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There is nothing like a brig on the shuttle, so they put him in the airlock instead. He spends the whole voyage with his back against the interior wall, eyes fixed on the tiny round window in the airlock door. He could see a glow through it, at the beginning, but now all that's visible is the cold vacuum of space, black and empty.
He knows he wouldn't die instantly, is the thing. A human body can survive for more than a handful of seconds in a vacuum if they make sure to exhale first. He would be alive long enough to feel his eyeballs and the thin membranes inside his nose freezing, ice crystals pushing into his bloodstream, slicing through his flesh. He would be alive long enough to feel the absolutely frigid environment cutting near-instantly through every stitch of his clothing. He would be alive long enough to know he's suffocating. All they have to do is open the airlock door, and he'll be sucked out by the pressure loss immediately.
He spends the whole voyage waiting for them to do so.
When the shuttle docks with an actual ship and the secondary shield comes down to prevent a binary hull breach, he's not sure whether he's relieved or disappointed. At least he knows what would happen, out there in the vacuum. He's got no idea what they plan to do with him now.
They keep the cuffs on as they lead him through the shuttle. It's nothing more than a glorified escape pod, and there are ragged, exhausted people packed into every inch of it. Each and every one of them stares at him as the three officers weave through the crowd, stepping over the sprawled legs of the injured, jabbing him with their stun-sticks to make sure he does the same. He winces each time, always expecting them to hit him with another round of voltage like they had when he'd surrendered right before the station blew, hoping against hope that he could stop the terrible mistake his brothers were making. But he hadn't been successful, and now Filament Station is gone, along with an unknown number of people. The officers haven't told him. He's not sure they know.
He wonders if this is the only escape pod that made it off the station.
He hopes it's not.
The guards prod him out of the shuttle hatch and into the ship's cargo bay. It's blindingly bright, with loading lights trained on the passageway through to the shuttle, leaving just an impression of people and movement somewhere behind the lights.
Someone speaks. Is this him?
He's Edenite, one of the officers says. He surrendered.
Edenites don't surrender, the voice scoffs.
This one did, the guard says, and prods him in the spine. He stumbles and catches himself awkwardly, his cuffed hands swinging out in front of him for balance. Got the tattoo and everything.
We'll see about that, the voice says, and then arms reach out of the light and seize him, dragging him forward. A dark shape coalesces out of the brightness, and he flinches as hands come up to push the hood off his head, patting him down with clinical distance. Someone taps the empty sheath on his shoulder and he has to resist the urge to turn his head and bite the hand.
You searched him for weapons?
Of course, one of the officers says, her tone indignant. He didn't have much.
They don't need much. Where's the knife?
Oh – I think it got handed off to the armory officer. She'll be on another shuttle. We didn't have much time to –
Fine, the voice interrupts from behind the spotlights. As long as it's far away from him. Doctor?
A new voice replies. Here. How long?
A few hours should be fine.
Sure thing. Gloved hands grab his jaw, jerking it sideways, and he makes an annoyed noise, then yelps in pain as a needle is jammed into the muscle of his neck. Are they just going to kill him, after all that? At least he heard them mention other shuttles, so he knows now he didn’t ride out with the only survivors.
You might want to catch him, the doctor's voice says as his head begins to spin and he sways on his feet. Whatever they injected him with is working fast.
“What...whassat...” he mumbles, but he can't feel his tongue and his vision is fading out, so that's as far as he gets.
Nah, he hears one of the officers say, distantly. Let him fall.
His knees buckle, but he's unconscious before he hits the ground.
When he wakes up, he's in an actual holding cell. They must have dragged him in and dumped him on the floor, because his shoulders ache and his face hurts. He brings his hands around – not cuffed anymore, that's great – and pushes himself into a sitting position, then runs his fingers gingerly over his cheeks, his chin, his nose. Nothing feels broken, but there's a scab on his chin and a sore spot on the inside of his lip, like his teeth came down hard on it when he fell. He can't really blame them for that – not after what they think he did.
