Chapter Text
Simon wasn't sure he believed in God, but he had no other word for whatever was putting him through this torment. The voice in the radio, the strange woman who he was sure at this point wasn't a woman at all, seemed to see it as such. She led him to it. She spoke reverently of it when he took a picture, as his eyes tried to make sense of the image and how it seemed to twist reality itself around the screen just by being there. Just by its image being there.
Either he was hallucinating and his vision was warping and twisting in on itself near the screen, or the mere image of the Light- whatever the Light was- was doing something to the reality around it. He knew it was the latter, because when he turned, the same thing was happening around the front of the SM-13.
He didn't want to know what the real thing could do, what would happen if he got closer, but he had no choice. He heard his own name being spoken, and he knew that was wrong. He'd never told her that. The wire on the speaker was disconnected, and he'd never told her that.
"Yes you did." She spoke softly when he pointed that out, as if it were nothing more than simple fact.
The whole submarine shook, throwing him to the side. He barely managed to get to the console and shove the lever that moved him forward. Careless. The panicked running of a creature who knew it was prey, right into the arms of something far worse.
The porthole cracked, and the Light shone through.
All he could do was watch. Watch as blood flew past him, as the Light grew. It was chaos, he couldn't keep track of anything happening except for one thing. The eye. The Light. Something in him, staring at the foggy white eye behind the blood, knew that the eye and the Light were the same. It was staring at him, observing. Something in his mind just shattered, the weight of its gaze too much to bear. The voice rattled through his body, not speaking any language but willing his mind to understand its intent anyway. He would. If it wanted him to, he would.
"I see you."
Simon's whole world had gone still and suddenly come crashing around him all at once, breaking open just to show him that this was what lay beyond the dying stars. This Light, this being, was the reason things were the way they were. Its mere perception of reality had reshaped it, had broken it down to its smallest parts and decided that was all there was and all there would ever be. And now, down here, it was looking directly at Simon. He had the undivided attention of a being so vast that the very act of watching their universe had destroyed most of it in one, sudden collapse.
He didn't know how he knew any of it, but he knew. He knew that he wouldn't leave this unchanged. Being seen by this thing was to submit to its vision of you, to be reshaped according to what it saw, because it was certain that its perception was truth and so it was.
He said the only thing he could think to, defiance in his eyes. "I see you."
Silence.
"Agreed."
And so he did.
He saw it. And then, all at once, he was ripped from the surface of the blood ocean and back into his body and he was throwing up blood on the submarine floor.
The rest was a blur. He tried not to remember it if he was honest. Blood seeping into the cracks of the Iron Lung became flesh, which became a heartbeat, which became tendrils doing their best to crawl up his arm and fuse with him. Everything hurt, more than any pain he'd ever felt, and yet not near as much as it should have. Arms didn't just rip cleanly off, but his did. He wasn't sure what that meant. There was no time to question it any more than there was time to question the Iron Lung becoming something more than it had been.
He could guess that it was that simple. He was something more than he had been, too.
Simon still told himself that this was bigger. He didn't matter in the grand scheme of things, but he could. His last actions would do something to help them, surely, even if he had no way to know that. It was the only thing he could cling to, as he tied the black box to the life jacket. He was going to die down here, but humanity would find a way to survive. Humanity would find the box, and it would have what they needed, and everything would change.
Simon was going to die down here, and no one above would even know that his name was Simon in the first place.
It was a selfish thought.
He let himself have it anyway. Selfish thoughts and a little pendant with a seed were the only things he had left, and in a few minutes that wasn't going to matter anyway. He'd die with those things.
The only living creatures to know his name were dead, or whatever the fuck that voice from the speaker was. He tried not to hate it so much that he was joining them. It didn't stop him from thrashing when the blood poured in and he couldn't breathe anymore, the fight or flight kicking in and overriding any logic. He screamed, which just made him lose air faster, but he was nothing if not defiant and screaming was all he could do.
And then he was gone.
