Archive of Our Own ^beta

They’ve been here for twenty-six days. 

Felix wakes up every morning, clicks open his penknife and scratches a new mark into the bare titanium wall beside the makeshift bed, and every morning Chan tells him that he’ll ruin the blade for when he “really needs it”, and Felix does it anyway. 

How else will they keep track? 

Besides, the escape pod has a fabricator inside. They can make more knives if they need them, and they’ll only need them for things like cutting plant samples and kelp, and for butchering fish and preparing food, and not for anything else.

On fish: there’s lots of fish around. Plenty to eat. Felix had been relieved when he’d first looked beneath the surface of Planet 4546B and saw all the fauna, swimming about in glittering schools in every color imaginable. Fish meant food, and food meant survival . 

Chan had looked at him and frowned. Made a claw with one of his hands, snapped it together like the jaws of an alligator. He’d mouthed something to Felix, bubbles streaming from his mouth, but Felix knew what it was anyway. 

Big fish eat little fish. 

Felix is an optimist. That’s why he keeps count of the days, and that’s why he decides not to think about what might lurk beyond the shallows. The only thing that’ll be eating anything around here, at least in these ten-meter-deep waters, is himself and Chan. 

When Felix opens his eyes on this particular morning, everything hurts. 

The escape pod is maybe eight feet long at most, and all they’d been able to throw together for sleeping arrangements had been a pathetic pile of thin blankets that were tucked away in the pod’s Alterra-issued emergency survival kit. So it might be that, or it might be that all of the physical exercise he’s gotten for the past almost-month has been exclusively swimming , and far too much of it. 

Gingerly, he sits up, grimacing at the dull ache of protest in his core. As he blinks the sleep from his eyes, the wall comes into focus. 

Twenty-six days. 

Everything’s going to be okay. 

It’s the first thing he tells himself every morning; it’s what Chan says every night, over their meal of steamed or maybe baked or whatever-the-hell-the-fabricator-does-to-it fish; it’s what the automated Alterra™ Emergency Response Message said when they’d first crashed. 

Felix yawns, stretches out his arms, his legs, his back. 

Everything’s going to be okay.

Is it? 

Just then, the hatch on the floor of the escape pod opens up with a hiss, and Chan clambers halfway inside; he rests his elbows on the lip of the hatch like some kind of wetsuit-clad merman and just sort of hangs there, and runs a hand through his soaked hair, flicking droplets of water onto Felix. 

“Morning,” Chan says chipperly, reaching back into the water beneath him and tossing up a netful of fish onto the pod’s floor. They land at Felix’s feet and flop about, slimy and writhing. “Want breakfast?” 

Felix just sort of nods and buries his face in his hands and makes some kind of pained groan, trusting Chan will understand. 

4546B is about 99.9% water, according to the information Felix can read on his PDA and according to everything he’s seen since the crash (water, water everywhere, in every direction). The only thing that breaks up the monotony of the blue horizon is the wreck of the Aurora , maybe a mile or two away. Her hull juts out of the water like some kind of jagged island, coughing up puffs of deep black smoke, crumbling slowly to pieces. More radiation leaks into the water every day, they’re both sure of it; it’s just a matter of time before it reaches them.

Don’t think about that right now.  

Chan loads the fish into the fabricator one by one, and the scent of cooked fish replaces the smell of raw fish. Fish for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and everything in between. Sometimes Felix wonders if you can overdose on omega-3s. 

“Anything interesting out there?” Felix finally musters up the energy to talk as Chan passes him a chunk of meat, which he takes gratefully— despite the over-saturated fishiness of his diet at the moment, he’s hungry enough to overlook the monotony. His voice is raw from swallowing mouthfuls of saltwater every day and grates against his throat uncomfortably; even the filtered water tastes like salt at this point.

Chan shakes his head. “Nothing new.” He pauses to chew on his food, probably just as tough and rubbery as Felix’s. “I went looking for food, mostly. You up for some more exploring today?” 

Felix ignores the fearful pang in his stomach, and nods. He knows that in order to survive, they have to explore, they have to scavenge, scour this planet for a means of escape. The escape pod communications are fried, and as far as they know, nobody else from the Aurora’s crew made it out of the wreck alive. 

There’s nobody out here to help them, and they’re so far off the grid that even if their transmissions were working, the chances that they’d contact someone who could rescue them are slim. 

All that’s left to do is survive.

With a belly full of fish, Felix finds himself dropping into the water behind Chan, rebreather fastened over his mouth and a little two-way radio communication system secured in his ear (also courtesy of the survival kit). They’ve never needed the radios, because they’ve never split up, but Chan insists on always having them handy— just in case, he says. 

The water is pleasantly cool as it envelopes him, and streams of bubbles flee his mask as he takes his first deep breath beneath the surface. The shallows shimmer a gorgeous shade of turquoise in the morning light, the sandy bottom dotted with sprigs of coral and weeds that wave gently in the current, and schools of peculiar fish that dart away every time Felix so much as looks at them; he doesn’t know how Chan catches any at all. 

He follows closely behind Chan, stretching his sore muscles as he kicks out his legs behind him, wishing he could push through the water as easily as everything else on 4546B can. 

Usually when they dive, they look for resources. The wreckage that the Aurora scattered when it crashed contains metals that help them make tools, including that oh-so-important knife that Felix keeps strapped on his thigh as he swims, and the local flora is rife with medicinal and nutritional properties that have kept them alive over the last almost-month. 

He assumes that’s what they’re doing again, as Chan leads him away from the escape pod, until they come to the edge of what Felix assumes is some sort of kelp forest. It acts as the outer boundary of their safe-haven, beyond which they’ve never gone. The forest is like a living wall, protecting and threatening all at once. 

(Behind the kelp live the things that make the noises that Felix hears at night; the shattering screeches that cut through the water, the low rumbles and groans that make the bottom of the pod quiver when he’s trying to sleep.)

Twenty or so meters down, Chan halts his swimming and turns back to look at Felix, almost expectant. The kelp here is dense and thick, deep-green fronds of it packed so closely together that Felix can barely differentiate between them, reaching up, tendril-like, from a murky deep that neither of them have braved before. 

The kelp dances with the current, swaying slowly, in unison. The movement reminds Felix of a charmed cobra, but the roles are reversed; the forest seems to be taunting him, daring him to go deeper. 

He shivers. 

Chan waves at him, snapping his attention away from the kelp, and points to the surface. Let’s talk. Felix nods, and with a kick of his legs begins to ascend. 

They break the surface at the same time, and Felix lifts his oxygen mask from his mouth momentarily so that he can speak. Though everything’s just rippling blue on the surface, Felix feels like he can still sense the draw of the kelp forest, as though it’s trying to drag him back under.

“I want to see what’s on the other side.”

Felix gapes at him, thinking that maybe he’s going crazy from all the nitrogen buildup in his blood or something. 

“ Why? ”

“Because,” Chan insists, offering him a grin, “I want to know. There could be valuable stuff out there,” he adds breathlessly, “we might figure out what happened to the Aurora , why it crashed. We might find a way out of here. ” 

Chan has always been more adventurous than Felix, but not in a reckless way. He just has this desire to know things, to figure things out, how they work, what makes them tick. That’s why he was the Aurora’s head engineer. Felix knows that Chan is cautious, that he’s well aware of what might be lurking out in the open oceans of 4546B, and that there’s something in him that needs to see those things for himself. 

