Chapter Text
Everything was hot.
Everything was cold.
The sweat beading off of Bart’s burning skin left trails of icy cold over his body. Every time they’d fall, he’d shiver. Every time he’d shiver, the green patches on his skin would itch like hell. Every time he’d scratch them, his muscles ached from the strain. The loop was sickening; shiver, itch, suffer. Shiver, itch, suffer.
The pain nailed him down through his skin. Acid seeped into his mouth, creating an unbearable bitterness. It hurt, oh lord, it hurt. He didn’t even want to fall asleep anymore, just for the pain to end. Anything. Anything to feel normal again, anything to be able to stand up and walk around and eat comfortably.
The visions were the worst they’d ever been. They brought sounds and feelings with them this time. Items flew from their lockers and danced through the air around the room, colorful fish outside the window painted rainbow ribbons through the water, the underwater island itself rocked back and forth like it was on the surface, catching the waves. With how much his sight swirled and how light his body felt, Bart couldn’t tell sometimes if the base had flooded.
He’d tried to move before, and he tried to move again. But anything at all just rang through his ears and knocked him right back down to his bed. The phantom noise screeched at him until his hunger pains spoke up themselves. The ringing changed to a pop, then to a rhythmic beating sound. Each pulse was louder than the last, becoming so unbearably loud that Bart curled up and covered his head with his hands.
He was floating again. But this time, there was a much more tangible feeling- a helmet was pulled over his head, air rushed in through the tubes attached. The popping sound happened again, and everything went cold. Bart only had a few moments to bask in the cool water before gravity dragged him down again. He fell against something hard as a tinny voice rang through the compartment. “Welcome aboard, captain. All systems online.”
Bart cracked his eyes open. The glass helmet was dirty, his tears not doing much to help, but it was no question what he saw. A young man with spiky black hair and warm brown skin. His whole face was pale, his mouth moving ever so slightly, his eyes were brimming with tears. He was… crying.
What?
Bart blinked. This was too tangible to be a fever dream, but too preposterous to be reality. Maybe the disease was worse than he thought, or maybe it had finally taken him under. He tried to croak out a sentence, but the soreness in his throat wouldn’t let anything more than a cough escape. Any noise from his mouth just bounced off of the glass. He rested his green and blistered hand over the man’s bicep to see if he would react.
He jumped a bit and looked down at Bart. The look in his eyes was nothing short of hell-bent, more intense than even Marguerit. The tears poured over his cheeks and he choked on a sob before returning his attention back to the water. Bart tightened his grip, only making the man cry more.
Bart couldn’t tell how much time had passed. He felt the other human pull him out of the sub and back into the cool water. They swam down for a minute before Bart felt a current blow upwards by his helmet. The man laid him against a tough, even surface on the seabed right next to it.
As Bart rested in the current, the other man swam off to go collect the peepers caught in it. The thing Bart was laying on was the same glowing green architecture he had seen dotted around the landscape, but much smaller. The flowing water was coming from two barred holes surrounded by a border. Occasionally, a peeper would enter through one and exit the other with a golden glimmer over its scales. When it did, the other human would swim over to it and grab it. He was shoving armfuls of them into his dive suit's storage, occasionally pausing to look over at Bart.
For some reason, laying in the stream with the peepers pushed back his nausea. Not enough for it to fully melt away, but the difference was noticeable. The fog in his vision began to clear up, his muscles didn't ache as much, the soreness in his throat was easier to ignore. It only got better until the other human scooped him into his arms again, his suit still full of fish.
As they ascended, a bright light glimmered at the surface. It must've been night, because it stood out brilliantly against faint colors swirling in the blackness. It got brighter, reflecting off of something white... It was a base.
The hatch popped open. For a second time, that tinny voice played; “Welcome aboard, captain.”
Now that his vision was clearer and his muscles were stronger, he was able to lift his head up to see what was happening. He was being carried through a hallway towards a glass tank with a few eggs in it. This time, as he gripped the man's arm again, he was able to push a few words out.
“Who... are you?”
He choked back more sobbing. “I- I can do this, I'm gonna save you- I can do this!” Anything else he tried to say just devolved into more crying.
He pulled his helmet back over his head and opened up the tank. He picked up the eggs and let Bart rest against the bottom as he dumped every peeper from his dive suit into the water. Once they were all out, he exited the tank and put his helmet back on its shelf. He didn't even take the time to change out of his dive suit before resting his forehead against the glass and sobbing. Though Bart couldn’t hear a thing outside the tank, he rested his hand against the glass to try and reassure him. That only seemed to make it worse.
Bart rolled over and looked up. The room had a glass roof, making the difference between the tank and the sea almost unnoticeable. The peepers above him gave him a lightshow, painting golden glittering trails through the water. With the ache being so much easier on his muscles now, and breathing being a much less laborious task, he was finally able to close his eyes and drift off.
“It’s dark down here, isn’t it?”
His voice was heavy and raspy. Ryley could scarcely tell that the noises coming from the man’s mouth were supposed to be words. His thick blond hair was falling out in chunks with each step, the green lesions on his skin being the only thing illuminating his body. Ryley couldn’t respond or even speak; he didn’t know how.
Their steps synchronized, echoing off the dark green walls and useless lights. The sound became lost in the low hum of the facility, getting louder and louder as he approached a glowing spot on the wall. Anxiety held a crushing grip around his ribs and stomach as he pressed it.
Immediately, a robotic tendril armed with a metal spike shot forth and stabbed him straight in the forehead. The floor turned from green to red with his blood. Even as the needle pulled back, he could still feel the cold of the metal in his skull.
He looked up. There was no button.
