Archive of Our Own

The Iron Lung has been leaking from the beginning.

At least you can be certain of this much amidst the perilous unknown, forced to weave between seething waves and raging creatures. A hollow comfort, to be sure – especially as the rare splatter of liquid on iron gradually grows ever more common.

Since the moment you first resolved yourself to get a move on in these agonising depths, the bloody ocean outside has been slowly, invasively, spilling in. Where from, you can’t place; you’d rather not think about all the insecurities the hull must have, the origins of all those stains that have been plaguing the inner walls long before you ever stepped foot in it. Right, Simon?

This is insane. This is so fucking insane. What the hell am I even doing here?

And yet, you plot your next manoeuvre all the same.

I don’t have a damn choice if I want to live. And for some fucking reason, I do.

Of course. Either you wile away, resigning yourself to suffocate in the smouldering confines of the Lung, or you chase the dangling carrot and hope you catch it. And then you must hope that after you have caught the carrot, what you have won fairly is delivered to you as promised.

Hope so often goes unrewarded, doesn’t it? Think about all the times you have hoped; every demand you made of a god that didn’t exist; every prayer you made to a greater power that was never even listening, let alone looking in your direction. Like a flower field trampled by a beast, hope wilts in the face of the corporeal – but it somehow persists anyway, no matter how many times it wilts. Why hold onto hope, Simon, when there is none?

Hope is bleak for someone like me. But if I have some, I might just make it off this fucking moon.

Isn’t it funny? You have never had a real choice. You did not choose to be with Eden, nor did you choose to work for the Consolidation, but you have now been placed on both sides of an argument you never got to have. Here, faced with a real choice – to choose between meek hope and giving up – you choose the option that is infinitely harder. I know why you bother, I know why you squander your precious time hoping, but I do not understand.

You must have a heart of tungsten, Simon, to find it within you to have hope for your life when death is chasing you into a corner. Eventually, the universe will dim; the sea of phantom light will dry up, and whatever meagre life still perseveres then will be left with no alternative. Likelier, long before that happens, you will die down here, pursuing a phenomena you don’t understand on the behalf of an organisation that blames you for a tragedy.

Hope may be bleak, but so is the future that awaits you beyond that thin, pale veil.

The terminal in the back corner of the submarine taught you many things you didn’t know – things the C.O.I had neglected to tell you.

Why would they waste their breath on a convict, one of many war prisoners they had snatched from Filament Station before it was blown to shreds? Why would they bother when they only keep you around to use you before they kill you? They didn’t even bother giving you the correct privileges to unlock the trove of information stored in the terminal – you only know what you now know because of a lucky, well-placed hit.

They told you this moon had the only known blood ocean; the terminal says there are three others. They told you that you were the first to descend into the sanguinary abyss; the terminal says you are not. They told you that you could be free again if you did this; the terminal told you all about the C.O.I’s Conviction Realisation program.

The convict who came before you, the one whose voice log you found on the terminal – he, too, partook in this program, whether or not he knew it. In his log, he was convinced the Iron Lung was to be his executioner. You have begun to see the reason in this conclusion.

‘They will have their execution. I will have my freedom.’

But you don’t feel the same, do you? Because you, for a reason you yourself don’t know, have hope.

Hope is bleak, but it will keep me sane. There’s nothing waiting for me topside – I know that. But I need to live. I want to live, and I hope to live, against all rationale. I want to live, even if the only thing I get out of it is a moment of smugness when the Captain realises I’m better than this shitty fucking execution program.

I still fail to understand your gainless desire, Simon, but I recognise it to be commendable. You will retrieve the sample, then? Despite how insane you think the C.O.I to be?

I’ll prove those motherfuckers wrong if it’s the last damn thing I do.

They are growing antsy with your stillness. You had best speed up, Simon.

The skeleton is gone.

Mm. A thought has been eating you – a suspicion that this discovery confirms.

You get it, don’t you? That skeleton is not without its shell.

X-rays, the Captain said when you irradiated her colleague. Radiation imagery. You saw it for yourself; the internal chassis will be seen regardless of what tries to hide it. What rests on the ocean floor is not simply a relic of what once was, like you and the Captain and everyone else topside deluded yourselves into believing – it is something living, breathing, moving. Just like you.

That— that thing out there is nothing like me.

The C.O.I would argue differently.

