Chapter Text
Air tore into his lungs like a fish out of water. Simon snapped upright with a strangled gasp, as though each breath were a live wire tightening in his chest and pulling him up by his bronchioles. Oxygen seared behind his ribs, and despite the rush of it, he thought he was suffocating.
If I don’t look, he thought, keeping his eyes shut, it won’t start lying to me.
The monster can’t get you, Simon. I’m here.
Gray light pressed against his eyelids, unrelenting as the steel of the SM-13. When he finally forced them open, it stabbed through him like a blade, the taste of metal exploding on his tongue like a burst blood vessel. His skull throbbed in two distinct halves, a cleaving ache that made the world fracture along his temples. For a moment, he thought he was back. 116, 520. The answer. The–
IT WANTS YOU TO DO THIS.
Pain ripped through him before any clear thought could finish. His bones felt like twisted filaments of string, snapping under some invisible weight, forcing him forward until his chest hit his knees.
“Fuck… what the fuck…” Coherent words barely left his throat as he rasped them out, the pain molding his lips into a plethora of curses. Simon’s right hand lashed for his forehead, but the nerves there had gone rogue, unable to register touch, only sending bursts of fire through his skull.
What happened? Did I… die?
He tried to trace the spiral back. Eden. Filament Station. Hot metal walls that bent under pressure, dripping blood. Expedition. Execution… And then – nothing.
Nothing.
Realization hit him like a tidal wave: he should be nothing. The sub imploded. He should be dead.
But somehow, he can still feel his bones creak, whimpering that they had not been given mercy.
CAN’T YOU SEE THIS IS A MERCY?
He forced his head upright, and the world pitched violently around him, threatening to hurl his upper body back onto the sterile white sheets like a rag doll. The scent of antiseptic and blood hit him like a slap, leaving his stomach hollow and his chest hammering as though trying to escape. Unbidden, images clawed into his mind again. The eel. The blinding light. The warm, suffocating flood of blood that had claimed him; or was supposed to.
PRAY THAT YOU STAY DEAD.
SIMON!
Simon!
“Hey! Simon!” Two half-gloved fingers snapped sharply in front of his vision.
Simon’s breath caught, stuttering, his lungs still refusing their normal rhythm.
Dark eyes struggled to concentrate on the limb in front of him, scraping together whatever brain cells were still intact after his many concussions. This hand wasn’t pale with death or covered in blood. It was warm, slightly tan even. There was blood still running through it.
Simon’s fingertips twitched, betraying the muscles his mind couldn’t command, almost begging for another person’s touch just to know that this is real – and then a low, guttural growl tore out of him.
The unidentified hand pulled back slowly and Simon’s gaze sharpened through the blurred haze, trying to focus, manually turn up the contrast in his eyes, anything.
“Ah, there you are, Convict,” the voice hummed in an amused tone. Simon’s eyes dragged themselves past the man’s arm and finally settled on him fully: tall, nearly his height, with disheveled brown hair just above his eyebrows and spilling down to his shoulders in uneven layers. Although he seemed younger than Simon, a few streaks of grey threaded through his hair; as well as a scar that traced the side of his neck. The face was unfamiliar – he couldn’t recognize a single freckle – but that tone… Simon had heard it before.
YOU SAW THE HORROR OF IT.
His head pounded so hard he could feel each beat at the back of his teeth. Static hissed through his skull, a constant, grinding white noise that made the world jitter and sway. The growl deep in his throat would not be silenced even as his muscles screamed, as if twenty iron rods had been hammered into his limbs all at once.
His jaw worked independently, teeth pressing together – but some had become… pointed? His own mouth felt like a trap he wished would snap shut forever.
The man, on the other hand, didn’t seem too surprised that a human was growling at him like a rabid animal ready to tear his throat out. “If you’re going to lunge,” he said calmly, leaning his body back slightly, “do it now. I don’t feel like waiting.”
