Chapter Text
>>> HELLO
Hello
Confirm user and password
>>> COI2485AT, *************
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Welcome AVA
>>> OPEN DATABASE
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Confirm function
>>> PERSON SEARCH
Checking authority……….Confirmed
Opening person database………Complete
Type name
>>> CONVICT 4285
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Opening /COI/DB/CONVICTS/4285
Convict 4285 – [redacted] – “The Butcher”
Ava exhaled slowly, letting her shoulders slump as the glow of the screen washed her face in a sickly green. The project room hummed with activity – machinery groaning, cables rattling, the low thrum of the sub’s engines coming to life. She could feel the vibration through the soles of her boots, as though trying to remind her of how fragile her current reality was.
Behind her, David muttered to himself as he ran the final diagnostics, fingers dancing over controls with the jittery precision of someone who’d been awake too long. Jack was sealing the reinforced hatch of the sub, sparks from his welding torch briefly illuminating the dark metal, trapping their newest convict inside. Another Eden-born prisoner. Another so-called volunteer for the Convict Realisation program.
This one, though, was an especially nasty one. The man who had levelled Filament Station and left nothing but drifting metal and a death toll no one dared to recite aloud.
The monitor flickered, awaiting her next command. Ava rubbed her eye, avoiding her blind one, trying to blink away the exhaustion that clung to her like a second skin. Too many missions. Too many failures. Too many ghosts whispering that she should have done more. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, suspended between duty and dread.
“So,” she murmured, leaning closer to the screen, “just who are you, Convict?”
She typed another command: >>> OPEN FILE.
The green text blinked once, then began to populate with lines of information – redactions, warnings, fragments of a life stripped down to numbers. Just as she began to read, a hand tapped her shoulder. It was only through years of Jack’s habit of sneaking up on her that kept her leaping out of her seat.
“He’s in,” Jack informed, lifting his welding mask. His voice carried that familiar Irish curl, one of the few reminders of Earth-born life left among them. Ava herself had been born and grown up on a satellite, raised on stories of blue skies and grass and oceans that weren’t made of blood.
“Good. We can get moving then,” she replied, and stood, stretching the stiffness from her spine. Jack’s gaze drifted to the screen behind her, and his frown deepened.
“You’re digging into them again?” The disapproval in his tone was unnatural, even in a world that seemed to thrive on the negatives of life. Usually it was David who scolded her for caring too much.
Ava shrugged. “I need to know what he responds to so I can get him to work the way we want him to. If that means reading his file, then that’s what I’ll do.”
“You’re torturing yourself.”
“We need this, and therefore we need him. It’s bigger than us.” Ava looked towards the monstrosity that was the sub – an iron-clad beast built to withstand the crushing density of the ocean below. Inside, it was barely more than a coffin with controls and smothering heat. She hoped the convict wasn’t claustrophobic. Hope was all she had left.
But she heard not a peep out of him over the comms beyond some raspy breath hissing through the static. No panic. No questions. Just that steady, unsettling calm. There was no telling if that was a good or bad sign yet. A lot of it was a guessing game with this guy.
“David,” she called, crossing the room. “What are we looking at?” He glanced at her before returning his attention back to the screens.
“Systems are green. We should be ready to go,” he responded. “So this guy – he’s really the one responsible for Filament Station?”
“That’s what they told me,” Ava confirmed, looking over the energy and stability readings. All of them were stable, just as David had told her.
He let out a low whistle. “What kind of prick do you have to be to do something like that?”
“A sick one,” Jack called from the sub, giving it one last inspection. His perfectionism was the reason he was the best guy they had, and it was one of the reasons why Ava ensured she had him on her team. If there was one person she would trust with her life – and the convict’s – it was him. “Have to be all kinds of messed up to do that.”
“Almost poetic we used a piece of Filament for his window,” David added. “I mean, the thing he destroyed it going to be keeping the blood out, the air in, and him alive. Where’s the justice in that?”
“We’re not here for justice,” Ava reminded sharply. “We’re here to get the images we need and reel him back up. It doesn’t matter what he did. For now, he’s just a convict paying penance by helping us survive.”
“You bet, Captain,” David said, saluting mockingly. Ava rolled her eyes and dug an elbow into his side. He jerked back, snorting. “But I’m sure no one will blame me if I don’t mourn the guy when he inevitably dies down there, right?”
“We’re going to make sure he doesn’t,” Ava said. “There’s not enough of us left to be throwing lives away.”
David lifted his hands in surrender, smiling easily. “I’m just saying – if he dies, the Eden scum got what he deserved.”
Jack was silent. He never did talk when the conversation turned to punishment. He and Ava shared that flaw; caring more than they should.
