Chapter Text
Never get attached.
That was what Ava had learned, during these expeditions. She had only broken that self imposed rule once - when the SM-8 went down.
They thought they'd mapped out the bottom of the ocean well enough to send down real scientists. People she spoke to on a daily basis. Then they lost them.
Ava had locked down then. No names, no personalities - all she focused on was the mission.
Never get attached.
"Get him out of there!" She barked, her team frantically sawing through the welds of the recovered SM-13.
She'd been so close to going down in the SM-14 until David had persuaded her otherwise, the frantic yells and sounds of the convict - Simon - seemingly losing his mind, alongside the clanking of metal and scraping and tearing noises... It has been a lot.
Sure, convicts had died doing this before. Hell, even on missions she'd overseen since the SM-8. But she'd never known their names, never spoken to them as much as Simon, never been so determined to survive as when most of them entered the submarine they already seemed to have one foot in the grave.
Consequently, when the submarines inevitably lost contact, it was merely body recovery afterwards. They'd never fought to get back like Simon had - which meant she'd never heard snapshots of conversations with someone who didn't exist, exhausted tears, begging and pleading to thin air, eventually forming into desperate screams of rage. Even if he hadn't told her his name, there was something so humanising about hearing someone survive such audible anguish - anguish she was subjecting him to, even at the orders of others. And even through it all, he apologised continuously for his one mistake - a mistake made in what she could see now was fear and desperation instead of wilful ignorance or a sick sense of revenge. Jack had known that since he did it, even though he was reaping the worst of the radiation.
"You heard him," He'd said once the initial shock wore off, "He was terrified. Whatever happened down there - gas bubble or living creature - it got to him. And we didn't exactly give him any time to read up on that thing before we sent him down."
Ava hadn't responded to that - hadn't been able to think of Simon as anything more than a convict at that point, to be honest. And maybe confronting the fact that ultimately she was the root cause of her own newly-cancerous cells was a concept that was beyond her at the time.
What was a few tumours compared to whatever lifelong trauma Simon would have to deal with?
"We're in!" Someone called, quickly followed up by a "Oh God!"
She ran closer, helping pry the slab of metal away before her mouth fell open.
Blood was still draining from holes they had drilled in the bottom once the submarine had been lifted clear of the blood below - attempting to drain it as they could all hear it rushing in from the speakers. What it left behind was... alien. Slowly pulsing masses of congealed blood and almost cellular tissue, twisting around pipes and holding cracked metal together. It surrounded most of the machinery, a twisting macabre pattern stained in red reaching for a collapsed figure by the navigation controls.
He had the black box, she recognised. He'd wrapped a lifejacket around it, tying it with something she didn't recognise but must have been his as it wasn't on the equipment list. He grabbed it with one arm even while unconscious, the other... She craned her head to see, heart sinking as she realised it was a stump. Dumbfounded, she found herself looking for the missing appendage, before her stomach lurched.
It was stuck to a pipe, the growths on the wall still slowly eating through flesh and muscle to assimilate it into itself.
Gross.
Trying to ignore the fact that the tearing noises and screams she heard had been Simon apparently tearing his own arm off, she reached out to grab the box from his... well, corpse, she guessed. He certainly didn't look alive.
Which meant that she got an absolute fucking heart attack when wild unseeing eyes slammed open, Simon's legs kicking out, stump trying to fight even as he scrambled away from her, his other arm holding the black box tightly.
"GET AWAY!" He screamed, slamming himself into the furthest corner of the submarine. "DON'T TOUCH IT!"
"Simon-" The name tore out of her lips reluctantly, because whoever the man in front of her was, it wasn't the 'Convict' she had known. He had been strong, stubborn, muscled and a threat - a far cry from the man in front of her, who was drenched in blood, missing an arm, clutching a black box she'd asked him to retrieve knowing the cost could be his own life while muttering feverishly under his breath.
"It's bigger than me," he was whispering, voice thick with tears and fear, blood still dripping from his hair and nose, "it's bigger than me, mom, please protect it, please-"
The air seemed to disappear then, before the noise started up again - almost cacophonous compared to the silence that had rung in the wake of those words.
Maybe it was the sheer brokenness behind those words. He was resolved to death, to protecting this thing at the cost of his own life, unable to recognise help when it came so he resorted to begging a woman long gone to save the box over him.
And she knew why everyone else had fallen silent when he said it.
