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Fear was an emotion he had long ago gotten used to. It crept in slowly, tendrils winding up his legs, his torso, his throat, squeezing his airways and coaxing his heart into a frantic sprint. His body sagged beneath its weight, thick and sluggish, as though sinking through tar. Pinning him; rendering him useless.
Trapped. No way out.
Simon dragged in another rasping breath, fingers locked around the controls. The radar’s left light began to blink – slowly at first, then rapidly quickening. His wrist creaked as he snapped the controls to the right, veering away from the unseen obstacle. The light dimmed, and he was cast into unrelenting darkness once more.
Fear was nothing new. Not since the Quiet Rapture. Humanity had been steeped in it ever since billions vanished in a single second, leaving mere scraps of civilisation behind. Fear chained them down. Simon had been only a child when it happened. Communications with family and friends – those not on the satellite he called home – had gone in an instant. Assumed dead. Every planet and star gone, leaving only four strange moons.
He remembered his mother’s face: the telltale paleness, the beading sweat, the way he could see her frantic pulse fluttering at her throat. The fear had taken her instantly. It had echoed in him too.
Metal grinded against metal as Simon adjusted the controls again, watching the right-hand light blink on the radar until it slowed to a stop. His hands throbbed; partly from the iron grip he kept on the controls, partly from the brutal descent earlier. He flinched at the memory: the sudden drop, gravity wrenching him upwards, the violent toss of his body like a ragdoll before his skull cracked against metal and he fell unconscious.
The bruises still burned. His back was probably mottled with the same purple splodges staining his arms. He was also certain he had a concussion. Simon was not normally so sluggish and confused, nor so constantly rattled.
Back then, when he was a child, he thought he knew fear. He’d used anger to smother it, to rise up against the stations that targeted his home, to fuel him into the fight upon that fatal satellite that landed him into this metal coffin.
Oh yes, he’d thought he had known fear.
He couldn’t have been more wrong.
The lone, dim square that showed his oxygen levels flickered slightly in the corner of his eye. There had once been three others, but they had long since gone dark. How he still had air was anyone’s guess. How he was still alive was even more so. He felt like a statue, in a sub tearing blindly forward, trying to ignore the floor getting wetter as time went on. Ignoring what that meant. After all, it didn’t matter there was miraculously still oxygen if there was no sub to pump it into.
The radar flashed again. Simon twisted the controls until it settled.
It was so dark in the damn Hellhole they had welded him into. The only time he got some kind of light was the flashing green bulb of the radar or when using the x-ray camera screen taking up the wall behind him.
Speaking of, he was long overdue taking a photo to see what was beyond the iron confines of his execution pod. Fucking murderers. They thought they were better than him, when they had doomed him to this fate? He hadn’t even meant for what had happened to that satellite. He hadn’t known what the others had planned. He was innocent.
Simon pried his fingers from the controls, groaning as he forced the stiff joints to move, and grabbed the manual he’d found during his first descent. With practiced movements, he wedged it against the forward thrust, before turning to the back of the sub.
It wasn’t large; only just big enough for one person. All it took were two short strides, and he was at the rear wall. On it sat a now familiar grey rectangular button. He pushed it, closing his eyes briefly against the blinding flash that flooded the sub. When his vision cleared, he leaned forward to inspect what it had captured. The image was low quality, black and white grains just barely forming a rocky wall that proved he was still in the tunnel. No change then. Of course there wasn’t.
Thirty seconds passed, and the image faded until it was dark once more. Simon pressed the button again, using the new, equally as useless photo as an improvised lantern. With a twist of his heel, he stomped over to his makeshift map, jaw clenched. He tracked the movements he had been making, grabbing the charcoal stick he had been provided to etch his route onto the paper. The original map he’d found was propped up beside his version, but it was faded and warped from the humidity of the air. Useless, just like all the other shit they’d given him.
A bead of sweat trickled down the back of his neck.
The tunnel he was going through seemed to be looping back on itself. He was circling. Going nowhere. Simon pressed his fingers into his eyes, biting back tears as darkness reclaimed the sub. It was never ending. He was stuck down here along with every other Goddamn sub they had sent to their dooms. A graveyard of Iron Lungs and convicted criminals.
God, he bet they didn’t even know his name.
At that thought, anger began to boil in his chest, pushing back the terror that seemed to seep into his very being. Anger was good. It sharpened his focus, made him less afraid to move. Using that, he turned back to the controls, glancing at the small blinking green that alerted him of another tunnel wall, and twisted it away again.
