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The first time Simon came to, he was drifting in the thick, red swell of the blood ocean.
It rose and fell in sluggish sighs, uncomfortably warm and sticky, clinging to every twitch the tide dragged out of him. Something rested against his chest, keeping him barely afloat. Only after a moment, did he realise his arm was curled around it.
With aching effort, he dragged it closer. Some instinct insisted its importance, even if he couldn’t remember why.
Was this another dream? Another cruel illusion the depths conjured to trick him into believing he escaped?
His eyelashes were glued shut, sealed with clotted blood. He didn’t want to open them anyway. Somehow, he knew the sight would be worse than not knowing.
He drifted.
…
The second time Simon came to, a great white light blazed down onto him.
Roaring jets thundered overhead, their engines disturbing the ocean’s surface and sending waves slapping over his face. It was deafening. Blood splashed into his mouth, coating his tongue with iron and choking off his breath. He spat it back out as quickly as it came in, gulping ragged air to keep from drowning.
Eventually, a shadow passed over him, and he felt something tap the side of his head; tentative, testing. He managed a groan, but the wind swallowed it whole.
“The convict’s here – he got the black box out!”
He didn’t recognise the voice speaking, but treacherous hope flared in his chest anyway. Was it the C.O.I? Had they finally come for him?
But if they were real, he realised, then this wasn’t a dream. He truly was free of the confines of his Iron Lung, adrift on the blood ocean.
“No, no. He looks… Shit, David, he looks bad enough to wish he was dead if he wasn’t already.”
The following pause stretched, and panic wormed its way through him. He wasn’t dead. They had to know he wasn’t dead.
“No, there’s no sign of Ava. I’m grabbing the box and getting out – I don’t want to meet whatever in this ocean did that to him.”
A tug pulled at the object clutched to his chest. Desperately, Simon tightened his grip with what little strength he had left. It was the only thing keeping him afloat. He needed it.
“Hold on – he’s got a death grip on it—”
Simon tried to lift his free arm, to swat the stranger away, to prove he was still alive, but nothing responded. Another sharp yank made the object slide against his chest, slick with blood; his blood, the ocean’s blood, all of it indistinguishable.
“No,” he tried to say, but the word drowned beneath another mouthful of blood. He spat and clawed the object closer. It kept him alive. It mattered more than he did. He couldn’t allow it to be separated from him. “No.”
The stranger’s hand jerked back so abruptly it pushed Simon away. He heard a sharp gasp, then another tentative prod at his skull. He summoned as much strength as he could to make a noise of complaint, turning his head away.
“Oh, fuck,” he heard the voice say. Then: “Oh, fuck. David, this guy’s alive.” A beat of stunned silence. “Yeah, I know what I said, but I was wrong. He’s… God, he should be dead.”
Relief surged through him so sharply it stole his breath, a sob catching in his throat. They knew he was alive. They would save him now. They had to.
“What do you mean just leave…? Ava died to keep this guy alive, and you just want to throw away her sacrifice?” Silence again. Simon felt his hope slipping through his blood-soaked hands. “No. No, we’re helping him. Yeah, I know what he did. Ava still saw something in him. That’s enough.”
A grunt, then hands reached down the found the harness strapped beneath the shredded remains of his shirt. A click snapped into place, and suddenly he felt himself being dragged upwards, the object no longer supporting his weight. It was still locked in his grip though. His fingers refused to release it.
Important, was all he could think. Vital. Need it.
“C’mon, big guy. I’ve got it. You can let go.” With a monumental effort, he forced his stiff fingers to relax. The stranger lifted the object from his hands. He heard another click. “That’s it. Alright, bring us up.”
There was a jolt, and he began to rise. His chest broke free of the blood first, then his hips, then his knees. When his feet finally tore free of the ocean’s grasp, tears welled and spilled, and he began to sob. Some dim part of him whispered he should be ashamed to cry like this in front of someone else, but his rescuer said nothing, and so he let the sobs come.
His tears softened the viscera sealing his eyes shut, and he blinked them open hesitantly as he ascended. Below him stretched an endless expanse of red, its waves swirling with deceptive calm. Nothing in its gentle motion hinted at the horrors lurking beneath. If not for its colour, he wouldn’t have guessed it would have been so disturbing or taken so much from him.
Above him, the sky glimmered with the glow of false stars. His sobs grew harsher, great shuddering gulps that tasted of salt and iron. He never thought he’d see the sky again.