There's a low bench with a thin mat that's probably the bed, and a vacuum toilet bolted to the wall. He must still be on the ship – or a ship, at least. He can't hear the engines, but when he leans down and presses his ear to the floor, he thinks he can hear a faint rumble, and there's a hint of vibration under his fingertips.
He sits back up and leans against the wall. He's not ready to try the sleeping mat, yet. That might have to wait until he's more desperate. Instead, he brings a sore knee up to rub at it, wondering if that was from collapsing in the cargo bay or from earlier, when the voltage of the stun-sticks had sent him to his knees. Even then, he'd kept his hands up, palms out. In the scuffle of them cuffing him and the evacuation, he lost track of where and how his medallion got ripped off. He hopes it was an accident, and that it stayed behind to burn on Filament Station. That would be better than one of these heretics keeping it, ignorant of its importance.
Fuck – he's gotta stop thinking like that. Those aren't his thoughts, that's just how they taught him to think. He shakes his head, then draws his other leg up and drops his forehead to his knees. After a moment, he hauls the hood back over his head. He stops to readjust buckles and straps as he does – clearly, they at least partially stripped him, likely to check for hidden weaponry, before stuffing him back into his own clothes. He's surprised they left him in his old clothes, actually. He kind of expected some kind of prison jumpsuit.
You think we can afford the fabric to make custom clothes for convicts? One of the guards snorts when he asks, later. Everyone's struggling, man. And you just went and made the struggle even harder.
“I didn't mean to,” he mutters, after the guard is gone. They left him a rubber bowl with protein cubes in it. They taste like cardboard, but he eats them anyway.
“Where are you taking me?” he asks when new guards come to cuff him and drag him out of the cell.
Another ship, one of them says.
“Where's that ship going?”
Why do you care? It's not like you get a choice in the matter.
The guards on the new ship don't tell him their destination, either – they just look over paperwork and mutter to the guards from the first ship, casting sideways glances at him.
Someone new walks in, and the guards straighten up. How is he under sedation? the new person asks.
Takes it like a champ, one of the first ship's guards says. Dropped like a rock and slept like a baby. No complications.
Good, the new person says, clearly some kind of authority. As soon as the transfer paperwork is complete, hook him up to a line and keep him under until we get there. I don't want him to have a chance to cause any trouble.
“I'm right here, y'know,” he says, miffed.
The new person – the captain, maybe – startles. Can he understand us?
“What – of course I can understand you! Why the fuck wouldn't I be able to understand you?”
You're an Edenite, the captain says, as if that's supposed to be an answer, and then turns to the guards from the new ship. Definitely sedate him. I don't want to listen to his yapping.
“Wait, hold on -” he protests, raising his cuffed hands in front of him, but then he feels a pinch in the side of his neck, and before he knows it he's falling again.
He loses time. They bring him up, sometimes, enough to eat and piss and move around before they drop him back under into full unconsciousness. Apparently, wherever they're taking him, they want him to be mobile when he gets there. He's not sure if that's reassuring or not. Maybe a penal colony? Indentured slavery, mining deep-space asteroids for the rest of his life? He no longer knows what to expect – not that he ever did in the first place.
There's an impression of a smaller space and louder engines – another shuttle? His body weighs a thousand pounds, then it's weightless, then it's numb.
Is this him? It's a new voice.
Yup. Should be up and about in...ehhh...thirty minutes or so. Easier to keep him sedated for the trip. Safer, too.
For him, or for you?
Someone snorts a laugh. You heard what he did. You know what he's capable of.
I guess so. Can he walk?
You can drag 'im.
A sigh. Fine.
His shoulders ache again, and his wrists are screaming where the cuffs dig in, but he can't muster enough control of his thoughts to say anything, or ask them to stop. He feels his boots dragging, bouncing off bumps and divots in the floor. The footsteps of the people half-carrying him change from clanging to thudding and back again, like they're passing over grates.
He blinks awake slumped over on a hard surface, his arms wrenched awkwardly in front of him. The left side of his neck throbs with every heartbeat, pulsing a deep ache, and he knows before he fully opens his eyes that they've done something to Eden's tattoo.