At least, he stopped kicking and screaming. The weakness began to overtake him, and so did.. something else. He wasn't conscious enough to really process what it was. Maybe just an extension of the darkness, the heaviness in what limbs he had left, something one's mind conjured in their last moments.
He died.
---
He was so bored it made his head hurt.
Boredom was the last complaint he ever thought he'd have on the Hail Mary. Sure, it was boring at times, but normally he was too busy trying not to die to pay any attention to the small space. When he had free time between near-death experiences, he had the entirety of the (pirated) internet at his disposal. One thing he could truly, genuinely thank Stratt for, without any complicated feelings involved. An objective good that didn't involve him being sent to his death. +1 Point for Stratt. She'd judge him for having a points system, probably. -1 point for Stratt and her imagined judgment.
That was probably a sign he was going stir crazy. In his defense, they were a full year and a half into the journey to Erid. At first, it had been lots of damage control, repairing after all they'd been through. Then, inventory. How much food did he have left? Enough, it turned out. That had been a surprise, but a pleasant one. Over-preparing had been Stratt's middle name, and what if it took longer than they thought to figure out the Petrova Problem? He could be fairly comfortable until Erid, so long as he wasn't a total idiot.
Then, once everything truly was safe, he'd had the inevitable crash-and-burn. It had scared the Rocky out of his mind, even after as thorough an explanation as he could manage in the midst of it, to see his mental health suddenly plummet after everything was over. He'd had to explain that humans had a way of blocking out the stress of things in the moment, which usually was followed by a really bad time once it was safe to collapse. It had taken him what felt like a very, very long time to get out of that collapse. Rocky had tolerated him more than he expected, really, and that was all he could ask for.
But now came a problem that was certainly lesser, but unexpected and therefore somehow worse in some capacity. He'd never questioned the meds he was given on the Hail Mary, not really. They were space meds, in his mind, some sort of vitamins or supplements so he didn't die in space of… whatever. Or. Well. So he only died when it was convenient. But he should probably have taken those into the inventory, he realized, so he'd checked what those were and promptly been smacked with the memory that hey, one of those is his and his alone and it's for the crippling ADHD, numbskull. And that one was considered less important, so he had less of it.
Which, bringing it back from the tangents his brain oh-so-loved to go on now, was why he was laying on the floor by the xenonite wall with his computer. Its screen had long since turned off, because he wasn't doing anything, because nothing sounded even close to fun. He'd decided to ration the ADHD meds, come up with a very smart plan that left him with enough in case he needed to be more able to focus during an emergency, and then left enough for the Eridians to hopefully synthesize some more once they got to Erid.
But oh, crud, he had not realized that one of the symptoms of being off his ADHD meds was crippling under-stimulation that absolutely nothing fixes.
"Grace sigh too much. Fifth time in forty-eight minutes." Rocky didn't stop his work as he spoke, and Grace was too irritated with his brain to bother asking what he was working on. "Go play computer game."
"None of them sound fun. It's not that I don't have anything to do, Rock, just nothing is helping. It's one of those things about my brain that the meds helped not happen as much."
"Grace said that was about not focus, go too fast, think too much."
"Grace was over-simplifying." Grace huffed, closing his eyes tight and sprawling his arms out. He could just touch the xenonite barrier like this, absently tapping it a couple times, much to Rocky's annoyance. At least he was pretty sure that was annoyance.
It didn't turn into a debate. It didn't have time to turn into a debate, because Grace and Rocky were probably cursed or something. Grace had jinxed it by being bored, by complaining about not having enough to do, because just then Mary started freaking the heck out like the world was ending. To be fair, as Mary loudly declared "Blip B detected," the world could be ending. In the words of Grace, the last time he heard something like that; "It could be a bomb. Is it a bomb?"
It wasn't a bomb. Grace scrambled up to the cockpit, Rocky getting there a few seconds before him, both of them frantically searching the screens for some sort of answer. There was none, of course, just a description of the dimensions of the blip and how far away from them it was. It wasn't far, but it wasn't close enough to be dangerous if it kept going the direction it was going. It was probably just some space rock or another, although that'd be a little weird where they were, Grace told himself. He couldn't help the little voice in his head that told him it would be something else.