When the sky vanished beneath the hulking metal belly of the ship sent to retrieve him, Simon let go of consciousness once more.
…
Simon.
Simon!
Wake up, Simon!
…
This time, he surfaced slowly.
Sensations reached him one by one. Softness beneath his back. A dull pressure in the crook of his elbow. Pain pounding through his head in time with his heartbeat. Every part of him seemed to hurt. Muscles were stiff and ragged. His skin burned as if lit from within.
He dragged in a breath. It tasted like artificial air – the standard C.O.I. blend he’d lived on in their jail. No hint of rusted metal or blood. Just sweet, sweet oxygen. Not as pure as the one at home, on Eden, but after days of choking on iron, it tasted like mercy.
A steady beep pulsed beside him. Voices murmured behind a wall. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the pitch was high, frantic, filled with panic. Slowly, Simon tried to sit up, but metal clinked sharply, and something tugged at his wrist.
He froze.
Then he opened his eyes.
A hospital ward greeted him. A vitals monitor stood by his bed, holding a drip that threaded down into his right arm. Rows upon rows of identical beds lined the walls, colourless and depressing. Each had a silver frame with a thin mattress and sheets folded with military precision. They were all completely empty. No doctors or nurses milled about. None sign of the people who had sent him down into the ocean’s depths on a rusty sub not designed for the trip.
He was completely and utterly alone.
There was a pair of handcuffs bound around his right wrist and his bed. Blisters bloomed on the skin, marring it with deep, ugly burns. It looked as though he had dipped his arm in acid. He frowned at the cuffs, tugging lightly. It didn’t budge. Simon tried to reach with his left hand to touch it—
And nothing moved.
His gaze snapped to his left side. A low, broken sound escaped him, his stomach dropping.
His left arm was gone.
Everything below the shoulder was simply… absent. The cut wasn’t clean. Its stump was ragged, uneven, muscle and sinew dangling in torn strands. There was no sign of the bone, as though it had been ripped out whole.
Simon vaguely recalled his last moments in the sub. The way the blood had seemed to come alive, flooding his lungs and dragging him back. Tendrils wrapped around his legs, his torso. Binding him in place. Trying to force him to accept his fate. The sub lurching violently as the monster found him again. Falling into a pipe on the wall.
His left hand had touched the pipe and become rooted there. Blood spat out from the other side to trap his right. Desperation, terror, rage. The freeing of his right, and the mad pull to release his left. There had been no pain; not at first. He hadn’t even realised he had ripped his arm off until he had looked up from his place on the floor and seen it still dangling from the pipe.
Simon leaned over the side of his bed, unable to stop the vomit spilling up his throat. Blood and bile splattered on the metal floor as he heaved and coughed. Once he was done, he turned away in disgust. He probably should have been worried that he was vomiting blood. He was too tired to care.
“Ah, so you’re awake, Convict!” a voice announced, and this time it was one Simon recognised. He turned his head slowly to look at David as he walked down the ward, barely able to work up the strength to glare at him. A doctor trailed after him. David glanced down at the mess Simon had left beside his bed and wrinkled his nose.
“I’ll call for clean-up,” the doctor murmured, already tapping away at the datapad she held.
“Thank you.” David’s smile was thin and brittle. His eyes burned with something far uglier. “So, how are you feeling, Convict?”
“What—” Simon’s word failed. He swallowed, ignoring the lingering taste of bile in his mouth. “What is this? I was told I’d be free.”
David pressed his lips together, nodding. “Yeah, I know what Ava told you. But thing’s change.” His gaze flickered to the vitals monitor as the doctor adjusted it. “And, unfortunately for you, the ocean has actually changed you more than you might think.”
Simon’s stomach twisted. “What do you mean?”
David crossed his arms, tilting his head. “Well, for starters, we can barely call you human anymore.” Those words hit Simon like a physical blow. A frown etched its way onto his face, shaking his head in disbelief. Words were lost to him as he attempted to work through the shock.
David continued, almost clinically. “We ran a few tests when we pulled you up, and that arm – man, that really was something I wasn’t expecting. You should have died from that, you know – should’ve bled out in minutes. But you didn’t.” He seemed to tick off each reason one by one, raising a finger as he added to the list. “And then there’s the radiation; five times the lethal dose, you know. Burns everywhere. Dehydrated. Starved. Oxygen should’ve run out over a week ago.” He shook his head, almost laughing. “But you just wouldn’t die. The ocean kept you alive.”
