empty station he sees the twisted face of the thing lodged inside the elevator shaft. He does his best not to tremble at the sound of it. It sounds like a massive, long human with pointed teeth.
“They put astrophage detection devices on the outside of the station, watching for your return. They’re supposed to be here waiting.” She hisses, mouth not moving the way a human’s does when they talk.
“Sure. But this isn’t real, so that’s neither here nor there, is it.” Rocky huffs.
“Not real as in not happening right now? Certainly. But is this what will happen?” She asks, and Rocky finds himself suddenly inside the elevator, gravity slowly applying itself as the car rockets down towards the surface of Erid. Rocky’s standing off to one side, almost against the wall. It’s where he stood on the ride up to board blip-a, but this time he is alone in the elevator. His legs, having grown accustomed to microgravity, tremble at the mighty pull of the planet as they reach the surface.
The landing terminal is just as empty as the station, though Rocky doesn’t move. He knows he doesn’t have to. Seeming to notice the Eridian’s reluctance to play along, the scene melts away and he finds himself outside. It’s cold. Too cold. The elevator was built along the equator to give blip-a a bit of a boost when leaving orbit.
The buildings around him are run down. Abandoned.
Scorched.
The monster is nestled into the rubble of a collapsed building that Rocky recalls used to be the orbital control center.
“You’ve been gone a long time, Rocky. Things were already taking a turn for the worse when you left. You know things will only have continued down that path.”
Rocky huffs, vapor forming around his vents in the cold air.
“It will not matter. If things on Erid too bad to take taumeba to three-planet, we will do it ourselves. The world will heal.”
“Oh, most certainly. It will heal. In time.” The monster says. The ghost of Erid fades from view, and he’s back on the Hail Mary, in the lab. Grace and Simon are working on something. They look… off. Smaller, moving slower.
“But they don’t have time, do they?” The monster purrs, clinging to the bottom of the Hail Mary. “Let’s pretend things aren’t as bad as you just saw. We both know Erid isn’t going to be in any state to help them. Resources will be scarce.”
“Grace Simon save star. Eridians will save them.” Rocky asserts, trying not to listen to the sickly illusions of his friends.
“Are you sure? I think we both know how selfish Eridians can be.” She hums, her voice vibrating through the whole of the ship. “And even if they do help, there might be nothing they can do. The universe is cruel. And then what? You would have to watch their short lives end in a few decades anyways. No matter what, you will watch them die.”
“Doesn’t matter. Have to go back to Erid, statement.” Rocky says, stamping the ground.
“Oh, but you don’t. You could stay here. I would love and cherish you all.”
Rocky grumbles.
“Liar. Hear how you treat Grace. Hurt him. Scare him.” He huffs. “If you wanted us to stay so damn badly, maybe you should have been a little nicer.”
“The visions would be sweet if you surrender to me. You resist, so the mind makes them sour.” The monster says. Rocky laughs.
“Oh, so it’s our fault then. Right.”
“If you surrender, chose to stay, I can make you visions so sweet you will forget you ever wanted to leave. You could live endless happy days, together. You would even be able to be in the same atmosphere. They would never be hungry, and you would never have to watch someone die again.”
“At the cost of Erid? For someone who can see all my memories, you sure do have no idea who the hell I am.” Rocky grumbles.
꒷꒦︶꒷꒦︶ ๋ ─ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─ ๋︶꒦꒷︶꒷꒦
Simon pushes his way down to where the lab connects with the rest of the ship, coming to a stop as he sees fleshy growths criss-crossing the entrance, blocking his way. Yelling he grabs one and tries to tear it free, but it’s too tough. They feel like tendons.
Floating down into the dormitory, he starts digging through their supplies until he finds a box cutter. Yeah, that’ll do it. He pulls the blade free and affixes it to the spare piping he had found a while back and floats back up to the lab.
Cutting into the tendons, blood sprays in his face, but he doesn’t stop. Years of study, a lifetime of lessons on how to properly prepare fertilizer, shows him exactly where he needs to cut. It’s not until he’s carved his way into the main lab that he notices something. The veins almost seem to pull away when his hand reach for them. As if…
“You’re scared of me…” Simon says in disbelief. The nearby speaker crackles but says nothing. “But why?”
Then it connects. He hasn’t been having hallucinations, beyond the two times the monster has spoken to him. Simon had assumed it was because of something the thing had planned. He never would have guessed that…
“You can’t affect me anymore, can you?”
The ship rumbles like it had when they made their revised escape plan. This whole time, Simon assumed that what happened back in the blood ocean had been a victory on the creature’s behalf. Gritting his teeth, Simon continues to cut forward, deeper into the the hot moist air of the lab.
Cutting through a wall of flesh, he pushes into an opening. Sat at what was once a lab table is Grace. Simon knows it has to be Grace, because it can’t be Rocky. The vaguely humanoid form sits slouched, it’s lower half fused with the fleshy growths coming out of the floor. The upper part of the body is made of what looks like black tar. It takes a moment for Simon to recognize what it is. Astrophage. Grace must have fused with it. Pushing off the wall, he floats over, his hand sinking into the viscous fluid as he grips the man’s ‘shoulder’. His face is the only thing that’s still definitely human, which seems to be muttering something Simon can’t make out. They might not even be words at all for all he knows.
