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Simon supposes he should be grateful, or at least content with his current situation. He wasn’t in a prison cell, nor was he set for an execution, and most importantly he wasn’t in a submarine sent to the bottom of a blood filled ocean, and yet…
Well, he gets three meals a day at least – though what they fed him now was more experimentation than actual food, it was a step up from the dehydrated nutrient blocks they’d had him surviving on for the first month or so after they pulled him from the sea – and he’s kept pretty secure in the loading bay of the ship. He wouldn’t describe his lodgings as luxurious by any stretch of the imagination (an empty husk of a submarine and a pool of blood was hardly anything to brag about), but he did at least get a couple of rubber mats to lay on now so he wasn’t just making do with the unforgiving metal floor of the Iron Lung.
Sure, he still gets poked and prodded by scientists every day, and sure he still wakes up in a cold sweat occasionally, the whispers of some unnamed consciousness lingering in his ears, but his situation could always be worse.
He could be dead
And anything was better than that, at least, that’s what Simon tells himself. Part of him wonders if he’d just spent so much time in the submarine slowly losing his mind as he clawed at any chance to make it home that now his desperate survival instinct was something engraved into his very psyche. It feels more like a reflex than anything else, a natural, human response. Frankly, there’s so little left to tie him to his humanity these days he’ll take whatever he can get.
So would Simon say that he’s “happy?”
That might be a stretch. Honestly he doesn’t know if he’s ever really been “happy” since the standards of what constituted ‘joy’ back in Eden landed somewhere between ‘success’ and ‘obedience’. When he was down in the ocean with thousands of pounds of pressure pushing down on him he’d said that he’d wanted ‘freedom’, but even that feels like a foreign concept to him.
What would freedom really look like?
Well, it’s probably not worth worrying about that too much anymore, not when the bloody waters around him keep him rooted in place more firmly than any restraints could. Sometimes Simon wonders if it would be easier if the bay doors beneath him just opened one day, dropped him straight out into the atmosphere and let him burn up until whatever remained of him hit the blood-red ocean below. Would he feel more alive then?
But then the more he thinks about it, the more his shoulders shake and his breath quickens and it feels like he wants to claw off his own skin. He doesn’t think death is really the freedom he’s searching for, but it’s hard to know for certain when every door in front of him just seems to lead to a new cage.
There is no perfect solution for Simon, not anymore, and honestly he probably deserves that.
Sometimes Simon lies at the bottom of the pool, staring up into the dark red waters and trying to think about nothing at all. The scientists tried to time it once to see how long he could hold his breath, but when he stayed down there for over an hour they eventually just shrugged and said he could likely survive indefinitely below the surface.
“The results are in, and… you don’t seem to have gills,” David says. He sounds oddly disappointed by that, though Simon can’t even begin to fathom why.
David flips through the pages on the clipboard. Though the other is too far away at the edge of the pool for Simon to read the results himself, he can see a few charts and graphs skip by on the papers. Simon probably wouldn’t know how to interpret all the results anyway. He’d never been one to study much about biology or chemistry or whatever the hell is going on with him internally now.
“Not a merman, unfortunately,” David continues, “Which is a shame, but hey, let us know if you ever feel like you might grow a tail.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Simon says dryly.
He glances down at his own legs then. He’s long since given up on wearing his boots, they’d hardly do much considering he’s surrounded by the bloody water these days, his legs look relatively normal. Well, what passes for normal by his current standards.
Simon doesn’t have any inch of skin that doesn’t look affected by the ocean’s mutations, but some of it looks worse than others. With his legs, they just look raw and red, outlined with black veins bulging below the surface of his skin and lacerations tracing the lines of his muscles, but honestly that looks better than most of him does. It definitely looks better than the mangled remains of his left arm.
He has had nightmares before of losing his legs though, of them being fused to the floor of the horrible submarine in the same way his arm had. He’d dreamed of drowning beneath the bloody waves, cemented in place by fleshy veins and sinew as he gasped desperately for air, only to be crushed by the massive teeth of the thing that lived at the bottom of the ocean. In his dreams he tries desperately to rip his legs off to free himself, though he’d never managed it successfully before he’d awoken with a choked off gasp.