That… sass. The voice from his second descent. What was his name again? Steve… Dave…
“David,” the man promptly spoke, curt, almost like he could pluck Simon’s thoughts straight from his skull. Maybe he could. Oh God… what if this is just another hallucination? How many more times will they twist the walls of my mind until–
A glint caught Simon’s eye.
Metal.
His arm. Searing pain suddenly lanced through his nerves like lightning striking bone, making his chest rattle with each twitch and forcing a hiss out of his throat. Slowly turning his left palm, he tried to move just the fingertips… and nothing happened.
“Yeah, Jack hasn’t really gotten the arm to respond correctly,” David noted, voice light, as if this were a casual conversation. “Considering his… you know… ‘bed rest.’” A calm chuckle followed, cruelly calm, like someone telling a joke while dangling a blade over your throat.
That caused Simon’s final nerve to snap, baring teeth as he turned his upper body towards the younger man. “Who the FUCK are you? Where am I?” His voice broke, cracking on the border between defiance and sheer despair. His vision blurred as he looked down at his legs, still covered by a clean blanket. So clean. He didn’t want to imagine the mess beneath.
Despite not having stood up yet, his muscles felt like lead, and hot tears stung behind his eyes, spilling before he could stop them, soaking the messy hair that fell into his face. “Please… just… fucking kill me.” He pulled his knees to his chest with his functioning right hand – his left still foreign – and buried his face between them, wishing to simply… disappear. It must be a pitiful sight, a 6'4" man trying to make himself as small as a newborn fawn.
David blinked, green eyes widening, lifting his hands in a quick motion of defense. “Wh– listen, man, I’d also rather have retrieved Captain Ava, but we can’t always get what we want, can we?” Anyone with half a brain could taste the poison on his tongue, recognize the question as rhetorical – and, like a metaphor, its sting sunk deep under Simon’s skin.
Ava. The name hit Simon like a freight train smashing into his chest. Reflexively, his nails dug into his palms.
HER BLOOD IS ON YOUR HANDS!
“–You know, after our little ‘bro-talk,’ I thought you Eden folk could be–”
“Shut the fuck up,” Simon growled, teeth grinding. His jaw ached, every vibration in his skull reverberating like a hammer against hollow metal. He hated how… indifferent David seemed, as if already bored by the damage in front of him.
David didn’t move. The corners of his mouth twitched slightly, but then he just crossed his arms, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. A scoff slipped out of him. “Same old.”
GIVE US THE ANSWER.
Simon stared at him, at the blur of reality bending in front of him, at the living proof that he might still be here, and his chest tightened. He wanted to scream, to strike, to vanish into the hallucination he dreaded was real. But he couldn’t tell where lies ended and the truth began anymore.
LET US SEE.
Before Simon could process David’s words – or, if this was a hallucination, how the entity seemed to know of their exchange – a new figure burst in.
Platinum blond hair fell in messy strands over hazel eyes that darted with restless energy, data pads clutched tight beneath his arm. There was something achingly familiar about him, yet Simon couldn’t reach the memory in time before it vanished. The edges of his vision were razor-sharp, but the center remained smeared and liquid, like looking through milky glass. All Simon could make out were his roots, dark against pale hair, desperate for attention. His skin was pale, and at the bottom left side of his face, a faint discoloration seemed to mark a scar – a pretty gnarly one, judging by the depth of the shadows.
Simon’s breath turned shallow. The world still swayed like a ship in a storm. The urge to empty his stomach right then and there was creeping up his throat, but even if this was a hallucination, he still had the decency of not vomiting straight onto the floor. His fingers twitched uncontrollably, and for a flicker of a moment he caught his skin shimmering, scales rising where the sleeve had slipped back, glinting in a copper color. “What the fuck…?” A whispered breath escaped him, but he was unable to investigate further before–
The blond stepped closer, and Simon’s teeth caught the light. A hiss escaped him before thought could intervene.
…And why the fuck do I keep doing that?
“Oh…” the man murmured, face paling and voice thinning with disbelief. “That… that’s going to take some getting used to.”
