Chapter Text
"If you do this..."
Simon stares at the banged up radio, gritting his teeth.
"I'll get you myself."
Simon's heart skips a beat at the message. He's getting out of here—finally, he's getting out of here.
The captain starts barking orders at her crew, with a few arguments from someone else on the tow-ship. Simon ignores it, and prepares himself to return to wherever the SM-8 was. He especially ignores the part where the man he spoke to seems to beg the captain to stop her own madness. Simon freezes when he hears the word "criminal" being thrown in there, he wanted to respond, saying he wasn't, but he stops himself. What would be the point? No use arguing what they perceive him to be.
"Convict, do you have the coordinates?" The captain's voice cuts through the noise.
"Yeah, I have it," he responds immediately, running his hands over his over the map extension he made. "The ship was the last thing I found after I landed in some fucked up cave. Somewhere between X - 780...Y - 700... it looked like something chewed it up but...I don't know."
"Good. I'm going to meet you there, and tow you out once you confirm you've done the transfer. David, prepare the SM-14. Get Jack up here, I need one last weld."
"Are you insane?! Jack can barely stand!" The man's voice, Simon now knows his name is David, can be heard angrily slamming his hand on the console. The captain insists anyway.
"Wait!" Simon finds himself saying, like an itch at the back of his head is telling him to warn them about something. Something he missed, something that's waiting to drag him back down. "Don't come down here. Not yet, not until I have the data."
"Convict, what are you saying? Why are you delaying now?!"
"I need you to trust me! Please," Simon swallows, now realising that that thing could be lurking around, stalking him. Regardless if it was a hallucination or a bad dream, he can't take his chances. "I...I need to make sure I get the data out of there, or else..."
"Or else that thing will destroy us both..."
He doesn't know how, but he knows something. Something like a memory telling him that if the captain joins him down here, before he can retrieve the data, they'll both die. That thing will make sure of it, and Simon knows that it's still there. Still waiting, watching.
"This...are you sure?"
"Positive! I'll meet out the entrance of that cave, just don't dive into it with me, or we'll both—!"
Simon bites his tongue as he walks towards his console, sitting on the old rusting chair.
He won't die, not down here...
And he sure as hell isn't dragging another soul down with him, either.
The captain hears the warning in Simon's voice, the fear woven between. She sighs and nods her head.
"Alright... I trust you on this. Do this and we'll get you out."
"And then I'm free."
There's a long pause before the radio crackles.
"...and then you're free."
Simon's lips twitch up, looking back at the radio.
"Deal..."
Simon switches the controls, but the captain's voice stops him.
"By the way," she says, her voice softening but resolute. "My name is Ava."
He nods, finally having a name to the voice in the static.
"Simon," he responds, his own voice trembling.
"...let's get this done, Simon."
The drive to the SM-8's location was short—shorter than his initial drive to it. Simon presses the camera just to make sure he's in the right place. He smiles hopefully, turning towards the computer behind him to access the fallen sub's blackbox. He didn't have to do much, the computer connected on its own. Once the data had been downloaded, he turned tail and started for the exit he had mapped out.
"Okay, Ava, I got it! I've got it, I'm coming out, wait for my signal before you dive!"
"What have you done, Simon?"
Simon freezes in his tracks, the distorted voice growling in his head.
"What have you DONE?!"
The sub begins to rumble and groan, and the sensors start beeping rapidly.
Before Simon could press the X-Ray, something knocks into the sub, jostling Simon around. The man yelps, hitting his head against the wall.
"YOU CANNOT LEAVE, SIMON! YOU MUST NOT LEAVE!"
"Shut the fuck up! Shut up!"
Simon screams, finally pressing the X-Ray, the screen flashing what seems to be teeth holding the Iron Lung in place. He runs to the console, manoeuvring the sub backwards and forwards.
"WE MUST NOT REVEAL THE LIGHT! NO ONE MUST KNOW ITS EXISTENCE!"
"You think i'm just gonna let you do what you want? Fuck that and fuck you!"
He drives back once more, almost down the monster's throat before driving forward at full speed, ramming into the monster's teeth. The creature howls in pain, opening its jaws, giving Simon the opening he needs.
"SIMON!"
Simon keeps driving, using his memory and the navigator to drive out of the cavern he was in. The monster was writhing in pain behind him just as Simon ducks into one of the caves leading out to the surface. He'd lost the creature... for now.
"Ava! Ava, can you hear me?!"
He curses when no response comes, but he refuses to stop now. He can still hear the creature swimming behind him, snapping its jaws, trying to find out where Simon had gone. He puts off pressing the X-Ray. It wasn't necessary, especially when he's memorized this maze in the amount of time he had circled around this place.
"Ava, come on, don't do this to me now!"