But despite their appearance his legs still seemed to be capable of holding his weight pretty well. Simon’s not sure if part of that is the same pain reduction that’s kept him up and functional after the everything he’s gone through or if it’s something else entirely, but he’s not about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
“We’re thinking you likely ‘breathe’ all that blood through your skin,” David says, snapping Simon out of his thoughts. When he looks up at David the other is staring at Simon like a child with a magnifying glass wondering whether it should burn the insect below him or pin it on a cork board.
“You’re kind of like… a frog! Or maybe a worm.” David shrugs. “The eggheads on board call it ‘cutaneous respiration’, but fuck me if I know how to explain that.”
“Great, so what does that mean?” Simon asks impatiently.
“That means, Convict, we’ll need more skin samples in the near future,” David says cheerfully.
Simon scowls. Even after nearly a month and a half aboard the main ship, the other man still refused to use Simon’s name. Simon knows the other has been told it, he just stubbornly avoids using it for whatever reason.
“Fine, whatever,” Simon says.
He wonders if he should be more worried that he’s gotten so used to losing bits and pieces of himself, but really he just feels kind of indifferent to it. Some of that might be the lack of pain that dulls the sensation of being harvested for his blood and skin, but he’s not sure he’d really mind even if he did still have his normal reactions.
In some ways, it felt like part of the punishment he’d always known he deserved.
“That’s the spirit!” David says cheerfully, “See you tomorrow, Convict!”
The other is gone in a clomp of his rubber boots, and seconds later the automatic door slides shut behind him. The loading bay is once again quiet, the only audible disruption being the lapping of the blood-red waters echoing around the room.
As much distaste as Simon had for David, sometimes the silence following his departure was even worse.
It likes to talk to Simon. He's not sure why it still tries to speak with him when he's done everything in his power to push It away, but It remains undeterred. Frankly, Simon's not sure if It is really conscious of what It's doing. In some ways It is like a child, tugging on Simon's consciousness impatiently to try and get his attention, though It's unable to do much more than call out to him.
-come back left us come back too far away come back Simon-
He's tried everything he can think of to block It out, but nothing ever works. He thinks part of him is still left behind at the bottom of the sea, stuck somewhere deep under a thousand pounds of pressure or seized between the teeth of a monster, an eternal tether to a force beyond his own comprehension. He's not sure if that pull will ever fade, if It will ever let him go (if It even knows the grip It has on him), or if he'll go to his grave some day still feeling the tug behind his guts trying to draw him back down beneath the waves.
It promises him everything he could dream of – freedom, life, hope, happiness, lightlightlight - but anytime Simon gets close to wavering he takes a few deep breaths to remind himself... It doesn't really have any concept of these words it throws around so casually. All of Its promises are taken straight from Simon's deepest, darkest, and most pathetic desires. It cannot promise him what It doesn't understand.
It cannot give him the stars It has never seen
So Simon pushes It to the back of his mind, a tempting cloud of white noise that echoes in the far reaches of his brain. He could fall into It the same way the doomed pilot of the SM-8 had, he knows he could, but at the same time he knows It will never give him the peace he needs.
-don't leave us too far come back you understand painhungerfear come back we will show you come back rest together come back breathe in breathe out there is nothing but water and blood come back Simon-
More empty promises, Simon thinks. He seems to collect a lot of those.
“Do you really think doing all this will save humanity?” Simon asks Ava one day.
She’s made the journey out to the sub in her full gear this time, wading through the chest-high water to the edge of Simon’s submarine before awkwardly pulling herself through the hole in the side. When Ava motions for it, Simon doesn’t even blink before holding out his arm for her to plunge the needle into. At least she was better at finding the veins than David was.
“I don’t know,” Ava says honestly. “Really, we’re all flying blind right now. It’s possible the SM-8 data and our tests on you hold the key to figuring out what happened, but there are a dozen other teams working on a dozen other approaches that are just as likely to find the solution.”