Fear, Simon had discovered, had a lot in common with blood. It clung to everything, seeped into every crack, stained whatever it touched. It seemed to constantly wish to drag you back, to keep you where it wanted. It ran through your very being. It marked you.
Perhaps then, it made sense that an ocean of blood was what taught him the meaning of true terror. More red dripped from the ceiling, sliding between the welded plates of iron, and splattered onto the floor. Simon coughed, and a spray of it splashed from his lips. Just adding to the leak problem.
Eden had been a good place for him to grow up. It was beautiful and peaceful in its early years, holding the only tree to ever have been kept in space. It was a scientific marvel, biologically engineered to produce all the oxygen the satellite could ever need. The first, and last, sustainable producer of oxygen in space. As a child, he would run circles around it with his friends, whispering how incredible it was. Unique and miraculous.
It was all they had left when the Quiet Rapture occurred. Suddenly, the tree became even more important – almost sacred. It was the only tree left in existence, the last natural source of oxygen. His people capitalised on it, using it like a bargaining chip to maintain their importance. Away from his people now, Simon could recognise that they became almost cult-like in their worship of the tree.
But it was harmless. Truly, it was. Despite this, the Consolidation of Iron – the C.O.I. – disagreed with their way. Eden had insisted on building society from the ground up, knowing the power they held with the tree. Meanwhile, the C.O.I. wanted to bring everyone back, wanted to figure out how the Quiet Rapture had occurred. They wanted unity. Wanted control.
Arguments turned to skirmishes. Skirmishes turned to attacks.
No one could tell when it got really bad. No one could even tell when the feud had started. Both sides blamed the other, agreed it had gone on for decades, and had no sign of ever stopping. Eden and the C.O.I. had always hated each other, even before the Quiet Rapture. This just bumped it to a new level.
All Simon had wanted to do was to get them to stop targeting his home. That’s all he wanted. He didn’t want to blow up an entire satellite. He didn’t.
Simon the Butcher – grown a conscience at long last?
“Shut up,” he hissed, crushing the controls in his hands. He could have sworn he heard a laugh, then, echoing from the back of the sub. His back ached with how much he stiffened. Simon swallowed, keeping his gaze fixed resolutely on the iron-sealed window in front of him. Why bother adding a window if he wouldn’t even be able to see through it? Eventually, the sensation of eyes on the back of his neck faded.
The right green light was blinking again. He twisted the direction control, turning away from the wall. The left lit up. Simon frowned, his lips thinning. The tunnel must have been narrowing. He propped the manual in place again and moved to the camera.
The image that flashed up wasn’t what he was expecting. It still showed he was in the tunnel, but the walls looked far apart from each other. It hadn’t thinned at all.
Simon went cold, slowly turning back to the blinking radar. The green light on the right was blinking rapidly now, as though something was getting closer. He knew exactly what that something was.
“Shit!” he shouted, lunging for the controls again. The movement of the sub would alert it. He had to slow, had to stop. His fingers brushed the controls just as the right bulb became a solid green and the beast slammed into him.
The entire sub lurched to the left. Simon flew with it. His shoulder smashed into the wall, and he screamed as pain flared through his already existing injuries. Mercifully, the manual also slipped from its place, and the sub ground to a halt.
But the beast had already found him. Simon tried to get to his feet from where he’d landed, but he was thrown to the right this time as the monster circled around to attack from a new angle. This time, the landing caused him to cough, and bloodied spittle trickled down his lips.
Fear. This was what had taught him its true meaning, its true form. This was the thing that wrapped cold tendrils around him and hollowed him out. Simon staggered upright, body screaming, and he fell forward to slam his hand onto the camera button. The flash seared his eyes.
And he saw it.
Two white eyes gleaming in the staticky film. Teeth like razors, each as long as his forearm. Huge and hulking. Skeletal, though he knew it was alive. The x-rays were just unable to take a photo of it that showed its flesh.
The fact the C.O.I. hadn’t figured that out when he’d told them about the weird-ass skeleton he’d found at the start of this nightmare. Hadn’t realised it was alive. Breathing. Hunting. It filled him with an incandescent fury.
But he didn’t have time to dwell on any of it. He slammed the button again; another flash, another burst of radiation. He hoped it would weaken the thing eventually. He coughed, stomach twisting, the metallic tang of blood coated his tongue.
The woman had insisted the sub’s iron shell was too thick for the radiation to seep through. Perfectly safe, she’d said, even as tumours filled her when he accidentally photographed her with the camera. She was ignoring his warnings, damn it, and she hadn’t told him it was basically a deadly radiation blaster. Well, more fool him for believing her, even after all of the lies and half-truths she told him.
