Chapter Text
You focused several cameras on the task you’re doing, attaching equipment onto yourself, getting ready for a descent.
Simon is in the corner of the room, his arms crossed and his back leaned against the wall, watching you.
It had been a couple months since Simon had been a part of your life now, following you close about wherever you’d go. He’d try his best to help you, like he’d be in trouble if he wasn’t useful enough, though you tried to assure him time and time again that he had done enough already.
You truly felt honored of his presence at your side, knowing he should be remembered amongst the great thinkers of the fleet.
Though, the fleet as a whole didn’t think the same way. They didn’t mind your search for more information, as wished for by the mothership, but they never treated Simon as an equal. Like he wasn’t human to begin with.
It started slow, because they were gauging him first, but then it grew more and more obvious, people saying things as you both passed by, murmuring rumors, leaving judging stares, even plainly talking to you like he wasn’t there how he was a liability.
And Simon caught on very quickly that you weren’t agreeing with your own fleet, when someone almost knocked him over with a hovering box and you stepped in between, pushing the box away with an irritated remark.
He had questioned you a few times since then, asking what your beliefs were on the mothership and its power. You accepted to talk if he traded confessions.
He gave little snippets at a time, like “clothes were hard to make from the lack of materials”, mumbled when he was playing with a fold in his uniform, throwing a glance in your direction, waiting for your part of the bargain. You’d usually reply directly from the subject he was raising, explaining the point of view of the fleet on the subject.
You finished locking the third bag onto your belt, turning your head to Simon as he pushed himself off the wall, walking towards you.
“I want to descend with you,” he said, in the soft tone he grew to have around you.
You scanned the airlock for spacesuits. “I’m not encouraging this idea. I’m less fragile than you and can withstand the cold for longer.”
Simon leaned closer, as if seeking your gaze, when you had no face. “Come on, I can't just wait here and do nothing for hours, what if you need help?”
You thought about it, how he was indeed refused most tasks from the others on the ship, and you were really the only one giving anything to do, despite your wish for him to kick back and relax.
You could at least give him the thrill of setting foot on another planet.
It didn’t sit right with you for some reason. You didn’t know why, yet.
But still, you decided to go with Simon’s wish, and turned to the locker to retrieve a suit. You chose a lightweight one, enough to endure the harsh conditions but not needing to dive headfirst into lava or similar.
You handed it to him, and gathered the rest of the equipment he might need onto a closed crate.
He slipped on the suit over his clothes and you took off his belt underneath before he closed it up, putting it aside before clipping one that was conditioned to protect the tools. You gave him thick gloves to put on over the ones of the suit, and strapped a vest onto his back for oxygen, strapping the oxygen tank onto it.
You finally handed him his helmet, making sure you were linked to his suit and instruments. It wasn’t his first time out of the ship, as he had explored some asteroids with you before, and you didn’t need to teach him again how the suit worked, though you felt more at ease knowing you could react for him in time of emergency.
“All set. Remember, no going off by yourself.”
“Are you sure this planet isn’t inhabited?” he asked, the sounds of his voice now going straight to your comms.
“We are certain. The drones who explored the surface are currently harvesting the ice, and haven’t encountered anything. Not a movement, not a heartbeat, not a source of warmth,” you stated, giving his suit a once over.
When you were satisfied, you stepped back and motioned to the elevators, as he stepped forward and placed his feet onto the plate, the mechanism lighting up and locking his boots in place. You locked your own feet to another elevator and nodded to him, before the plates lowered, a cylinder of light surrounding you.
You went through the thick walls of the ship, before you could see finally the planet’s surface from your own cameras.
The whole surface was dark, as there was no star nearby. Clouds surrounded you, though you had made sure that you weren’t going to land in the middle of a blizzard.
The atmosphere lacked density, and the whole thing could be called an asteroid instead of a planet, though it was too large.
A stray planet, without anything to orbit onto, floating through space.
Simon’s lights from his suit turned on, lighting the direction of his gaze, the photons catching onto the fog, giving the illusion of a bottomless pit.