Simon nods. “So it’s a crapshoot.”
“More like Russian roulette, though now the gun’s to everyone’s heads,” Ava says wryly. She pulls the plunger back and dark, red blood fills the body of the syringe. She pulls the needle free and quickly caps it before placing it back in the sample kit.
“Are they investigating any other planets?” Simon asks.
“Some,” Ava says, “Though obviously they can’t travel too far. Wouldn’t do much good to set off for some moon or planet only for it to end up being a thirty year round trip. Who knows how long the rest of us have to hold out.”
There’s a long silence as Ava pulls out another empty syringe, though this time she fills it with some other clear liquid from the sample kit. She glances at Simon. “You wanna know the composition of this one?”
Simon shakes his head. “Wouldn’t mean anything to me.” It’s nice she always asks him, at least. David just plunges the needle in.
“Alright, here we go.” Ava sets the liquid aside before raising the needle over Simon’s arm. She plunges it into the vein before depressing the plunger. Simon glances at his arm as Ava pulls the needle free before starting her watch.
“How long is this supposed to take?” Simon asks.
“They estimate about fifteen minutes at most,” Ava says, putting the dirtied needle away. She pulls out a voice recorder and starts the tape. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” Simon says.
“Dizziness? Headache? Nausea?”
“No, no, and no,” Simon says.
“Alright, we’ll leave that for a bit then,” Ava says, setting the recorder gingerly aside. “I am… sorry you have to go through all of this.”
Simon shrugs. He kind of hates whenever Ava brings it up, mostly because there’s really nothing either of them can do about their current situation. They’d both made far too many mistakes to get to this point, mistakes that couldn’t be taken back or changed, and they both knew it.
Before he’d gotten angry, furious even, but now–
“I know it’s not fair!” Ava had growled, jaw clenched as she glared at Simon through the fence they’d welded to the side of the submarine. “None of this is fucking fair, Simon!”
“Yeah, I’m sure this is so damn hard for you!” Simon bites out.
Normally he wasn’t so argumentative, or at least he tried not to be, but that day had been a bad day, the kind of day where he’d been woken up with a faraway voice murmuring in his ear and had only gone downhill from there.
“Alright, Simon,” Ava snaps, “Let me ask you then: what would be fair? Who should I have sent down there?”
Her words bring Simon up short, but Ava isn’t done.
“Who deserves to die, Simon? Who should get sent on that kind of mission?” Her fingers curl into the metal bars of the cage. Even through her face mask, Simon can see her one good eye glaring back at him. “The elderly? The sick? A young person with more energy and strength? An older person who doesn’t have that much time left?”
“I…”
She slams her fist on the metal, making Simon flinch.
“Tell me, Simon!” Ava yells, “Tell me who deserves to die, and I will gladly let that weight fall on your shoulders instead!” She’s breathing heavily now, teeth bared like fangs. “Should we all draw straws and make it fair? Or wait, should we all draw straws until it’s anyone but you? Would that be fair?”
Simon is silent, and Ava seems to deflate as she recollects herself. For the first time Simon can see how much the world seems to weigh on her, how it presses her down from all directions with the impossibility of her duty.
“I’m sorry it had to be you,” Ava says, and she sounds like she means it, “But it had to be someone.”
Simon stares back for a long second, then nods.
–he supposes he just doesn’t have the energy anymore to rant and rage like he used to. After all, what good would any of that do him? The only thing his anger had ever gotten him in the past was a jail cell and a body count high enough to earn him a gruesome nickname that’d clung to him like a second skin.
“And that’s fifteen minutes,” Ava says. Simon blinks. He hadn’t even realized so much time had passed. There’s a click as the tape recorder turns back on. “How do you feel?”
Simon tests his arm. There’s no change from his perspective, neither in feeling nor appearance. “Fine. Same as usual.”
Ava sighs, but nods. “Test number forty two, results ineffective.”
She clicks off the tape recorder and packs that away with the sample kit in a waterproof bag before turning to jump back into the pool.