With effort, he pushes himself stiffly upright. He's seated in a hard chair, his hands cuffed to a ring in the center of a metal table that's bolted to the floor. There's a drool spot on the table in front of him where his face was, and he twists his right arm to wipe it away with his elbow. As he does, his eyes catch on the broken ring on his wrist, and his heart clenches at the sight of the place his medallion should be. How can he ever find his brothers after everything if he doesn't have his token?
Wait, no, he's forsaken that shit. He's done with them, after what they did. But it still hurts. He liked his little leaf. Each one was different, and it reminded him that he was a person.
He's not sure that's the case anymore.
Oh good, you're awake, a voice says. Can you understand me?
“Yeah,” he grits out. “Why do people keep asking me that?”
Well, you never know, with Eden.
“What's that supposed to mean?”
It's not like they give you a real education, the voice says, and he finds himself bristling.
“We learn enough.”
Enough to know how to kill, and die violently yourselves, the person huffs, sitting down across from him and dropping a thin folder on the table. They flip it open and pause, glancing up. Do they teach you how to read?
“Of course they teach us how to -” he snaps, leaning forward over his bound hands. The whine of a stun-stick charging up echoes through the room, and he looks over his shoulder to see a guard he didn't even know was there, standing at attention and holding their baton out to their side. Slowly, he settles back into his chair and takes a deep breath. The stun-stick continues to whine for a moment longer before the person across from him raises a hand, then it shuts off with a snap.
“I know how to read,” he says carefully.
Good. Read this and sign here when you're done.
He blinks blearily at the paper that's shoved under his face, fumbling for it with numb fingers. Something about his rights, and a trial, and penalties. “What is this?”
I thought you said you knew how to read.
“Fuck you, I've been drugged for days.”
Weeks, actually, they tell him, and that shocks him so much he just scribbles something that doesn't even resemble his name in the slightest on the line at the bottom when they tap it with a pen. Weeks? How fucking far out is this place?
Wonderful. Welcome to your new home.
They tuck the paper back into the folder and leave the room. Another guard comes through the door as they walk out, and the two guards unlatch his cuffs from the table and half-walk, half-drag him down the dim hallway outside. They take several turns, and descend at least one staircase, and he knows he should be paying attention so he can find his way back out, but his brain is still muddled and he's realizing he didn't actually read the entire paper before he signed it, and now he's not sure what they're planning to do with him.
“Hey, uh, where...?”
No talking, one guard says.
Sure. That's great. “Asshole,” he mutters under his breath, and gets a fist to the jaw for his attitude.
They dump him in a room that bears a striking similarity to the holding cell on the ship, only this time there are actual cell bars at the front, and there's no vacuum toilet bolted to the wall. Instead, there's a bucket. That confirms he's on a moon, at least. It can't be a planet – no one's wearing masks, and there are no habitable planets left, just a handful of half-terraformed moons, most of which are too small or rugged to settle much of a colony on. Apparently no one wanted him on a station. He can understand that.
This time, the guards don't remove the handcuffs before they leave. They don't feed him, either, and this cell doesn't even have a sleeping pad, just a balled-up tarp that looks like it's seen better days. He figures they'll set up some kind of trial, put him on a live feed in front of the remnants of humanity and tell him to atone for Eden's crimes. He wonders how long it will take.
After a day or so they return, remove the cuffs, give him some food, and tell him to settle in. He waits for them to explain what's next, but they just walk off again, footsteps fading up the hall as they chatter about some inane bullshit, completely ignoring his frustrated yelling.
In the end, they leave him in the cell for nearly two years.
He's maybe a little bit crazy, by the time someone finally comes for him. The guards have been feeding him and hosing him down occasionally, and he sometimes hears the voices of other prisoners in other rooms, far down the halls. But no one comes to talk to him, and when he asks for books, or workout weights, or anything to mitigate the boredom they laugh at him, as if the very idea of him suffering from solitude is amusing.
You're from Eden, they tell him. You don't need that shit.
He does, though. He does. He used to be a person.
Just pray to your tree or whatever. It should be happy with you, right?