The elevators finally reached the surface of the planet, landing on ice, though it was covered with a layer of snow. You tested the ground, pressing one foot into the snow, to find the soft layer very shallow, the metal of your foot resting onto the ice.
“We’re good, the ground is stable,” you communicated to Simon, unlocking your other foot and stepping confidently onto the ice.
You saw Simon turning around himself nervously, the ray of light he was casting enphasizing the movement.
“We shouldn’t be here…” he murmured, a tremble in his voice.
You scanned the area, switching from echolocation to thermal vision to even the geological drones scans, and found nothing around but hills and a few weirdly shaped ice spikes.
“It’s safe, Simon. I’m monitoring the whole area,” you moved your cameras so they would see all all around you, not leaving a blind spot. “If there was something remotely threatening I would have picked it up by now.”
Despite your professionalism, he wasn’t reassured. “No, no I— I feel it. We’re not meant to be here. There’s something wrong with this planet.”
You were worried for him, wondering if you just sent him back up, but there was a chance he might freak out even more if separated from you.
“You can go back up if you want, I’m not forcing you. I’ll just settle down with the instruments, and we can wait for the data up there if you want.”
You walked a few steps forward to have some space before kneeling down and unstrapping the large station from your back.
You placed it down, turning it on, and unfolded it open, part after part, and slipped a battery inside. The station made a whirring noise, before stabbing down through the ice, starting it’s scanning routine. 1% progression was displayed on the screen.
“Alright. The station is up, I’m going to lay down a signal emitter in case we find this planet again, and then we can go up if you want. Deal?”
Simon didn’t respond to you, though he did step off his elevator, still looking around, but walking closer to you.
“Do you hear that?” he asked, and you paid more attention to your recording system. There was a slow, constant rumbling. Something like rocks dragging, or…
“Blizzard. Let me finish this and we’re finding shelter.”
“What? We should go back up!”
“Trust me, there’s only a few things worse than being strapped in one of those when a tornado hits.”
You unhooked another device from your back and opened on of your bags, putting together a strong box that you anchored to the ground with metal spikes, and placed on top the second large metallic magnet, so it would constantly emit a specific magnetic current easily recognizable without the need for energy production.
When your systems detected that it was on, you grabbed Simon by the arm and pulled him in the direction of the closest cave registered by the drones. It wouldn’t be big, but it had to be enough.
Simon tried to pull back. “Are you crazy?! We’re straying from our only way out!”
“I am well-trained for these scenarios. Trust me. I will not let harm come to you.”
You made sure you wouldn’t hurt him or twist his arm as you pulled him to a small hill, pushing snow aside to reveal the small entrance into the ice.
You slipped in first, motioning for Simon to get in.
“No. No no no, I’m not—”
“The blizzard is on us, come on. I swear to protect you.”
With a muttered curse, he took your hands and slipped into the cave as well. His light reflected on the ice walls.
Receptive to Simon’s paranoia, you scanned the cave, used your different visions to map out that this was just a weird ice formation, not a willing carved entrance for some living being, and wasn’t infested by any kind of bacteria or virus.
The cave seemed to dive deep, though, and if you were alone you would have definitely explored, Simon was far from able to do such a thing.
You heard him panting through the comms, tensed up and eyes focused on that opening that went deeper.
“Simon,” you tried to calm him down. “You’re safe. There’s nothing coming out of that. The cave goes for much further and it’s empty. Don’t worry about it. Save your oxygen.”
The visible jolt he made when you mentioned his oxygen made you regret saying anything.
“Hey,” you pressed your hands on his shoulders even if he wouldn’t feel them. “Please don’t panic. I have this under control. I will get you back safely. Believe in me, please.”
He seemed to shake a bit less, though his eyes were still focused on that opening.
“Wh–why the fuck does it look like that, then?!”
You paused for a second. Turned to the entrance. Switched between visions. You didn’t see anything. No weird texture, no lighting pattern that resembled a face, though you picked up something using your regular cameras, that the color was off at a certain point.