Felix would really rather not, which is why he worked in the Aurora’s onboard greenhouses as a botanist, and had never even laid eyes on Chan until the moment they were shoved into the same drop pod together. 

“What about the noises?” Felix retorts, a little breathless as he paddles to keep himself afloat. “What about the whole ‘ big fish eat little fish’ thing?” 

“Noises? Ever heard of a whale, Lix?” 

“Well, yeah, but those don’t sound like whales.”

“They’re alien whales, Felix, ‘course they don’t sound like Earth whales, the point is that—”

“The point is that they’re going to swallow us alive!” 

“They won’t. ” There is a confident solidity to Chan’s voice that sometimes makes him hard to disagree with, and it comes into full force now. Chan’s eyes gleam with the thrill of adventure and something else too, something that in a paradoxical way mirrors the depth of the forest looming below. “We won’t let them.”

Felix frowns, and for a moment all there is is the gentle lapping of the waves around them. “But they could.” 

“They won’t . ” Chan repeats. “We’ll never make it off of here if we don’t go further out, Felix, you know we won’t.” He glances off to the west, where the Aurora’s smoking wreck smears the sky like an unwanted stain, and frowns. “We have to try, you know. For. . . for them.” 

For everyone who didn’t survive.  

Felix hates how Chan has a point, but Chan always seems to have a point. 

“. . . I guess you’re right.” He sighs, already feeling the anxiety begin to build in his stomach. “But we’re only going to scout the area,” he adds firmly, giving Chan his best stern glare, “we’re just taking a look, that’s all. ” 

“We’ll be back here before you know it,” Chan confirms, “and we’ll be careful, like we always are.” 

Finally, Felix nods despite his apprehension, and Chan grins. He fastens his rebreather over his mouth and plunges back beneath the surface, gathering up his courage to face the kelp forest— and whatever’s on the other side of it. 

He follows Chan to the edge, lagging reluctantly behind him. He doesn’t like the way it moves, like it’s mocking him, taunting him. There’s a moment of apprehension for Chan too, a split-second hesitation that’s just barely visible, no more than a too long pause. It's gone faster than it came, though, and Chan’s pushing through the kelp, and Felix has no choice but to follow. 

It’s thick, but not too dark; sunlight still filters through the fronds, and Felix makes sure to keep Chan in sight. Each time a stray strand of kelp touches his leg or his arm, he startles, and once a school of shimmering sapphire fish dart out in front of him. They’re the kind that swim in the shallows too, the ones with massive orange eyes that seem to stare straight through him.

Time seems to bend, and Felix doesn’t know if they’ve been pushing through kelp for mere minutes or for hours on end. It all looks the same, and he wonders if they might be swimming in circles. His skin prickles with goosebumps, his neck sore from how many times he’s glanced over his shoulder, expecting to see some sharklike creature following him with hungry eyes. He finds nothing each time, but keeps checking anyway. He just can’t shake it, the awful feeling of being watched, being hunted. . .

One moment, shadowy kelp looms in front of him; the next, he’s drifting out into open water, a sudden expanse of blue opening up to him so suddenly that he nearly throws himself backwards. A few feet in front of him, Chan halts too, glancing back to look at him.

The other side of the kelp is quiet. 

Not completely; there’s still the soft rush of the current dancing past Felix’s ears, still the occasional torrent of bubbles flowing forth from their masks, but there’s a disconcerting emptiness that seems to linger around them. The water here is gold-tinged with sand and silt, and stretches out before him endlessly, and below him, the bottom begins to drop off, sloping down, down into some dark and indiscernible depth. Staring down into it makes him dizzy, makes his pupils dilate and his stomach turn with a primal sort of fear, so he tears his eyes away, and looks back at Chan instead. 

There’s comfort in seeing him there, breathing and tangible and within arm’s reach, as if he might’ve disappeared had Felix waited too long to look. He’s not looking at Felix, fixated instead on the murky blue.

It’s very, very quiet.

The time it’s taken them to get here was more than they anticipated, and the sun’s height in the sky is dwindling, and the deep, well— it opens its jaws to Felix, making him want to swim backwards, to touch the safety of the ledge behind him, instead of hovering out in the open like bait. 

Bait for what?

He waves to get Chan’s attention. Chan looks away from the abyss, questioning. What? His eyes say, brow furrowing with concern. 

Felix jerks his head back towards the kelp. We need to go back soon. 

Chan nods, but holds up a hand. Bubbles stream from his mask. One second. 

Felix watches him kick forwards, propelling him out into the open ocean. Something in him wants to rip his mask off and shout, tell him to come back, like—

There, to the left. A split second, the outline of something streamlined, ghostly pale, darting in and out of the murk for a split second. Felix freezes. Was it a trick of the light? A mirage, conjured by the sea? 

It must have been the light, because it doesn’t return, and Chan keeps swimming, daring to go further and further from the safety of the ledge. Felix doesn’t understand what he’s doing, what he’s looking for. 

He glances downwards. With a jolt, he sees only his own feet, and beneath them, nothing at all. A quick look behind him, and he realizes— there’s a current, a weak one, slowly but surely pushing him out to sea. The outer dregs of the kelp, very suddenly a symbol of safety rather than fear, are many lengths away from him. For a moment, icy paralysis grips his limbs; he cannot swim, he cannot breathe, the sea is swallowing him, he— 

A hand on his shoulder snaps him out of it, squeezing lightly. Felix can only see Chan’s eyes with all of the dive gear on but he can tell that his smile is apologetic, and he beckons towards the refuge of the forest. Let’s go home. 

But he doesn’t let go of Felix’s shoulder. 

It happens in the blink of an eye. Chan’s easy grin melts off of his face, and his fingers press into him, then start digging, clawing into his skin, threatening to puncture through his wetsuit. Pain sears through Felix’s arm but he doesn’t feel it because ice is washing over him again, numbing everything. 

It’s so quiet. 

Until it isn’t. 

Felix doesn’t even know what’s happening until it’s too late.

Chan screams something as he tries to shove Felix out of the way, but the sound is warped and mangled by the water and drowned out by a screeching bellow that makes everything shake. Something smashes into Felix’s back and rips him out of Chan’s grip, knocking the breath from his lungs, ears ringing. 

He gasps for air but gets a lungful of water instead, and finds, with terror, that his rebreather has been knocked askew by the impact. Water fills his throat and lungs and stings as it chokes him, but he struggles and kicks anyway, knowing nothing besides that he needs to swim away swim away swim away. 

He doesn’t know where Chan is and he doesn’t know what hit him but he’s trying to shove his oxygen mask back over his mouth with one hand and scrabbling for his knife with the other and the bone-rattling shriek sounds again, vibrating through his core, and his limbs threaten to seize up in fear alone. 

He rips the knife from its holster and whips around just as he manages to right his rebreather; he takes a dizzying gulp of oxygen, heart pounding, chest aching; his eyes refocus where they had begun to fog over, and finds himself looking into blackness. 

For a split second that feels long, drawn out and stretched, his grip on his knife tightens; he breathes in, out; bubbles of oxygen obscure his view, then dissipate. At first, he doesn’t know what he’s looking at. 

Then, it blinks. 

An eye with no pupil, a pool of onyx the size of his head, stares into his— hungry, calculating. It only takes one look to understand that this creature has no morals, no soul. 

Big fish eat little fish. 