One trip, she’d promised. For your freedom, she’d claimed. You are the first, she’d explained.
But then she had sent him back down there after he found the not-a-skeleton. And then he’d found the recording – the one that revealed the truth. There was no freedom. This was an execution. And that recording? It had been made by a previous convict sent before him.
He was not the first. Not by any means. He was one in a line.
So really, was it any surprise that she had also lied the radiation wouldn’t affect him too?
He pressed the button again, but the resulting photo came up empty. A morbid rushing could be heard from beyond the sub’s walls as the monster sped past, slicing through the ocean of blood as though it were water. This time it slammed into the ceiling, and Simon couldn’t bite back the sob of terror as he was launched again.
“Please,” he choked. “Just leave me alone. I don’t deserve this. Please – I just want to go home.” To go back to Eden. Back to his brothers in arms. To leave the sub and the psychos at the C.O.I. who’d thrown him in it. He was innocent, damn it, innocent from the act of blowing up that stupid satellite. Innocent of that damn crime.
Blood seeped through the cracks between the iron. Condensation streaked down the walls. The heat was suffocating, and he could hardly breathe for his fear. The oxygen meter held steady, indifferent.
The camera flashed again, and he caught a ribcage. Again, and he snagged the eye. Again, and he saw the bony trunks of its tail. Again and again and again, he pressed, and sobbed, and prayed the radiation would drive it away.
This place may have been built as his execution chamber, but Simon wasn’t ready to die. He wanted to live. Was that really so bad? Was it such a crime to crave life, to fight for it tooth and nail, even if it all seemed hopeless? Even if his body probably had enough microscopic holes punched in it from radiation to cause his remaining years to be excruciating? Even if the world would always see him as a murderer? Even if he would never escape the horrors he had witnessed here, at the bottom of this blood-soaked abyss?
Perhaps you do deserve this, Simon. You claim innocence, yet the ocean is not the first time blood has stained your hands—
“Shut up!”
Everything stilled.
The blinking green of the radar stopped. The last photo he had taken faded to black. Silence was oppressing, thick and absolute. Simon slumped in the corner, blood pouring from his nose, new bruises and cuts blooming across his skin. His stomach flipped and he leaned over, vomiting. The dark liquid mingled with the other blood on the floor.
The world seemed to swim around him, the darkness playing tricks on his mind. For a moment, he thought he saw himself at the controls. The double was hunched, his clothing shredded and hanging like rags. In the rips, he could see his skin, mottled with lacerations and deep, ugly purple bruising. Blisters bubbled across his arms, clustered like diseased pearls. It was worst around his hands – boiling, blistered, ruined.
Then Simon blinked and he was alone again.
Hallucinations. Another thing he was becoming familiar with.
He looked down at his own hands, wrapped in bandages. They throbbed. He decided he didn’t want to know how close the hallucination was to the truth.
Slowly, too slowly, he stood again. Every muscle and aching pain protested, but still he moved. He hobbled forward to the pathetic little chair they had given him, and collapsed into it. His throat was dry and newly raw from his screaming and subsequent vomiting. Hunger pangs hit him again. No food or water. Only the half-full bottle he’d found by accident, buried in a cabinet he hadn’t been informed about. It clearly wasn’t intended for him. It was probably made for the last poor bastard.
Well, he’d found it and he’d drank it. But that was only a few hours into this fucking nightmare. He was days in it now.
Simon stared at the controls, feeling the last of his lingering adrenaline fade. His clothes stuck to him, brought on by the insufferable heat. With too little conviction, he searched for the flame of drive that had kept him going onwards.
Tears slid down his cheeks. He didn’t even notice them starting; only when he began to sniffle and felt the stinging of his eyes did he realise he was sobbing. It wracked his body, hitching his lungs, wasting whatever precious air he had left. The oxygen meter held strong though, even as Simon cried harder, gasping.
It was ironic in the worst way. He had come from the only satellite in existence with limitless pure air, and now he was stuck in a sub which was doomed to run out at any moment. If he hadn’t gone to that stupid satellite, if he’d stayed away—
You never could stay away from a slaughter.
The file was in his hands and launched across the sub before he realised it. His roar of fury and effort echoed in the void of the sub. His fucking Iron Lung. There was no one behind him; it was only him and his demons, taunting him in his mind. He panted, each exhale a growl, even as tears continued to spill.