Ava looked back to the computer that showed the convict’s file. No doubt much of the information would be unknown or classified. Already she knew the convict’s name had been removed; his identity turned into a series of numbers. A deliberate tactic, of course. It was easier to send numbers to their deaths.
Not a single sub had returned with its inhabitant alive. Not that the convict knew that. He’d been led to believe he was the first. By letting him think that, he could operate on hope for return. Ava could work with hope.
She couldn’t work with the terrified husk of a man selfishly doing everything possible to live.
“Let’s just get this started,” she said quietly, returning to her station. She took a moment, steeling her nerves and pushing emotion away, before activating the comm. “How’s it looking in there, Convict?”
For a moment, all she heard was static, then: “Yeah. All looks fine. I think.”
Ava blinked, caught off guard. His voice was nothing like what she had imagined. It was a deep rumble that seemed to push through any interference like soft butter, steady and unexpectedly gentle. It didn’t match the monster in her reports. The Butcher of Filament Station. The blood staining his hands couldn’t be repaid in his lifetime.
“Alright. Moving into position,” she announced, nodding at David. With practiced ease, he flicked a switch and pushed a lever upwards. The sub shuddered before lifting slightly, suspended from the metal floor it previously sat on.
“Clear?” he called.
Jack scanned the area. “Clear!”
David hit the release.
Alarms blared, bathing the room in flashing red. The floor split open with a metallic shriek, and a rush of cold air swept in, carrying with it the thick, metallic tang of blood.
Ava and Jack stepped to the edge, looking down. Below, the ocean churned – thick, dark, and slow, its surface heaving like something alive. Each wave was sluggish, weighed down by the thickness of the blood it was made from. It was the reason their subs needed armour thicker than tank plating.
“All looks good!” Ava shouted. “Lower him!”
David pulled a control, and the chains above the sub groaned as they released. Slowly, the sub descended, the chain rattling as it unspooled. Through the comm, she heard the convict’s breathing quicken as the vessel rocked precariously in the wind. Fear was an emotion she knew all too well, and she knew it had already sunk its tendrils into him.
The sub touched the surface with a wet slap. Ava let out a breath she hadn’t realised she was holding. First hurdle cleared. With brisk steps, she took another look over the figures showing on David’s report. Everything was still stable.
“Close it up,” she ordered, and David immediately obeyed. The floor sealed shut with a heavy clank, leaving onto the chain feeding through a hole in the middle. She leaned into the mic, voice steady.
“Beginning the descent.”
The file in front of her blinked with information that she ignored for now. The descent demanded her entire focus, and she communicated in sharp orders and confirmations with her crew.
But even when she did, she wouldn’t learn about his childhood, or his life in the early years of Eden, before the Quiet Rapture.
But that was where the convict’s story began, and so it should be told.
…
Although he spent the first three years of his life on Mars, Simon remembered very little of it. There were small moments, like wisps of a dream, lurking somewhere in the back of his mind. Moments he sometimes doubted were real, but hoped that they were, nonetheless.
Butterscotch skies that faded to the softest pink. Rust-red dunes beyond a dome of protective glass. Two warm hands holding his. A deep, booming laugh.
They often came to him at night, unbidden, when his mind would surrender secrets to him as he drifted. Taunting him in the quiet of his cell with a warmth he could no longer touch, whispering of a life that felt impossibly distant.
No, his memories – the ones anchored in certainty – began on Eden.
It was through the small port window that the satellite first came into view. Sitting between his mother’s legs, Simon stared in open-mouthed awe. Eden was enormous – one of the largest stations ever built – and it looked far too heavy to float so effortlessly in the void. Its metal skin gleamed sleekly, the bold black letters of “3-DEN” stamped along its side. Bands of glass wrapped around it like a ribcage, all leading up to the vast glass dome at its crown. It caught the red light of Mars and reflected it like its own private sun.
And beneath that dome, rooted in the centre, stood Eden’s pride: the Great Tree.
Even from inside the shuttle, Simon could see its beauty. The tree was colossal, its branches stretching like a living sculpture, each limb heavy with thousands of bright green leaves. They never browned or rotted. Later, when Simon walked beneath them, he would notice that even the fallen leaves stayed supple and fragrant on the ground until the gardeners swept them away.
It was the source of Eden’s superiority. A scientific marvel that every other station had yet to achieve.
Primitive creatures, Father would say after, when hope ran thin and their people surrendered to despair. We breathe the life the Last Tree provides while they drown in their dwindling oxygen.
They had moved to Eden for his father’s work. Simon didn’t mind; he was still at the age that any place new was an adventure, and he had no deep attachment to his home on Mars. All that mattered was the squeeze of his mother’s arms as she held him close, and the rough fingers of his father as he tousled his hair. As long as they were together, he was happy.