Simon’s remaining hand curled into a fist. “What does that even mean?”
He remembered asking if the camera was safe, if he was also at risk of massive radiation exposure. They had told him no. The metal walls of the sub would protect him. It was only when it was too late that he realised they’d lied.
“It means,” David said slowly, “that the blood started changing your biology. It converted itself to oxygen to keep you alive, and with every inhale, you became less and less human. It’s what stopped you from bleeding out when your arm came off. It’s what protected you when you blew the sub.”
“When I blew…” The memories came back in sharp bursts. The monster clamping the sub in its jaw, teeth triple the height of him slicing through iron like putty. How he’d grabbed a pipe and roared as he hit the teeth, again and again and again. The bones finally breaking and the beast’s scream. His frantic scramble to rig the sub to blow with the next impact.
Then the blood sweeping his body away when it finally came. How it rushed around him, encompassing him in a bubble as he hugged the black box closer to his chest, flames flurrying past him.
“What the fuck,” Simon choked out. Tears blurred his vision. He could hardly make sense of what David was saying. “That’s… How did you know that’s what happened?”
“You muttered it when we moved you here. You were only awake for a few seconds, but you said you killed it. You blew it sky high.”
“I don’t remember saying—” His voice broke. Simon’s face screwed up, sobs wracking his chest and rattling the cuffs. Every emotion he had been keeping suppressed in the sub crashed over him at once. Every ounce of terror, and despair, and horror, and rage that he’d pushed aside in the name of survival, rendering him almost mute.
“I’m out,” he managed. “I’m out. I fucking survived it. It didn’t get me. I beat it. I won.”
David didn’t soften. He simply watched Simon cry with a cold, simmering hatred. The doctor glanced at David, nodded, and slipped out, leaving them alone.
Simon forced himself to calm, to steady, forcing each hitching gasp to settle. David’s stare made his skin crawl. Like he was nothing more than a vaguely interesting science project to be studied. Like he was dangerous.
“So I did good,” Simon said hoarsely. “Yeah? I did good. I got the box. I got your data. Now I’m free.”
“I’ve already told you—”
“Now I’m free!” Simon insisted. “That was the deal! I go down, I get some photos, I get my pardon, I walk. I did a Hell of a lot more than that!”
“You did,” David snarled. “You blasted Jack and Ava with deadly levels of radiation. You convinced Ava to go down there to rescue your pathetic ass where she died. You blew up your sub in the exact same way as you blew up Filament Station!”
“That’s not fair!” Simon shouted. “I didn’t know the camera was basically a death ray! I didn’t blow up Filament Station! I didn’t ask for any of this!”
“Well, you got it!” David leaned in, voice low and venomous. “You can’t leave here; you will never leave here! You could be dangerous – more dangerous than you already were, Convict!”
“My name is Simon! Fucking use it!”
The silence between them was only broken with their heaving breaths. Simon had sat up so he was inches from David’s face. His jaw ached from how tightly he clenched his teeth. He trembled with a fury he didn’t know he was capable of showing through his tiredness. David didn’t flinch.
“You,” David snarled, each word as sharp as glass, “are staying right here. You are going to be locked in quarantine indefinitely. And hey, you might get company. Jack’s still too irradiated to be near anyone. Maybe seeing what you did to him will teach you some empathy, you Eden scum.”
Simon didn’t break eye contact, even as David straightened and looked about ready to spit on him. He followed him with his eyes as David walked to the door to exit the ward. He didn’t look back.
It was only several seconds after the door swung closed that Simon looked away. Exhaustion ebbed into his bones, dragging him back to the pillow. He sniffled, turning his head to wipe his tears on the sheets. God, he wanted his arm back, but that would never be possible.
David’s words echoed in his ears.
We can barely call you human anymore.
Everything he’d endured. Everything he’d survived. And this was what waited for him.
Simon rolled onto his side and cried until he fell asleep.
Simon!
Simon, wake up!
Simon jolted awake with a strangled gasp, his pulse hammering against his throat. Warm liquid cradled his body, only his face breaking the surface. The district stench of blood flooded his senses.
He launched himself upright. The blood clung to him like a second skin, matting his hair and soaking his clothes until they were heavy and cold. Thick clots trailed down his arms. The Iron Lung enclosed around him, a suffocating metal coffin radiating heat and pressing in with its cramped walls.
