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Ava hopes her last desperate words meant something to the convict. To Simon. It was all she could do to stay by the transmitter and cling to the microphone like a lifevest while the scalding, sinewy corruption coursed through them all and eventually overtook them as that vast, ponderous creature broke through their hull and drowned them in the sea of salty, viscous blood. If she hasn't managed to get through to him, to break through that selfish survival instinct, then all is lost.
It's horrible, drowning. She didn't think it'd be this painful. What's next is much worse.
"It wouldn't hurt at all if you would stop fighting it," sighs a woman's voice, layered with many others, not that Ava should be able to hear anything at all down here other than the dull roar of blood rushing around her, inside her. "Let the blood burn through you and be with all of us."
Ava thrashes her head back and forth in agony, chokes down more blood trying to scream as her brain feels like it's throbbing in her head. "Better to let yourself sink into us than to be alone forever in the dark. Please, let us in."
There is something like the sensation of a hand on her shoulder. It makes her skin buzz and prickle. She tries to jerk herself away, but the strength is pouring out of her and feeding the ocean. Death must be the thing that has nurtured this place. Only ghost life can remain.
"You said that not everyone can be saved. But you can be, if you choose." The voice goes quiet, expectantly, like someone that has never been refused and doesn't mean to be now. She blinks unseeing eyes that burn from the blood surrounding her.
Alright, she thinks, and she knows that it's the wrong choice. The kind of choice that blew up Filament Station or killed her girlfriend in the Invincible Shuttle food riots. She makes it anyway. I let you in.
The pain stops, and she could cry with relief if she could feel her body at all. The pressure of the blood, of the outside force battering her mind is gone and just as she is starting to wonder if she is alone in the dark, there comes a kind of caress that she doesn't need a body to register.
"I'm sorry," says the voice, distorted with sorrow. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," it groans, the other voices behind it growing louder. "No one should see the light. No one should know of it. Better to bring you into the fold than for you to lead others here and help it shine brighter."
"Am I not saved?" Of course she isn't. Whatever passes for salvation in this nightmare world is certainly still some kind of hell.
"You are damned."
She is drowning in another way, then. That same battering down, only gently insistent, now, that her mind will open up and cease to be hers, that she will cease to be she at all and become one of many. There is no pain now. It feels… loving, to be so enveloped. The voices root through her and when they are done examining a memory it fades, as though it happened to a distant stranger who told her the story of someone else's life. She tries so hard to fight it. Whatever she knows, she cannot let this monstrosity have it, not if the COI wants her replacement to have any chance of winning against this ironclad will.
There is a lingering pause over a certain memory. It's the last time Ava and her girlfriend had a night alone before the riot. The wet heat between her own legs as she put her mouth on Jimena's core, the taste of her, the flickering light of the lamp casting fluttering shadows on the walls, the bed, their skin, all of this is on a loop that builds and builds. Ava doesn't know what to do with the need if she doesn't have a body to put it inside. Her focus is slipping. She is forgetting to hold fast.
Jimena looks down at her, eyes hungry, teeth long and sharp, and this time when Ava sticks a tongue in her, it is blood she is slick with. Ava moans as Jimena crushes her head with her thighs, forcing her to drink it in. With every swallow, her mind gets fuzzier, and Jimena's smile gets wider. This isn't right; this isn't how it happened, but why should she care anymore?
Ava gasps as something hard and slimy brushes against her clit. She doesn't pull off to look at what it is. Everything feels this good because she's being good, she thinks, dazed.
"Be with us," the voice purrs from Jimena's mouth. Ava realizes that she and Jimena are stuck together now, their bodies melting into each other, and this should make her upset, probably, but it's comforting and warm and when Jimena tugs on the string of flesh now adhered to her clit, she lets out a whine and forgets all about it.
Before Ava knows it, she and Jimena and the voice are all blurring together, and she has the unique sensation of rooting through her own mind like it's a junk drawer. The voice finds what it's looking for quickly, Ava knows where everything is after all, and the wave that has been building crests and she feels so good, they all feel so good.
As that feeling subsides, the last vestiges of Ava who loved Jimena and would have done anything to save the rest of humanity float away. The newest member of the chorus of the voice settles, a whisper of who she used to be. They feel the currents of the ocean and know by the smell of the blood bubbling up from the depths where Simon has been. They gnash their long, curved teeth, chipped from the earlier scuffle, and make for the wreck of the SM-8. The black box must not be found. The light must not be found.
There is no other choice.