Chapter Text
He needed to act quickly. Grace couldn’t believe this- they'd found a person. Someone alive, well barely at least. Grace had no idea what he was supposed to do. He had climbed up the xenonite chain like a madman and scrambled his way back inside the Hail Mary.
“Rocky! Please hurry!”, his voice trembled from distress and the shot of adrenalin that had been released upon seeing the nearly dead person in the metal thing.
Grace kept moving and frantically started searching for another suite that would fit the man. He had never worked well under distress. Sure, yeah he got the job done, but it was always at the price of Grace’s significantly raised cholesterol. He never did anything without becoming completely immersed on the task at hand, and this task left his mind clouded with possible outcomes, worries, dangers, possibilities... Oh yeah he already knew how bad he would crash after all of this, but none of that mattered. They had found life. LIFE. This was as exciting as it was absolutely nerve wracking. Grace would be smiling while tying the extra suit that he had found in an old container to his own belt if it wasn’t for the horrifying state of the other person. He tied on a tourniquet next to the suit for that reason.
How long could they have been in there? They were breathing, but how? The metal thing had been on the bottom of the red ocean and had sustained extremely critical damages. It must have been sealed by whatever crushed the tail of it, keeping some of the liquid out. But... how could someone in a metal vessel, at the bottom of a non-opaque ocean, possibly lose their arm-
His train of thought was interrupted by Rocky finally getting to the space-walk area.
“Grace okay, question? Rocky got here as fast as possible. Chain is tied to xenonite hook to prevent object from falling”
“Rocky you have to listen to me really careful, okay?”, Grace was bent down, searching for tools that could help him screw apart the tiny window, and paused to look at Rocky seriously.
“Yes”
“There is, and I cannot believe I’m saying this, something alive in the object. A person who, I very much hope is unconscious for their own sake, is gravely injured so I’m going to bring them up here so we can help”
“Is dangerous, question? Grace can’t help everyone”
He couldn’t help everyone, but he could damn well try.
He looked at Rocky for a second before clearing his throat and standing up from where he was crouched down.
“I know Rocky. I’ll be fine bud. Go prepare the med bay and tell Armando to sanitize it. First, you just have to pull the chain down far enough that we will be in the atmospehere”
“Rocky will make sure rescue is success”
“Thank you Rocky. I’ll see you soon, bud”
A few moments later and Grace was weightless again. The pain in his joints disappeared and his aching back finally got some relief, but it was hard to enjoy when the metal object was looming below the Hail Mary. Looked like Rocky had listened to him and let the chain down more. Now all he had to do was break into a vessel that had remained relatively compact under extreme depth, cram a very injured human-looking thing into a space suit, and bring them the long way back into the Hail Mary while having scurvy and muscle loss.
“Easy peasy, Grace. Just don’t get anyone, yourself included, killed. Right right right”, he pulled himself towards the chain and started the significantly longer decent. But now the metal vessel was far enough down into the atmosphere that the pressure hopefully wouldn’t kill the person as soon as he got into it. The problem was just how in the world he would get into the metal vessel.
He went from pulling himself down the chain to slowly having to adapt to the gravity of the celestial body and start lowering himself down while moving his safety strap down. It slowed him down significantly and he felt his hands fumbling with the carbine hooks in an effort to get down a faster. He felt his arms start to shake a little when he lowered himself, and his grip got worse and worse. He tried to compensate by weaving his legs around the chain to lessen the weight on his arms. The fire-station pole method worked pretty well if he had to say so himself, because after one last slide down the chain he could finally feel the roof of the vessel under his red boots. Now he just had to get to the window while dealing with gravity. Fun.
Grace took off one of his extra ropes and attached it to the claw, but he stopped as soon as a dim red blinking light caught his eye. He inhaled a shaky breath. He had forgetten about the geiger scale. Hi heart pounded in his chest as he slowly reached his hand towards the red smeared display.
He mentally counted to three before roughly swiping off the crusted red liquid from the display.
It read as the highest radioactive count possible.
He could very well be standing on top of the elephants foot in Chernobyl. He looked down on his suit. It was supposed to shield the wearer from radiation, but how could less than an inch of material possibly keep him safe from that amount of radiation? He was afraid to move, what if the suit ripped? At that thought he quickly spread his legs out and looked at where the xenonite chain had rubbed against his thighs. No damage. He sighed and bowed his head to lean against his hand holding onto the chain.