He jerks into motion, his every instinct screaming at him to move, and so he pulls his arm back and drives his blade into the first part of the creature he can reach. It digs into the flesh with surprising ease, blood pouring from the wound and into the water. 

The creature rears back, and he backpedals furiously, the knife falling from his fingers, struggling towards something. Mirroring his movements with fluid ease, it coils backwards like a spring, giving Felix a better look at it.

It has a streamlined head with those awful eyes set into it, and a gaping maw filled with rows and rows of jagged teeth; two sets of mandibles, opened wide, sinewy and tipped with spearlike claws. Behind the head, a body thrashes, bloodred in color, spineless and sickening, thirty feet long, maybe forty, maybe more.

It roars , the sound rattling him so hard he feels his ribs might break, and it surges forwards— but he never really had a chance, did he? 

It surges forward, mandibles clamping down on his sides, and suddenly he’s rocketing towards the seafloor, his head aching as the pressure builds rapidly, those horrible claws digging into his ribs as they hold him tight. The pressure makes his ears ache, his head throb, but he finds he has no strength to try to wrestle himself from the creature’s grip. His vision is darkening, but it is from the pressure? Is he dying? Or is he just plummeting deeper and deeper, farther and farther from the dwindling reach of the sun? 

His back hits the seafloor, and everything goes dark. 

***

[6 months into the Aurora voyage]

The greenhouse is the most peaceful room on the Aurora by far. Removed from the busy atmosphere of the rest of the ship, it’s silent, almost tranquil, and few people are inside at a time, making it the only place where Felix can hear himself think. Besides, it’s the only place that feels a little bit like home. 

The thing about space travel is that you can’t go outside. No matter how claustrophobic you feel, no matter how sick you are of the taste of recycled oxygen, that’s all you get. And the greenhouse, at least, kind of feels like going outside. All the plants remind him of his old home on Earth: the farmhouse in Australia he’d shared with his parents and his grandparents, the garden out back, the grassy hills, and the pastures where a herd of cows and an old sway-backed horse used to graze. 

Right now, the greenhouse is empty save for him. He’s staring down at a bed of lettuce, a pair of tongs in his hand, the bright UV lights hanging in rows overhead, miniature suns. A moment ago he’d arrived with the intention of taking a sample, like they’re supposed to do every week, to make sure their plants are still growing without abnormalities. Now, though, he’s been staring at the greenery for some unknown amount of time, being far too sentimental for a planet he’ll probably never return to. 

A light tap on his shoulder makes him startle, the tongs falling from his hand and clattering to the floor. 

“Dude, you okay?” Jisung laughs, grinning brightly when Felix turns to him. “You looked a little. . . spaced out.” 

Felix rolls his eyes. “That pun died as soon as this ship took off,” he retorts, though inwardly he’s grateful for the distraction. “What are you doing in here?” 

“I work here,” Jisung reminds him. “What are you doing in here? ”

Felix bends down to pick up his tongs and snips them a few times, for good measure. “Collecting samples,” he replies, “you know, doing my job. I work here too.” 

“And you know fully well that we take our lunch break at one, and it’s—“ Jisung checks his watch— “one thirty.” 

“Time doesn’t technically exist out here,” Felix argues, even if it’s weak. Jisung knows he’s feeling homesick, but being homesick isn’t really an option on a ship like the Aurora. One failed weekly psych evaluation, and your career just might be over. 

Jisung snorts and waves his hand. “Don’t bother me with physics,” he grumbles, “we work in the biology department for a reason. C’mon, I hear they’re serving freeze-dried brownies in the cafeteria today.” He grabs Felix’s wrist and drags him away from his lettuce. 

Jisung pulls him through the halls of the ship, passing by groups of stone-faced officers walking in full uniform and pristine windows looking out into an abyssal sea of stars. 

The cafeteria is full to bursting, swarming with crew members starved after working all morning long— morning according to the ship’s simulated day-and-night cycles, anyway— and after grabbing a tray of food, Felix takes his usual seat in between Jisung and Seungmin.

“Nice of you to show up,” says Seungmin when he sits down, not unkindly. “Where have you been?” 

“Felix thinks plants are better friends than we are,” Jisung accuses him.

“Uh-oh,” Jeongin says with a devious grin, sitting across from Felix, “are you losing it? Do we need to make a report?” 

“No , ” Felix insists, grinning in spite of himself, “it’s just. . . a good place to think.” 

This, they all seem to understand, without really knowing any specifics at all. Seungmin pats his shoulder sympathetically; Hyunjin hums, and frowns, presumably, despite the large forkful of salad he’s just shoved into his mouth. 

“We’ll be there soon,” Jeongin, who works somewhere in the navigation office, offers, eyes bright. “The voyage is only supposed to take around seven months, and we’re already around six months in. The captain says we’re running on-schedule, maybe even ahead of time.”

“I’ve heard it’s really beautiful once you land,” Hyunjin offers, now having swallowed his food. “4546B, I mean. All oceans and sunny beaches and stuff.” 

Seungmin snorts. “Nobody's ever managed it before.” 

Felix, Jisung, Jeongin, and Hyunjin all look at him, various looks of confusion and intrigue apparent on their faces. Seungmin blinks, raising his eyebrows. 

“What, you’ve never heard the stories before?” They shake their heads. “Every ship that’s flown close to planet 4546B has gone missing,” Seungmin says, his voice taking on some kind of smug, all-knowing cadence, “first the Mercury II , ages ago, and just recently the Degasi . They just vanished—” he snaps his fingers— “never to be seen or heard from again. Some people say that half our mission is to track down the missing ships, not just to build a phasegate.” 

“Bullshit,” Hyunjun declares, “and stop, you’re scaring Felix and Innie.”

It’s true that Felix’s stomach had begun to tie itself into a knot as soon as Seungmin had begun his story, and it’s true that he’d been looking out across the cafeteria, through the massive, bulletproof-glass window that’s supposed to give anyone who’s dining a good look into outer space, feeling as though the stars were trying to pull him in. 

It’s true that the last place he’d ever want to die would be out here, in the so-called final frontier, where nobody would ever hear him scream. 

But surely, the ship is in good hands. Surely Alterra wouldn’t send them on a death mission, they wouldn’t waste lives or resources like that, would they? Surely, everything will be fine, and Felix’s anxiety and Seungmin’s stupid stories are just getting to him. Surely. . .

***

It happened in seconds. There had been nothing Chan could do, not without any weapons, but he still should have done something. He should have cried out or attacked the thing himself or thrown himself in the way, he should be the one down there, he should have seen it coming, he should have—

No. Not now, not when he needs to think, when he needs to do something. That thing could come back at any moment and drag him to the same place it dragged Felix, and then they’ll both be good as dead— and Felix isn’t dead, not yet, he can’t be. 

He won’t even allow himself to entertain the idea, not when he knows Felix still has thirty minutes of oxygen left in his tank. Chan glances upwards, at the surface; the sunlight slants deeply where it bends and refracts in the water, indicating that it won’t be long before dark. The ocean is already turning darker, the deep spiraling into inky blackness beneath him. 

The silence has returned like a stifling blanket, but now Chan knows that it’s a ruse. Every time he peers at the void below him, he sees the wretched face of that monster rising up, jaws agape. . . until he blinks the mirage away. 

Think, Chan. He’s reminded of the Alterra engineering courses he had to go through before he joined the Aurora’s crew, the ones with the stupid slogans uttered by old professors in lecture halls, slideshows that mean nothing when you’re faced with a real problem. Assess the issue, find a solution. If only it were that easy. 