Being the guy that named the first three alien species Earth had made contact with, two of which he found himself, would do that. You kind of started expecting aliens when something went weird, after that, even if it was ridiculous. Getting launched into space against your will, meeting a rock-spider, saving the world together, and becoming besties with him was ridiculous. Grace's life was ridiculous.
Grace jabbed a couple buttons and soon he was looking at a decent view of the outside of the Hail Mary, and then staring at blip B. He just stared like an idiot, in silence for way too long. Rocky tapped by his own screen a few extra times to make sure he was hearing it right.
"Hey uh, Rocky, that's one of your guys, right?" Grace tried, knowing it was hopeless. That wasn't xenonite.
"Rocky not recognize ship. Too round. Too small. Hard to tell on texture screen, but texture doesn't sound like xenonite on human cameras." Rocky was hesitant, slow with his words, moving this way and that like if he could just process the information better it would make more sense.
"It doesn't look like xenonite to me either. It looks… kind of like rusty metal. But it's- it's definitely a ship."
"Yes. A ship." Rocky confirmed. "Does Mary have a way to measure if sound comes from the inside? Maybe we can hear if there is speech, or silence. Like test craft, or with people inside."
"Well- if there's people inside, they're ignoring us." He pulled up what he could anyway, though it felt a little weird. These instruments weren't meant for this, really, because nothing was meant for finding a second- a third- ship in outer space. Humans hadn't really thought they'd get that far.
Some part of him begged for there to be nothing. Just an unmanned spacecraft, maybe something that would find its way back home and confuse some scientists of another species decades or centuries down the line. Maybe it would be the equivalent of a Golden Record, never meant to come back home, and they'd never have to worry about it again.
It had a heartbeat.
Rocky froze. Grace froze. Rocky turned to look at him even though he didn't have eyes but he apparently felt very strongly about expressing his shock in the moment in a way Grace could understand. Truly unfortunate, because Grace was too busy staring at the ship to match the action, so he didn't see it. "Grace, is that-?"
"That's stupid."
"It matches yours-"
"Yeah, and that's stupid. There's no way. Humans haven't sent anyone out this far, except me. Maybe it evolved similarly? Do you think they've seen us- do you think they see at all? Do they know we're here?" He was already starting to sound nervous, shifting in his seat to look closer at the screen.
"Grace said they ignore us. Maybe just not notice." Rocky didn't sound very sure of himself. Grace had started to pick up the nuances of Eridian tone and body language, and he knew when Rocky wasn't sure of himself.
"They're not… I mean, they aren't stopping. Or coming closer. They've only been going one direction. Actually, they might be drifting. I don't see anything to indicate propulsion." Grace squinted, chewing on his lip, and then he finally zeroed in on something he couldn't ignore.
SM-13 written clearly across the side in blocky print. Letters and numbers he recognized.
"Rocky that's human writing. That's my language."
Whatever Rocky said next, the translator only got bits and pieces. Some particularly colorful phrase, by the sound of it. By the time Grace realized that Rocky was done staring and had begun doing something about their situation, the Eridian was halfway out of the cockpit. Grace shouted after him, sighing when the response was equally shouted with zero signs of stopping his tumble through the ship.
"If human heartbeat in ship with human writing, is human! Means human in there, human like Grace! Grace talk about space, lonely boring small ship, other human in even smaller ship! We go talk to other human, see why, maybe need help." Rocky was already hurrying past the EVA room and airlock, down into a part of the Hail Mary that Grace couldn't see, leaving him to try not to panic.
It probably wasn't another human. It couldn't be. How, and why, would there be another human out here, in a dinky little tin can of a ship? It looked rusty for crying out loud! There was no reason for a rusty ship of that size to be in space-
SM-13. SM. SubMarine.