That’s when you tried any possible measuring tool you had, wondering if it was a shift in hue, or a light defect, going through any data you could measure, until something popped up.
You had a specific tool that was only meant to recognize traces of rot, to chase after it on any contaminated ship. And that tool was not good at making out shapes, just general areas to be cleaned.
And the whole tunnel of ice was glowing with it.
“I see it,” you said to Simon, which seemed to reassure him a bit. “It’s… Fine. Nothing dangerous. But certainly new data.”
“New data? Like what?” he asked, and he sounded out of breath. You checked his oxygen tank in your system. 83%. Everything was good.
“It’s… something that was here long ago. Turns out this ball of ice might just not be just ice. We would need to run some tests, perhaps…”
“What is it?”
You pressed your lips together, knowing it was best if you left it out, but you couldn’t just lie. That was against the mothership’s teachings. And Simon would panic either way, if you omitted the truth or not.
You calculated your answer for the best outcome.
“The good news is, it’s dead. The bad news, it’s the same rot that ate the stars.”
He held his breath.
You observed him closely, thinking it over. You had taught everything about the rot to Simon, as it was the mothership’s main concern. To find a way to get rid of the rot. And thanks to the blackbox, the rot stopped taking more planets and stars. But the rot didn’t vanish into thin air, and dead, corrupted flesh still covered most astral objects.
You didn’t expect it to be present inside a small ice planet.
You paid close attention to his need to get as close to the exit as possible, barely blinking, as if it was going to lash out at him if he didn’t watch it.
You scanned the storm outside through the opening. “Would you feel safer outside?”
He nodded, still not blinking.
You were slightly amused at his antics, knowing this was a safe environment, but you definitely didn’t have the full picture in mind. “Okay. Get out.”
He hesitated, scrambling for the exit, and you had to grab his oxygen vest to haul him up back outside, into the wind.
You climbed out too, your systems warning of the strength of the wind. You gathered your senses, as much as they were senses, to then wrap an arm around Simon’s shoulders, guiding him through the thick, opaque layer of snow blowing past.
You followed the signal of the emitter you had placed, your heavy body navigating the ice better than Simon who definitely hadn’t stepped on ice before.
You both reached the emplacement of the station you had placed down, kneeling beside it and making Simon sit against it, as you used your shell to protect him from most of the strength of the blizzard, gripping onto the station from either side of him.
You monitored your vitals and his closely, your systems keeping you warm but his temperature was surely dropping. Each minute passing by, you recalculated how cold he would become before the storm would clear.
You wanted to ask how he was but there was no way you could hear anything from the comms through the whirring wind.
You just held on, despite the odds, knowing you were both safer in that cave, but there was no point in arguing it now. Simon chose that option. You were resourceful enough to handle it.
You were about to regret your choice, when the wind subsided, not completely, but definitely enough. You straightened up, shaking the snow off your cameras, before scanning the area and evaluating your chances. Without a second to spare, you decided to bet on the clearing of the fog to remain long enough.
You pulled Simon to his feet, rushing him to the position of the elevators, kicking the snow off of them before you put his boots onto it, activating the device as it locked onto him and started lifting him. You saw him struggle a bit with his balance but the locking mechanism would ensure that he didn’t fall off.
The storm started blowing a little stronger again, and you decided to find the other elevator, digging into the snow, locking your ice covered feet onto the plate and letting it bring you back up.
Wind blew as you were totally exposed, in the middle of the air, and you noticed the ice that covered your whole body. The layers were thicker around your legs, and you hadn’t noticed how you broke off some of it when getting up.
You stood there, waiting, as more snow piled onto the plate and different places of your freezing exterior. Thankfully your organs were well insulated for spacewalks, and didn’t risk freezing.
The noise subsided finally when the elevator reached the ship, as you arrived to the airlock.
“Researcher in. Going to the disinfection room,” you communicated to the pilot, and he didn’t say anything this time.
You noticed Simon, hunched over and covered in snow too, some ice stuck to his suit.
