Chapter Text
GRACE
<Foreign object detected>
Grace startled from where he was slumped in the pilot’s seat. These days, there wasn’t much to do on the Hail Mary. They were on the way to Erid, the course was set and the autopilot engaged, and Grace spent a lot of his time thinking about both everything and nothing at all. Rocky was somewhere on the ship, doing his own thing. The Hail Mary wasn’t huge, and they absolutely didn’t have a lot of space, so spending a bit of time apart each day was helpful. And it wasn’t like Rocky couldn’t hear every little thing happening on the ship.
In fact, Grace could hear the skittering steps as the rock alien approached the cockpit. Grace sat up straighter, looking at the screen that was now pinging with a “Blip D.” What the heck?
A musical sound echoed through the ship. Grace barely needed the translator anymore; being in such close proximity to Rocky for a prolonged (for him, at least) amount of time made picking up the alien language quite easy. While Grace himself couldn’t mimic the various notes and chords Rocky made, he could at least comprehend most of what Rocky said to him.
Ship detect other ship, question? Rocky asked, appearing in his little hamster ball. Grace glanced at his friend and then back to the screen. Rocky was holding his “image” translator to point at the screens, allowing him to visualize what Grace could see. The Hail Mary and her trajectory were clearly defined across the screens, but what caught Grace’s eyes was the teeny tiny “Blip D” floating just slightly off their path.
“What the heck is that?” Grace asked, staring at the screen. Another alien ship? When the Blip A first showed up, the dot was much bigger than the new little dot. Mostly because Rocky’s ship was freakin’ huge. But even from far away, Grace could tell whatever it was, it was small.
Maybe they want to fix own star, Rocky whistled, waving his front arms out in front of him like he was trying to shrug. They’d both picked up each other’s mannerisms over the many, many months they’d spent together.
Grace hummed, somewhat mimicking the sound Rocky made. He was sure it translated somehow to Eridian, probably some stupid word that didn’t relate to the situation, but Rocky didn’t say anything about it ever so Grace assumed it was fine.
The pair watched the screens quietly for several minutes, waiting to see if the Blip D would move at all. The computers showed that the Hail Mary was moving forward at a constant speed, propelled forward by the astrophage Rocky had given Grace for what was supposed to be his trip back to Earth. And then the taumoeba evolved to escape xenonite, managed to get into the fuel tanks, and feasted upon some of the astrophage fuel before Grace had stopped it. It was then that Grace had made his fateful decision: Rocky’s entire ship was made of xenonite, and Grace knew that he would be in trouble. So he believed in the Hail Mary, turned his ship around, and zoomed back to save Rocky.
Now they were here, moving towards Erid. It was a long trip, and Grace was slowly running out of food. He had decided to save the real food until near the end of the journey, so he had something to look forward to. For now, he was forcing himself to eat the coma slurry, which tasted like (pardon his French) shit. It was pure nutrients, but while he’d been in a coma, the slurry had been fed to him through a tube in his stomach. Now he was just eating it. Yuck.
Anyways. The Hail Mary was moving forward, but as their marker on the map moved with them, the marker for the Blip D hadn’t budged. It wasn’t moving.
♩♪♫♬♩, said Rocky in various musical chords. Grace didn’t know this word, at least by memory. In trouble, question?
Grace leaned forward to stare at the screen, like it would tell him the answer to Rocky’s question. It didn’t. “I don’t know, bud.” He slumped back into his seat, chewing his bottom lip. “Maybe it’s not even a ship. Maybe it’s just an astroid.”
Grace ship say it is like Rocky ship, Blip A. Rocky stamped one of his front limbs. Even though he was a genius engineer space rock alien who was over 200 years old, he reminded Grace of a student of his who would stomp her foot when frustrated. The memory made him grin.
“The canisters you sent over were called Blip B and Blip C, those weren’t ships,” Grace offered. “It’s just what the ship calls the objects it detects that aren’t really normal in space. Blip D could just be a bit of space junk.”
Grace Rocky get closer and see if ship.
Blip D wasn’t too far off their trajectory, and Grace was also curious. A part of him felt like it was something more than just space junk. What if they were about to encounter another alien species? What if they were also trying to fix their star? What if they needed help?
“Yeah, Rock,” with a nod to his friend, Grace made his decision. “We’ll go see if it’s a ship.”
SIMON
He could feel the blood stinging his eyes, sloshing around his feet. He was sick to his stomach, delirious, and struggling to stay awake as the submarine was tossed around. The concussion he absolutely had was making it hard to think, to even process what was happening. The monster had him in its claws. Or, well, teeth. Shit shit shit!
