Chapter Text
Four days ago, the Submersible Machine 13 disappeared under the waves of a red sea.
”We love you, Simon.”
Crushed under the weight of a thousand teeth.
”Happy Birthday, Simon!”
A lone, blinking star at the bottom of a crusted trench, thrashing against endless black.
”We will always be your family, Simon.”
Flash. Flash. Flash.
”I’m so sorry. It’s your mother, Simon.”
Flash. Flash. Breathe.
Chapter One: Pacemaker
The white-hot flash of laser cutters clawing their way through metal rips asunder a silent tomb. Crewmen shout at each other as the stench of cooking flesh fills the rover. It took them four days, but the outpost on AT-5 were graced by the council to wrench the SM-13 from the ocean. Post-mission inspection, was the excuse.
“Watch the output on that cutter, bud, we’re trying to make a door inside, not melt the thing,” a voice crackles through the comms, weary and sharp. A voice from a working companion.
“Hard to be precise when I’m cutting through a week’s worth of tectonic sediment and ocean-rot,” The engineer grunts back, the blue glare of his laser-torch reflecting off his visor. He gestures with a gloved hand at the crumpled metal. “We should’ve left this thing in the trench. It was a loss four days ago, and it’s a loss now.”
“Tell that to the Council,” the first engineer snarks, pulling black-red slime off broken components. “They didn't care that David voted against the recovery. Majority ruled. Apparently, whatever data the Captain died for is more valuable than our sleep cycle or the fact that we’re down a flight lead.”
“The Captain was obsessed,” the second engineer mutters, the laser hissing as it hits a pocket of trapped gas. “She threw the mission, the pilot, and her own life into the teeth of whatever the hell is down there for a few corrupted drives. And now the C.O.I. has us scavenging the wreckage like- fuckin’ vultures.”
“Just keep cutting. The Council’s running the outpost now; they aren't looking for opinions, they're looking for results.”
From the outside, the machine hung from huge, rusted-orange chains, crumpled as if it were made of paper. Its porthole shattered, teeth marks dragged across its hull, littering punctures across its body. Something akin to a red, flesh-like “algae” had wrapped its way around the mechanisms of its drill propulsion system. It hung heavily, dribbling blood, sagging having been stolen from its home below.
The SM-13 came out of that ocean fighting, as if the pilot were still trying to figure out where he was. Everyone knew what happened; they were briefed, but looking at the wreckage in-person set everyone on-edge, especially when it kept mechanically whirring like that. But, it wasn’t just that, either. Attempting to break the surface with the SM-13 attached agitated these strange, thread-like, impossibly strong webs, holding onto its metal hold and pulling down, to keep the ship under. As if the ocean refused to let go.
But, the C.O.I.’s steel winch was stronger in the end.
Something must have been constricting around the x-ray’s activation button, because when they broke it from the ocean’s grasp, it flash-banged everyone standing nearby multiple times. Luckily, no one was in the way to get hit by any rays, but the light nearly blinded the recovery crew.
Flash. Flash. Flash.
A jagged, square pane drops from the SM-13 with a loud clang!, ringing out like a gunshot throughout the inner docking area. Casual bickering and chatter falls silent. The conscripted engineers working to break into the hull stumble back as a waterfall of blood rushes from their makeshift doorway. A terrible squelching bellows from within. The crew looks on in suspicion and fear, noting that the hull pane itself — the one on the floor — was bleeding, too.
David barks to the crew unceremoniously from his nearby position at the command terminal, having taken on the role of overseer for this new mission. “Everyone be prepared to see a body. You know the drill. I need disposal in here and salvage. Get that light deactivated immediately!”
People move before his sentence even finishes. The initial sweep team — some volunteers from Medical — climb in after the blood coagulates enough under the vessel to be traversable. They move in steps with precision; a perfect swarm of hazmat suits, scanners, sample kits, and flashing cameras. They have done this before. Too many times. Documenting the consequences of their actions. Their crime scene.
Flash. Flash. Flash.
With each blast of light, new horrors reveal themselves. The entire interior of the submersible was nothing but meat. The floor, the back-end terminal, the walls. Red-blue veins crawl and squirm against the lab team’s sterile metal scrapers. One of them is too scared to go deeper, taking to holding an LED flashlight above everyone’s heads from the back, and staring into the depths of the now-cavernous machine. Each footstep squished into the once-metal floor, coating their boots in thick, rotting ichor.