He drives up higher out of the cave system. The radio crackles, and hums.
"...'mon? Simon, come in! Do you copy?"
"I'm here! Ava, I'm here! I'm on my way out the cave!"
"We see you on the radar, Simon, did you get it?"
The radio is clearer now, and he could hear people scrambling in the background. He could hear something being welded, and he wonders if that man he had irradiated had really come out of hospice just for this.
"I got it! I got it, Ava, but something's comin' after me! You need to get me out of here!"
The distorted voices start getting louder, screaming at Simon to turn around, to accept his fate, that no one has come out of this alive, that the Consolidation lies.
"Ava, I have the data, now get me—!"
The sub lurches, throwing Simon off the chair, making him groan in pain. That's when he feels it. Warm liquid starting to drip into the sub. He curses and goes back to the console, and keeps driving. Before he can scream at the radio again, he looks down at his arms and sees his skin peel, and he feels sick staring at it.
"YOUR SHIP IS ALIVE, CAN YOU NOT SEE? IT WANTS YOU! YOU WILL BE ONE WITH THE BLOOD. JUST LIKE THE OTHERS. JUST LIKE US!"
Simon curses under his breath, feeling the vibrations of the SM-13 intensifying as the creature closes in.
"Shut up! Please just shut up!" He shouts back, Ava voicing her confusion over the comms, but Simon can't hear her. He can't focus on the voices, the screams confusing him over whose voice is whose. "You're just a piece of shit who can't accept that they're dead, what do you know?!"
"YOU KNOW AS MUCH AS WE DO, SIMON."
The creature's voice reverberates in his head. He tries to shake it off, bur he can't. It feels like it's right there, right in his ear.
"WE SAW THE LIGHT, SIMON! WE SAW IT! IT WAS MEANT FOR US! THIS WAS MEANT FOR YOU, CAN YOU NOT SEE THAT?"
He looks at his navigation, he's almost there.
"No fucking way, fuckface! Stay here and rot!"
Simon ducks back under into another cave, disregarding Ava's call to pull away from the cave system. He tries to confuse the creature but the hull's starting to give, and blood is starting to pour in from the front. He realizes, though he despises the thought, he might not make it out of here alive.
"Simon, what's going on? Why are you going back in the cave, we can't get you out if you dive back in!"
"This thing's filling with blood, Ava. Something's comin' for me, and I don't know how much longer I can avoid it. I don't even know how much more the sub can keep going," Simon almost sounds frantic and resigned all at once, looking around the walls as blood rains in. "Please, Ava. Get me out, please..."
"I know! I know...I'm coming down there, Simon. Right now I just need you to get out of that cave," Ava says, before someone mutters something about recovery. Ava says something back, almost arguing, something about the other person asking for too much. He hears shouting before Ava sighs, frustrated urgency bleeding through. "Simon, listen to me. I need you to do something for me, please. Just this last thing."
"Fuck, I just went through hell to get this data—!"
"Please, Simon, we need this! This is important!"
"Then fucking tell me what it is!" Simon growls until a flash spreads across the room. The X-Ray camera flashed on its own, which was impossible. Simon turns to look at the green rectangular button, and sees something growing around it, keeping the button down, making the screen flash continuously. Simon's breathing hitches, fear coursing through his being as he realizes the growth isn't just on the button but all over the ship. They looks like...veins...
"I need you to go down into the crawlspace, and get the blackbox and secure it," Ava says gently but firmly. "Whatever happens, Simon, we need to get that blackbox out of there."
"You can't be serious, Ava, I'm trying to get out of this thing alive! We had a deal!"
"And that deal is still in place! I just need you to get this data, we need this data!"
Simon huffs angrily. He has half the mind to let the sub and blackbox get eaten by the monster but he throws the thought away.
"Simon, please. This is bigger than any of us. Bigger than anything else left in the universe. This could be the answer to everything that had gone to hell!"
Simon grits his teeth. Ava had a point, he hates that she had a point.
"Fuck!" He screams, slamming his fist onto the console before checking his map. The way is clear and it's a straight way out. He decides to just get this over with, propping one of the manuals against the driving lever. "You better be fucking right about this."
He gets down into the crawlspace entrance, already filling with blood.
"Fuck me," he mutters, holding on to the life vest as his only source of light. He jumped down, the blood rising around his feet. He pointed his light down the tight space, and visibly felt dread. The blood was nearly knee level, if he moved quickly he can get out as quickly as he came. Still, this was terrifying, despite having done it before. "Oh, fuck me!" He screams louder this time.
He dives in, trying to crawl as quickly as he can to get to the blackbox. He struggles pulling it out. He can hear the radio above, crackling, reassurances from the other side resounding through the blood-stained walls.