"What would a submarine be doing in space? Why would- does that mean there are thirteen of them?" He asked no one, even if Rocky could probably hear it. He couldn't help but sit dumbly in the pilot's seat, staring at the screen with a too-human ship that wasn't meant for space but somehow had the heartbeat of a living thing inside. A heartbeat that matched pace with Grace's own enough to be human.
"Grace! Grace, found map structure and container from when we met! Has both our planets marked, should be good for first message." Rocky clambered back into the cockpit, shoving the container into the little transfer airlock they had in the cockpit. "Grace can go outside, throw this, hopefully they catch."
Yeah, because that had been super easy for Grace when Rocky threw him the container. This thing didn't exactly look equipped for a spacewalk, either. "I don't know if they can. This doesn't look like a normal spaceship, it doesn't look like a spaceship at all. Something's… wrong with it."
"Is worth a try." Rocky insisted, tapping loudly at the xenonite of the transfer box.
Against his better judgment, Grace agreed. He set Mary to drift at the same speed as the other vessel, which was slow enough that their gravity was nonexistent. That didn't make getting in the suit much easier, nor did it help that Rocky was anxiously tapping and pacing in tight little circles around his tunnel. By the time he was out of the airlock and drifting into space with his attempt-at-communication-canister, he was anxious enough for both of them.
He threw the canister as hard as he could, watching it tumble into space, spinning as it crossed the divide between the two ships. The other ship did not seem to care. There was no robot arm, no human frantically making their way onto the hull. No other plethora of things alien life may be doing to prepare for what might be first contact, or might be two humans pointing at each other and wondering what the heck the other was doing there.
The result was predictable. It bounced off, just like it had when Rocky first tried.
"Fuck."
"Language."
"More fuck!"
Yeah that was honestly justified. Grace couldn't really argue with that one.
"We try again." Rocky insisted, and he couldn't argue with that either.
After much debate through the radios and some cussing from Rocky, they decided the only choice was to grab the canister, get closer, and try again. Grace had only gotten it on his second try, after all. Without the equipment for getting out of the ship, maybe he needed to literally just… hand it to them. Assuming they had some sort of way of taking things from outside the ship into the inside of the ship, which he really really hoped they did.
So he did what he absolutely did not want to do. He launched himself off the hull of his ship, into the endless space around him, and onto this stupid little rusty ship that didn't seem fit for space in the slightest. Because it had a human heartbeat, and he wasn't about to just leave that be. He latched frantically onto the ladder, hooked his tether onto it, clung to it for dear life. It had gotten easier to walk over the hull of the Hail Mary like it was nothing, but this was a different beast altogether and it put the fear right back into his bones.
"Good good good! What Grace see, question?" Rocky's voice came to him through the radio, shaking him back into the moment.
"Uh…" He squinted, looking around. The ship itself was small, horribly so. Just a cylinder of metal. The whole thing looked scrapped together, the front half even more so. Some framework of metal ended in loose pieces at the front, jagged things sticking out like teeth that he could rip his suit open on. There was what looked like it may have been an entrance on the top, but it wasn't an entrance anymore. "The metal's been welded- uh, fused together- If they had an airlock, they don't now."
"Then how they get out, question?"
"They don't." A pause, and then he realized just how bad that sounded. "I mean not every ship is equipped for that sort of thing! Maybe it's just- uh- safety measures. It's a small ship, maybe there was a risk of throwing themselves out the airlock…"
"That does not reassure Rocky."
"Yeah, I realize that now that it's out of my mouth. I think I saw a window, let me just-" He focused on the hull, pushing off the ladder to move towards the front of it. What struck him the most about the ship was the fact that it was clearly made for water; SM really did stand for submarine. It had to. This was something built to be underwater, not in space; nothing should be alive in there.
Some part of him pointed out that if it had been alive before, it would have probably suffered the same fate as Rocky's crew.
So why was there a heartbeat?
He maneuvered carefully around the jagged metal, trying to get a look in the window. Surely a window would give him some sort of idea of what they were in for-
"Ah, darn it."