You unlocked yourself from the elevator and went over to free him as well, pulling him into a door that you signalled open, slipping inside as it warmed up, water dripping down as you held Simon upright by his elbows. He was panting, his body temperature struggling to climb back up. You had to figure something out.
When you were dry enough, the room sprayed you down in case of any possible contamination, and you rushed back into the airlock when the door finally agreed to open. You rushed your movements, pulling Simon’s helmet off, then his gloves and belt, throwing anything to the ground as you needed him out of his suit.
He was barely responsive, though trying to get words out, as you sat him down on a crate and unravelled an emergency blanket from your belt, wrapping him with it.
You scanned around for a heater, but it had to have been moved for some reason. Those things were always useful.
You wondered where it could be, but you couldn’t just leave him there on his own. You raked your puny human brain for ideas, when you remembered your venting system.
Adjusting the parameters on your own systems, you changed the course of the venting air to your chest, plates adjusting their position for better airflow. The heat was a little over the normal body temperature, but much less than a proper heater.
You scooted onto the crate yourself, letting him adjust, before he noticed the warmth coming from you and leaned in, sighing.
He was still shivering, but on his own, he moved his arms to get the blanket around you, the heat gathering under the insulating material.
You waited there for a while, thinking. Calculating. Simon did grow colder faster since he wasn’t used to harsh environment before. You didn’t know if you had any solution at hand to solve this issue in the near future. Simon also was more tired than the average researcher, his nights difficult. That obviously played in the slowed down running of his system.
In any case, you didn’t have anything more to do at the moment but wait and analyse the data the scanner you left would give you. Simon needed rest and you’d give him just that.
A quick once over made you notice he was sleeping or close to it, so you lift him up into your arms, carrying him into the next room, through the corridors, commanding a drone nearby to pick up the mess you left in the airlock.
You brought Simon to the room that once was assigned to you, when you still needed sleep like a normal human, but now your power naps were done standing up.
You set him down on the bed that had the blanket pushed to the side, betting that the room probably smelled of Simon, another human thing you’d forget about if you weren’t careful.
Feeling human was important. It kept you upright.
Simon clung to you despite being placed onto a bed, and you had to sit down on it for him to settle against, curling against you and your warmth. Having Simon around was good for your mental wellbeing. It kept you acting like a person.
You adjusted the security blanket on him and pulled the one from the bed on top just for the sake of it, before switching your vision to the data reported from the depth scanner.
In your mind, displayed like a clear image, you could see what the scanner had detected underneath the ice. The ice was deep, and not just a layer on top of an asteroid. However, the whole structure was weakened with a weaving of rot, like it had covered the planet once, and only remained in the caves and holes as the blizzard was too harsh for it to survive.
You sent a report summing up your finds to the mothership.
Switching back to your cameras, you checked on Simon, deeming him warm enough to return your venting systems to normal and lie him down properly.
You could go and work on more research at the lab, and have a few exchanges with the other researchers there, but those were often not kind to you, and you would be a very bad friend to let Simon in there when it was known that he had frequent night terrors.
So you stayed, a bit awkwardly, standing against the wall. Sitting on the floor felt odd, and standing beside the bed was certain to give Simon a heart attack he might not recover from.
Unsure of the time you had before you, you decided to indulge into some selfcare, so you didn’t have to leave the room.
You removed your equipment you had still on you, as you had rushed to get Simon some warmth and forgot about it.
You folded everything neatly and placed it onto the desk there, before getting a few tools from your belt, taking the time to scratch and polish your exterior, especially any spot around the articulations. The action in itself was soothing, as you were focused on a simple task, but you were also tricking your brain into thinking you were taking care of yourself.
You cleaned every little detail, every spec of dust, or rust or anything getting brushed off and the whole of it would get cleaned off when a drone would come by.
The ship hummed with energy, a constant noise your brain often forgot about. The silence in those moments were always a little unnerving. All you could hear was Simon. His breathing, when he’d turn under the sheets, the small mouth noises he’d make. On the other side, you were so quiet, it’s like you weren’t even there.