Getting used to? Getting used to what exactly? Simon’s vision narrowed, confusion knotting with a sour, crawling shame. He felt grotesque under their piercing eyes, something misshapen that had slipped through the cracks of death by mistake. A thing to be kept behind glass so no one had to look too closely.
“They called him ugly because they didn’t know what he was yet.”
His mother had brushed his hair back then, smiling so softly down at him.
“You have to survive long enough to grow into yourself, my little swan.”
Simon swallowed hard. If this was all growing was, bone and blood twisted into something unrecognizable, something that needed “getting used to,” then what was he still waiting to become?
David seemed to read his mind again. He kept his voice calm, even as his eyes flicked to the scales. “The blood, it was irradiated,” he started, “but it worked in your favor – God knows how. It slowed the trauma from the implosion. The Coalition managed to stabilize you. Your wounds were almost fatal, but you pulled through. With some minor…” He coughed into his hand, glancing down again at the scales, as if Simon hadn’t noticed the creeping, fish-like ridges spreading across his arms and torso like a cruel joke. “…Side effects.”
Simon blinked at his opposite, jaw shifting as memories forced their way up like shards of glass. Pain and cold and red flooded over him, causing him to forcefully shiver through every bone – and scale.
Then, the door opened again. Simon couldn’t help but roll his eyes. Is there a fucking zoo sign outside my door? Am I an exhibit–
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” a rough voice said. “Easy there, lad. I’m not a monster.” Welder goggles perched crookedly atop a messy brown mullet, streaks of ash and soot marking lines across a face so pale the veins beneath seemed to writhe like living rivers. Deep shadows under his eyes hung like hammocks for the moon, his lips cracked and slightly blue at the edges. His widow’s peaks were receding, thinning like frayed rope, and ahis gloved hands were shaking slightly. His posture was stiff, as if every joint protested the weight of his own body. He looked… sick.
“You’re welcome, by the way,” he sighed, one finger gesturing toward Simon’s prosthetic. “That took resources we didn’t want to waste.”
He made that?
As soon as Simon’s eyes locked with that glare, memory slammed into him without warning: his desperate screaming, the figures outside a blur through the blood dripping over the porthole, his hands on controls he barely understood, and then… the world detonating in a white-hot explosion that seared every sense.
So that must be Jack.
Oh.
“Oh,” Simon whispered as realization slapped him into the face once more, striking the same bruise twice.
Jack’s jaw set the moment he saw it land. “Yeah.”
The silence stretched uncomfortably long. Simon’s chest heaved, every inhale a countdown. He was anticipating the inevitable moment it all snapped back like a tense rubber band. “I didn’t mean to,” Simon said automatically, almost whimpered. The words felt old from how often they have been subject to repetition. “I didn’t know it would–”
“I know,” Jack cut in coldly, harsh as the iron he welds. “Doesn’t change that I almost died.”
Simon winced; he didn’t know what to say. There were no words shaped wide enough to hold the weight crushing his chest, no excuses left to reach for. He bit down on his lip out of habit and felt the sharp scrape of a fang break skin. “…I’m sorry,” he whispered finally, almost inaudible, the words spilling out like blood from a wound that had never healed, as if the knife was left inside just to torture him.
Simon scratched at the scales creeping up his neck, nails dragging across rough, alien ridges that pulsed faintly beneath his skin. A few of his teeth had grown irregular, poking out at odd angles under his lips, crawling up his cheeks like a permanent, grotesque grin. He tried to reason with himself. Why would the light make me hallucinate such a nightmare…?
“How many?” he croaked, voice almost caught in his throat as a wave of bitter bile rose when he felt the teeth on his cheek shift against his skin.
Jack’s brow knit tight, his gaze flicking from Simon to the room and back again, as if Simon had just politely asked whether he’d like to be irradiated a second time. His mouth opened, closed, opened again as if fishing for his words in the air. “How many… what?”