On the tow-ship, Ava is leaning over the comms as Jack welds a heavy-duty tow cable onto the SM-14, built like a grappling hook that can shoot out of the sub and onto the chain slot above the SM-13. Jack was adamant to get out of medbay after David tried talking him out, despite Ava's orders. He's weak, but he's still here. Still breathing. Still standing. The man refused to lay there and do nothing once he found out that the convict may have found answers to the Quiet Rapture. He couldn't idle by. He wanted to help, in any way that he can.
The crew waited in bated breath as they worked, some of them ready to quarantine the dock, and some with weapons ready in case whatever's chasing down Simon reaches them. They could hear the sloshing of blood through the comms, but nothing from their convict.
"Simon? Simon, are you there?" Ava's voice echoes through the comms, panic in her tone when the man doesn't respond. Only a gurgling sound can be heard, like someone choking. "Simon, hold on, okay? We're prepping the SM-14, we're coming to get you, just hold on!"
The silence is eerie. David, who was apprehensive of retrieving the SM-13 in the first place, was suddenly gripped with fear.
Yeah, Simon was an ass, and hardly gave them any grace. But the man was terrified, he was alone down there in an ocean of blood, facing God knows what. And hearing the fact that something was coming after the man...
Who is he to judge what Simon deserves? He's just a man. Just like everyone else on this ship, he's just a man.
"Fuck! Ethan, is it done?" the captain looks at one of Jack's assistants, who replaced the man once Jack started feeling too nauseous to stand. "It's done, cap," Ethan confirms, double checking the welds. The SM-14 was stronger compared to the SM-13. Ava is confident that it'll hold.
"Keep communication with me and Simon," Ava tells the crew. "If anything happens to us...let us go, and never bring anyone else into this godforsaken moon, do you understand?"
"Captain," Val, one of the crew's navigators, bites her lip before she can protest as Ava glares at her, and salutes. "Aye-aye, captain."
Ava nods and climbs into the SM-14. She was not welded shut. Her submersible is much more resilient to the pressure and viscosity of the blood ocean. Not like the SM-13. Ava thinks about how unfair that was on Simon's part. Prison management thought Simon was bad enough to deserve such a sick joke put on him and Ava went along with it. She didn't know why she did, but she was just as angry over Filament Station like the rest of them that she let it happen.
But hearing the conviction in Simon's voice when he said he had nothing to do with the massacre on the colony...Ava wasn't so sure anymore...
But that was a question she'll have to ask the council when she gets back.
"Good luck, Captain."
David wasn't that religious, but he carried old beliefs of Earth still. So he did the only thing he was taught to do at a time like this. He prayed... for Simon, for the crew, for Ava...for humanity...
He looks below, down into the blood ocean and can see faint zaps of light flashing through the thick waves. It must be Simon, using the only tool he can use for navigation. He hopes the man's still alive.
Ava dives down, following a signal in her built-in radar. Something they should have placed in Simon's sub but didn't. Another thing she felt guilty for.
As she closes in on the SM-13's location, the radio crackles, picking up the signal of the wayward sub. Then a gurgling sound, followed by choking.
Simon.
He was still there.
"A....'va... Ava?"
"Simon! Simon, I'm here. Are you alright? How's the sub? Can you still breathe?"
There's no response. Only hacking and gagging. It makes her heart heavy with dread. Ava tries to hold herself together, she needs to be strong right now.
"Simon, I've got you, alright? Just hold on."
The radar picks something up. Something big. And it's closing in on them.
"Ava, I don't think I'll be getting out..."
The man sounded so weak, so resigned to his fate of dying in this hell. Ava will be damned if she came all the way down here, giving her word, only for Simon to die.
"Simon, no! I'm almost there, I promise you!"
Once she believes she's in the right position, just above Simon's sub, she presses her own X-Ray and sees the SM-13. But something's off. Ava can't quite make it out but... the submersible looks like it's developing gills.
She shakes her head. Rescue first, questions later.
"Simon, can you hear me?" she is answered by static. She curses under her breath and presses a lever. The SM-14 jolts, and she presses the X-Ray again. She lets out a sigh of relief as she sees she got the SM-13 hooked on the first try. "Simon, fucking answer me, goddamit!"
Still nothing. There's no point wasting time. If he had just started to drown, then she still has time to pull them both out and him into medical.
The radar starts beeping.
Whatever's chasing Simon isn't going to let them go that easy.
She hauls the SM-13 as hard and as fast as she can but her sub can only do so much. She taps into the tow-ship's comms, trying to get through.
"Capt...n? C...'va! Ava!" David's voice echoes through the radio. The feeling of dread slips out of her and her breathing evens. God, is this what Simon felt when he heard them after the silence?
