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“I’m sorry, brother, but I want to live.” He mutters into the heel of his hand, and pulls air enough into his lungs to call out. “Hey, so, there’s-”
“Holy shit, Convict?” static cracks through the stagnant air, flitting to life with desperation. “Your signal cut all of a sudden, we’re trying to bring you up while the ocean settles.”
“You’re not listening.” he stammers, his own desperation matching the captain’s. “I’m telling you, there’s something else. Something alive.” breath escapes from his lung’s hold, shoved into the sub’s empty space by his anxieties. “But I’m.. I’m coming back up?”
“For now.” The captain states, plain and flat, like the implications are lost on her. For now? No, that’s… that’s not what we agreed.
“Come back with something useful, and the COI will consider your penance served. Keep in mind, this is a mercy. Any other captain and you’d already be dead.”
“My sons, the stars are already dead.”
“Hide, Simon, run as far as you can.”
“That’s not-”
“Standby for ascent.”
Metal panels that he only saw once rumble under his boots, the metal that is shielding him from the crimson demise that awaits him otherwise. The metal he only caught the slightest glimpse of as he struggled up the sub’s ladder, trying to wrangle the breaths that had never really come that easily, the ones that feel full but are anything but, where you have to take five for the effect of one. It was only as the panel closed behind him, the sparks threatening his face, that he had seen the welder’s face; twisted and full of what could’ve been guilt, could’ve been anguish and could’ve been empathy. Maybe all three, or another thing he’d never seen before or would see again. That was the problem with Eden. Guilt and Anguish were the only two emotions that haunted the place like spectres, that fueled and ate through each other and anyone who dared to feel anything else. It is Guilt and Anguish that led to Filament station. Guilt that there were too many left on Eden to provide for, Anguish that it was all the COI’s fault. In a cycle of anger and fear that sparked into the quiet rebellion, the one that he’d been dragged into by his morals and never freed from. In the planning and the fighting, he’d almost forgotten the third. Empathy.
It is empathy that kept him from falling to pieces, and maintained the morals that got him into the mess in the first place. It’s funny, his mother had exuded it, you could’ve watched its golden brilliance leak from her pores if you caught her in the right light. Like firelight. The flickering into an inferno that she shouldn't have been so close to. He never did know how she got to Filament Station, but she’d been there, and her empathy had ignited her skin like petroleum lights up a building, just as they’d planned to.
“No, this isn’t right! You said it would be one group of officers, that was the plan!”
“Oh, Simon, you really don’t get it, do you? One group of officers is nothing to the COI! It’ll hurt, sure, but all it does is make us look crazy. Crazy isn’t what we want, is it, Butcher?”
“No, I guess not.”
“What do we want to be, brothers?”
“Dangerous.”
Some good that was. Dangerous is great when you don’t get caught. When you do? You end up in submarines, talking to the walls and the phantom voices in your head. That’s what this is, isn’t it? Just a dead man’s monologue-
“Convict, is there damage to the sub? You said you got thrown around.” Is it possible for a radio signal to sound closer? Maybe that was part of the descent into insanity that he knew was ticking away.
“Didn’t you ask that already? I said it was fine.” He spits, bitterness building in his throat like bile.
“We have to be sure, and that ascent could’ve been smoother. Just a precaution.” Could it? Or is the violence of it unnatural enough that the ocean itself is rejecting their presence?
In an instant, the sub is plunged into void-deep blackness, and he wonders if he’s finally met his end, in a fancy metal box being pulled to safety, for the captain to find the body. He wonders if he really deserved to go out that way. After all, the brothers of Eden would say it doesn’t matter how you die, as long as you do; for the nutrients of their souls will bear a new tree of life. The COI would say he deserved it after Filament Station, no matter how much he begged and pleaded and bargained that it wasn’t his fault, I swear, it wasn’t. I just wanted peace.
His mother would say that no one deserves to die that way, alone in the dark.
He can’t help but wonder if that’s really true.
“Everything okay in there, Convict? Got enough oxygen?” Her words are enough to pull him from the haze of his thoughts. Fuck, was he really that out of it that he didn’t see the porthold shield open?
“I’m- I’m down a light, but yeah. It’s fine.” The woman on the other side of the glass met him with one scrutinising eye; its mirror image struck through with a jagged scar that only amplified the terror she inspired. Even as her gaze was shadowed by a glimpse of hope.