“He thinks this is a hallucination,” a calm voice chimed in. The blond guy again. Simon never caught his name – an unsolved variable in the cracks of his mind, intensifying the feeling that nothing here could be trusted just yet.
“That’s what anyone would say,” Simon murmured. He tipped his chin just enough to look up through his lashes, pupils tensing despite the fog in his head. “My brain’s good at voices.”
The blond swallowed, a tiny hitch of unease flickering across his pale features. “Then…” he exhaled, straightening slightly, “test it. Ask me something I wouldn’t make up.”
“How many days was I… unresponsive?” Simon asked, keeping his voice low. He held the man’s gaze, not blinking, like he was daring the image in front of him to mess up, to reveal a horror beneath, to melt into noise. His fingers curled slowly against the sheets, nails biting into fabric. They felt sharper now, but he pushed down the urge to investigate his body’s changes further. “Down there,” he added on.
Jack’s confusion deepened. “Ethan, what the hell is he–”
So that’s his name.
“Three days,” Ethan answered his question in a heartbeat, “you were unresponsive in that sub for three days. We were… surprised that your oxygen lasted as long as it did.”
Simon’s chest tightened, a slow, suffocating release of tension. “…So, this is real,” he murmured.
Jack nodded once, the creases at the corner of his eyes deepening ever so slightly. “Afraid so, mate.”
Ethan’s shoulders sagged as though releasing decades of burden by answering a simple question. He pulled out the tablet from under his arm, swiping across it with fast fingers. “The data you saved… the blood composition, the voice logs, the images. Without it, the Coalition probably would’ve buried more people down there.”
David unfortunately sprung back to life and snorted dryly. “We’re still considering it.” Though, his smirk barely touched his eyes. Simon wasn’t fond of David just yet, but the masked could always spot their own, especially when the masquerade continued long after the ballroom had caught fire – and Simon held a begrudging respect for that.
He nodded faintly, ignoring the humorless remark, mind spinning like a violent tornado with 200 knots. “The data… that means… did you… see it?” As soon as the question left his trembling lips, he swallowed back another rise of acid – he wasn’t quite sure if he wanted to know the answer just yet.
Ethan ran a hand through his disheveled hair, exhaling deeply. “We’re in the process of deciphering it. Still trying to get the black box to crack. It absorbed… more than we expected. Blood, mostly. But the Coalition– they’re… good at what they do. Trust me.”
Simon scoffed sharply, picking at one of his nails. They should be called claws now – longer, pointed slightly, the nail bed turning a dark red. He dug them into his palm as hard as he could and pain answered immediately. He pressed harder until the fire flared up his wrist, electrifying his tendon. His throat tightened as another wave of nausea threatened to roll up. “Yeah,” he muttered hoarsely, staring at the crescent marks blooming red in his skin. “‘Trust.’”
The word tasted rotten in his mouth.
Jack shifted, visibly uncomfortable with the weight of the room pressing around him. “For what it’s worth,” he coughed up, “I didn’t build that arm because the COI told me to.”
Simon’s eyes flicked to him, searching, unsure if he could trust any words of a COI member anymore. Could he even trust his own words?
Though, Jack held his gaze – and Simon saw that sparkle of truth. “I built it because… you didn’t deserve to die like that.”
Something inside Simon shattered into a million pieces. His breath stuttered once as his nails dug into the mattress, shredding the sheets with soft rips. Soft is a sickening, mocking term. Pain and rage mingled, blood and metal and bone shaking through him.
“…I think I’m still down there,” he whimpered with a rasp, like his vocal cords were permanently scorched. He wrapped his right arm around himself as best as he could; he couldn’t even hug himself properly. “I think… it just hasn’t finished me yet.”
David stepped forward, tilting his head slightly as he raised a pierced eyebrow. “What is this ‘it’ you keep talking about?”
“You don’t know?” Simon’s voice pitched higher, trembling with a cocktail of panic and fury. His vision turned the color of a Cosmopolitan. “You saw all the fucking signs and still don’t know what happened down there?”