"What happened question? Grace okay question? Sharp looking metal-"
"I'm fine, I'm fine, the window is fused shut too. I can't see inside, there's nothing that looks like it can grab or take something inside or anything like that. I mean, humans weren't really expecting first contact, y'know? We didn't build our ships with special mail deliveries in mind." Not to mention that this looked nothing like any ship he'd seen, but that wasn't the point. The point was…
Actually. "Hey Rock have you still got the heartbeat on the screen? Can you hear it?"
"Yes. Rocky can hear heartbeat, same as before. No change."
"Tell me if it changes. I'm gonna do something that would cause any sensible human inside a panic attack."
"Why-"
He knocked on the front of the hull with the xenonite canister, hard. Three times, clanging against the metal, the sound completely empty in space but probably hauntingly loud and undeniable from inside the ship.
Silence. "Did it change? Go faster?"
More silence. Rocky waited for a moment before confirming; "No, nothing. Is steady."
Grace leaned back, holding onto the metal framework of the front, groaning loudly. Of course. "That means one of two things. Either the heartbeat is fake for some reason, or whoever is in there isn't awake. If we're assuming this is actually a human ship, ignoring how it could've possibly gotten all the way out here, then it's from Earth. They wouldn't put a human in something this small and keep them awake."
"What do now, question? Rocky is not human. Does not know if best to leave or help. Think best to help, but…"
But he wasn't human, he couldn't be sure. Neither could Grace, really, but. Well. So long without any other human contact, and there might be a human in there? He wasn't going to just leave it. It didn't look humane anyway, so whatever the heck it was, he figured it was more than just him wanting another human around if he decided to crack it open. "We connect it to our ship, test it as much as we can for anything dangerous, and if it's not dangerous we cut it open."
"Rocky will go get chain from fishing, tie ship to Mary while Rocky connect airlocks!"
Like that, it was decided.
--
Tests gave them more questions than answers. They learned a few things. The first thing they learned, as Rocky connected their airlock to the other ship, was that it was full of liquid. The inside was hollow and normally Rocky would be able to get a good sense of what was inside through sound alone, but everything inside was blurry. Sloshing around, and-
"What do you mean pulsing?"
"Pulsing. Heartbeat, everywhere. Bad bad bad, don't like." Rocky scrambled away from the airlock in his ball, practically climbing up the side in his attempt to get away fast enough. "Like inside of Grace, only worse, much worse, loud and squishy with liquid moving everywhere. Everything inside unclear."
"Okay, great, that sounds horrific. Sarcasm." Grace ran a hand through his hair as he clarified like Rocky always did, glancing nervously out the window of the airlock. He could see the little tunnel Rocky had made and the section of the hull it connected to. "Everything I can think of is coming up clean. Mary's not freaking out. Apparently part of it is, like, violently radioactive, but it's contained to only that one part and everything else is perfectly fine. We should be able to cut it open with no issue."
They debated it for another hour or two anyway. Grace showed Rocky exactly where the radiation was on the screens in the cockpit, confirmed again and again that it was contained and they would be shielded from it. It was near the front of the ship, and after Rocky got over the initial gross factor, he managed to parse that the source of the heartbeat was in the back of it. The heart itself was definitely human, it was just… whatever was connected to it, pulsing throughout the entirety of the ship, that had Rocky so on edge.
Grace told himself, and Rocky, that it was probably some weird medical stuff. Tubes throughout the whole ship connected to the heartbeat, maybe with the purpose of tracking it or connecting certain functions of the ship to it. Maybe for the exact purpose of amplifying it so others could find it. He was throwing shots in the dark at this point, but again, it was a human submarine made of rusty metal in space that there shouldn't be another human ship in, so.
Shots in the dark were really all they had.
He got back in the EVA suit, opened the airlock, and stepped through a tunnel with no idea what was in the ship connected to his. Awfully familiar. This time he was dragging something with him to cut through the metal, not an ideal tool but the closest thing they could find. It would work. He mentally prepared himself to find a human that couldn't be saved for one reason or another, drowning with their heart forced to beat mechanically, something horrible like that. It helped if thought of the worst-case-scenario first, then nothing could be worse and surprise him. With a deep breath and Rocky standing a few feet away, he cut into the ship.