They don't know the Last Tree is dead. They don't seem to know that Eden would be anything but happy with him, after what he's done. He surrendered, after all. He surrendered, and he tried to stop it. Eden would flay him for that. They would feed him to the hungry soil without a thought.
The person who comes for him eventually is new. An opportunity has opened up, they tell him. A chance for you to earn your freedom.
“My...freedom?” They haven't even had a trial. Does he not deserve that, because of Eden?
The new person tells him about a moon whose surface is covered with an ocean of blood. They tell him about a project, a mission, an attempt to map the sea. They tell him about the cobbled-together submarine unit. At some point, he realizes he's shaking his head.
“This sounds like a suicide mission. If you're gonna kill me, just fucking kill me.”
We don't want to kill you, the person says through the bars of his cell. There aren't enough of us left. Every life is precious.
Well, that's just a load of fucking bullshit. If every life is precious, why have they wasted years of his by leaving him here to rot? But he doesn't say that. The core premise of this deal, after all, means he'd get to leave this room, these halls, this whole entire building behind.
“Tell me about the details,” he says. “What's – what would I need to do?”
It's fairly simple. You go down. You make note of what you find. Report on a few specific locations of interest. You come back up. Then you're free.
“...That's it?”
It's not as easy as it sounds, they tell him.
He scrubs at his face, threadbare gloves snagging on his scruffy beard. “I already said it sounds like a suicide mission.”
Would you rather stay here?
He looks around at the bare floor, the lack of bed, the slowly-dissolving tarp, the fucking bucket. “Not really,” he says.
This is transfer paperwork, the person tells him, holding up a clipboard. It releases you into my custody until I can hand you over to the mission captain on the moon. Getting to the superstructure on the surface is a three-day shuttle from here. I'll need you to sign – They pause, glancing down at the paper, then up at him. Or leave your mark, if you can't write.
His fists clench at his sides. “Give me the damn pen,” he grates out, and when they extend it through the bars and hold the clipboard up, he scrawls an overlarge, exaggerated “X,” feathering the top two arms like the symbol that's tattooed under the burn on his neck. “There's your fucking mark,” he growls.
How quaint, the person says, and before he knows it he's cuffed again, stumbling down the halls after his next captor and into a shuttle that looks like it was salvaged from mismatched scrap.
It was, they tell him when he asks. At least your attack on Filament Station left plenty of material. It wasn't completely destroyed, you know.
He didn't know. He's glad, he supposes, that there was something left. It feels like a bad omen, though, to travel in the patchwork corpse of the station he helped destroy. Of course, he doesn't say that. These people already think he's an illiterate brainwashed bumpkin – he's not tossing superstition into the mix.
The shuttle rattles alarmingly as it takes off, but once it breaks atmo it quiets down, and he unclenches his fingers from where they'd dug into his pants.
They asked me to brief you on AT-5.
“What's that?”
The moon. That's its designation. The blood ocean is new, as of a few years ago.
“A few years ago? What – where did it come from?”
That's what the team is trying to find out, they say. That’s what they tell me, anyway. I'm no scientist; just a courier. Do you want the briefing now, or later?
“Later,” he says. His head aches, and he tried to exercise as much as possible in the space he was given, but he's still exhausted from the journey out to the shuttleport, let alone all the talking. He's lived in practical solitude for two years. He forgot how tiring conversations can be.
Suit yourself. Let me know when you need to use the head and I'll move the cuffs.
“Yeah,” he replies. “Sure. Thanks.”
Seemingly cognizant of the fact that he needs quiet right now, the courier turns to face the controls.
So. He's back in the void of space again. At least this time, there are two doors between him and the vacuum, and he can see if the courier tries to fuck with the controls. Just a few more days in this rust bucket and then he'll be on a moon with an ocean of blood – which sounds awful, but at least it's something new. He wonders what it'll look like. He wonders what it'll smell like.
Actually, scratch that thought. He doesn't want to imagine it. He'll be dealing with it soon enough.
He tips his head back against the seat and closes his eyes. At least he's out of the fucking cell. Anything has to be better than that, blood ocean or no. “I go down, I come back up,” he mutters under his breath. Easy, right?
“And then I'm free.”