Still, some of it rings true: assess the issue. What does he need to do first? He glances back at the dropoff, now so far away, where the refuge of the kelp forest seems to beckon for him like an old friend. Safety. Good— what next? He starts back towards the kelp, taking deep, even breaths all the while. Forcing his mind into some kind of mechanical, calm state, Chan next evaluates his equipment.

He has a survival knife, a set of three flare canisters clipped to his belt, and— the radio. Pulse quickening, he scrabbles to open the line, suddenly immensely thankful for the waterproof technology Alterra had stored away in the escape pods, and presses the button by his ear. 

“Felix? Felix, can you hear me?” He tries to keep his voice steady. There’s no reply. Static buzzes in his ear as he shoves down a wave of fear, staunchly refusing to jump to conclusions. He hides himself behind a coral-covered outcropping at the edge of the kelp, close enough that he can still see out into the open ocean. “Felix?” 

There’s no sign of anything from the deep. Not the creature, not Felix. All is still, and that scares Chan more than the beast itself did. 

He presses his back against the solid rock, squeezing his eyes shut. He knows he’s still within reach of the creature; should it return, he knows he can’t be completely silent, not with his rebreather spewing bubbles every few seconds, but he can’t retreat any farther either— not without Felix, he can’t leave him behind, he’d never .

He tries again, fighting hard to keep his voice steady: “Felix,” he repeats, “come on, I know you’re there. It’s gonna be okay, I swear, I’ll get you out of there, alright? Felix?” He clenches his fist, guilt ripping through him, searing hot and bloody. “ Shit, ” he whispers to himself when no reply comes through. 

A thousand things could have happened. Felix’s end of the radio could be damaged; his earpiece could have fallen loose; he might be too deep for the signal to pick up, or maybe the occasional, hungry cries of the beast are enough to disrupt their connection. All these scenarios cross Chan’s mind, and so do other things, worse things: his rebreather might have been knocked off; he might be unconscious; he might be drowning; his oxygen tank might be leaking, punctured; he might be injured, he might not be able to swim, he might be—

Faintly, the static begins to morph and change, becoming something garbled, but different than before. It’s enough to bolster Chan’s efforts, and he begins muttering nonsense into his mouthpiece again, anything to make Felix respond.

“Felix, c’mon, give me something. Just one word, really, just let me know where you are and we can figure this out. And if, and if you’re hearing me but you can’t say anything, then just stay calm, okay? Take slow, deep breaths. It’s— it’s going to be okay.” A useless phrase, overused and meaningless, really, but what else can he say?

Then, the radio crackles. “ Ch—. . . I’m a—. . . ive.”    

***

[2 months before the Aurora voyage]

The room is small, walls painted a bleak eggshell white, blank and lacking decoration. There are no windows, like most places in the garrison, and no furniture either, save for a mahogany desk and a flag standard looming beside it, bearing the flag of the Alterra Trans-Gov. 

Though the air-conditioning system is cycling cool air through the room, Chan is sweating, waves of nervous heat washing over him. Regardless, he stands the way he’s supposed to: chin up, shoulders squared, hands clasped behind his back, staring straight ahead. Shoulder to shoulder with the others, he can tell he’s not the only anxious one, despite the stony facades they’re all keeping up. He’s known some of them for years— Sangyeon and Minho came through the engineering program with him, and Yeji trained with him before she split off to study biotech. 

There are others he doesn’t know that well, but they have their tells too. Feet tapping, stances shifting, eyes twitching. This is, after all, the moment that will make or break their careers, and reshape their lives as they know them. 

The door to the room swings open, near-silent on well-oiled hinges. A man strides in, stout and shorter than most of them, but with a commanding aura all the same. His suit is pristine, his hair is carefully combed, and he’s holding a small pile of manila folders. 

He arrives at the mahogany desk, sits down, and drops the folders on the table with a soft thump. With calculating eyes, he surveys the line of trainees in identical uniforms, sweat beading down their faces. When his gaze reaches Chan, he resists the urge to fidget, trying to appear as professional as possible even now— not that that will change whatever’s written in that folder. 

The man lets out a small sigh, and checks the gold-plated watch on his wrist, as if he has somewhere better to be. “As you all know,” he begins in a wheezy voice, “you are all candidates for captainship of the Alterra Corporation’s newest ship, the Aurora . You have all exhibited,” he thumbs the edges of his stack of files, “excellence and leadership throughout your training and employment at Alterra thus far. However, your final evaluations have been processed, and as you know, only one of you will get the job.” 

Chan swallows, his throat suddenly dry. Almost imperceptibly, Minho elbows him from his place on Chan’s left, and gives him the most subtle of grins. They’d roomed together for a while during a research job back in their training years, and as far as friends go, Minho is pretty close— and maybe the only person in the room Chan doesn’t hold even a shred of competitive animosity towards. How could he? 

Chan elbows Minho back, shakes his head minutely, and turns his attention back to the man speaking, who seems to be nearing his announcement. 

“. . . it is our greatest hope that all of you will stay on the Alterra team and continue to be leaders in your respective fields. You will all be offered priority positions on the Aurora in recognition of your work and accomplishments. However. . .” he picks up the files, taps them lightly on the desk to align them, and purses his lips. “With careful consideration, we have selected the candidate who has shown the most diligence, consistency, discipline, and above all, ability to lead. The Alterra Corporation is hereby proud to hand the command of the vessel the Aurora over to Lee Sangyeon, for his. . .” 

And Chan hears nothing after that, feeling the world shatter like it was always destined to, shards like razors falling at his feet and falling all over him, a thousand pinpricks of pain. It’s not like he was expecting to be picked— everyone in this room is worthy, everyone has what it takes. Maybe it’s who was picked. Lee Sangyeon. 

Maybe it’s that Lee Sangyeon was always one year older, one percentile above in all their Alterra Engineering classes. Always taller, smarter, quicker, stronger, calmer, but only by a little— so little that nobody else could tell, not even Sangyeon, but Sangyeon never spent as much time looking at Chan as Chan did looking at him. 

His ears are ringing and his head is clouded with a bitter symphony of his own voices saying ‘failure’ and ‘not good enough’ over and over, but outwardly, he smiles. He shakes Sangyeon’s hand and congratulates him, genuinely, because he does deserve to be captain and Chan’s just awful, and ignores the tingle in his fingertips when their palms touch and the burning sensation in his chest. He picks up the folder on the table with his name stamped on the front, ignores the worried glance that Minho shoots his way, and leaves. 

He does not open the folder until he reaches the privacy of his room, all cold steel and dim lighting, and locks the door behind him. When he thumbs open the file, it’s strange— aside from the front page, with his photo clipped in the corner and a detailed profile typed out beneath it, it’s full of other people’s thoughts on him, evaluators, higher-ups, most of whom he barely even knows.

One word scrawled in red pen sticks out to him the most, three out of a sea of thousands. It makes his stomach turn, makes him feel scared even, because it’s so true he wants to run from it. 

“Reckless.”

Swallowing hard, he reads the smaller words beneath it. “Candidate shows promising willingness to brave new situations and environments, and is able to lead and direct team members with ease and without pushback. However, an occasional lack of proper contemplation before acting has been assessed multiple times.” Like a hot knife through his chest, the memory of a flight simulation ending resurfaces, followed by a blinking red light that meant ‘failure’. Another memory, a mission he’d co-led working on some satellite, when he’d sprained his wrist because he’d been in too much of a rush to check his equipment properly. 