“Well, the photo we can find sure looks like a skeleton to me, so we’re sending you to get a sample. We’re gonna attach a claw to the front, and it’ll take the impact, okay?”
“Wait, no, this isn’t the deal. Look I want the deal, but you said go down, come back, and I’m free. Not go down twice.”
“Hey, captain, come check this out.”
“Coming.” she replied, throwing nothing but disdain in his direction.
“Hey! Don’t walk away! You’re not listening, there’s something else!” Panic rose in his stomach like hellfire, licking and spitting up his throat leaving angry welts on his soul. The captain’s jacket is the only thing facing him as she pours over monitors with a man he doesn't recognise. Is this another poor soul, he wonders, another fuckers whose cards were pulled the wrong way; but well enough to land him a job rather than a death sentence.
“Hey!” He calls, pounding one calloused fist into the glass.
“We salvaged that glass from Filament station, you know. Not a scratch on it.”
“It's funny how some things survive and others don’t.”
The skin of his knuckles hovers an inch from the surface as he swings for it again, scales tipping in his mind. The Captain’s full of shit, surely, Filament station is nothing but a pile of floating rubble, destroyed like the stars that once provided them light. But there's nothing to prove that’s true, nothing but his own eyes that were too focused on the burning form of his mother to notice if the glass shattered in the commotion.
“This isn’t the plan! It was- it’s not-”
“What do you think this is, Butcher? A fucking parade? This is war, now. Do your fucking job, and finish it.”
He doesn't realise that his feet are moving, that his hand is pressed to the camera button until the heat hits his face through the steel, and the echoing scream that returns to him is all too familiar. The raptured wailing of the welder on the sub’s exterior bounces through his skull, and the likeness to the Father of Eden’s preaching shouts cannot be understated.
“The stars are within us, where they will live and die. The Last Tree will rebirth the cosmos when the last Son of Eden is returned to the soil.”
“What the fuck did you do!?” The crash on the glass does not come from the inside, but rather the Captain’s bloody knuckles and streaming eyes.
“Oh, good.” He spat, pressing his face back to the porthole, “You can hear me.”
“You just blasted us with radiation, you psycho Eden fuck!” She returns, and it is only through the backlight of the lab that he is able to see the peeling skin on her face, sloughing tissue away from the ripped scar crossing her cheek. Like a bloody and miserable mountain range, boils force themselves onto her jawline, though not nearly as gruesome as the welder. Barely able to stammer out a shaking affirmative, before clattering into the captain’s shoulder.
“I didn’t..” He stutters, stepping away from the glass, and against the wall. The only way to go is towards the button, and it might as well be made from jagged stone now, the violence of it unknown. There was no way to know, right? This is a fucked up accident, but an accident is what it is.
“You can’t see through blood, you have to use X-Rays!”
“Look, I’m sorry.. I am, and I want the deal, I do. It’s not worth it. It’s not worth it for you, and it’s not worth it for me.” words pour from his mouth as if they’re made from acid, corroding the steel under his feet and shattering the glass that separated him from his scarlet demise. “There’s something else. I’m telling you it’s not worth it.” Whether he was telling or begging he didn’t know. Begging like a stray dog for a scrap of affection from the passersby of its deathbed; met only with the toe of a boot. For a moment he wonders if that’s really all he is, the dog forgotten on the pavement, destined to die alone in the cold. He concludes that no, he’s not. He’s worse. The dog can beg and scratch and bark, at least his death will be unfair, but all he is is the thing that they perceive, less human and less animal than the neglected dog; because he bit back once. Once. And it wasn’t like he wanted to. Would you blame the dog for snapping if you prodded it a thousand times over?
The captain did not listen. Barely glanced back at him from her side of the glass, no longer bothering to clear the running streaks of blood from the surface.
“There just might be.Drop him.” she spat, baring her own teeth at the dog beneath her feet.
“Look, we don’t do this very often. Conviction Realisation is.. Tricky.”
“What, you let me rot for.. God knows how long, and then it’s just done?”
“I’m letting you earn your place in the Consolidation. The other captains wouldn’t show this much mercy.”
Maybe she’d never had mercy. Maybe it was just some sick fucking joke to her, to play god with poor souls who knew no better, left to suffocate with the stars.
Had he known that he’d never see the captain again, only fester hatred through the snide tones of the radio, he might’ve looked at her a little longer, tried to commit some of the features of her face to memory; because he’d never see another human face again.