“Okay okay okay, think. Right now there is a person inside of a radioactive metal tube, possibly being microwaved alive right now. What do I do?”
His thoughts bounced around but none answered his question. Instead, he remembered how Stacy, a little girl in his class, had one day brough an injured seagull baby into the teacher’s lounge one day. He had looked the bird over when calming the crying kid and noticed that both of its wings were broken. He had helped Stacy put the bird on some paper towels and promised her that he would call the bird doctor just like she had reminded him needed be done several times. But when Stacy left, it was his coworker Mark that had to take the bird outside to break its neck and put it out of mercy.
Grace had actually wanted to call a vet to try and help the little fluffy seagull, but when he had turned around to reach his phone all the other teachers had looked at him with concerned eyebrows as if it was all obvious to them that it had to die. It was clear that everybody but Grace understood that some things had to die in the name of mercy.
YOU’RE MURDERING ME! YOU’RE SENDING ME TO DIE!
He shook his head and groaned. There was a phantom feeling of arms on his back, and he quickly tried to steer his thoughts back. There was a bird with a broken wing inside of a microwave and this time he couldn’t fall back on Mark to make the decision if it- they should die now or later. By his choice or by nature.
“It must be hard. Sending everybody to their deaths”
“It isn’t”
No, the decision wasn’t hard. He wouldn’t let anyone die alone trapped in a tin can. He pushed away from the chain and let himself fall down towards the nose of the vessel, letting himself hang from his safety straps. He grabbed the window to steady himself and almost hesitated to look at the person, but they were still in there behind the rusty old window. Still sprawled out in what, to Grace, looked like a very uncomfortable position.
“Alright just have to try and screw the screws lose, let’s see come on”, he fumbled with the large screwdriver he had fastened to his belt and tried to fit it into the slots of the screws, “ “oh yeah let’s send out the least handy man into space where one mishap with a machine basically means instant death”, what were you thinking Stratt? HNGGGGGGGGHH”, he used all the momentum that he could get into one twist and tried to win over the rusty screw by using his limited supply of muscles. The screw didn’t twist at all.
He sniffed and tried to push his glasses up by scrunching his nose. “Okay new plan, I’m breaking the window because haha... there’s no time so just hold on in there alright!”
He took of the hammer from his utility hook on his belt and lined it up with the screwdriver so that he could chisel the window open. He pulled the hammer back and...
Crack
Some shards of glass trickled down into the dark celestial body down below. A window that thick should not have broken that easy. Before the thought of the window maybe having been damaged before-hand surfaced, Grace flinched and had to stabilize himself on the edge of the window again.
It looked like the body twitched when the glass fell onto the floor of the vessel.
Grace felt his lungs rapidly suck in air and push it out too quickly, his heart pounding next to them. He didn’t take his eyes off the body, but there was no movement.
“Must have been polarised light”, he muttered in an exhale before swallowing the lump in his throat. Now he just had to crawl through the hole without ripping his suit. The lump came right back up and moved back into his throat. He threw the extra suit into the vessel and attached another safety line next to the one holding him so that he could safely extract the person later.
He put one leg carefully into the window and felt it touch something hard, maybe a table. That would at least make this a little easier now that he didn’t have to hold himself up by both arms. He looked up at the Hail Mary before ducking his head into the vessel. Maybe Rocky could see him? He waved a little just in case.
He realized that the table he was standing on was actually what looked to be very simple control panel. What machinery would need a control panel like that didn’t help him understand what type of vessel it was and how it had ended up in the red ocean, so he focused on his next move. He didn’t really want to step into the liquid. Not only because it was most certainly radioactive and not transparent so he had no idea what could be hiding on the floor under the pooling liquid. No, there was just something eerie about it. The fact that it became crusted when dried and was an identical in colour to blood did not sit well with Grace. But it was the evidently extremely iron rich liquid that could possibly save him.
His boots made a squelching sound as he stepped down and tried to get to the body as fast but cautiously as possible. He hadn’t really been able to see any details through the browned window, but the state of the person quickly became clear when the spotlight from his helmet landed on them.
Just as he’d seen, the persons hair was partially covering one side of their face and most of their right side was covered by the liquid that moved slightly when the person breathed a shaky and weak wheezing exhale. Their left arm was... gone. The person was shirtless and Grace could see that it was probably a man, although he was wearing some kind of chest harness, but it didn’t seem like it was there to support anything. He couldn’t see the state of the persons lower body due to it being covered by clothing, but he moved closer to inspect the arm, adjusting his spotlight as he did so that all of it was luminating what looked like a forcibly ripped of arm.