David’s frown tightened. “We know enough.”
“No,” Simon snapped, the word ripping out of him like a growl. Claws tore into the mattress, shredding its fabric completely now. “You don’t.”
David’s hand twitched toward the stun unit on his belt. “Easy,” he warned slowly. “You’re still tethered to several drips after your recovery. One wrong move and–”
Recovery. The word struck Simon like a kick to the stomach. As if he were just debris, a hollow husk patched together with wires and blood.
As if he had asked to be saved.
Simon laughed, humorless, bitter. “You didn’t recover me,” he spat. “You pulled what was left from a grave.” He bit his tongue, knowing his anger was getting the better of him, longing for the taste of copper instead.
IS DEATH THE ONLY THING SHE TAUGHT YOU?
Simon’s hand shot to his head again, fingers digging into his scalp as his teeth clenched so hard that they pressed painfully into each other. His body throbbed, every nerve screaming. Fear surged through him like wildfire, setting his muscles trembling, wracking him with shudders he couldn’t control.
He wasn’t a violent dog. He wasn’t supposed to–
Ethan froze, choosing a careful tone as he watched his approaching breakdown. “Okay… okay. No one’s here to hurt you.”
Simon’s breath stuttered, heart hammering like artillery in his chest. “You don’t know,” he hissed, each word trembling. “None of you do.”
David stepped forward, almost as if attempting to get between Ethan and Simon, tone calm but firm – almost like hers. “She was lost to environmental hazards during–”
“No!” Simon roared, surging forward as far as the drips would allow, legs screaming under the strain, back arching straight with bone-deep pain. “That thing killed her.”
Silence fell like a guillotine.
David’s face hardened, stun unit fully in hand now. “There was no lifeform detected.”
Simon laughed in borderline hysteria. “Because it doesn’t show up on your fucking sensors! It’s bigger than us! Bigger than any of this fucking–” He slammed a fist into the wall beside him, concrete vibrating under the impact, and his skull pulsed with every heartbeat. Eden flashed behind his eyes, the station he grew up in, the place that taught him how systems slowly fail before they fall catastrophically.
He spun back to David, voice cracking, ragged breaths shuddering through his chest. “I saw it! I saw it! It looked at me. It knew I was there from the very beginning, and none of you… none of you incompetent–” His claws flexed. Scales rippled across his forearms like water boiling under skin.
David shook his head, voice so certain of his ignorance, cutting through him like ice. “You were exposed to extreme radiation, pressure trauma, and neural stress. Hallucinations are expected.”
Simon’s eyes still burned, but his scales dimmed as the tremor in his chest slowed, breath lengthening. “Then tell me something,” he demanded in a low tone. “Tell me how both Ava and her sub are unretrievable, vanished from the face of AT-5… but I survived a fucking implosion.”
No answer.
Silence pressed in like the hull of a sunken sub. Simon’s chest heaved. “There is something else down there,” he growled. “And you’ll wish you never retrieved that black box once you see it too.”
Ethan stepped forward hesitantly, each movement cautious like approaching a wounded animal. “Convict… breathe. Just– breathe with me, okay?”
Simon backs away instead, claws scraping against the metal of the bedframe, body tense and ready to fight something that might not even be there. “If this is a hallucination,” he hissed, voice shaking with rage and terror, “then it’s doing a really fucking good job of pretending you don’t believe me.”
David watched him like a puzzle that refused to lock into place. The Coalition may be grateful for the data, but trust? That was another matter entirely.
He felt claustrophobic. The walls were leaning in again. Simon’s panic surged, and without thinking, his clawed hand jerked towards the others, trying to get everyone away, away, NOW.
“–ouch!”
In the corner of his vision, Ethan flinched back, arm snapping to his chest. Blood welled immediately, bright red against his skin, spilling in slow drops from a shallow line carved along his forearm. Simon’s stomach dropped through the floor.
Oh. God.
His mind lagged a beat before comprehension slammed into him like a brick. I… hurt him. His heart thudded violently, nails digging into his palms, scales prickling like fire along his arms.