"I'm here! I've got him. Pull us up, now!"
Without another word, David does as he's told. Ava can hear him from the comms.
"All hands on deck! We've got two subs incoming, Ethan, get Jack back into medical. Tyler, get quarantine in here now."
The radar distracts Ava from the noise on the radio. That thing that was coming after them was shrinking away. Whatever it was, it doesn't want to be found. This makes Ava sigh in relief.
The sound of chains hauling the SM-14 up rattles through its walls, and then stops abruptly. She opens the hatch and climbs out, and Anna, one of the medical staff, runs up to her. She's sprayed up and down with disinfectant, and UV light before another whirring catches their attention. The chains rattle again and Ava's eyes widen at the horror that is the SM-13.
Or rather...what it used to be.
The submersible was covered in what they can only describe as vein-like, and it was pulsing. The thing had gills on the sides of it, and a fin-like appendage where the SM-14's hook was attached to.
"What the fuck..." Ava's heart drops, watching as blood drains out of the Iron Lung. "What the fuck is this..."
"Captain, the convict..."
Val's words snap Ava out of her stupor, and she runs towards the sub.
"Ethan, the welding gun, now!" She barks, the younger man already running towards her with his tools. "I need a knife—someone get me a knife."
Ethan works quickly, unbolting the side hatch. He opens it and blood pours out in waves, flowing back into the blood ocean below from the docking bay. He scrambles out of the way, nearly slipping had it not been for Tyler standing close by.
"David, with me," Ava says, her second-in-command already tailing her quietly.
As they entered, they take in the state of the Iron Lung from top to bottom. The veins have already reached inside, and there's flesh-like material growing into the walls. David felt sick to his stomach.
None of the other subs they had recovered looked like this.
"Simon?" Ava calls out, looking around.
"Captain, the console," David mutters, his eyes trained on something he cannot comprehend.
It was a figure, slumped against the controls. It was covered in wart-like growth. It looked like it had teeth growing around its face. David's breathing hitches at the sight, realising that this...thing... can only be their resident convict.
"Simon," Ava rushes forward, but David stops her. "What are you doing? We need to get him help!"
"Cap, I think...you should go get checked," David says, unable to look away at the poor soul seemingly fused into the ship. The captain was about to protest until David held her shoulders. "I've got the co..." he stops himself, unable to utter that inhumane word. "I've got Simon. You get to the medbay."
The man hadn't gone through hell and back just to be degraded back to "convict" again, like he was just a piece of trash thrown into the blood ocean to rot away. Which, to be fair, the COI was guilty of.
Ava hesitated but a squeeze on the shoulder reassures her enough to leave.
"Tyler, get in here!" David calls out, making the taller man enter the monstrosity that is the SM-13.
"Shit..."
David nods, sharing Tyler's sentiment. Taking a deep breath he takes a step forward, walking cautiously towards Simon—or whatever remained of him.
"Simon," David says softly, afraid of startling what may or may not be a corpse. "Simon, are you there?"
The sub was quiet, save for the pulsing of the veins on the walls.
"...'va..."
David releases a breath he didn't realize he was holding.
"Ava's in medbay, buddy," he responds, kneeling next to the slumped Simon. "It's David. We're gonna get you out of here."
"...'m...not d...dead?"
"No," Tyler says, walking closer, and kneeling at Simon's other side, his flashlight tracing the flesh fusing Simon to the console. "You're not dead yet, but...if we don't get you out of here soon, you might."
Tyler takes out a scalpel, experimentally cutting between flesh and metal to try and see where the growths end and Simon begins. He makes small cuts, so far cleanly separating a part of Simon's ear from the navigation dial.
"Ah!"
Tyler freezes, biting his lip. "Sorry," he mutters, going back to cutting tinier, more precise lines. "I need to get you out of this growth so we can get you to medical."
"There's...no point," Simon weakly states, his eyes fluttering closed. He's tired. He wants rest. "I've lost...too much blood...lost my arm..."
And that's when David finally noticed the missing limb from Simon's left side. David didn't know if the man was still bleeding or if it was blood from the ocean. It was probably why he didn't notice the missing arm either. David can feel the bile building up in his throat, but he swallows his nausea down. What he feels is nothing compared to what Simon had gone through.
"Shit," Tyler lets out a shaky breath. He takes out a second scalpel, and looks at the open hatch. "Mick, Wade, get the fuck in here!"
Two other men run in. Upon seeing the interior they freeze, not knowing whether to be mesmerized or horrified.
"Help us," David says, already drawing his knife. "We need to get him out as soon as possible."
The newcomers forget the questions in their head and start carefully cutting away the flesh and the veins and whatever else is sticking out around Simon. The man groaned and moaned but made no other attempts to speak.