“Reckless.”

Maybe they’re right. 

***

Felix must have only been out for a minute at most, because when he opens his eyes, the sand is still settling. He takes a shuddering, gasping breath of oxygen through his mask, and winches when his ears throb and pop. They’re ringing loudly, and his vision is still out of focus; all he can see is the faint glow of sunlight far, far above.

The surface. 

His sides are what ache the most, fiery pain radiating from his lower ribcage up through his chest. Tenderly, he brushes a hand over the area, and finds his wetsuit shredded. His hand comes back red with blood, his blood, oozing from the wounds and spiraling through the water in delicate tendrils. 

Can it smell blood? 

Felix once read somewhere that the sharks on Earth can smell a drop of blood from a mile away, and though the cuts don’t feel deep, he’s bleeding far more than just a drop. Right now, the creature is nowhere to be found. Has it gone to look for Chan? Does it think Felix is dead? 

When is it going to come back? 

As the ringing in his ears fades, a new sound filters in, static buzzing in his ear, quite annoying at first. He ignores it, feeling as though a damp cloth has been wrapped around his brain, fogging up his thoughts and slowing them down. He lifts his head enough to see the steep slope of the seafloor towering above him, and far, far above, the ledge where he and Chan had first emerged— where he had been attacked. Stranded deep in the belly of such a colossal ocean, it’s suddenly easy to imagine how the Mercury II or the Degasi vanished.

He might be able to make it. 

His diving goggles are cracked, a fracture spiderwebbing across the left side of his vision and shattering his view, but the digital display still flickers in the corner: 

O 2 : 27 min

Depth: 55 m

27 minutes is plenty, he tells himself. 27 minutes is more than enough. 

He glances up and around, surveying the murk for any sign of the creature. There’s nothing, but unease trickles down his spine and raises goosebumps on his arms beneath his wetsuit; every variation in the lighting down here looks like a snakelike tail gliding out of view, and every shift of the current feels like the oncoming surge of a massive, charging creature about to crush him in its jaws. 

He breathes in deeply, filling his lungs with oxygen, trying to clear his mind, and he exhales, bubbles popping and dissipating as they make desperate and futile attempts to escape to the surface.

Then, he begins to move. 

All his battered body allows him to do is claw his way through the sand. He drags himself across the seafloor in a slow, agonizing crawl towards the towering ledge, entirely focused on listening for any signs of the creature’s return. His breathing is labored, his chest protesting with every full lungful, and every minute or so he has to stop to catch his breath, wheezing and coughing. 

Part of him just wants to curl up right here, hundreds of pounds of water pressure hugging him like a blanket, and close his eyes; as he takes another shuddering inhale, body half-paralyzed with shock and utterly exhausted, he cannot help but think of how easy it would be to just—

“ Felix? ”

The sound of Chan’s voice in his ear elicits a visceral reaction from Felix’s tired mind, providing a rush of hope and adrenaline that floods his system, enough to make him forget his pain. 

He fumbles to press the button on his earpiece, forgotten in the turmoil, heart rate spiking. “Chan? I-is that actually you? I’m, I’m alive, I can hear you.” He says, even though he supposes it’s obvious; it’s a reassurance, for himself as much as it is for Chan. I’m alive, I’m alive. 

The relief in Chan’s voice is palpable. “ Thank God , okay, okay, ” he breathes, and there’s some static-ridden shuffling from the other end of the line. Then, a barrage of questions:  “ How much oxygen do you have? Are you hurt? ” And most importantly— Felix can tell because he knows, and because of the edge that sharpens Chan’s words, “ Do you know where it went? ” 

They do not have a name for the creature, but merely it, coated in fear and dripping in apprehension, seems to suffice. 

Felix becomes achingly aware of the vastness of the ocean all over again, of the crushing depth, of the murk that swirls around him and seems to wall him in. It could be out there anywhere. There had been something intelligent in its eyes, something that knew his fear, that wanted more than just to kill. If it had wanted to kill him, it would have; instead, it left him to die. 

Felix takes a deep, measured breath. It hurts, his ribs and his lungs and his throat alike. The bubbles that his mask emits spiral up towards the surface, and then dissipate.

“I don’t see it,” he admits, glancing about warily. He drifts toward the ledge, putting his back to the steady incline of algae-covered rock and sand, and stares out into the blue— deeper blue now, indigo around the edges, fading darker, darker. Nothing. Not a sound, no other life in sight. “But it’s getting dark.” 

“ Yeah. ” A moment of silence. “ I think, ” says Chan after a pause laden with tense apprehension, “ you should start coming up. ” 

Felix’s heartbeat jumps into overdrive, instinct-fueled panic seeping into his mind, poisoning him with fear. The scared animal in him wants to cower and hide, because swimming upwards means exposing himself, means vulnerability. But the other part, the more rational, the part that wants to live, quickly triumphs. 

“Okay,” he says slowly, and adds meekly, “how?”

“ Slow, ” says Chan, “ very slowly. Otherwise the change in pressure might— might hurt you, or worse. . .”

“Kill me,” finishes Felix, head aching, hearing foggy at best; he feels as though someone has stuffed wads of cotton in his ears. He knows, or at least he’s heard, about what happens to divers to ascend too quickly.

“ Yeah. The trainings we did said around thirty feet per minute, which— how deep are you? ”

“Fifty-five meters.” 

“ So. . . a hundred-eighty or so feet, so that’s five, six minutes? Not even, ‘cause I’m at around ten right now. ” Chan’s engineer-brain does those conversions far quicker than Felix’s is able to right now, his consciousness just a little blurred around the edges; he suspects a concussion on top of everything else, but he’ll worry about surviving this ascent first. “ That’s not bad, five minutes’ll go by no problem, yeah? ” He’s fighting to sound calm, Felix can tell. 

“Yeah,” replies Felix, and pretends he believes it. 

Another silence, lingering in the water. Another wary glance, another listen for any noises. 

“ Whenever you’re ready, ” says Chan, fainter, like he’s speaking more softly than before. “ I’ll be here. ” 

Felix looks up. The incline of the dropoff is steep, pockmarked with jagged cracks and ridges, pockmarked with divots and hollows. He could find somewhere to hide, if he needed to. . .

He kicks lightly, minding his injuries. His fins catch on water, and he glides upwards. Slowly, he reminds himself. The unease is nearly overwhelming, the silence almost crushing, and his stomach turns as realizes that if the creature comes back to finish him off, death will be his only option. Flee too quickly, and the decompression will kill him; keep his pace, and he’ll be ripped to bloody shreds. 

“It won’t come back,” he mutters to himself, swimming another stroke. It’s five minutes, probably less, because he doesn’t even have to reach the surface. He’s already been down here for as long, maybe longer.

“ What was that? ” He’d almost forgotten Chan could hear him. 

“Talking to myself,” he admits sheepishly. The meters tick downwards, painfully slow. Fifty two. . . . fifty one. . . sluggishly, sleepily. He tears his eyes away from the numbers, and focuses on the light of the surface far above growing closer, larger.

“ Ah ,” says Chan, not much more than a static-ridden rumble in Felix’s ear. “ You do do that. ” 

Fifty, forty-nine. . .