It screamed.
He stopped the tool, thinking oh god maybe it was just the sound of the tool, but the scream kept going for a few seconds before it died down. Rocky tilted as far back as he could go, his front legs in front of him like a shield, deadly still. It almost sounded human. It sounded human, if human overlapped with something too big and too animal, both sounds muffled but undeniably there.
"Rock." He sounded sick. He felt sick.
"Heartbeat changed. Faster now. Grace… hurt it." Rocky's voice was slow, hesitant, aware of what the words implied and not quite sure how to scrub clean that implication. It was a stupid thing to imply, that the ship was alive, but what other answer did they have?
A heartbeat running throughout the ship, a scream when he cut into it, and blood. Blood, it was pouring blood from the puncture he'd made. "Rocky the liquid inside is blood. It looks like blood."
"Bad bad bad bad bad-" Rocky's voice had raised an octave, hissing out its notes, anxiety turning to panic. The blood was one solid stream, the pressure making an arch, and some distant part of Grace found it almost ironic. Hey, Petrova line. Remember how you first remembered that? There was blood involved then too.
And then the pressure made a screw come loose, the blood coming faster now and no longer in a particularly small stream. The numbness was replaced by horror as it pooled at his feet, and he registered the heat starting to seep in through the suit.
"Oh fuck it's still warm!" He took as many steps backward as he could take with weak knees, figuring a cuss word or maybe fifteen were appropriate for the situation.
"Bad, very bad, oh no-" Rocky sounded even more upset now that Grace had cussed, tapping a few of his legs frantically to get any sense of his surroundings over the sound of the blood. He followed Grace away from it, skittering over to him for safety. Grace felt sick again, looking at Rocky only to find his view partially obscured by the blood that had smeared across the surface of the xenonite.
Grace paid for being smart enough to cut at a weak point, and the pressure exploded outward. An entire metal panel came off, blood rushing out, covering almost the entire floor of the tunnel. Grace kept a hand on Rocky's ball, staring the blood pouring from the ship.
"Grace, Grace what we do now?" Rocky asked, tapping against his hand through the xenonite. "Ship is full of blood, that is considered bad sign yes, question? We go now, we leave question? Rocky don't like new ship."
"I don't like it either, bud." Grace muttered. "But… There might be someone in there, Rocky. If there's someone in there we have to help."
"Someone in the blood ship. Why would humans put someone in a blood ship, question?!" Rocky stamped the two legs closest to Grace. "Is stupid! Is horrible! Don't say is normal for humans, Grace heart beat too fast to be normal! Grace is scared too!"
"No it's- it's not. It's not. I don't understand it either. Just let me look inside once it's drained some of the way. If no one is in there, we disconnect and leave immediately, scrub everything, never think about this again. Okay?" He tried to sound more sure of himself than he was. This was nothing short of desperation, knowing that another human might be on the ship. If he left without knowing he'd never forgive himself.
It was a selfish thought.
Rocky let him have it anyway. Rocky was good like that. "Okay. Just- be careful careful careful. Rocky hates this."
Grace nodded. They waited for the blood to drain, which took a while. At least they'd thought to connect to the upper half of the ship, the tunnel closing over the side and top of it. The hole in the hull was big enough that he could climb inside and about halfway up, so it wouldn't have to drain entirely before he could… get in. Into the blood. Rocky had never been happier to be safe in his ball, and never more upset to be contained to it and unable to make sure Grace was safe.
Grace slowly started to make his way through the puddle of blood, grimacing. He carried himself up the ladder to the side of the hull, looking inside and fighting back the urge to gag. The hole in the ship's side was… pulsing. The outer layer was still metal, but veins of some sort ran through it, already curling around the edge of the hull where it was broken. They connected to the inner layer; something fleshy, pulsing in a steady rhythm.