The sub lurched violently. A deafening bang ricocheted through the hull as he was hurled into the wall.
Simon!
The monster’s shriek burrowed itself behind his eyes, a familiar agony that sent panic surging through him. He staggered to his feet, slipping in the rising blood, and lunged for the controls. Another harsh attack slammed into the sub, knocking him sideways. He clawed his way upright again.
“No,” he choked as he grabbed the levers. They were too comfortable in his hands from the hours and days he’d spent holding them. Blood swirled around his ankles. “No, no, no.”
The beast struck again. He cried out as he was thrown to the side, just barely able to keep hold of the controls. The radar was going ballistic, each light flaring a frantic green, begging for him to move. With a desperate shove, he shoved the lever forward. The sub groaned and surged ahead.
Simon, you cannot escape me!
“I was meant to be free,” he wept. “I was rescued. I was free of this fucking Hellhole!” The radar kept blinking – relentless, urgent. It seemed to scream at him, trying to prompt him to move faster. The sub suddenly lit up with the blinding flash from the x-ray camera behind him. He hadn’t pressed the button to activate it. Dread crawled up his spine as he glanced over his shoulder to look and saw veins snaking up the walls, strapping themselves over the button.
He slammed the console with his free left hand, keeping the right locking the lever forward. Trying in vain to outrun a creature who knew these ocean tunnels better than he ever could. He hit the metal again, over and over, a raw scream tearing from his throat.
“I was meant to be free!”
The blood on the floor was rising too fast to be normal. Simon looked down as it reached his thighs and cursed. A leak. There had to be a leak. The lights flickered, died, then flared again as the x-ray fired another blast into the darkness. Firing radiation out at the monster and bleeding more into himself. Who would give in first?
A crushing blow impacted the rear of the sub. Simon flew forward, smashing into the iron-sealed window. His nose shattered. Hot own blood poured down and over his lip, adding to the flooding issue. It was at his chest now. He wasn’t going to survive this.
“Come on!” he roared, glancing at the radar. There was no change. He was still surrounded by the beast who seemed desperate for his life. Well, it couldn’t have him. He wouldn’t allow it to have that satisfaction.
But then another impact hit him, and the sub split in two with a shriek of tearing metal. A tidal wave of blood crashed in, swallowing him whole. He thrashed in the depths as his Iron Lung broke apart, its lights flickering out one by one. A strange grief twisted his chest. Despite every fault he had found in it – and there had been many – it had still protected him for so long. Kept him alive. He didn’t want to watch it die.
He felt something rush past, and Simon felt a current seize him, dragging him through the crimson depths. A scream sprung from his throat, but all it did was empty his lungs of what little air they had left. His chest burned. Franticly, his arms flailed in the thickness, trying to spin him around to track the beast. If he was going to die to it, then he wanted to see it. He wanted to look into its eyes with defiance at the end.
It appeared in the murky gloom of the endless red. Huge; far larger than he’d initially thought from the snippets he’d glimpsed with the camera. Its mouth unfurled like a grotesque flower, each petal lined with hundreds of long, razor teeth. Its body coiled like a snake, circling him so he had no way to escape. Two black, unblinking eyes fixed on him.
Simon didn’t have the air, nor the strength left to scream. He was only barely able to hold onto consciousness. So when it opened its jaws wide, revealing the end that awaited him, all he could do was float helplessly. He closed his eyes, sending out his silent apologies – to Eden, to his brothers, to his mother.
Come back to us, Simon!
A violent jolt struck his shoulder. He tumbled off the bed, cuffs clanging sharply as they yanked taut. A strained yell died in his throat as he blinked awake, finding himself sprawled on the cold floor. The ward was dark now, the lights dimmed to simulate night.
It took far too long for him to calm. His lungs cramped in the spasms of hyperventilation, and cold sweats made him tremble violently. For a brief, horrifying moment, he was convinced he was dying. Strangled cries echoed in the empty ward, pleading for help, but no one came to his aid. They left him, until his tears slowed, his shaking eased, and reason clawed its way back.
Shame hollowed him out. A nightmare – just a nightmare. One that detailed his worst fear: being trapped in the sub again, unable to do anything but await his inevitable demise. Every time he blinked, he saw the beast’s face again. Great and looming. Death-incarnate.
But he had beaten it. Escaped it. He had gotten out.
What had that done for him though, really?