Simon’s appearance had changed a bit since he grew accustomed to living on the fleet. He’d attach his hair up, when you told him to cut off for practicality. He trimmed his beard instead of shaving it, another thing you found was extra work. His skin tanned under the UV light therapies, an important part of human self-maintenance to be healthier. He also was getting more muscular, as he explained to you time and time again though you didn’t understand, that strength was vital for survival.
Despite the whole puzzle of information he gave you throughout the time you two spent together, it was hard to imagine the conditions he used to live in, before he was sent on that wretched planet. He made it seem like purgatory, as if his colony needed to punish each other for the sin of existing.
He didn’t believe in God, or at least that’s what you gathered from his irritated comments on the sect he grew up in. He was rejecting it all together.
But even so, he lacked other words to describe the entity that hid in that blood ocean. You had studied parts of the blackbox, you knew what he was referring to, and facing that kind of monster alone obviously left some deep scars in his soul.
If not that, you knew he wouldn’t feel normal again from the logs you listened to, of him talking alone like someone was responding to him.
You never told him you personally went through that blackbox, he didn’t need to know, he didn’t need to remember, and he’d feel only wary of you for some reason or another.
You were just about to clean your cameras when you heard him rustle.
You knew your role by heart, after long nights of trying.
Step one, you knelt beside the bed, to be slightly lower than him.
Step two, you gently placed your hands on his shoulders when he sat up suddenly.
Step three, you had to talk very calmly. “Hey, Simon. You’re safe. You’re okay. I’m here, I’ll keep you safe.”
Step four, you would grab his wrists and lead them to his own face, as he’d often believe he was mutated again.
Simon sat there, panting, eyes wide, his fingers pressing into his soft and void-of-teeth cheeks.
“You barely rested for thirty minutes. Think you want to go for another round?” you asked, watching him slowly turn to you. He shook his head no, not really looking near your face.
“I know, nightmares are difficult. I’m sorry I don’t have a solution currently. Are you thirsty maybe?”
He shook his head no again, and you slowly let go of his wrists. He hands caught yours before they could go too far.
You observed him quietly, wishing you could ease his pain, that telling him he was safe and the entity was nowhere to be found would satisfy him, but it wasn’t enough for him. He wasn’t there when it was killed, he’s still settling with the fact that this reality wasn’t just a fever dream as he was dying.
He clutched hard onto your hands, still looking at some point in space that didn’t connect right.
“Simon?” you asked, and his gaze turned to you. “You’re okay. You’re not in danger.”
He was deeply skeptical.
You tried the other method. “I’m here. I’ll protect you from anyone trying to hurt you, okay? No one is going after you. I’m keeping you safe.”
That seemed to bring him back a little, so you pulled away one hand to peel away the emergency blanket.
When Simon talked, you could hear his throat tight on his words like he was really trying not to cry. “W-what about the rot…?”
You really regretted bringing him down there. “It’s… going to be on a lot of planets we will visit, sadly. But our instruments measure it up close each time, and I assure you, it stopped moving. It stopped growing, it stopped evolving. We killed the source of the rot.”
He gripped his free hand at his chest, nails digging into the uniform, as he tried to get words out. You slipped your fingers inside his grip to gently pull it away from him.
“I… Why can I feel it inside of me…?”
At that point, you had no protocol, you hadn’t found a good enough answer.
“Uh… Well. I can assure you our instruments are very well trained on scanning for any trace of rot, and when you were reconstructed, I assure you no stray piece of rot was left there by mistake.”
It sounded too commercial, and he didn’t look much more convinced by your speech either. You tried again.
“I’m a cyborg, you know. I may function weirdly and with less struggle than others, but I still have my organs. Well, it’s all that’s left of me, really. And sometimes… I feel them. A lot. Like I'm suddenly flesh in a metal shell again. It feels really bad. What I’m getting at is… Maybe you feel a little disconnected from your reconstructed flesh? Or something like that…”
Simon sighed, looking down at his own hands.
You adjusted your cameras as he mumbled, “They used to call me the butcher.”
“Who?” you asked, wanting him to be clear. You didn’t want to misunderstand anything when it came to his past.