Felix’s mind feels to be in some strange, disconnected abyss situated between terror and calm, neither one nor the other, yet both of them in equal strength. He feels like a deer forced to walk at a slow, even pace away from a pack of hungry wolves— in essence, he feels doomed, but there’s solace in certain doom, and calm, too, because at least he won’t go down completely alone, Chan’s talking to him, Chan’s— 

“ —Felix!” It takes a shout to drag him back to reality. His depth reads forty-three. He feels hazy, groggy. Is it the blood loss? The hit he took to the head? The decompression? He slows his swimming even more, reducing his movement to little more than an upward crawl.

“Huh?” 

“ You just, ” Chan sighs, or something, “ you just cut out for a minute is all. Everything still okay down there? ” 

Felix is still hugging the incline of the seafloor as best he can. Now, he can make out the towering silhouette of the kelp, looming over him, an army of green sentinels. He doesn’t know how he once thought it looked threatening, when now it seems more like a refuge. Forty-two, forty-one. . .

The back of his neck prickles, and a strange feeling overtakes him. He glances back, staring into the twilight-tinged water, and gets the indescribable, overwhelming sense of being watched. His hand drifts to his belt, but his knife had been knocked to the seafloor earlier. What good would a knife do, anyway? 

It’s like the stifling silence in the water takes on a different pitch, as if the very currents can sense the change. He knows he's being hunted this time, long before he sees any sign of the hunter, and Chan knows it too, judging by his sudden silence over the radio.  

His back presses against the stone face of the dropoff, his only security as he searches the abyss for a hulking shadow, lying in wait behind a curtain of indigo. 

He’s almost ready for it. 

The scream shakes the water around him, shaking him to the bone, and precedes the mouth that loosed it only by a millisecond. The creature launches from the blue with the speed and precision of a cobra, rocketing open-jawed directly at him. A hand on the wall of rock behind him, Felix feels around, and finds a place where the rock seems to curve in— a cave, a recess of some kind, big enough for him but too small for his pursuer. 

A mighty kick propels him into the cavity, but iron jaws close around half of one of his fins, jerking his leg backwards. He yelps, a desperate scream swallowed by a stream of bubbles, and kicks with all his might. The sickening sound of mandibles scraping against rock fills his ears, and he scrabbles to find a handhold on the cave’s walls and floor, the rough surface tearing his fingernails and ripping open cuts on his palms. 

The pulling stops when he yanks himself free, the bottom of his flipper tearing clean off. The ragged orange plastic flashes bright, trapped between the creature’s teeth. It tries in vain to wrestle its sickeningly flexible body into the crevice, rearing back and thrusting its head inside, pushing, contorting itself, but to no avail. It’s making these God-awful noises, jaws snapping together, and Felix just presses himself against the back of the cave as tightly as he can, just barely out of reach. He’s breathing heavily again, heart racing. His depth sits at thirty-nine, close, closer than before, but still so far .

He can hear Chan muttering and swearing over the radio, barely audible over the din the creature’s making. The mandibles are beginning to gouge chunks of rock from the mouth of the cave, and Felix’s hideaway is starting to crumble.

“I’m still here,” he pants, “found, found a place to—” The creature cuts him off with another savage scream. 

“ Hold on, ” says Chan, and there’s some rustling, and then, “ the second that thing turns away from you, start coming up again. ”

“What—”

“ Just as slow as you were before, and— ”

“But what if it comes back for m—”

“ It won’t. ” 

***

[7 months into the Aurora voyage]

Alarms blare as the Aurora falls to her death. 

The alarms don’t feel like enough, nor do the flashing red lights, nor does the automated message that repeats and repeats and repeats that ‘ The Aurora has experienced a critical strike to the stern. All flight systems are down. Initiate emergency evacuation procedure.” Felix barely listens to any of it as he slams the greenhouse door behind him— he was the last one out, he checked (right?)— and shoves himself into the throng of panicked people rushing the escape pod loading bay. 

The ship is tilting backwards, little by little.

She’s collapsing in on herself, and there’s nothing they can do about it; the fall is subtle, but every few minutes the incline of the ship’s hallways get steeper, and more and more of the crew pack into the thin corridors. It’s loud, so loud, and there’s screaming and crying and yelling and desperate shouts for order from some of the higher-ups that fall on deaf ears. It’s hot, too, stiflingly so, dozens of panicked bodies heating the hallway so that it becomes an inferno, and sweat begins to collect on Felix’s forehead.

People have become animals. They claw at each other in desperate efforts to reach a means of escape, push and shove each other, yell and argue and spit in each other’s faces. The fear is so primal, so pungent, that Felix knows they all know one thing:

  Not everyone is getting out of here alive. 

  He tries his best to stay calm, to breathe in the air despite its choking thickness and wade through the crowd. He can almost see the door to the escape pod bay now. 

The ship creaks and groans and shakes beneath his feet, and the unearthly shriek of tearing metal whines over the cacophony in the hallway. There isn’t much time left. He’s making for the door, but hands are dragging him back, shoving him downwards. He trips over a foot, maybe someone else’s or maybe his own, and stumbles. The crowd won’t stop if he falls, they’ll just run him over, coworkers and friends and strangers alike, frenzied in a way that seems to make them blind.

The Aurora lurches, and this time he really does fall, landing on his knees on the cold tile floor. The rush of footsteps and the shouting and the crying and the alarms and the haunting moans of the dying ship are enough to make his head feel like it’s imploding, and he tries to stand but is shoved down again. 

Then, a hand grabs his shoulder and practically drags him to his feet, fingertips digging into his bicep. 

  It’s a guy that seems vaguely familiar, like Felix might have seen him in passing, walking down the halls or in the dining hall on the ship. He seems high-ranking, if his uniform is anything to go by, but status doesn’t really matter now, does it? Regardless, his brow is furrowed with some kind of concern and his eyes are warm, and Felix doesn’t really have any time to say anything before he’s being pulled through the crowd and into the nearest escape pod. 

Chest heaving, all he can do is give his savior a grateful look as he buckles himself in. “Thanks,” he manages, chest still tight and heart still pounding, and for lack of better things to say he simply adds, “I’m— I’m Felix.” 

“Hi Felix,” says the other man, measured and calm, “I’m Chan.” He must be some kind of officer, or at least someone who’s in charge of something. He even grins a half-grin, an empty grin, but a reassuring one all the same, the contours of his face made rather ghostly by the flashing lights of the alarms. He glances around once, and the Aurora gives her mightiest groan yet; Felix starts to smell something sharp, burning the back of his throat. Smoke. 

  Chan looks back to him. Felix nods. 

He presses the release button, and they begin to fall.

***

Chan has three flares, and each lasts about five minutes. He can swim, fast and strong enough, and maybe he has enough agility to evade the creature for a few minutes. A few minutes is all he needs.

He gives himself no time to be afraid, shooting out from behind the rocky outcropping he’d been hiding behind, and drifting out into the open water. He kicks his legs, paddles as fast as he can, and rips the first of the flares from his belt. 

It’s dark enough now that Chan can only see the faint outline of the creature thrashing about in the deep, ruthlessly attacking the spot where Felix must be hiding. It hasn't seen him yet, but it will. 

With shaking hands, he wrenches the cap from the top of the flare, and a sunburst of light flashes bright enough to blind him, reddish fire that hisses when it makes contact with the water. 

He waves it around, wishing he could shout. Come and get me, come on, over here, I know you can see me. . . and another roar splits the water, and when he looks back down, it’s—

Gone. 