Fuck the C.O.I! I didn’t ask them for this shit! The only thing I ever asked for was to live.

Deny it all you want, Simon, but you cannot change reality. None can – not the Consolidation of Iron, nor Eden. You have hope enough for yourself, but do you have any to spare on the fate of a near-extinct world?

You already knew you weren’t alone down here. The very first descent should have revealed this much, or did you truly believe those unidentifiable noises – the heavy swishing of disturbed waves, the barely-there moaning of something far away – were natural? I know you didn’t. Yet you only brave the truth when you have no other option.

Humans confuse me. First with your incessant hope for what is nigh impossible to achieve, now with your refusal to acknowledge what has been in front of your face the entire time. Why fool yourself? Why delay the inevitable confrontation? You fear, and you anticipate, and you hope, and in the end it is all for naught; the monster still looms, unmoved by your billowing philosophies of feeling.

Maybe you are different, Simon. Maybe you will surprise me – maybe your hope and your fear will give way to something revolutionary. Or maybe you will lose yourself down here the same as your brothers before you: fearful that the end is approaching, hopeful that something better might be on the other side.

I didn’t ask for this. Fuck. It’s gone, for fuck’s sake, it’s fucking gone!

You mustn’t drift here, Simon. Not now. You have an objective, and at the crux of it lies your incomprehensible impulse: survival. You want to live, don’t you?

The only thing you ever asked the C.O.I for was freedom. They are willing to give you what you want should you follow their instructions. Find the skeleton and collect the sample, Simon; it is the only thing standing between you and the rest of your life.

Just when I thought things couldn’t get any damn worse. Fuck!

This is hardly the worst to come, Simon.

Later, you will discover that there is no end to the thick, rusty substance permeating the submarine. In a fit of desperation, you will endeavour to find the hull’s every weak spot. You will try to patch and plug them all with the roll of masking tape tucked away in the hastily-prepared emergency pack beneath the grates, but the sheer heat of the metal plates will unstick them, furl them up, and render them – and your effort – useless.

Later, you will discover that the moon’s blood is not quite blood, not in the sense that you know it. Your skin will blister and crack upon exposure. It will congeal on the walls, form filthy, bulging, conscious veins that reach out with the intent to grasp and never relinquish. It will trap you before it drowns you, and you will lose your arm to it, trying to save not only yourself but those who endure, also.

But none of this matters, Simon. It is not the blood that ultimately kills you. I think you already know what, exactly, has you beaten.

The time to be resourceful is upon you.

You still want to live, yes? Then get out of the cave.

If there was a way in, there’s a way out. Just gotta find it. Trial and error, right? This… this is fine. I can make this be fine.

I find myself… amused. Your fear, though certainly as present as it has been all this time, is diminished. But your vessel has just been attacked by one of the many things on this moon that would love to hunt you, and you have just seen its face with your own eyes. How is it that your expectations frightened you more than the actuality?

Your hope remains unchanged. I am surprised; for someone who calls hope bleak, you hold onto it rather steadfastly. Humans so often lie to even themselves. Even knowing what is to come, I had thought you might succumb here. But it seems that the first step towards life, towards proving your superiors wrong, is to prove me wrong. So go ahead, Simon.

How arduous this process is. How boring. How despairing. Anyone else would have given up, you know? It has happened before, at the entrance of this very cave – though what they experienced differs from what you have, from what you will. Will you continue to have hope once you have seen their remains?

You, too, are bored. You have made no significant progress by the time your attention diverts, though you cannot be blamed; the Iron Lung is leaking again, and more prominently than before. Running along the pipes, mixing with the furious condensation, and dribbling from somewhere overhead. You still can’t see where the hull’s

The fuck? It— shit, it burns. How did all this blood get here, anyway? Wish the C.O.I would answer that one. And where did it come from?

Simon. You are no fool.

It burns. You feel it now and you felt it earlier, too, at the very beginning – a lingering tingle left behind by the droplet of blood you tried to wipe away on your trousers. In doing so, you spread it across the back of your hand and allowed it to seep into the thin fabric protecting your thigh. Both patches of skin were contaminated, irritated as though responding to an allergy, but this is not the case. You cannot be allergic to your quintessence.

Though the pain it brings is foreign, you know this blood well. The scent of metal, the wet scarlet and the desiccated auburn, the consistency. All familiar, for it is the very same liquid that keeps you alive. And you are floating in a thick, overabundant pool of it.