"What Grace see question?" Rocky asked anxiously, and Grace couldn't blame him, but the question was hard to answer and not helping him focus on keeping his lunch down.
"It's fleshy. You- you said it looked like my insides. It looks like my insides to me too. Like it- it's gotta be made of the same stuff. There's flesh all over the inside of the ship." He didn't give Rocky time to talk him out of it, because he knew Rocky would try and probably succeed. He'd talk himself out of it, all on his own, if he gave himself a few more seconds.
He stuck his head inside to get a better look. He regretted it immediately.
The inside of the ship was covered in viscera. The front of it had a chair and console, presumably to steer with, but the porthole in front of it was covered with metal. Beside it, a series of four square lights labeled O2. Oxygen being measured meant a human needing to breathe. The blood had only emptied out as high as the hole they cut, filling the entire lower parts of the ship.
When his eyes traveled upwards to get away from that, he was greeted with the sight of flesh covered the walls. The metal of the console had broken open, revealing flesh underneath, like a blister. The pipes that ran along the side of the walls were just as covered, each one more vein than pipe at this point. Along the top, tendrils hung from the pipes and radio. A radio, some detached part of him noted dully, but the rest of him was watching the way the tendrils squirmed like intestines.
And then he landed on the arm, just a whole arm gripping one of the pipes, detached like someone had ripped it off a doll and not a person. He wanted to cry all the sudden, wanted to run because what the fuck was that, but it was proof of a human so instead he forced himself to look away from the arm and to the back of the ship.
He couldn't process most of what he saw. It didn't really matter what was back there, because in the center of it all was a person. The veins and flesh growing on the walls all coalesced into one mass of pulsating viscera on the back wall. It curled around the remaining arm the person had, his legs, his torso, and completely covered the shoulder Grace could assume to be missing an arm. The whole thing was red, dripping with blood, and the man's head hung between his shoulders. Unconscious. Unconscious, alive, but it was hard to tell if he'd stay alive once he wasn't connected to the mass of viscera and blood keeping him that way.
Grace turned around, practically fell off the side of the hull, stumbled a few feet away from the ship, and threw up. Sue him. Rocky scuttled over to him, frantically calling his name and asking questions, but all Grace could really focus on was the fact that there was a human in there, fused with flesh and blood that wasn't his own, inside a ship that had somehow become some sort of organism.
And there wasn't anyone other than him capable of sloshing around in the bloody, fleshy mass, and cutting the guy free to carry him out. Which meant he'd have to do it.
Oh, crud.
---
Simon was dying, he was sure of it. He wasn't aware enough to be confused about how he was dying again, just aware enough to feel it. The weight came first; oh god, the pressure. It was agony. He was sure his ribs would cave in on him, and it'd be over. When it lessened, just long enough for some relief, something sharp dug into his side and a new sort of pain began. Some distant part of himself accepted it. This needed to happen, it was for the best. He'd fought in hopes something like this would happen.
It was agony anyway. Maybe he wasn't dying, sure, but it felt like it. He was barely aware of his surroundings, but everything hurt, and some cosmic fucking comedian had decided that he'd have a nervous system capable of fight or flight. Fear, panic, all things that had made up his entire short existence.
At least, after Eden, right? Eden hadn't been so bad, he told himself. Eden had been home. Eden had been safe. He knew what safety felt like.
He didn't feel so sure of that as his eyes opened, and he was immediately bombarded with light. It burned, and actually everything in his body hurt, not just his eyes. He felt like he'd… there wasn't a good enough phrase, because all of them paled in comparison to what had literally happened. He shifted and made a pained sound, only then realizing he was on some sort of cot. The memories were rushing back, disjointed and not lining up at all with what was currently happening. He wasn't drenched in blood anymore, wearing some sort of white jumpsuit tied at the waist, covered in a blanket. He tried to push himself up properly, only to find that it didn't work.
Oh. Fuck. Yeah, it'd help if he actually had that arm.