“Fine!” he bellowed. “I am guilty! Make me your Goddamn scapegoat! Hold me as your prisoner, let me serve this penance! You want to see the Butcher? You want to?”
Nobody answered him. Of course no one did.
It was only him and the monster after all, and the monster had given up on its snack for now.
When his friends – his brothers – proposed the plan to attack Filament Station, there had been little argument from his end. It wasn’t the first satellite they’d attacked. It was just a way to get the C.O.I. to back off, to strike a little fear into their hearts. It was for a good cause. Eden needed the peace from them. Eden was superior in every way. It was a good cause.
Simon had always been a fighter, and he was good at it, too. It was why his brothers had to make sure he was with them. The plan was simple; go onto the satellite, cause some bloodshed, warn that they would return should they refuse to back off, and leave. Blowing up the satellite wasn’t part of that plan. He didn’t know when his brothers had come up with it, but they told him moments before they set it in action.
He’d protested. Of course he had. Bodies had been left in Simon’s wake from the attack – good cause, he reminded himself, but the words seemed hollow now – but this was an annihilation he hadn’t signed up for. But his words didn’t matter in the end. The satellite exploded and sixty-two people died. His brothers-in-arms dragged him into the blame too.
Simon looked down at the trinket wrapped around his wrist. He couldn’t see its detail in the dim, but it made him feel closer to home. It was a simple glass circle, with a twig shaped like a tree welded in. One of his brothers had suffered this fate before him, leaving behind the symbol of Eden. Even after their betrayal, he still clung to it. A piece of home, a piece of his life from before the iron box he was contained.
With trembling hands, he pushed the throttle forward, and the sub jolted. The familiar sound of rushing blood met his ears again, paired with the groan of the engine chugging to life. Gradually, his tears slowed to a stop. His breathing steadied. He settled into a rhythm again.
Each time the radar flashed, terror strangled him, wondering if the beast was back. Every time he felt a clot of blood hit the side of the ship, he flinched. Fear – always present, refusing to leave. God, he was so afraid.
But still, he pushed on. He had to. He wanted to live.
The woman had told him, “It’s bigger than all of us.” That was her excuse for sending him down here. Her excuse for refusing to bring him back. That was what she functioned on. She thought she was so noble, so pure, when she sat up there in the safety of her ship, aware of the horrors below but refusing to acknowledge them. Refusing to save him from his fate.
They spoke to him as though he’d volunteered. As though he’d chosen this. But he’d never been given a choice. In their eyes, he was the convict that had destroyed Filament Station and murdered so many of their kin, so they thought that an appropriate punishment was murder. Even as he begged and pleaded and yelled that he was innocent.
They hadn’t even bothered with a jury. Prisoners of war didn’t get trials. They got cages. They got Iron Lungs. They became tools of the C.O.I.
And for what? Answers? Knowing how the Quiet Rapture happened wouldn’t bring anyone back. They’ll still be just as dead, and the C.O.I. were just adding more to the count.
Simon snapped another photo and coughed. It showed more tunnels. More nothing. Time passed. Slow and sluggish like the swell of blood. Still, he kept going, kept fighting, even in the bleakness of the ocean’s depths. Hoping that if he reached radio level again, they might take mercy upon him. Trying to ignore the doubt curdling in his chest.
He didn’t know yet he would find another sub in these tunnels, its black box still intact – a lifeline he could bargain with. He didn’t know the radio would eventually crackle back to life, only to reveal they had never intended to retrieve him… not until he mentioned the wreck. He didn’t know the woman at the C.O.I. would die trying to save him, or that he would finally understand what she meant when she said it was “bigger than us”.
He didn’t know he would sacrifice himself for that cause. That he would launch his own black box, loaded with the recovered data, toward the surface while rigging his Iron Lung to blow, praying it would take the creature out with him. Didn’t know the figure of himself he’d hallucinated would become reality, as the blood became like acid and the radiation finally did boil over.
No. He knew none of that.
And so he pushed onwards, blind in the dark, stewing in fear and guilt and anger until even those emotions thinned to exhaustion. The tunnels stretched on, looping and twisting like the inside of some colossal vein. The blood outside pulsed with the slow rhythm of a dying heart. His own breaths rasped in time with it.
Fear was his companion in these depths. He once believed he knew fear. Understood it like an old friend.
But as the sub crawled deeper into the abyss, as the walls groaned and the blood pressed in and the monster circled somewhere beyond the iron prison, Simon realised the truth.
He was only beginning to learn.