“Grace! Grace wake up!” He shouts.
꒷꒦︶꒷꒦︶ ๋ ─ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─ ๋︶꒦꒷︶꒷꒦
Grace is sat in the garden, watching the birds peck away at some seed the aids put out. He doesn’t feel… well, anything. That’s better than before, according to Dr. Elizabeth.
An alarm plays on the speakers, pulling Grace’s languid attention up from the birds.
“Dangerous patient escape. Initiate lockdown. Please return to your rooms.”
Grace rotates his wheelchair to look around. He hasn’t actually met any of the other patients here. He hasn’t really wanted to. No reason to make new friends, now that he knows he’s not worthy of them.
A man, dressed in patient’s clothes like him, runs into the garden, looking around wildly. He looks like…
“Simon!” Grace calls out, relief flooding his chest. It’s him! He’s real! Simon catches his eye, running up to him on bare feet.
“Yes! Yes, Grace it’s me! You have to wake up! You have to fight it!” Simon says, gripping his shoulders so tightly that it makes Grace wince.
“I…” Memories flash into Grace’s mind. Sitting and talking with another patient, one who believes the government locked him in a sub. Who thinks he’s being haunted by a giant fish monster. He lives here, also being treated by Dr. Elizabeth.
“I want to believe, Simon… but… But I don’t know what’s real anymore.” Grace whimpers, unable to meet the man’s dark intense eyes. Suddenly he feels those strong fingers gripping his face, forcing his gaze back up at his. He’s covered in blood. Why hadn’t he noticed that before? Maybe he really is dangerous-
Simon’s lips press against his, and everything goes black.
When he opens his eyes, he’s back in the lab. At least, he knows he must be back in the lab. Everything around him is red and covered in flesh or blood or both. Floating before him is Simon, his hands still gripping Grace’s face. Raising a hand to touch Simon, Grace freezes as he sees himself. He’s covered in some sort of black ooze. The astrophage. He was holding it when the hallucination took him, so it’s no surprise that it spilled. But he hadn’t taken out that much.
His mind starts to reel as he watches his arm bend and collapse around itself as though it was nothing but viscous fluid.
“S-Simon!” Grace screams, voice cracking as he tries to grip the man.
“It’s going to be ok, Grace. I promise.” Simon says, forcing him to look at him again instead of at his disfigured body.
“Grace, where’s Rocky?” Simon demands. Lifting a arm, he points towards the habitat, which he realizes is full of silvery growths.
“In there. Did he finish the detector?”
“I don’t know.” Simon admits. Flailing a bit in his strange new body, Grace presses to the xenonite, trying to find his friend in the mess beyond.
“There! I see him!” Grace calls out. Hidden inside the web of silvery flesh, he sees Rocky. At least, he sees most of Rocky. His legs are tangled up in the alien growths(what he is guessing is Eridian meat).
He tries to bang his fist against the xenonite, and his stomach drops as he watches it splash against it. Leaving the squishy hand where it is, he catches one of the pipettes that are drifting through the air. Pressing down on what is supposed to be the back of his hand, the goo obediently moves out of the way until the rounded end of the pipette is presses to the xenonite. A gargled cry of horror escapes him as he realizes that he isn’t covered in astrophage. His body has become astrophage.
Simon grabs his shoulders, shaking him back to the rest of the horrible, meaty reality around them.
“Stay with me Grace! We have to get that sensor!” Simon commands. He thinks for a moment, looking at Rocky’s enclosure. “I’ll get the eva suit.”
“No! It’s only good up to 250 degrees! You’ll just get stuck to all the crap in there. And the pressure would crush you.” Grace says, but Simon is already floating towards the exit of the lab.
“We don’t have any other choice.” He says. Grace looks down at his hands that seems more like a distant memory of what the ends of his arms are supposed to look like. The disgust and horror is interrupted by a thought.
“Yes we do.” Grace says. He floats over to the bin he and Rocky use to exchange tools. Giving it a good yank, he finds it’s being held shut by more meat. Despite not knowing what Grace is trying to do, Simon floats back over and cuts the sliding bin free. Pushing down all his instincts related to not touching hot stoves, Grace pulls it open and shoves his hand inside.
It doesn’t feel hot at all.
Which makes sense of course. He’s currently made of an organism that can survive the heat and pressure of a star’s surface.
“I can go in. The astrophage… it…” Grace says, feeling a little sick as he starts to describe what’s happening to his body. “I need the emergency gas mask.”
Simon cuts their way over to the airlock, leaving Grace there while he craves out a path to the emergency wash station to grab the gas mask. For a moment he goes to put it in Grace’s hands, but decides to help the man fasten it to his face. With Simon’s help, Grace gets into the airlock, sealing the earth side. ‘Hands’ hesitating on the lever that switches the airlock over to Erid atmosphere, Grace sees Simon putting his hand on the xenonite next to him.
“Grace, if this doesn’t work…”
“Yeah, I know.” Grace says.
Before he loses his nerve, he pulls the switch.