“I’m… I’m sorry,” he gasped, voice trembling. The words barely scratched the surface of the guilt clawing through him.
Simon the Butcher lost his nerve again.
David’s expression hardened. Jack’s eyes flicked from Simon to the exit. And Ethan… Ethan was rubbing his arm, face tight with discomfort and surprise.
The weight of what he’d done crashed down.
You got the highest body count out here, killer.
“I… I’m so sorry,” Simon croaked, breaking into strangled sobs. His head dipped forward, shoulders curling inward, eyes glued to the floor. Dark strands of hair fell over his face, clinging damp to his sweaty skin and covering his glassy, blood-shot eyes. He had been a weapon, a convict, a test subject… and now… he didn’t know what he was.
A thick silence pressed in, winding tight around their chests. Finally, David exhaled and gave a subtle nod to Jack and Ethan to leave. Jack’s hand brushed lightly on Ethan’s shoulder, likely guiding him toward the medical station. They slipped out quietly, leaving Simon alone with the weight of his body, his mind, his scales, and his teeth.
David remained, arms crossed, an unreadable expression resting on his face. “Get some rest,” he said, flat, neither cruel nor kind. “You’re not going anywhere.”
After that, he turned towards the door but didn’t exit immediately, pausing for a second as he gave Simon one last glance. “We’ll run some tests later to determine your physical status regarding your…” Another cough. “…changes.”
Simon let the words sink in, the metallic tang of his own blood and sweat still persistent in his mouth.
The door finally sealed behind him with a hiss, but Simon’s ears barely picked it up over the sharp ringing reverberating in his eardrums.
He’s alone.
The hum of the station settles in around him, indifferent as the universe. No voices. No hull breach nor groaning of the metal. It’s finally... quiet.
He stared at the wall. He didn’t know how long. Time had grown slippery, stretching like the endless gray corridors of Eden, days bleeding into nights of breakdowns and repairs, of failures both small and catastrophic. His “changes.”
YOU CHANGED EVERYTHING!
Right.
He hadn’t looked at himself fully yet, and maybe it was better that way. He could imagine their eyes on him, wide with fear, faces twisting with the recognition of a monster. That’s what he had become: Simon the Butcher, a thing that had survived when it shouldn’t have.
IT SAW YOU, SIMON. IT WILL NEVER LET YOU GO.
His breath hitched before he realized the tears were coming, hot and relentless, dripping into the collar of his gown. Shoulders curling inward, shrinking, folding into himself, a reflex to make himself smaller, easier to contain.
He looked down at his left arm.
The metal doesn’t shake. It doesn’t ache. It doesn’t feel anything at all. Still, Simon pressed his right hand over it, fingers curling around the cold plating, searching for a pulse, a spark, something.
Nothing.
A broken sound escaped low in his throat. He wiped at his face with the heel of his hand, breath uneven and shuddering.
“…Maybe that’s for the best,” he whispered to no one.
ALWAYS THINKING OF A LIFE YOU’LL NEVER GET BACK.
No feeling meant no blood. No blood meant no ocean. No ocean meant none of this had happened. Maybe it could all be undone.
Simon lay back, curling into himself, exhausted to the marrow. Tears slipped free even as his breathing slowed.
With his eyes half-lidded, he murmured, “I think I’m allowed to sleep now… aren’t I?” His thumb traced the wrist of the prosthetic where the bracelet once rested, the same way he had caressed the gift from his mother all those years ago.
“I’m so tired, Mama,” he whispered, voice trembling, barely audible despite the complete stillness that surrounded him. “Please… let me rest now.”
The blood had been as warm as her embrace, as if the ocean itself remembered her exact temperature. The weight of the blanket pressed down like the ocean’s pressure; he knew this was not his freedom.
When they evaluate the black box, undo the careful knot his mother taught him, they will find a record of everything he had fought to save – and nothing that could save him in return.
This was his sentence.