“What happened to you?”, he glanced up at the persons face and was met with one eye looking back.
The spotlight from his lamp went everywhere as Grace scrambled back. He quickly reached up to it and expanded it to light up the whole vessel. The person flinched from the light.
“Hey hey hey, it’s okay I'm here to help you. God, I don’t even know if you understand me-”, he tried to move back towards the person, but they flinched once again. He put his hands up in a gesture that hopefully meant I'm harmless and stayed put where he sat on his knees in the liquid.
“I promise I just wan’t to help you- hey what are you doing stop!”
The person- or maybe man was trying to stand up. He had put his weight on his arm and tried to get his legs underneath himself, and when that didn’t work instead tried to use his other arm, just to fall forward and accidentally put all of his weight onto the stump where an arm used to be. It was almost like he didn’t know his arm was gone.
Grace imagined the thunk that must have come from when the exposed bone hit the metal floor. The man immediately panicked in shock from the pain, but no sound came out when he screamed in what could only be described as anguish by the expression on barely exposed face. He fell back onto the floor and his eyes rolled back into his head. Gone once more. Grace mouth was gaped open. What had just happened?
What if those eyes were the last human eyes he ever saw? Eyes filled with terror and pain. And wore, what if the last thing the person felt was excruciating pain, and last thing they saw was his face hidden behind the gleem of the spotlight on his helmet. A faceless creature so terrifying that you would, in desperation to get away, put pressure of a bone that had been snappet clean off, and on muscles where nerve tendrils hung out.
Grace gagged.
He knew he didn’t have time to try and collect himself; he couldn’t see how much blood the person was losing due to the very... very similar colour. So, he unraveled the extra orange suit and picked out the folded helmet that he put in the middle of it. This suit wasn’t as heavy duty as his own and didn’t have a latch for oxygen or whatever it was this person breathed (he really hoped it’s oxygen it would make it so much easier), so he would need to get back to the Hail Mary before the air in the helmet ran out.
He carefully sat the person up against the wall of the vessel. Their head flopped down to their chest and Grace could see that the little bit of skin peeking out from under their hair on the left side of their face looked damaged, maybe burnt. He really hoped they weren’t radioactive burns as he stuffed his feet into the suit and pulled it up his thighs. Yep, definitely a man of some sort.
He tried to lift him from the side to slide the suit on the rest of the way, but it was hard when he also had to hold it above the liquid on the floor. He settled for leaning against the wall himself and moving the man over to rest between his legs.
Now instead of the liquid being a problem, Grace realizing that there was another human-like creature resting against his chest became an issue. He could feel his back rise and fall agianst his own moving chest, unconsciously adapting to the other person breathing rhythm. It was hard to focus when he had to put his arms around the man to lift his hips up, but the blood from his stump staining his suit, despite the tourniquet band Grace had wrapped around it, helped him focus and he got it done; the suit was finally ready to zip up and be connected to the helmet.
Grace had always been weird when it came to touch and affection. He rarely craved it, sometimes avoided it, and some days his chest hurt from the lack of warmth from another person. Even before the mission he sometimes felt like his breath would catch in his throat in his lonely moments in bed and he would curl up on himself and try and think about something- anything other than how fundamentally lonely he felt. He would crave hugs and kisses, but when he actually received some of his cravings he would shy away and the craving would only become worse. It was a problem with a solution he didn’t really like. And the few times when he liked it, it went away. Except for Rocky.
He slipped out from behind the man and held the back of his head so that it wouldn’t thunk on the wall or fall forward. He zipped the orange suit up and let go of the man once more to put the helmet on, he had thought about puling the man’s hair behind his ears to remove it from his face but hesitated. The man had gotten so scared at seeing Grace and he really didn’t want him to wake up again until they were up in the Hail Mary where it was safe and he had already pushed his luck with manoeuvring him into the suit. At least that’s what he tried to tell himself. It is hard to admit to oneself that the simple act of caressing another persons face, of tucking their hair behind their ear, felt so unreal that it is hard to complete the action. Believing that closeness is something outside the capacities of the self will lead to natural acts being second guessed, and cravings easily fixed to be neglected.