He shudders, the water black aside from his flickering ring of red. It’s away from Felix, though, and surely circling him now, hiding just out of the torchlight, now hungry for different prey. He holds the flare tighter and prays that Felix is moving . Only a minute or two now, just long enough for him to hide in the kelp. . .

Chan doesn’t really know what he was thinking. Sure, he did think that exploring 4546B was important, but he’d been too hasty, they’d been unprepared, and that is why Chan was never going to captain the Aurora . It’s strange how thoughts begin to assault him as he floats helplessly in the darkening water, as he waves his flare around and draws red trails in the water and hopes he’s drawing the creature’s attention to him. Maybe it’s because he knows he might die, he’ll probably die, and before death comes he feels this strange need to reflect. It’s meditative, almost, if not for the monster lurking out there somewhere in the dark. 

At least Felix will live. That’s all that really matters. Chan can say with utter conviction and honesty that he’d throw himself into the jaws of this monstrosity if it meant that Felix would survive. It’s an awfully fierce protectiveness that maybe comes from being stranded on a remote, water-covered planet together for nearly a month. Chan was the one who pulled Felix into the escape pod, after all— he’d wanted him to survive when the Aurora was going down, and he wants him to survive this.

He just— he just remembers the crash so vividly. He remembers the absolute pandemonium, the air rancid with fear. He remembers securing a pod for himself somehow, because he’d been working near the bay when the ship was struck, and observing in a haze of deathly calm as what seemed like hundreds of crew members tried to fight their way to safety in the too-narrow hallway, the knowledge that they just didn’t have enough escape pods burning at the forefront of his mind. 

He remembers, just before he’d buckled himself in, seeing someone stand out in the crowd. Someone who wasn’t shoving and kicking others out of the way, who wasn’t screaming, wasn’t contributing to the chaos, but was instead a victim of it. 

Without really thinking, he had grabbed the man’s arm, and dragged him free of the mob and into the pod with him. He’d never seen the guy before, but he was younger than Chan, freckled and small and far too young to die like this. He had blinked with eyes dilated with fear and given him a look that said thank you, and then— 

The flare runs out. 

Chan is plunged into darkness, dragged from his introspection, and a nauseating cocktail of guilt and panic churns in his stomach. Miraculously, he’s still alive. 

He fumbles at his belt for a second flare, painfully aware of how he can’t see anything. Finally pulling one free, his trembling fingertips slip against the plastic shell, and it drops. 

Instinctively, he dives to catch it, heart racing, the utter darkness of the ocean elevating his fear to a level nearly unbearable. He fights the urge to freeze up and grabs the flare, drifting slowly to a halt. 

He needs to light the flare now, the creature is going to find Felix, the darkness is going to devour him, his skin is prickling and his heart is racing and every breath oxygen he takes through his mask seems to roar in his ears, he’s going to die, the flare, light the flare light the flare light the flare light it—

He twists the cap off, and the water turns red. 

For a split second, a flash in the dark, he sees the rows and rows of dagger-like teeth glinting like rubies rushing up from beneath him, and a pair of enormous black eyes staring soullessly into his own.

Without thinking he dodges, rolling out of the way just as fearsome jaws snap closed around nothing. It had been silent, not making any noise, circling him for God knows how long. . .

Still, the flare’s light is minimal, and now the creature is chasing , the water turning turbulent as it twists and turns, and Chan swims. It’s been long enough, or he hopes it has, and he hasn’t heard from Felix but maybe he’s staying quiet and hiding like he should be. Now unveiled, the creature screams, maybe angry or maybe just bloodthirsty. 

For a moment it feels like he’s getting away, the limited light of the flare glancing off the edge of the rocky ledge, illuminating a few ghostly fronds of kelp, but the monster is relentless, and he can feel it, mere inches away. He swims so hard he thinks his legs might snap, his chest heaving, his oxygen dropping at an alarmingly fast rate, but it’s still not enough.

A searing pain tears through his left leg, and he’s jerked back, horrifyingly, as one of the creature’s mandibles stabs into the muscle of his calf, snagging like some kind of deadly burr. No, he thinks with startling clarity, no, not now, and ignores how he feels like his leg’s going to rip off and does the only thing he can think of. 

He throws the flare, launching it into the nothingness below him, and then he hopes. 

Miraculously, the creature seems to follow it, the clawlike mandible tearing a gash down his leg before it finally comes free, and it chases the flare down into the deep, like some kind of dog playing fetch. He watches it disappear, snaking down into the depths, but doesn’t linger for long after that. 

The rest is somewhat blurred, probably on account of the shock and the blood loss, but it takes seconds or maybe hours to swim, his strokes staggered and uneven, to reach his old hiding spot. He collapses against the rock, but doesn’t rest for long, because where’s Felix? There’s no time, no time to do anything but search because that thing could come back any moment now, and there’s only so long the flare will distract it. 

Then, a hand grabs his shoulder, or tries to— adrenaline still coursing through his system, he jerks away, and instead the hands claws down his arm, a desperate reach. When Chan gets a look at who it is ( who else could it be? ) he’s overcome with relief, though it quickly mingles with heavy concern. 

Felix is alive, but he’s hurt, far more than Chan previously thought he was. His wetsuit is torn in several places, lazy wisps of blood drifting through the water, and Chan can tell he’s fallen victim to those awful mandibles as well; though it’s dark, and Felix’s face is obscured by his diving mask, his eyes are glassy and unfocused. But he’s alive. He’s alive, and Chan can work with that. 

Chan exhales; his mask blows bubbles, and a little alarm beeps in his ear. Low oxygen. Aside from that, the far side of the kelp forest is silent once more. 

The journey back to the pod is excruciating, both due to Chan’s leg, which throbs and burns searing pains all the way up past his knee each time he moves it, and the fact that Felix can barely swim on his own. They move slowly, Chan half-carrying Felix through the water; he’s reminded of the nature documentaries he would watch when he was younger, about how predators always choose the weakest of the herd, the injured, the stragglers. 

It can’t get us, he tells himself, it’s too shallow here, it won’t follow us. We’re safe. 

“We’re safe,” he repeats aloud, to himself and to Felix alike. 

***

[1 day after the wreck of the Aurora ]

It’s impossible to sleep in an escape pod. Alterra seems to have overlooked the need for sleep in order to properly survive, because the floor of the pod, cramped as it is, is solid titanium and built for durability, not comfort. Or maybe Chan can’t sleep because yesterday the Aurora blew to pieces and as far as he knows he and Felix are the only ones who survived. 

He shifts around on the floor, his only comfort a thermal blanket that barely covers his entire body, wincing at the way his back twinges after hours of trying to fall asleep in here. It’s dark outside; it’s a kind of dark that’s new to Chan, a different dark from the simulated one on the Aurora or from the one he grew up with on Earth. The very fabric of the night sky is alien, different stars and a different moon. 

The pod bobs gently up and down on the surface of the water. If Chan listens, he can hear the waves lapping at the edges of the pod. When he’s lying down, his head is a few inches below sea level, just enough to let in the sounds of the oceans of 4546B. 

He closes his eyes, heavy as they are, and listens to what the ocean has to say. It’s better than remembering the screams, or the fire, or the fear. 

Lying down in a similar fashion on the other side of the pod, Felix shifts around, his blanket rustling. He’s not sleeping either. 

As Chan listens, there’s one noise that becomes more and more apparent, growing, as if coming closer. It’s a low rumble, a moan, low and strong enough that the pod shakes with the force of it. It sounds like a whale— but there are no whales here. 

