Chapter Text
SM-14 was a hasty welding job.
Ava realizes this only when the tether cord drops, letting her sub rush toward crimson waves below. It’s a sturdier model than SM-13, but force of contact with the ocean’s surface still gives her whiplash. She grits her teeth through the sharp pain in her neck and waits.
A creaking protest rises from the vessel as it sinks into the blood and settles beneath. No immediate leakage, thank God; she would have to trust the shoddy patchwork holds up just long enough to get this over with.
Ava aligns the coordinates for the rendezvous and pushes the forward throttle hard, ignoring her shaking hands. She’d been drilled on SM operation protocol just once, long before she ever got promoted to Captain. Nobody important to the COI was ever supposed to pilot one of these things.
You made a promise.
It started as a lie. The same as every other deal she’d fed that convict through the dingy radio. Her best attempts to placate the pathetic whimpering of a doomed man. As if twisting the truth about his fate had been any less cruel than sending him to die in the first place.
Simon. She reminds herself. His name is Simon.
Simon the cultist. Simon the Butcher. Simon the miracle, who somehow survived 60 hours at the bottom of the congealed ocean floor with all contact cut. Who apologized over and over for accidentally harming his wardens when everything they had heard about him told the exact opposite.
Simon, who despite the choice she’d made for him, now chose to put his faith in her. He believed she was coming to get him out.
Guilt rises in Ava’s chest, thick and unpleasant. Why should she feel remorseful? Why not wring out every last drop of use his sorry life was worth? The potential of the black box, if he had been telling the truth, was far bigger than either of them could fathom anyway.
The answer she doesn’t want to accept comes when SM-14’s porthole slides shut, leaving her in dimness and heat with nothing but the guidance of flickering coordinates.
Ava swallows hard.
She tries to mask her nerves behind a scowl, gripping the throttle with white knuckles. The radio is supposed to be on by now, and trying to make contact is her only hope of checking his progress. She doesn’t want to think about what will happen if he isn’t present for the handoff.
“Convict!” She barks. “Are you there?”
The light on the mounted speaker blinks sporadically, audio crackling awake. Hoarse, harsh breathing pulses faintly on the other end. She tries to address him again, but this time the shape of his real name curls on her tongue.
“Simon! Simon, can you hear me? Do you copy?”
“A v a?”
The answering voice is female, low, crooning.
"A v a? I s t h a t y o u?"
SM-14 shudders to an abrupt halt as the captain freezes where she stands. Every muscle in her body stiffens with terror, leaving her stuck hunched over the control panel.
"D i d y o u f i n a l l y c o m e b a c k f o r m e?"
Ava’s sudden struggle to breathe has nothing to do with the oxygen meter. Of all the sleepless nights she wasted wishing to hear this voice again, she never thought it could ever be like this.
It’s not real. It can't be. That’s not her.
Whispering echoes graze her ears, sickeningly sweet. That achingly familiar voice rises above the rest and presses in close. It silences the chatter inside her head, stills the feedback stutter from the radio. Slithers inside the vessel and curls heavy around Ava like red fog.
"A r e y o u h e r e t o j o i n u s?"
The hull moans, side plates flexing under the pressure of something giant gently brushing against the sub. It takes Ava a few horror-stricken moments to realize the coppery tang in her mouth is not from a leak sprung in the oxidizing metal. Tiny beads of blood well up from the trench her teeth are working into her lower lip.
“I m i s s e d y o u…”
Large, lazy ripples travel through the lull of the sanguine depths and rock the iron shell. SM-14 sways haphazardly, and Ava jolts out of her terrified trance. She runs to the rear of the sub and slams her hand down on the camera shutter.
A bright flash of gamma rays is followed by a shrill, sporadic chitter of displeasure that resonates old metal under her palm. Such an alien sound bores into the captain’s bones, making her tremble with the force of its vibrations through the wall.
This can’t be happening.
Ava scrambles forward, yanks the main lever, and her shoulder is nearly wrenched from its socket as SM-14 lurches into full gear. The vessel bursts off through the gloom at the highest speed its engine can muster, grinding with a noise like tin scrap through the mouth of a shredder.
The captain beats the side of the speaker desperately. Interference sputters in and out of life with each frantic hit. No point in bothering to hide her fear now.
“Simon! Simon! Something’s down here!” She gasps. “Did you– Did you get it?!”
His voice is barely audible over the screeching of SM-14, but she makes out his babbling reply.
“I think I’m sick or somethin’, I’m-”
“That can wait til we’re back up at the top!”
“I don’t know what’s happening–”
“Simon, shut up and answer me! Do you have the black box from the crawlspace?!”
“I-I…” He fumbles. “Yes.”
“Keep it safe, do you understand?! I’m en route to our meeting point!”
Any response Simon has dies with the radio connection. Ava curses to herself, glancing down at the numbers zooming by on the console face. No use in slowing down now. All she can do is make sure she’s headed in the correct direction and avoid hitting anything. Pushing 10 knots is extremely straining on this vessel; add a bumped obstacle to the mix and there might be an implosion in her near future.
Ava checks her watch. Fifteen minutes since initial descent.
I’m already running out of time.