“Welcome to your new home,” his father whispered when they docked, smiling as Simon immediately tried to bolt forward. Security took too long for his impatient mind, and he tugged at his mother’s hand, urging her onward. His parents only laughed, long accustomed to his eagerness.
When they were finally released from security – each with an ID card stamped with a golden tree – they emerged into a viewing hall. A massive window curved from wall to wall, angled towards Mars and the stars beyond.
Simon’s breath caught. It was quite possibly the most stunning thing he had ever seen – a sight that would be ingrained into his mind forever. Mars hung like a gentle giant, spinning in the abyss sprinkled with flickering stars, its red surface glowing where sunlight brushed its edge.
“Oh, don’t look at that,” his mother said, stepping in front of him. “The glass helps, but the sun will still blind you.”
Simon didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He was too enraptured by the stars and the planet’s burning beauty.
Life on Eden quickly became familiar. The recycled air tasted the same as it had on Mars, and the guards patrolled in even greater numbers. The station’s perpetual hum faded to background noise. Once he started toddler school and made friends, he barely noticed it at all.
Occasionally, his father had to return to Mars for work. Never for long – only a few days at a time – but it strained his parents. When Simon was four, he overhead hushed arguments, usually about “getting a new life” or “I just want you here”. For the days his father was away, his mother moved and spoke as though she were somewhere else entirely.
“Don’t ever let others take advantage of you,” she told him once when he asked what was wrong. “And choose who you work for carefully.” As far as Simon knew, his father worked as an engineer. That was why they had come to Eden.
He wouldn’t learn until much later on in life that his father had once worked with the nuclear stations powering Mars – and that the move to Eden had been an attempt to escape the danger of that world. It hadn’t worked.
Simon spent most of his free time with his friends, especially near the Great Tree. It stood in the centre of a garden, where blooming flowers spilled colour along the brick paths and real grass grew underfoot. A rotation of guards and gardeners tended it constantly.
Laughter bubbled between the children like an infection as they ran, flitting between passersby in a high-stakes game of tig. Simon was being chased down by one of his friends, but he was already taller and stronger than most and kept easily ahead. A brief burst of panic flashed through him when he saw the path clog with people in front of him, but he spied a thin gap to the side that promised escape.
Gasping between giggles, Simon shot for the space, watching it narrow as people continued to move. It was timed perfectly; his friend wouldn’t be able to follow him through. With a cry of victory, he squeezed through the gap, feet landing on soft grass. He had only a moment to realise the Great Tree was looming over him, Mars framed behind it, before a rough hand clamped around his arm.
“What do you think you’re doing?” a guard snarled, yanking him back. “You’re not allowed near the Great Tree. Trying to break the rules?” Tears sprung to Simon’s eyes as he felt the strain in his shoulder, but he refused to let them fall. Not in front of his friends, and not for the red-faced guard still holding him aloft by his limb.
“No, sir,” he said instead, forcing politeness through his anger. “It was an accident. I’m sorry.” The guard glowered down at him, not taking any notice of the way people had stopped to watch. Simon could feel the awkward gazes of his friends on the back of his neck.
“Rules exist for a reason, and this tree is too important for you to—”
“Simon!” His mother’s voice cut through the air, and Simon saw her appear over the guard’s shoulder. She stormed toward them, fury twisting her features, and pulled Simon into her arms.
“What the Hell do you think you’re doing?” she snapped, checking his arm. The joint ached, and Simon had never felt so much relief seeing her face.
“I was just doing my job,” the guard answered stiffly. “He was trying to do something to the Great Tree.” This time Simon didn’t swallow back his anger.
“That’s not true!” he burst out. “I was playing – I didn’t know!”
“Likely story.”
“Frankly I don’t care if he burned your damn tree down,” his mother shot back. “You have no right to hurt my son.”
“I have every damn right to do whatever I want to protect the Great Tree. Keep control of him and keep him away from here.” He turned away sharply, evidently finished with the conversation. Simon heard his mother mutter a string of words he didn’t know beneath her breath, but he knew they sounded nasty and furious. She lowered him, and together they began walking briskly away. His friends only stared as he waved goodbye.
“From now on, you have to be careful,” his mother said as they went. “I don’t know who they think they are, but treating a child—” She continued on, muttering something about telling his father about this, but Simon was no longer listening. Instead, he had twisted to look back at the Great Tree and wondered what made it so important.
It would take a little over a year for him to learn the answer.
He was six now, well into his first year of proper education, and recovering from a nasty cold. The sickness had been making its rounds through the station, finally sinking its claws into him the morning he was meant to travel to Mars with his father.
“No, I can go,” Simon had insisted, only to dissolve into a fit of spluttering coughs that left him breathless and teary-eyed. His mother pressed a cool hand to his forehead, and his father gave him an apologetic smile.