“Wait,” Simon says. Ava pauses. “I… I’m sorry.”
“About what?” Ava asks.
“I just- I still don’t think I’d have an answer,” Simon says. When she looks confused, he clarifies. “Of who else it could have been. Other than me. Maybe it’s best it was me after all.” He grimaces.
Ava is quiet, then speaks, “It wasn’t ‘best’. But there is no ‘best’ solution. Every solution to this problem would have ended with someone going down there, someone being condemned to your fate.” She sighs. “But you still want to live despite that.”
“I do,” Simon says, barely audible.
“Then live, and I’ll stay alive too,” Ava says, “And for both of us that will be our sin and atonement.”
“I’m getting the feeling you really don’t like me,” Simon says one day as David begins going through his normal sample collection.
David pauses, hand out stretched to grab Simon’s arm, then says, “Noooo, what gave you that idea, Convict?” The words are dry as usual, but there’s a warning in the tone, a threat not to push too hard.
Unfortunately, Simon’s never been the best at taking direction.
“It’s more than just the fact that I’m a criminal,” Simon says, “It’s something else. Something personal.”
“Don’t.” David says.
“Did I do something to you?”
“Fuck off.”
“No, really, did I-?”
“Convict!” David snaps, “Leave it alone!”
“My name is Simon,” Simon snarls right back. “Not Convict.”
David sets his sample kit down on the console with far more force than necessary, and the hollow clang that results echoes damningly around the hull. “Alright. Alright, Simon,” he spits Simon’s name like it’s sour on his tongue. “You wanna know so damn bad?”
“You’re the one who seems to have a problem,” Simon says.
David laughs, but instead of his usual derisive one, this one is cutting and harsh and completely devoid of humor. “Yeah. Okay. I have a big fucking problem.” He takes a step toward Simon, who meets his eyes without backing up even as David jabs a finger in his chest. “You are my fucking problem.”
“What did I do to you?” Simon asks.
And really it could have been any other number of things. Simon and by extension Eden had committed countless atrocities, it wasn’t surprising they’d left more than a few grudges in their wake. That said, he really wanted all the cards on the table now, especially if one was being held by someone he had to interact with on a near daily basis.
David goes quiet for a tense minute then straightens back up. “Since we’re so concerned with names right now, let me tell you some.”
Simon’s lips thin.
“I had a brother,” David says, “An actual brother, not whatever your freaky cult forces you to call each other.” Simon opens his mouth to protest, but David bulldozes through, “And his name was Jeremy. And his wife’s name was Olivia. And their kids’ names were Hunter and Lacey.”
Simon’s heart drops at the repeated use of past tense. “Were they… Did they live on-?”
“Filament Station!” David says, “Perfect place for a new family, right?”
“I…” Simon’s not even sure what he can say to that. A dark emptiness carves itself out of his gut, and the familiar crushing guilt and self-loathing begins to weigh down on him. He shrinks back from David involuntarily.
“What, not gonna use their names, Simon?” Dave asks. Simon bites his lip and David huffs. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Do you even know how many people you killed? Do you understand how many fucking lives you ruined?”
“It wasn’t- that wasn’t supposed to happen-“ Simon says, but the excuse sounds as hollow as he feels.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it all already,” David says unsympathetically, “You tried to stop it. You didn’t mean for it to happen. You were just a poor, unsuspecting bastard, a real victim of circumstance, you and all your brothers. Why, you’re practically just like me.”
David’s moving then, seizing Simon’s wrist and yanking it up in what normally would hurt if Simon’s new pain tolerance wasn’t keeping the sensation dulled. “There is a difference between the two of us though. Wanna guess what it is, Simon?”
Simon doesn’t dare speak, though David doesn’t seem to expect him to.
“You,” David says, “Have this.”
He shakes Simon’s wrist, and the resin charm looped around the end of it flashes in the low fluorescent light. Down in the submarine at the bottom of the ocean it’d been Simon’s only tie to his past, to the unknown brother who’d come before him and hadn’t been as lucky to be pulled free of the ocean’s grasp. It’d been the only lifeline he’d been thrown in a situation that’d been completely hopeless otherwise.