One cage had been traded for another. He was chained to a hospital bed, surrounded by people who despised him. To the C.O.I., he was the monster in their depths. The one responsible for so many of their people’s deaths. Regardless of how loudly he insisted his innocence in the destruction of Filament Station – though he still had blood on his hands, he wasn’tresponsible for that massacre – they still refused to believe him.
Maybe Ava did, in the end. Or maybe she just didn’t want to see another person die while she stood by and did nothing.
Was her blood on his hands too? More grime caught beneath his fingernails, reminding him of his ugly past and present; reminding him of the responsibility he owned and the Butcher he was. It whispered to him that yes, it was his fault. It was always his fault.
He had yelled that at the monster in its final attack, daring to ask if it wanted to face the Butcher. Challenging it to meet the ugliest parts of himself so it could kill him first, and then maybe Simon could die in peace and without the darkness the Butcher stained onto him.
Once, he’d believed Eden was the best part about himself. They’d told him he was enlightened as he fought a war in their name, gunning to protect the last real tree in existence as the C.O.I. tried to dirty their name. But, in his time below the surface, Simon realised he was wrong. Eden insisted none other than them were right. They persisted on stagnation, of simply surviving day-to-day, of living and dying for the tree. Their bodies would become one with the soil to keep it thriving.
He had once killed in Eden’s name beside his brothers. Yet, the moment he rebuked the plan to destroy Filament Station, they turned their back on him. Pinned the blame on the big, scary Butcher. He had never seen them again. Sixteen years, and not one attempt to rescue him.
Simon reached with his only remaining arm, gripping the bed’s metal railing. With it as leverage, he hauled himself onto the mattress. A numb resignation settled over him.
There was no difference between being trapped in the Iron Lung and being held in the hospital ward. Both were cages. He was still just as helpless, just as stuck. At least the monster below had been honest with its hunger. The monster above wore a smiling mask instead and made promises it never intended to keep. He was doomed regardless. Freedom had never been in reach.
You should have stayed with me, Simon.
He didn’t even flinch at the voice curling through his mind. The voice of the beast was one he had long ago come to know, and he was unsurprised it was trying to lure him back.
David had said he had changed. It had changed him. It flooded him with a familiar chill, coaxed his heart into a sprint, but he knew it could do nothing to him up here.
Maybe, Simon admitted back. Maybe I should have.
If the satisfaction of the beast echoed inside him, he chose not to notice it.
…
Days slipped by in a haze of monotony. Twice a day, David would arrive with the same female doctor in tow. She checked his vitals, cataloguing the mutations creeping through his body, drew more blood than he thought he had left. David hovered behind her, jaw clenched so tightly Simon half expected his teeth to splinter. Whatever the tests revealed, it wasn’t what they wanted. Each day, David’s irritation sharpened.
Simon met it with the same detached stare. He refused to give David the satisfaction of rising to his riles. His barbed comments about Eden, about guilt, about the mistakes Simon had made – none of it pierced him anymore. Grief and desperation hollowed out David’s cheeks and drained his pallor. Eventually, he stopped coming at all.
After that, the doctor lingered. She asked how he felt, whether he needed more food or water. Her concern was a small mercy in a place where contempt had become the normal. Simon learned that her name was Nadine, and she stopped calling him Convict.
One day, as she turned to leave, Simon reached out and caught her sleep. The cuffs had been removed days earlier; they’d realised he had no fight left to give. His sleep was plagued with visions of blood and monsters, leaving him too exhausted to resist anything even if he wanted to.
“How long do I have?” he croaked. Nadine’s eyes darted away, unable to bear looking at him.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “It’s impossible to tell.” She hurried out after that, leaving Simon with his watery broth and the weight of her honesty.
Jack visited him once, too. The welder looked awful; pale and thin enough to look like a walking corpse. His hair had gone thin and straggly, and his previous beard was shaved off. There was a dullness to his eyes, but beneath the exhaustion simmered anger softened by pity.
Simon apologised before Jack could speak. He didn’t ask for forgiveness; at this point, he knew better than to hope for mercy from the C.O.I. Not after they’d thrown him into a blood-soaked abyss with promises of freedom they snatched back at every turn. Still, he apologised. Even though he hadn’t known the camera fired lethal radiation. Even though he had been scared senseless.
“I’m going to be alright,” Jack interrupted finally. A thick Irish accent tainted his words. Despite the ruggedness to his speech, it was still one of the nicest accents Simon had ever heard. “Got the all clear today. I’m going to be fine.”