They are quick to cut the x-ray button out of the tangle of veins grasping onto it, radium-green light poking through the gore. The surrounding flesh recedes away from their incisions, as if it could feel the blade… but the x-ray finally stops, and the crew outside visibly relaxes a little.
The poor folk over in back-admin are going to have a terrible time sorting through the thousands of useless photos this thing took over the span of it’s eight-day venture. Four days abused at the hands of a blind convict, and four days stranded and forgotten, button stuck and forced to flash photos of nothing but black.
They couldn’t skip analyzing a single one, just in case.
It smells like a rotting corpse in here, and it has everyone working fast. Their visors aren’t enough to shield them from the corrosive, acidity of the ocean’s blood for long. Contamination meant a long, tedious cleaning process no one wanted to deal with. The flesh in here had immediately begun to spoil the moment they lifted the SM-13 out of the depths. Despite only boasting a thin exosphere, AT-5 was hot.
A bold individual ducks under the collapsed ceiling barricading the driver’s seat from the rest of the rover. It’s cramped and damp. Red smears against the white plastic of his hazmat suit and sizzles.
It’s too dark to make anything out.
“Flashlight, somebody. Now.” The lab technician reaches behind him to grab at the team’s singular shared light being passed to him, leaving the others in the dark. Waiting.
He takes a breath, and steadies it forward.
“Contact.”
There, slumped flush against the far corner, was their pilot. Flesh, clothes, and all, having melted to the meat-wall of the submersible. Head hung low, long, black hair covering his face, sopped and scabbed in blood.
Thank god I don’t have to see his face. The lab technician crinkles their nose up at the sight, but steps closer to get a better look.
One arm pulled away from the center of his bicep, flesh softened like it had been cooked. Bones turned gelatinous. He notices discarded bandages, completely soaked red having been abandoned and thrashed around for days, on the floor near him, caught up in a tangle of metal.
Poor bastard thought that would help.
The pilot’s other arm was spread straight out to his side, the wall-veins having clutched it tight. If such a thing could white-knuckle, this would be it.
The technician notices something odd, the more he looks. The undulation… the almost-living nature of this whole rover… it was all moving in sync. He presses his flashlight firm against the remaining wrist of the pilot, industrial beam lighting up the inside of his body, veins streaked in shadow.
There, he sees it.
The slithering veins surrounding the team had all but sunk into the pilot’s body days ago, digging into sloughing, dirty skin. Joining with his. A slow constrict and release.
Pumping blood into him. From him. In and out. Artery to artery.
A heartbeat.
“Holy fuck!”
The technician stumbles back, icy terror creeping up his chest as he witnesses the vessel shudder and dump blood into the pilot’s body. Then, watches as the body raggedly sucks in air through its mouth. Choking. Tensing its muscles with all its remaining strength to inhale. Sputtering red chunks from its cold lips. Head lifting.
Wide, glazed eyes meet his, if only for a moment. Retinas burned out from acid-blood having drowned him for days. Gaunt, pale features. Black veins.
It’s over as fast as it came, and the pilot slumps forward, back into lifelessness.
From the other side of the ship, someone lets out an “ah-ha! Look guys, the black box!” in the silence between the pilot’s last breath and the technician’s scream for help.
An all-encompassing void overtook Simon when he drowned in the sea. The last thing he remembered was the submersible failing to decompress, and being bitten nearly in half by the monster who had claimed to be his friend. He sunk to the bottom along with the black box — wrapped in a life vest — he swore to deliver. The aching weight of his failure only served to sink him faster.
But, none of that mattered. It wasn’t his problem anymore, because he was dead.
Death felt like a long, warm sleep. He was in a gentle sway against the boundary of eternity, not letting him cross over just yet. Almost like being afloat, pushed against a rocky beach, warm waves cradling his body as if he were precious cargo. It was nothing like what the Father had described. There was no Eden. No beginning of life anew. Simon existed in his memories. A choir of beautiful singing voices would wash over his grief and fill all the holes in his soul up with relief, and he basked in it. For once, he was tended to. For once, his mind was an open book, not to be shunned, but to be loved.
Simon assumed this was some kind of judgement. Simon would wait. He was far beyond the concept of time in this place. Every time an anxiety struck, it was methodically stripped from him with surgical precision, but Simon was in too much bliss to question it. Too out-of-it to realize that the voices were taking things from him.