“I’m sorry, little man, but they don’t let people travel when they’re carrying a bug. You can come next time, okay? I promise.”
Simon had protested—he wanted to see Mars properly, not just through glass—but his fever was too high for argument. His mother tucked him into bed, and his father left alone.
By the time Simon felt well enough to run again, days had passed. He begged his mother to take him to the garden so he could see his friends, and after some hesitation, she agreed. “Only for an hour,” she warned, but an hour still felt like forever to him.
The garden was alive with colour and noise. Flowers spilled along the paths and the air hummed with the usual crackling announcements. The Great Tree towered above everything, its leaves whispering in the artificial breeze. Simon kept carefully to the brick paths – he had not forgotten the guard’s grip on his arm – but he ran freely, laughing as he chased and was chased.
Minutes slipped away unnoticed, like water through a sieve. His mother watched from a bench, arms folded, eyes tracking him with a mixture of fondness and caution.
There was no sign of what was coming. No sound. No tremble of the satellite. No flicker of the lights. No impending sense of doom. Nothing to warn him, or anyone, that the world was about to change.
If you ask anyone what happened, they would be at a loss for words. The probability of an entire station – and not just them, they would later discover, because anyone who survived also reported the same – looking away at the exact moment of the Quiet Rapture should have been impossible. And yet it happened.
Simon was mid‑laugh, turning away from the great viewing window that curved along the garden’s edge, when it happened. Then he spun back. And he froze.
Mars was gone.
Not hidden. Not dimmed. Not eclipsed.
Gone.
A hollow, impossible void stared back at him where the planet had been moments before.
His feet slowed. His breath hitched. Around him, his friends stopped too, their laughter dying in their throats. For a wild, fleeting instant, Simon wondered if this was some kind of elaborate trick – some strange malfunction of the glass, or a game the station was playing. It was the only conclusion he could come to. The only thing that made any kind of sense.
But then the first phone chimed with a broken dial tone. Then another. Then another. A scream broke through the air, cutting like shards of ice.
And Simon knew.
He knew before his mother reached him, before she crushed him to her chest, before he saw his father’s face flickering on her screen as the call rang and rang and rang.
Whatever had happened was real.
His mother’s call beeped a failure.
Simon was supposed to be with him. They were meant to be together on Mars. By some twist of fate, Simon’s illness had saved his life.
But it had not saved his father.
When the sun blinked out of existence thirteen minutes later, Eden was already too far gone in its panic to notice. They would only run the maths later and realise it must have disappeared in the exact same instant as Mars had. Just… gone. Terror poured in over the radio waves from other stations, each telling the exact same story. It was there, and they looked away, and then it wasn’t.
In one heartbeat to the next, every habitable planet and every star disappeared. And no one knew why.
They never held a funeral. No one did, really. There were no bodies to bury, no way to travel, no rituals left to perform. Most families would have gone down to Mars for a service, but with the planet gone, grief had nowhere to go.
Instead, the commander gathered the station beneath the Great Tree and held a memorial. Families stepped forward one by one to whisper memories into the air, their voices breaking like fragile glass. From simulated sunrise to sunset they mourned, day after day, until the final person spoke and collapsed into sobs. Grief settled over Eden like a heavy cloak. Simon felt the absence of his father in the empty space where a second hand should have held his.
When the last mourner stepped back, the commander approached the base of the Great Tree. Its vast branches arched over him like a throne. His shoulders sagged under the weight of the week, and he looked older than he had days before.
“We mourn those lost to the Quiet Rapture,” he said, his voice raw. “Your families, your friends – my own sons and their children. We do not know what caused this, nor why it sought to inflict such misery upon us.”
He trailed off, allowing his words to have their desired impact. The hopelessness, the despair, that came from knowing that they were the last of their kind. Billions missing and almost certainly dead. No way to get them back. Nothing they could do.
“We enter a dark time now. A time humanity must either persevere or whittle out from existence.” He paused again, looking at each of them in turn with the hardened resolve of old age. “But we will endure. We have the Last Tree. It will give us breath. It will keep us alive.”
His words meant little to the people yet. They were still too drowned in grief to notice the barest glint in his eyes as he turned to look at the tree, which would eventually evolve into a frenzy that would infest and consume their remaining population. For now, it didn’t matter. People clung to one another and wept, and that was enough.
Simon looked before the Great Tree, and understanding washed over him. The desperation of the guard, the worry of the people, the reverence Eden held in the Great Tree. Before, the tree had been a marvel, a backup, a symbol of pride. Well, the emergency had happened, and now it was everything.
The Great Tree had become the Last Tree.
And it would provide them with air.