Involuntarily, he tries to yank his arm out of David’s grasp, but the other keeps a firm grip on his wrist. His eyes burn into Simon’s own, dark and accusatory.
“You have some pretty sentiments you can still cling to,” David says, voice wavering, “And I… I have my brother’s butcher.”
He drops Simon’s arm then like he can’t let go of it fast enough, grabs the sample kit, and stalks out of the sub. Simon doesn’t turn to watch the other go, even as he hears the splash behind him. He’s not sure how long he stands there – silent and unmoving as guilt and regret clog his throat – but eventually the lights of the loading bay shut off leaving Simon alone in the darkness.
Jeremy and Olivia. Hunter and Lacey.
The final bodycount of Filament Station numbered in the thousands. The four names he’d just learned were only a small fraction of the list of the dead.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen,” Simon says, the words sounding far too small and worthless even to his own ears.
There’s no responding condemnation, but there’s also no responding comfort.
“Can you give me the list of everyone who was on Filament Station?” Simon asks.
Ava pauses in her work to look up at him, confusion and concern clear in her eye. “What?”
“I just- can you give me the names,” Simon says, “Of everyone who was on Filament Station when it…”
Ava lowers her clipboard. “Is this some new kind of self-flagellation thing you’re on? Because I’m not really interested in giving you enough rope to hang yourself with.”
“No, no,” Simon runs his hand through his hair, “I just need to know. I need to know how many.”
“And what good would that do, Simon?” Ava sighs. “It won’t bring them back.”
“I know!” Simon snaps, then grimaces. “Sorry. I just. I don’t know.”
Ava studies him. “Who put that thought into your head?”
“I-“
“Was it David?” When Simon doesn't respond, Ava sighs. “Damn, I really didn’t think he’d ever talk to you about it. Normally it takes five drinks and a crowbar to pry that shit out of him.”
The familiar crushing weight in his chest is back. Simon swallows hard, but it does nothing to remove the ever present tang of copper from his mouth.
“Look, Simon,” Ava says, though not harshly, “Beating yourself up forever isn’t going to do anything.”
“What, so I should just forget it?” Simon says dully.
“No, but-“ Ava lets out a frustrated noise, “What do you even want out of this? More punishment? More anger? More people to tell you that you’re the worst person to ever live?”
“I don’t know,” Simon says again, feeling a bit like a broken record.
Ava shakes her head. “If you really feel bad then stay alive to do better. You- well, you’re probably never going to make it up to David, but frankly you dying isn’t going to make him happy either. Like it or not, he’s the only one who can deal with his shit, and nothing you can say or do will help with that.”
It’s a horrible thing to admit, but Ava isn’t exactly wrong. Simon doubts he’ll ever be able to do anything to make up for the thousands of deaths on the Filament Station. Even if he tried to stop it, even if it hadn’t intended for it to happen, the fact of the matter is it did happen and the only way he could even begin to make up for it was staying alive to hopefully prevent even more deaths.
“It’s all bullshit,” Simon surprises himself by saying.
Ava snorts. “Yeah. It’s all bullshit. Everything about our situation is bullshit. But dying is also bullshit, so we both gotta suck it up and keep going.”
“This is a hell of a pep talk,” Simon says dryly.
“Sorry, I’ll bring my self-help guide next time,” Ava says, which finally manages to get Simon to crack a smile. “And Simon… deep down I think David knows it wasn’t your fault. You’re just…”
“The only thing he has to blame,” Simon says, “Yeah, I know. And I don’t mind.”
“Well, aren’t you a martyr,” Ava deadpans.
Simon laughs humorlessly. “Oh no. God no. But he’s not saying anything I don’t already tell myself.”
“A’right, drop ‘er there!”
Simon is awoken by a deafening crash outside the submarine. He jolts upright on his mattress, only to nearly be knocked over by the force of the impact from something large, heavy and metal landing outside the sub. A wave of bloody water crashes through the opening of the Iron Lung, making Simon cough as it smacks him in the face.