The choir sings as if they were in a room from afar, stuck behind the boundary, and Simon strains to hear it. To make it louder. Why were they so quiet now? His brothers were calling for him. Screaming for him to join them. What was once a serene song had turned into jagged, broken voices. Ocean waves grow distant…
He tries. Over and over, to get a breath and call back. To balm his loneliness and shout out to his brothers.
“We don’t have anything remotely close to fixing… that. What the hell are we going to do? If we cut him out, we’re gonna hit every major artery and he’ll just die anyway.” A male voice, far away yet shrill enough to grate on Simon’s ears. A disembodied conversation half-finished.
“Yeah we know, we’re just trying to see how far this mutation goes before we call it. We’ve already got someone coming to take care of it. Admin was adamant about nobody being here when that happens. Just keep your voice down and don’t scare him, and get the hell out of dodge if you still want your job. This shit is grizzly, even for us.” A concerned female voice drops into something akin to pity. Guilt. She thinks Simon can’t hear her.
Death peered into Simon’s eyes, mere inches from his face.
Alongside it, a rival.
A red-eyed god desperate for its prize.
Warmth turns to ice, and he is ripped from his slumber.
Simon’s eyes pop open as his lungs scream and move on their own for air. His body is thrown forwards as his muscles contract involuntarily, and he wretches blood clots from his airway; ejects blood from his lungs.
Pain. It crashes down on him like a sack of bricks. He wasn’t floating anymore, and the weight of his limbs did nothing but pull against skin slowly tearing its way off with each movement.
“Dude, look! He’s doing it again!”
Simon hears multiple boots come stomping near him. Gloved hands touched him; an incessant beeping came from all directions. What were they doing to him? Simon couldn’t fight back even if he tried; glued to the wall as the convulsing machine held onto him.
Simon was its lifeline; a beating heart to keep it alive, and nothing more.
Simon can’t see anything other than blurry lights and shadows. His nervous system is so fried that it all feels like static. His tongue is blistered and he can feel something worming its way around near his heart and it’s horrifying.
He tries to scream and it comes out more like a wheeze. Something cold is pressed against his neck and suddenly a needle drives its way all the way into his spinal column. Simon jerks and sputters.
“Pilot. Pilot, can you hear me? We just hit you with adrenaline, it’s the only way you will wake up. I don’t know how long it’s going to last.”
That same woman from before. Stoic and concerned.
“A - va…” Simon chokes through nothing but air. His voice was completely gone. Burned away like the rest of him.
“No, she’s dead. I’m a research lead for the Consolidation. We found you, pilot.” She speaks almost with a feigned determination, like this was some kind of victory.
Simon attempts to blink, dips out into nothingness for a split moment, then back again.
Dead? Did he remember that? Or was that taken from him in the void? His memories had been split nearly in half from how many times it tried to soothe him. If Ava didn’t save him, then who? They weren’t calling him “convict” anymore. Why? His mind was racing, trapped in a body that no longer worked.
Make it stop. Make it stop. Just make it stop.
”S-t…op…”
The SM-13 shudders. Pumps more blood into him. A choir sings in the distance, and Simon’s pain is dulled. He loses himself in it, the high of whatever chemical it dumped into his bloodstream made him soar far away from reality. The choir had, piece-by-piece, broken into so many voices in his head, all whispering to each other as if they were watching him, snickering, biting at each other, biting at Simon with harsh, cruel words.
”Let us take the pain away.” A venomous promise.
”We need the Butcher, not this broken thing. What have they done to him?” An angry child.
”Come back. Please come back.” A desperate plea.
”Your blood is my blood.” A statement of pride.
“Do you know what year it is? What’s your name?”
The female voice demands answers from him, just to see if she could pull a little more information out. Squeezing every resource attempt they have out of a dying man. Simon doesn’t have it in him to respond. Doesn’t have it in him to take another breath.
The adrenaline they hit him with has lasted only a few minutes. it’s fading, and he’s slipping again. How long before the SM-13 forces his lungs to move? How much longer would he be forced to endure this hell? Who were these people in his head?
Why did he feel so… okay with it? With their presence?
At least he wasn’t alone… right?
”Yes, Simon. We’re here. We love you.”
When the silence holds for a beat too long, the research lead continues to speak, “listen. Focus on my voice. It’s going to be okay. You’re going to be okay. We’re going to get you out of here.”
Another shuffling of boots squelching against flesh. The ruffle of plastic hazmat suits and hushed whispers between the lab team. They are packing up. Giving up. Simon wretches again.
Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me here. I don’t want to be a monster. Please. I can’t see.
”We got our readings. We’re cleared for disposal.”