Jack broke down then. Simon froze, unsure, but reached out and rested a hesitant hand on his shoulder. The blisters still mottled his skin in great ugly clusters, and he knew he must look like a beast, but Jack still took hold of his wrist and simply held it.
“I’m sorry,” Jack managed through gritted teeth. “You fucked up my insides. Took ten years off my life. But I’ll live. And you… You’re not even angry anymore. How much did we take from you?”
The silence stretched between them, broken only by Jack’s intermittent sobs. Simon looked down at his skin again. Covered with blemishes, never to recover.
“Everything,” Simon answered at last. Jack’s sobs faltered. He stared at Simon with a twisted mix of disgust and empathy – an expression only a human being could manage. “You took everything from me.”
Jack didn’t return after that. But still, he stood by Simon’s bed, drowning with guilt, and spoke Simon’s real name. No longer was he just Convict.
First Ava, then Nadine, then Jack.
Maybe he could die as Simon then, if they all recognised him for who he was.
The monster whispered to him in the quiet moments. Coaxing. Tempting. On good days, Simon ignored it. On bad, he spat vitriol back, cursing it for every horror it subjected him to. The C.O.I. never learned about the connection he had to the beast. No doubt, it would end poorly on Simon’s end if they had.
And then, one day, David returned.
He held a piece of paper in his trembling hand. Weeks had passed since Simon had last seen him, and the man standing in the doorway barely resembled the man he remembered. A look of lingering horror seemed to taint his features, which only worsened when he saw Simon. Dark bags carved their way into pale skin beneath his eyes. His uniform was wrinkled and unkempt.
Simon glanced at him with disinterest, even when David stopped at the foot of his bed and simply stared. No longer like he was working out a puzzle, but as if he was genuinely horrified by his mere existence.
“You’re free to go,” David said finally. “Anywhere you want. Your pardon has been implemented, effective immediately.” The words didn’t have the effect that Simon expected. There was no relief, no joy. Just the usual numbness that he had grown to accept in the weeks since his return.
“Why?” was all he asked.
“We… We finally finished listening to the black box,” David explained. “We heard everything.”
“Did you hear it too?”
“What do you mean?”
Simon lifted his gaze to look at David. “The monster. Did you hear it speak to me?”
David inhaled sharply. “Yes. We heard it all.”
Relief made Simon’s shoulders sag. “Good. I’m glad. I’m glad I wasn’t going crazy.” David stared at him strangely, but Simon ignored it. He stood, took the paper David held, scanning its contents. In bright green was the stamp: PARDON APPROVED. He couldn’t help but stare at it.
“I don’t have long left now, do I?” he asked quietly.
David shrugged. “No one knows. You should have died down there. Everything we heard, everything you’d been through… No human should survive it.”
Simon folded the paper with his one remaining hand – it crumpled in his grip as he still learned how to compensate for his missing limb – and tucked it into his pocket. “Well, as you said, I’m not sure if you could call me human anymore.”
David studied him for a moment, and whatever lingering hatred he had for the former convict dissolved. Now, he understood everything Simon had been through. He had heard Simon’s screams, his pleas, his desperate fight for life. He saw the husk standing before him; tired of existence, tired of hope, tired of humanity’s cruelty.
He saw someone who had once wanted nothing more than to live, had fought for it tooth and nail against a beast he couldn’t see, only to lose that spark when his own species abandoned him.
Simon brushed past him, empty of the fire David had heard in the recordings. As he reached the doors, David called out.
“Convict!” Simon paused, one hand on the handle. David sighed, lowering his head. “Good luck, Simon.”
Simon left.
For the first time in sixteen years, he was free.
He walked the corridors slowly. They felt foreign. He had always been dragged through them, chained, despised, treated as nothing more than the crimes stamped on his back.
But now his pardon was heavy in his pocket. He should feel something. Anything. This was what he had fought for all those years in captivity. Freedom was now his.
He wandered until he came to a window.
Outside, the universe stretched before him. Black skies glimmering with distant stars, long dead yet still shining. Peaceful. Beautiful. A sight he hadn’t seen since he surrendered to the C.O.I. all those years ago.
Below, a moon floated in the void, its surface drowned beneath a deep red ocean.
Come back to us, Simon. You know you want to.
He looked at the stars again. Something soft unfurled in his chest. He smiled.
“No,” he answered it. “I don’t think I do.”