Convicts didn't do what they were told. They didn't call out for their mothers or other loved ones when they knew they were going to die. It was a bit of a slap in the face - a reminder that even if they hadn't heard it, every person they'd sent down there had in fact been a person. Sure, they were seeing Simon now - because he had survived and done the impossible. But how many other Simon's had they sent to their deaths without a second thought?
Maybe that was why the noise was cacophonous. Because instead of admitting the truth, they were trying to be louder than what had been left unsaid.
"Simon," She tried again, crouching despite her knees screaming out in protest. "You did it. We've got you out. Can you get up?"
His eyes were partially glazed over when he looked towards her - not at her, they couldn't seem to focus. "... 'va?"
"Yeah, it's me."
"... Prove it." His voice was weak, but held a touch of that impressive stubbornness she had come to somewhat appreciate over the past few days. It had kept him alive - got them a biological sample impaled to the front of the ship (and growing inside) and the black box of the SM-8. Annoying when it was aimed at you, sure, but impressive nonetheless.
"There were three people in the room when you shot us with radiation."
"No, said that already." He shook his head violently, droplets of blood flicking off the clumped locks. "It knows. Something else."
It knows. What knows? Ava certainly didn't know.
"I told you that you could apologise to my tumours." She answered after thinking for a minute, "You said that was 'fair enough'."
Simon took a minute to process, before his grip loosened on the black box. " 'va?"
"Yeah."
"You're... 'live?"
"Yeah. Why wouldn't I be?"
"Heard you... Screamin... Swear you died..." His voice kept trailing off as she detached his remaining hand from the black box, like he was struggling to remain conscious.
"Well, you weren't exactly in your right mind from the snippets we heard," She said lightly, passing the black box off to someone nearby. She could feel the confusion of the crew - why would the captain give up the most valuable thing to someone else - before she reached forward to grab Simon under the arms (well... arm). "Come on, time to get up."
The blood definitely wasn't normal - it tingled on her skin, before progressing to a mild burning sensation. She couldn't imagine being drenched in it like Simon, who was so drenched in blood that she couldn't tell where most of his injuries started and ended.
His head lolled limply as she dragged him to his feet, his entire body listing to the side before nearly collapsing on her shoulder, unable to hold his own body weight.
"Do you have a concussion?" She asked, grabbing his chin to look at his eyes again.
"Dunno... prob'ly 7 of 'em... Can't tell... real fr'm not."
"Great. Someone get medical set up," She called sharply, ignoring how Simon flinched at the volume. "See if there's anyone qualified in psychological shit too."
"Seriously?" A voice called out, partially confused partially angry. "He's a convict-"
"He was promised freedom for finding something, and not only has he provided us with photos he's managed to get us two biological samples and the data of the most advanced ship we sent down there." Ava said firmly, leaving no room for argument. "He's a free man now. He gets treatment. Now go, before I put you down for the next blood ocean exploration."
He shut up after that, rushing past her in such a rush that he accidentally brushed against Simon's arm hanging from the pipe. Simon looked at it dumbly.
"My arm."
"I know. Let's go."
"I want it." He reached out for it, trying to pry the tendrils off. "It's mine. My mom made it."
Ava did not have time to unpack that statement, nor did she want to.
But Daniel was there then, a knife separating some of the tendrils that hadn't quite fused with the flesh below. He pried it off, wincing at the noise.
"There you go, mate." He said, looking a little bit green. "Can't say how long you'll have it since it's dead flesh, mind you, but there's your arm."
Simon reached out, hugging it to his chest like a toddler with a teddy.
"Th'nks." He mumbled. "Think 'm gonna pass out..."
He lurched, nearly dragging Ava to the bloody floor if Daniel hadn't swept in, tightly grabbing Simon around the waist since there wasn't an arm to toss around his shoulders. The man slumped between them - a literal dead weight clutching onto a dead arm.
"What have we done?" Daniel whispered under his breath as they finally wrestled him out of the glorified tin can.
Ava didn't respond. What could she say, really?
Sure, he was alive. But there was no fixing what had happened to him - no going back before she dropped him into a blood ocean with no expectation of ever seeing his face again.
She remembered her first loss - how she had cried privately, burying her screams in rough pillows. How had she gone so far from that girl - how had she gotten to the point of focusing so much on the mission she forgot about the individual?
She couldn't go back to what once was.
She just hoped she had the strength to remember what Simon had shown her going forwards.