“The hell?!” Simon sputters, lurching back instinctively as a loud groaning noise echoes from the bay.
“Left, left- fer god’s sake yer other left!”
Simon’s brain manages to fully wake then, processing the shouted orders coming from somewhere outside the ship. He tries to get to his feet to get a better look through the hole in the submarine, but it’s difficult to stand when the hull is shaking like it’s in the middle of an earthquake.
“There! Good!”
Abruptly the commotion stops, and Simon finally risks getting to his feet. He cautiously approaches the edge of the hole to see-
He blinks. A long metal platform has been dropped right outside the submarine, leading from the edge of the pool to the Iron Lung. It’s not tall enough to be completely out of the water, but it’s enough so that there’s only about a couple inches worth of blood that swirls over the top of it. Simon tentatively takes a step outside of the submarine onto the metal walkway. It holds his weight easily.
“There ‘e is!”
Simon jolts at the unfamiliar voice. When he looks up he sees a small gathering of people lined up on the far end of the pool. One of them, the one who spoke, appears to be in a wheelchair, heavily bandaged from head to toe.
“What’s it gonna be, ya rat?” The man asks. His accent is thick, though Simon can’t quite place it. “Six more weeks o’ winter?”
“Enough, Jack,” Ava says, though she sounds more exasperated than irritated. She looks at Simon. “Good morning.”
“Enough of a wakeup call?” David snickers.
“Probably thought we were ‘bout to drop a house on ‘em,” the newly introduced Jack says. The name tugs at the back of Simon’s mind until-
Shit
He remembers then that there’d been another person who’d been in the room back when he’d accidentally flashed the X-ray camera without being aware of the radiation that shot out of it. He’d heard later through the speaker box that the man, Jack, had been so severely injured that he’d been unable to move. Apparently he’d partially recovered in the time since the incident, though clearly there were quite a few lasting injuries.
“Decided to drop a few good intentions to pave the way to yer house,” Jack snickers. The other appears to be cheerful, though most of that seems to be at Simon’s expense.
“What Jack means is we’re trying to make it easier to take samples,” Ava says, “And also easier for you to cross to the edge of the pool.”
“You know, in case you want to lean against it all tragically like a princess waiting for her knight,” David adds, only to yelp as Ava elbows him.
“This is the best we can do for now,” Ava says, “We don’t have that many resources at the moment.”
Simon blinks, taking in her words, before he tentatively takes a step down the walkway, then another and another. Bloody water swirls around his ankles, hiding the platform beneath him and giving the illusion he's walking straight across the surface of it. It only takes a few minutes until he’s at the edge of the pool.
“Easy enough, right?” Ava says.
Simon nods, glancing between all the faces gathered around the edge of the pool now, both familiar and unfamiliar. “So this is how it’ll be now?”
“Unless the stars die on us first,” David says cheerfully. His attitude is back to normal, almost forcibly so, but Simon thinks it best not to open that particular can of worms at the moment.
“It’s not a perfect solution, but it’ll make things easier,” Ava says.
“Sometimes the best solution is a straightforward one,” Jack says with a shrug.
“And we got tired of swimming all the way out there,” David says, “We aren’t frogs like you, after all.”
“It’ll mean we can run tests more often, and hopefully figure out a solution to- well, everything ideally,” Ava says. “We’re also working on some potential ideas to get you out of the pool and down to the labs, though we may have to cart you around in a tank or something.”
“Wait, really?” Simon asks. His heart leaps into his throat despite his best efforts to not get his hopes up.
“I’ll figure it out,” Jack says, waving a hand. “I’m damn good at my job.”
And god, there’s a lot Simon wants to say to the other, starting and ending with an apology, but this doesn’t really seem to be the time.
“I- I don’t know what to say.”
“Say ‘thank you,’ ya bastard,” Jack says, rolling his eyes. Simon can’t really tell if the other is trying to be teasing, insulting, or a mix of the two.
“…Thanks,” Simon says.
“Alright,” Ava says with an approving nod, “Now lets figure out where we go from here.”