Simon hadn’t talked about butchers before. You were aware it was mentioned in the blackbox, but it lacked context.
“The… the COI,” he said, hugging himself. “When I was caught after… Filament station’s…”
You let him talk, hoping he wouldn’t just go back into his shell and not finish what he had to say.
“They… I used to… have a mark on my neck, like a brand… COI burned it off.” He touched his neck, void of scars, as he remembered it. “They held me responsible for… destroying the station…”
That was the main reason why most members of the fleet saw Simon as a threat. Being accused, whether true or not, of destroying a space station was enough for a whole fleet to want him out. But you hadn’t told him they knew, yet. Though he might guess it on his own.
“They called me the butcher, because of that. Because… I killed thousands, destroying precious resources.”
“Did you?”
That made him pause. You couldn’t read people in general, but there was something with him that made his emotions obvious.
He shrugged. “I… it was the plan… well, I… I wasn’t… told… I think they knew I was… doubting some of the teachings of Eden, so they must have not told me anything.” He rubbed his face with his hands, pressing his palm into the orbits of his eyes. “They were right. When I found out what they were going to do, I chickened out. I… I tried to dissuade them.”
You nodded, seeing how that story fit with the circumstances.
“And someone had to take the fall, didn’t they?”
He frowned slightly. You shrugged. “Sounds like a harsh time.”
He turned to stare directly at your cameras, which was odd, because most started avoiding your gaze since you were rebuilt like this.
“It’s… they’re not happy memories, no. What about you?”
He never did reveal anything for free, and you knew talking would ease his nerves.
“What do you want to know about? I don’t really have a similar story… I could tell you more about the great minds that made the fleet grow,” you offered.
“Yeah… I think I heard enough of that. I want to know about you. You never told me how you ended up losing your limbs.”
You hesitated. “Uhm… it’s a long story… Are you sure you don’t want to hear about how we managed to create a zoo inside the mothership?”
He smiled a bit. At least this was something. “I’m sure you’d love to talk about it, but I want to know more. You always avoid talking about yourself.”
You paused, that was a moment where you’d usually press your lips together to think about what was to come.
“Maybe it’s not something you want to know about?”
“Why not?”
You taped your fingers together, preparing yourself for the conversation that was about to happen.
“Over a few years ago, the fleet was traveling through space, and we remained in a system for a few weeks, like usual. We studied a planet from afar but mostly spent time getting resources from the system’s asteroid belt. I… Our ship found an anomaly on an asteroid. Some kind of spore. We dissected it in the lab, but it didn't show any sign of life… Despite being petrified, and safe to examine, it sprung to life the moment it made contact with my skin, when I wasn’t paying attention. It latched onto me, and… used my flesh as food, to try to grow. I was placed in quarantine, and the ship was saved.”
Simon frowned, tilting his head like there was something to read through your cameras.
“You were… infected too?”
“Severely. It took three days for the mothership to decide to take action.”
He huffed in frustration, probably thinking something about higher deciding powers.
“Why did it take that long?” he asked, looking away to stare at the door.
You straightened a bit. “They wanted to study me, initially. To see how the spore grew. But then needing to extract me became more important, because the infection prevented me from explaining my symptoms. By some kind of luck, I was spared.”
“Spared? You call that spared?”
You shrugged. “I have been given a new purpose. To live on. To keep searching for information. To find you. It’s enough of a reward for me.”
“But you were robbed, you probably could have just cut off and arm or something—”
You gently placed a hand on top of his, careful of your weight and strength to not hurt him. “Yeah, I could have been turned into a rotting pile of flesh, though I wouldn’t have lived very long. They cut me out of the infected flesh and gave me a second life. That’s all I need to focus on.”
“You don’t regret it?”
“Not one bit. Now, are you hungry? It’s going to be nearly time for a nutrition break.”
He glanced down at your hand, turning it to look at it closely, before turning to stare at your cameras.
He must have understood something behind your faceless shell, like your emotions were clear as day, and he relaxed, though he also looked a little deflated.
“Yeah. Okay. Let’s go eat.”