It wasn’t a robotic tendril that had struck him, it was… a piece of scrap metal. The wreck of an Alterra starship sat in front of him, not crushed by an impact, but… chewed. Covered in saliva and riddled with teeth marks from unfathomably huge fangs, he could barely make out the word written on the side. Sunbeam.
The man was still right there behind him. His skin was clear and his hair was full, his blue eyes focused on Ryley instead of the monolithic wall of water just a few meters back. “Ryley?”
Ryley didn’t even have time to react. Six orange eyes appeared in the abyss, growing faster than he could run. A gargantuan wreath of big white teeth, some of them knocked loose from chewing on scrap, breached the surface. Right before it clamped its jaws shut over the other human, the thing that ate the Sunbeam focused all six eyes on Ryley. All he could do was scream.
He kept screaming as he jolted awake.
The sudden rush brought unnatural life to his limbs. He rubbed the dried tears from his eyes as he waited for the vertigo to settle and the bad taste to clear from his mouth. The burning cold feeling was still in his forehead- he must’ve fallen asleep against the glass tank.
His breath caught in his throat just long enough for him to look back up. The other man hadn’t moved an inch, but the bubbles rising to the top of the water told Ryley he was still alive. The peepers were gathered around him and nibbling at the bits of dead skin falling from his arms- the green lesions were gone. There were still blemishes where they used to be, but they were the same color as the rest of his skin now.
It hit him like a bullet in the back. It worked, holy hell, it worked. Whatever it was on the peeper’s scales pushed back the infection, he wasn’t going to be alone, he wasn’t going to be alone-
Food, he thought suddenly, lifting his head from his hands. His new friend was going to need food, he’d have to go out and find something.
He immediately got up and rushed over to his seamoth, not waiting for the feeling to properly return to his body. He tugged the hatch open, but stopped just before getting in. He couldn’t just leave with no explanation, what if the man woke up while he was gone? There had to be something that he could leave…
He ran over to the main compartment and pulled a medkit out of the medical fabricator. He tore a blank section out of the instruction packet and jotted something down on it with his cheap Alterra brand ballpoint pen.
Hey! I don’t recognize you from the Aurora, but I’m Ryley Robinson from non-essential systems maintenance. I needed to go out to get some stuff, WAIT IN THE PEEPER TANK UNTIL I’M BACK! It sounds really weird but I promise it’ll help you feel better! I’ll explain more when I’m back, don’t worry. - Ryley
He threw the items back on the table before rushing back to the moonpool and jumping in the seamoth. He ignored its welcome message and darted off through the mushroom forest. He took a deep breath to try and soothe his racing heart. Focus, focus…
Rays of dawn filtered through the water and cast light through the glass. Glowing jellyrays turned almost invisible as the daylight took them over, flickering back to their nighttime radiance as they passed beneath the shadows of the trees.
None of it made it through to him.
How could it? Even the nerve-wracking notion that he and the new person would hate each other was pushed to the back of his mind. That wasn’t something that could possibly happen; it just wasn’t conceivable as an option for Ryley. His head was full of whatever the future might hold- god, it had been so long, he had almost forgotten what it was like to live with other people. Nobody really talked to him that much, but remembering some of the friend groups in Cabin 3 made his heart race. Sitting together and laughing over meals, late-night chats about whatever…
Bam! He was abruptly pulled back to reality as the submarine slammed right into a spadefish. Yellow blood seeped into the water as the bruised fish went limp and began to float. He slipped out of the seamoth and stuffed it into his suit, taking a second to appreciate the reefback leviathans. Their calls made a sense of safety wash through his veins, still as soft as the first time he heard them.
He coasted to the edge of the shallows, eventually snatching up a boomerang. As it wriggled in his hand, the PDA warbled. “Consider disguising the flavor of unsavory meat with salt, or other locally available herbs and spices.”
He rolled his eyes, but contemplated it. His new friend might not be the type to settle for refabricated meat like he was. He wasn’t the best at making food, sure, but he could juice a lantern fruit just fine… he pried a salt deposit off of the limestone, just in case. A bladderfish swam by- right, he’d need to get some water too. He grabbed it, but regular fabricator water wouldn’t do. He’d need some coral tube samples for bleach- some more salt, too. He should probably grab a piece of metal salvage so that he could make another chair for the table- maybe grab a few more fish in case the other guy didn’t like spadefish or boomerang-
The PDA beeped. “Inventory full.”
He took a second to breathe before getting back in the seamoth. He was getting way too ahead of himself.
The ride back to the base was quiet. All kinds of disconnected thoughts kept coming back to him, but he pushed them away to focus on the task at hand. Passing through the grassy plateaus, the sight of Lifepod 6 broken open through the top made his head spin.
He gripped the steering wheel a little harder. Not again. Not this time.
The sight of his base in the canopy didn’t help his vertigo. Little worries poked through his hope- maybe he didn’t put enough oxygen in the tank, maybe the kharaa was just hidden and would reappear as soon as he took him out of the tank, maybe, maybe, maybe-
…The bioreactor was low on fuel, might as well grab some blood oil while he was outside.
He parked the seamoth next to the outdoor growbeds and knelt next to the blood kelp. The sacs of red oil and seeds squished and morphed under his hands as he pried them from the roots, carefully cutting away any stubborn spots. Only four sacs were needed to fill the bioreactor, so one more would be fine-
The knife snapped forward from a tough root and cut clean through the membrane. Red liquid as thick as blood poured through the water, the taste of it leaking into his rebreather making him recoil. As he flailed his arms, fruitlessly trying to push it away from him, he caught a tiny glimpse of the garden through one of the windows.
And just like that, he froze.
For a second, he couldn’t move. He had to blink a few times to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating. But it didn’t fade, clear as day, it was right there-
The figure ran from the window.
Ryley couldn’t have pulled into the moonpool faster.