He let the hair hang over the man’s face inside the helmet and began dragging him to the window. The adrenaline of seeing the man balance on his bare flesh and bones was wearing off slightly and the exhaustion from a full day (and months before that) without proper food and the ache, and shakiness in his muscles from having to climb down the chain was making itself known. Grace was panting by the time he reached the control panel, and that was just a few feet away from where the man had laid.
How in the heck was he going to get the man up the chain?
He mustered some more strength out from underneath his skin and pulled the man up halfway onto the control panel with a grunt. He was sweating and his helmet was growing foggier with each breath; the salty sweat was dripping in his eyes and simultaneously drying on his skin in a very uncomfortable way. It almost felt like his skin was dry and cracking when he grimaced. He rolled his shoulder in his heavy suit and tried to crack the hurting joints in his hands while taking one last look around the vessel.
The inside looked like a wreck. Exposed broken pipes and indents covered the walls and ceiling, and the tail end of the vessel hand definitely been pinched and broken off, but sealed shut by the pressure of whatever took off the rest of the vessel. He looked behind him and something caught his eyes. There were two trips of thinn glass on either side of the panel, and when his spotlight shone on them, he could see what looked like some sort of electrical wiring behind them.
He looked closer. No, it was copper wires, but they looked to the spirraled like in light bulbs so it must be some sort of light display. Wait...
The rounded shape of the vessels nose.
The weld-markings on the outside metal parting and window.
The minimalistic control panel.
He looked back at the panel. The old school radar detector.
The light displays. Depth and... oxygen.
“Holy fudge cake, this is a submarine”, he looked down, “You’re a pilot? Captain?”
The captain obviously didn’t answer so Grace settled for pulling his extra safety strap down and hooked it into the extra suits safety harness. He wondered how big the vessel had been before it got destroyed. Had there been a whole crew aboard? Where the rest of it down there? What... what could possibly do this to a submarine, and how could you- how and why would someone ever go down into that thick red ocean?
He didn’t have time to figure it out himself. His best chance of answers was the limp man by his knees, and his breaths were either becoming even more shallow, or Grace was starting to imagine things. Either way he really needed to hurry up.
The way back to the claw up on the top hull was difficult and ungraceful to say the least. He had pushed the man out of the window first and then clumsily climbed out after him. The sight of him just hanging there was... unpleasant. Very unpleasant. Then he had to use the last bit of sweat he had to cool his boiling and taunt skin as he pulled the dead weight of the captain (?) up the hull after he climbed up there himself.
He looked up. Now he just had to get up there. He took a hold of the chain and tried pulling himself up a little to lock his safety chain up higher. His arms felt like jello and he knew that he would never be able to pull the man up after him when he could barely hold his own weight.
He weighed his options. He could try and wake him up? No, he probably wouldn’t be much help with that arm of his. What if he strapped him really close to his body? It might be easier with the weight distributed on his core rather than-
“Huh?”, there was a rattle behind him. A new xenonite chain dangled next to the one attached to the vessel-submarine-thing.
He looked up and smiled. “Thank you, Rocky”
Grace hooked them both to the chain and to each other, then waved up towards the Hail Mary. The chain elevator was quicker than he’s expected, and he could quickly feel the effects of lower and lower gravity, until they were ready to board the HM.
The hull opened the Rocky pulled them right in.
“Grace okay, question?”
He unclipped himself and the man after the hull had closed, and laid him precariously up against the wall, his head fell towards his chest again.
Grace unclipped his own helmet before answering Rocky and talked through undressing from his now biohazardous suit.
“Yes, buddy I'm fine but we really need to get him to Armando. Did you prep the medical room with plastic?”
“Yes, medical room is ready for rescued alien. Did you find nourishment?”
“No, this kind of became top priority. Whatever species this is could be really similar to human, so if we help him, he could maybe help us? Although I wouldn’t count on it”
“Why Grace not count on it, question?”
Grace started unzipping Simon and pulled his feet and arm out, leaving the suit hanging off his bleeding stump and moving him to a flexible plastic tarp to prevent the biohazard from spreading.
“Well... the radiation in the submarine- the vessel, was very high. Extremely high. I’m surprised he’s still human shaped and not just goo on the floor honestly. We’ll see what Armando figures out”
“Radiation is what killed Rocky crew, statement. Grace not safe. New human not safe for Grace or Rocky”
He stomped his foot once and followed Grace, who had begun to drag the plastic tarp with the man laying on it towards the medical room.
