Chapter Text
Simon scrambles forward on his hands and knees. Blood is in his nose and eyes and mouth and ears—it sticks between the gaps in his clothes; he feels it congeal against his joints to stop him moving.
The entire crawlspace of the Iron Lung is flooded. He’s blind. He can’t breathe. The black box—the one supposed to save all humanity, bar him—is clutched to his chest.
Just one more thing. One more thing, again and again.
He breaks the surface. In his desperation, Simon opens his mouth and sucks down a layer of blood with his oxygen. He doesn’t care—his lungs are burning, everything is too hot. He’s surfaced but he still can’t breathe. He wipes his eyes, flicks thick globes of blood on the mangled floor.
Eventually, he can see enough to stumble up to the controls and collapse into the seat. He twists one dial, then the other.
The sub begins to turn.
He coughs. Feels it in his chest like he’s hacked up half his organs. He can’t tell. Everything is blood anyway, he can’t tell what’s his. Maybe all of it. His insides feel scabbed over and raw. Everything is too warm. The viscera has clotted against his skin in a single unbroken layer, thick and sticky and refusing to dry.
He spits, sucks in a breath. Spits again. The air burns, but his oxygen light remains miraculously green.
Above, the overhead radio crackles to life. The noise of it—awful audio feedback that screeches through him—momentarily makes an already bad headache unbearable. His face presses against the controls in an effort to shut it out, and then—
“—Convict. Convict, are you there?”
The woman’s voice. The Captain, or—scientist. He isn’t really sure. His executioner, certainly. Or maybe not.
He groans, ears ringing so badly it’s painful. He has to spit out another thick clump of blood before he can speak.
“I'm still here.” He rasps, throat horribly raw. “I’ve got it—the data. I have your box.”
Simon clutches it to his chest like the lifeline it is. He sways, then blinks—hard—and it does nothing to stop the blood pooling in his eyes. He’s still struggling to breathe when the intercom crackles again, speaking urgently with words he doesn’t have the wherewithal to understand.
He shakes himself. Chokes, then spits—and tilts his head towards the intercom. He’s still mostly blind and thinking is hard, but he croaks out an audible “what?”, and the woman seems to hear him well enough.
She replies: “I have a visual on your sub.”
That makes him pay attention. He struggles to sit up, one hand still clutched to the box. “You do?”
“Yes,” more patience in her voice than he’s ever heard. “I have a visual. We’re going to pull you up now. I need you to brace.”
Simon nods. Then, realising he can’t be seen, says: “Yeah—yeah, I got it.”
He nods again, reflexively—then adjusts himself in his seat. He braces one arm against the controls and waits.
It doesn’t help.
The Iron Lung is hit with tremendous force. Simon is thrown forward and his head ricochets off the control panel. He screams, but his cry is drowned out by a boom and the scrape of impact. The submarine jerks violently and he’s thrown with it, backwards over the side of the chair.
He lands at an angle—something in his shoulder cracks. He rolls to a miserable stop and whimpers as the sub finally settles.
There’s blood on the floor now, not just in the crawl space. The whole submarine just sloshed on impact. He rolls onto his back and chokes back a sob. If he drowns before they pull him up, he’ll…
Simon sobs in earnest.
He can’t see, can barely breathe. Blood is lapping at the back of his neck and slowly rising to his ears. He’ll do nothing, he has nothing left. The box is—he reaches out, snags it with the tips of his fingers and holds it close for something like comfort.
Everything is humid and sticky and awful. They buried him. They put him in a coffin and buried him in blood. He wails until the piercing static returns, and with it:
“—Convict, can you hear me? Iron Lung secure. We’re pulling you up now. I repeat, pulling you up now—”
Simon gurgles something in response. It doesn’t make much sense, but the intercom replies anyway.
“—Not to worry. Just stay put, I’ll take it from here.” She sounds surprisingly gentle. Then: “Brace for pressure.”
Simon doesn’t have anywhere to go. He feels the submarine lift off the ocean floor, feels it shake as something yanks him steadily toward the surface. The sound of the instruments mark a rapid accent as he fades in and out of consciousness.
The woman—the Captain—isn’t speaking to him now, but he hears her gasping breath as the pressure drops. It gives him a half-second warning before his own eardrums burst, and white noise takes over his senses.
He’s crying, probably. Maybe screaming. His mouth is open and he’s on his side.
The sub stopped moving a moment ago—it’s getting harder to breathe.
They actually pulled him up.
They pulled him up, but he’s still sealed in a metal box full of blood and the air is failing. He cries out—to who, he doesn’t know. It descends into a miserable coughing fit that he can barely hear over the ringing in his ears. He doesn’t have the strength to move. His lungs burn and his breaths are short and shallow. Tears pool in the places blood does not.
To die now would be worse than when there was no hope at all, he thinks.
The intercom crackles again.
The Captain sounds out of breath now. Simon has to focus just to hear her speak.
“—It’s going to be okay. Just a little longer, we’ll get you out of there.”
It takes embarrassingly long to realise she’s trying to reassure him. Longer still, to realise his sobs were likely broadcast to the control room. He can’t bring himself to respond much, just grunts in affirmation.
It’s enough to keep her talking.
He focuses on her voice over the pain and rapidly dwindling oxygen. It sounds like she’s walking as she speaks—he can hear her footsteps. She says he’s earned his freedom. More than that, he’s a hero. She tells him it’s a good day: for humanity, for him. He wants to believe her.
The footsteps stop. A moment of silence, and then—“Why isn’t he out yet?”
There’s a pause, muffled conversation. It sounds like someone put a hand over the microphone. He can’t make out much—just the abstract sounds of argument. There’s a raised “it’s not that simple!”—and then two sets of feet.
The next thing he hears is something large and metal being hauled across the ground. It makes him wince (he thinks he hears it outside, too).
Then, the Captain’s voice—barely more than a whisper:
“—Oh my god.”