He pushed down the sick feeling and used his other arm to push himself up, setting one foot on the floor. The bed was pulled out of a sleeping pod in the wall, and beside it was a robotic arm that held an IV bag among other things. For a moment he focused on observing the room around him, mostly a typical-looking dormitory or something, save for the oddly shaped glass wall that enclosed a solid chunk of the room. There were medical supplies left on a metal table by his bed. He didn't get much time to process that, however, before the robotic arm came to life and started moving towards him.
He yelped and flung his legs to the opposite side of the bed, standing up and stumbling immediately. He heard what he could only describe as distressed-sounding music from the other side of the room, but with a robot arm coming at him he honestly had bigger problems. He only stopped his hurrying away from the thing when he realized it had the IV in his arm, and it was starting to pull and hurt.
But he did seem to be out of its reach, huddled in the opposite corner of the room. That was good. He stared at the thing helplessly holding his IV and reaching for him, but it was unable to get any closer. "Good. Fuck you."
Then he looked down at himself and actually took stock of what was happening. Bandages covered most of his chest and shoulder, so the jumpsuit he wore was tied around his waist. It was really nice, too, not a single patch on the whole thing. He felt… good. Actually, really good. He was still in pain, but it was dull now, and he felt sturdier than before somehow. He should feel weak, horrible, right? Last he knew he was dying. Which reminded him, how the hell did he get here? Where was here? There was no way the COI would waste medical supplies on him.
He looked around, taking stock of how nice the damn place looked, how clean. What little he could see seemed to be well-stocked with medical supplies, and the glass-looking wall had a messy looking workshop-ish area behind it. Actually- oh holy fuck something moved.
He yelped again, trying to take a step back and being abruptly reminded that he had an IV in his arm. He stared at the source of the sound he'd heard earlier, a weird little spider made of stone, or something akin to that. It seemed aware that he'd seen it, stilling, before it began making noise louder than before. When it did, whatever noise it made was drowned out by a machine projecting a human voice into the room. Simon couldn't understand it any better than he understood the creature.
Then, another human walked in. More accurately he ran in, nearly tripping over himself, making eye contact with Simon and looking just as stunned as Simon felt. He glanced at Simon, then at the arm, then at the bed as he began to understand the situation.
The human looked like he'd lived a soft life. His eyes were a little too sweet for looking at a stranger, the motion of his hands in front of him a little too gentle. Like trying to calm a wild animal. His voice was soft when he spoke, setting Simon's hair on end. Just too damn soft. No one actually fucking talked like that. Simon was definitely in trouble for fucking up their medbay.
He looked at the mess of medical supplies by his bunk and ran for the scissors, ducking under the robot arm and snatching them from the table despite the sounds of protest from the other human. The robot arm went to snag him and he dodged again, finding that he was actually really feeling a lot better, and within seconds he was out of its range again. He held the scissors tight, looking at the human with wide eyes.
Silence. The other human just stared at him with something between fear and understanding, before he started to speak again. Slower this time. He raised his hands in a 'surrender' motion, taking a step back. The creature on the other side of the wall was silent save for the occasional click and tap.
"I don't understand you, don't bother." Simon hissed, before proceeding to not listen to his own advice. "Are you COI? Or- who am I kidding. What the fuck is this place?"
The human's face and shoulders fell in unison, the disappointment palpable. He looked at Simon helplessly for a moment, chewing on his lip. He seemed to come to a decision, speaking aloud and slowly stepping closer. Simon tensed, backing further into his corner of the room, holding the scissors in front of him when that didn't stop the human.
He made his way slowly to the robotic arm, fiddled with some buttons and said something directly to it, and then the thing slowly fell limp. The creature said something through its human-voice thing, and the human responded as he walked away from Simon without turning his back. He motioned to the arm, then the bed, once he was at the doorway again.
He'd turned the thing off. It wasn't proof he wasn't COI, it wasn't confirmation he meant no harm, but the intent was clear. Simon was scared of the weird robot arm even though it was probably a medical thing that meant no harm, so he'd turned it off.
Reluctantly, Simon lowered the scissors.
He didn't put them down either.