“Radiation doesn’t really work like that bud. The radiation should have damaged his cells, but his damaged cells can’t damage mine. It’s not transmittable”
“Understand. Is new human sleeping?”, he asked innocently while following the tarp round the corner and through the hanging plastic tarps into the medical room. Armando immediately activated with a shrill “injury detected” and started scanning the man while Grace lowered the cot down to the floor and carefully pulled the man onto it and carefully, oh so carefully slid the suit off the arm stump. Armando moved in quick succession.
“No he’s not sleeping. Remember when I hit my head and wouldn’t wake up? It’s like that. He’s hurt badly and his body is shut off because it can’t afford to be conscious- you know how I told you that humans are conscious even when we sleep? Now he’s UNconscious”
“Please leave medical room. Preparing for surgery. Please leave medical room. Preparing for surgery”
They both scurried out of the medical room and shut the glass door behind them. The plastic made it so that Grace could just barely see the blurry shape of Armando putting an oxygen mask on the man. God he hoped his species breathed oxygen. Otherwise, that would just have ruined all the effort they put in to save him.
“What do Grace and Rocky do now, question?”
The chances of the man surviving were low. The medical room and Armando were designed to treat humans after all. Grace had a pit in his stomach, but somewhere in there grew hope as well. If they were able to treat him. That would mean that-
That he had found another person like him.
He looked down at the blood covered suit in his hand. “We have to get rid of all the biohazard somehow. Stuff it in a box and mark it so we don’t end up like the people in alien”
“Grace is right. In alien only one woman and on earth cat survived. Rocky or Grace is not cat or woman”
“I meant the face suckers but sure, neither of us makes for a good final girl. Listen, I'll take this and dispose of it, but I'm going to take a blood sample and a sample of the red liquid so we can find out a little more about our guest and the celestial body while we wait”
“Grace is nerd, statement”
He kicked one of his feet out from under him, making him stumble.
“At least I can walk”, he chuckled but felt the smile slowly turn with the sour feeling in his gut. In just a few minutes, there could be a corpse on the ship. In just a few minutes, he could find out whether or not he was the last thing a person saw in their life.
He had traveled the galaxy, yet this felt too big for him to handle. What would he even do if the person survived and woke up? He had no idea what he’d been through and no way to help him heal. “Hi, sorry I carried your unconscious body up here to space and that your arm is gone and you have radiation sickness, but I'm hungry so could you show me how you harvest food? Maybe we could go down to the tree together?”
Right the tree. That was another mystery in itself, but at least it was a promising mystery for once.
They packed up the sullied clothes together in crates and Grace had a good laugh at watching Rocky try and use tape. The sound of some whirring machine inside of the medical room quickly quieted him seconds later.
Grace scraped a dried sample of the man’s blood into one dish and a sample of the dried red liquid from his boots on another. He put both samples into vials with some saline and balanced them in a centrifuge before dripping them onto a plate for a test. One blood test and one structure test to see if the red liquid had some vitamin properties. The computer would need some time to work the tests, so Grace and Rocky decided to watch something light in the ‘don’t go crazy room’.
In a white, sterile, plastic covered room, a man lies nearly on the floor but not quite. Nearly laid to rest but not quite. Dirty hair forced to the side by a robot with no comprehension of it’s importance. A cheek with a slit and gums aching with growing pains from where white sharp bones has pushed through the small canals and forced nerves to the side. An eye hiding behind a lid takes on a different shade than its neighbor, and a new voice echoes between ears- one sharp, one just like the mother’s- We were made for this. We were made for this. Weweremadeforthisbutcher
Butcher
Butcher
Grace yawns and pats his ways towards the lab. He had fallen asleep while watching tangled with Rocky and woken up to him drooling on one of Rocky’s limbs. It wasn’t the first time so there was honestly not much to be embarrassed by. Grace thought Rocky had seen most of his bad sides by year one. Grace saw Rocky’s bad sides by week one.
There was a harsh glow from the blinking computer in the lab and Grace had to squint his sensitive eyes as he moved towards it to read the test results. He blinked.
He must have done it wrong. He looked at the two marked vials and discs laid out on the bench. One from the red liquid and one blood sample from the man.
He had definitely used both of them. He remembers clearly. So why...
Why did the computer say they were both human blood?