More shifting from Felix, restless, troubled. Finally, out of the corner of his eye, Chan sees him sit up. 

“What is that?” His voice is very small, his silhouette little more than a dark smudge in the lightless escape pod. Chan doesn’t answer at first, because he doesn’t know.

“Nothing,” he mumbles after a while, after Felix doesn’t lie back down. Felix only sighs in reply, frustrated, or maybe just on edge. The sound comes again, a mournful wail, and then fades away.

“It’s something. ” Felix’s voice quivers. 

Finally relenting, Chan sits up too, blanket falling off of him, leaning his back up against the cool walls of the pod. “It is,” he admits, “something, I mean. But. . . probably not something too scary.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.”

They sit in silence for a moment, listening, in the dark. The sounds seem to have stopped.

“Do you really think. . .” Felix shifts, blanket rustling. “Do you really think we’re the only survivors?” 

Chan glances at the long-range radio built into the pod, the one that’s laid dormant since they landed. They haven’t heard from a soul, from any of the Aurora’s crew, not even from Alterra. As if they’ve disappeared, like he and Felix are the only living souls in the entire known universe.

He thinks about Minho, and even about captain Lee Sangyeon, who had almost certainly gone down bravely with the Aurora. Not even he could have seen this coming. Maybe they’re all alive. The crash could’ve scattered them dozens, even hundreds of miles away from each other. It’s not impossible. 

“I hope we aren’t,” Chan admits, “I really, really hope we aren’t. But for now, it’s just the two of us.”

“Just the two of us?” Felix repeats softly, sorrowfully. 

Chan exhales, helplessness washing over him in a cold wave as he wishes desperately to have the means to better reassure the man sitting across from him. As if mocking him, the alien ocean sings its alien songs beneath his feet, and the pod rocks gently back and forth, back and forth.

“Just us.”

***

When Felix comes to, he can’t move. Everything hurts; a dull burning sensation dominates his senses, worst in his torso, but everywhere. His head feels unbelievably heavy, his eyelids glued shut, and his thoughts slow and a little disjointed. 

He remembers everything— the creature, the ascent, finding Chan again— but does not recall returning to the escape pod, even though he can tell that’s where he is right now. Chan must have carried him somehow, he supposes, or dragged him through the water. 

His consciousness returns in layers. The sensation of pain comes first, and after that, he begins to hear things; the shuffle of feet, gentle, even breathing, the soft lapping of waves on the side of the pod. Next he opens his eyes, squinting at the bright overhead lights above him. 

He presses a shaking hand to the floor of the escape pod and pushes himself upwards, biting back a yelp when pain sears through his sides. After a painstaking amount of effort, he manages to shuffle himself into an upright position, his vision clearing. 

Across from him is Chan, sitting with his back to the opposite wall, legs outstretched. His expression is pained, brow furrowed, biting down on his lower lip as if to stop any sound from escaping him, and Felix soon sees why: he’s wrapping a bandage around one of his lower legs, blood already seeping through the white, painstakingly slow. 

“It. . .” Felix’s voice comes out raspy, his tongue feeling clumsy in his mouth. “It got you too?” 

Chan startles, then hisses in pain because the way he’d jumped had jerked his leg. “You’re awake? ”

“Y. . . yeah?” Felix blinks slowly.

“How are you feeling? Is the pain bearable? Is your vision okay? God, do you know who I am? Where you are? Your name?”

Still feeling a little sluggish, Felix thinks for a moment. “Uh,” he says, clearing his throat and wincing when a fiery lick of pain shoots through his torso, “Shitty, almost unbearable, yes, and. . . you’re Chan, we’re on 4546B, and my name is. . . Brian?” 

Chan’s eyes widen almost comically, and Felix has to laugh, even though he grits out an ow as soon as he does and clutches pitifully at his ribs. “S-sorry,” he grits out but grins anyway, “I’m aware that my name is Felix.”

“Thank God. ” Chan glares at him. “You can’t do that to me, I thought you were gonna die!”

“I lived,” Felix wheezes, glancing down at the crimson-stained bandages wrapped around his torso, and adds with another painful laugh, “no thanks to you.”

Chan recoils, looking as though Felix physically struck him. He shifts uncomfortably, keeping his injured leg still, eyes soft and apologetic, mouth turned down in a very serious frown. “I’m sorry,” he says, “I never should have forced you to go out there. I-I wasn’t thinking, and I wasn’t being careful enough, and it’s okay if you’re angry with me, you should be angry. I put your life on the line for no reason at all. I was— I was reckless, and you almost died for it.” Chan spits out reckless like something bitter, his eyes darkening.

Felix isn’t angry, though. He takes a moment to gather his thoughts, fighting through the pain, the throbbing of his head and the burning of his wounds. “You weren’t the one who did this to me,” he replies. “You’re the one who calmed me down, and guided me back up, you distracted it and almost got yourself killed. If that’s what being reckless is, then. . . I guess it’s not such a terrible thing, is it?”

He exhales shakily after that, already winded, and clutches at his ribs when another surge of pain makes his vision spotty again. Chan, though, says nothing at first. 

He’s looking at Felix strangely. His hair is wild, curling in every direction on account of the salt water, and his fingers are stained with his own blood, but his eyes are wide and sort of glimmering. Through the haze beginning to reclaim his mind, he thinks he sees Chan’s mouth tug upwards into a grin. 

“That’s one way to put it, I guess.” 

***

[3 months after the wreck of the Aurora ]

 Felix is scratching his ninety-first marking into the wall of the escape pod and Chan is refilling their oxygen tanks when the onboard radio crackles to life, beeping to alert them that they’re receiving a transmission. At first he only freezes, concerned by the unfamiliar noise, but then he realizes— they’re receiving a transmission. 

Knife and tanks alike clattering to the floor, he leaps to his feet, Chan hot on his heels, ignoring how the scar tissue all around his ribcage pulls painfully, and rushes over to the radio to flick the switch. 

A gravelly voice begins to speak, a voice that isn’t his or Chan’s, an angel as far as he’s concerned. “—Aurora, do you copy? This is captain Seo Changbin of the Sunbeam. We’re here to take you home. I repeat, Aurora, do you copy? This is— ”

“ Yes, ” Felix gasps, “yes, yeah, we copy.” 

There’s some muttering on the other end, surely the captain speaking with someone else, and then the voice returns. “ Aurora, we’re glad to hear from you. How many of you are down there? ”

“Two.”

A moment of silence. “ Two? ”

“As far as we know,” Chan cuts in, bracing a hand on Felix’s shoulder.

“ That’s alright, Aurora,” this captain Seo Changbin’s voice tells them, “ we’re still thrilled there are some of you out there. We’re entering planetary orbit within the hour, and we’ll be down to get you in no time. ”

“Th-thank you,” Chan stammers, voice wavering.

“ It’s no problem. Hang tight, Aurora. You’re coming home.” 

The radio shuts off, and wordlessly, Chan drags Felix towards him, pulling him into a fierce hug. Felix wants to complain about how it’s hurting his ribs, but he knows he’s squeezing Chan just as tightly, burying his face in his shoulder and crying overjoyed tears because they made it. Chan’s nose is buried in his hair and Felix can feel the race of his heartbeat all pressed up against his chest like this, and even though it’s muffled, he still knows exactly what Chan mutters into the crown of his head. 

Everything is going to be okay.