… Could it really be…?

Check the terminal, Simon. I dare you.

No— no, this can’t be— it can’t.

Blood. Much of it evolved, but all of it human.

No. That’s impossible. It burns me. If this blood is like my own, why am I not burning from the inside?

The Quiet Rapture exsanguinated your people. This, you must know, is the truth. The lab reports may not be available to you, but you have seen the entry in the terminal just as your brethren before you; there is no doubt that the blood of this moon, and of the three others you know are out there, came from your own species.

The Consolidation lies all the damn time. They told me I was the first to come down here, for fuck’s sake. They told me this was the only moon! Who’s to say they haven’t pulled this from their ass, too?

Why would they lie about something so simple, Simon? About something that can be seen with the naked eye?

It matters not. In due time, you will learn. You will learn when the eruptive, defiled blood of your species fills your mouth and scorches your throat. You will learn when you choke on it, when you flail in it, when you are smothered by it.

You would do well to make your peace with it now, Simon, for it is in this deluge of a lost civilisation’s blood that your grave will be dug.

You did not strike me as a hopeful fool, Simon. You have not been this way since you were small.

Here is a truth: you are Convict to everyone that matters. Those who still remember Simon were left behind at Filament Station. The Consolidation wouldn’t so much as hear your name before they dropped you into your doom, so why do you continue to cooperate with them? After all you have been through, after all of Ava’s ceaseless injunctions and her breaches of your agreement, why do you insist on continuing?

This all but guarantees my freedom. Sure, they probably don’t give a fuck about me, but if that data matters to them then I do, too, by extension. Right?

Do not delude yourself, Simon. You are right; they don’t care. Whatever way you spin it, the C.O.I are using you. Ava is using you. Did you not hear her? You were welded into the Iron Lung. You are not supposed to leave it alive.

If that entry in the terminal is accurate – about the SM-8 – there might be a chance they were always expecting me to return. Even if they weren’t, they will be now.

Here is another truth: the data on the SM-8 is indispensable, but you are not. Ava will transfer the data from your submarine and she will leave you there to suffocate, to drown, to be eaten – whichever comes first. And I know which comes first.

This was never without risk. But now I have a choice that isn’t weighted, or rigged, or complete bullshit. I have a chance to catch that stupid carrot, and maybe I’ll die trying, but if I’m going to die either way I might as well fucking try.

Another truth: Simon wants to live. This truth conflicts with many other truths. There is nothing left for you, Simon.

The Quiet Rapture exsanguinated your people. They were Raptured in wrath, caught in the middle of an ages-old feud between the universe’s celestial bodies and something far more sinister – something far more ancient. Or, Simon, if you have the nerve to wonder – submerged in the life essence of humanity – might it be you who has been Raptured?

Could this have been your way out of purgatory? A chance to return to the world as it was: full of life and light, of love and creation, of stars that blaze and planets that spin. Would you throw away this opportunity to keep living in this desolate, dying universe?

I just wanna live. Is that so bad? Why does nobody else want that?

Well, Simon, a distinction must be made. Does no-one else want to live, or does no-one else want you to live?

You and Ava are the only people who want this. Her associates – you heard them over the radio. Too dangerous. Too perilous. They sent you down here to do their dirty work, but draw the line with their Captain.

Should you survive, what would you do? You will have your freedom as the C.O.I defines it; they will have you become a member of their society. You cannot return to Eden, if that is what you want. You cannot negotiate with those at the top of the authority chain, if that is what you want. And you know damn well you cannot reverse the Quiet Rapture, if that is what you want.

The lost cannot be returned. The universe is too deep into its destruction to be saved. You few humans cannot face up to that which annihilated your world. I… struggle to justify this choice. I struggle to understand.

Fuck it. It doesn’t matter. What do I have to lose? My life, that’s what, and that’s the only thing I’m not ready to give up.

Perhaps… I am mistaken. I thought I knew it all – I thought I knew you inside-out, even if I found you and your people unrelatable. I thought you would be easy. But you’re not. No other convict had conviction quite like yours. They shared your hope and your fear in equal measures, but they always gave up in the end. Not you, Simon. You will leave this moon with far more determination than you entered it with.

Remind me once more what it is that you want, Simon. Loose your tungsten heart.

I just want to live.

Live, then. By whatever means.