Simon knew he was going to die. The C.O.I. sent him down here as a punishment, an execution. He was never meant to survive this. But right now at this moment, he is freaking out about this fact. He doesn’t want to die. He doesn’t want to fucking die!
The submarine shook and he slipped on the blood, only barely managing to brace himself from falling with his left hand against the wall. He winced. Every inch of his body hurt from being used as the Blood Ocean’s play toy. His skin had developed radiation burns in random spots across the exposed parts. He didn’t want to know if it continued underneath all his layers.
He fought to keep his balance as blood and something living crawled over him. His other hand hit the right wall. He could feel tendrils climbing up his arms, spawning from the point of contact. He couldn't move his hands; he was fucking stuck in place. He pulled his right arm off the wall with all his might and shook the weird blood tendrils off. His left arm proved to be not as easy. Simon forced all his weight towards the right side of the submarine until he felt his muscles and ligaments in the arm stretch and tear. Skin tore as the blood consumed his entire arm all the way up to just below his shoulder. He let out a scream as he felt his bones snapping and ripping apart with such force that he fell into the thick blood rising up to his knees. “Fuck!”
He managed to cast a glance at the black box kept floating by a life vest. Simon knew that there was no possible way for him to survive this scenario, but that black box had to make it. It contained the answer to everything.
A sharp screeching noise pierced his ears as several teeth penetrated the hull of the ship. Oh shit! He thought as more of the blood spewed in from the cracks. Okay, this is it. I’ve got to make sure that box makes it to the surface. With his one surviving hand, Simon pushed himself up and grabbed the fire extinguisher abandoned nearby in the cramped ship. Everything felt heavy, his body being weighed down by the blood. He slammed the extinguisher into the monster’s teeth. Only one broke, and it only serves to make it angrier.
Only one thing he could do. He had to smash the only window. He had to sabotage the SM-13. With all the strength left in his body, he hit the glass. It broke in only a few swings, and—
All he could see was light.
He couldn’t feel anything, not the blood nor his missing arm or even the cuts and burns that littered his skin. Simon felt nearly weightless, like he was drifting through space.
Simon could hear his Father’s voice, calling to him in indistinguishable words. Maybe it was the lyrics of the old Earthen hymns that Father had been so insistent on all the Brothers and Sisters of Eden knowing.
Eden.
He pictured the Last Tree, how it had been so full when he was younger but was seemingly dying as he’d grown older. He remembered praying under the Last Tree, his Brothers beside him.
He remembered when they’d given him the tattoo.
He remembered when the C.O.I. had burned it off.
Simon had hated Eden, once upon a time. He’d hated the prayers and the hymns. He hated the expectations and restrictions placed upon him and even now…
He hoped the black box made it.
Slowly, his body began to wake up. Simon felt it in his toes first, first a static-y feeling and then a bone-deep ache. It spread up his body and Simon could feel each and every spot that had been injured over the course of however fucking long he was in that ocean. And, at this point, that was his whole body.
There was a ringing in his ears as Simon came to, his senses going haywire as he was suddenly plunged right back into the darkness of the submarine.
GRACE
It had taken them only two days to make it to Blip-D, and as they got nearer and nearer, both Grace and Rocky were anxious balls of energy. They were about a few thousand kilometers away when Rocky suddenly got even more jittery.
I hear a heart beat, Rocky said, when they seemingly came in range of Rocky’s hearing. Heart beats like Grace heart.
If that didn’t make him perk up, he didn’t know what would. Was there another human? How would that even be possible?
Grace had parked himself at the huge window to space, a place he didn’t typically like to be in. Especially now that he knew he hadn’t been brave and stepped up for the mission. He’d been forced to go, drugged by guards ordered by Eva Stratt. Thinking about it made him nauseous. She forced him to lose his goshdarn memory, for goodness sake!
But from this view, Grace could see the Blip D. It was, in fact, tiny. Actually, Grace was like…pretty sure that the tiny little vessel that Rocky could hear a heartbeat from was a submarine. From Earth. Made by humans.
Even the lettering on the side of it was Earthen! SM-13.
It is made of similar material to Grace ship.
Grace hummed at the statement. “It looks like a submarine from Earth.”
What is submarine, question?
“Submarines go really deep into the ocean. In a way, they’re kind of like a space ship, but for water.” He’d never really thought about it. Both a space ship and a submarine were designed to keep the passenger(s) inside in a comfortable atmosphere. Both had a limited source of oxygen; the Hail Mary used a recycling system, but if any air managed to escape the vessel, they wouldn’t be able to get that back. But this submarine was tiny, and seemed crudely built. Grace didn’t think whoever was in there had much oxygen left.
He was actually surprised that anything was alive inside at all. That thing looked absolutely awful.
They got closer, and Grace could see the submarine a little more clearly. It was crusted with something, maybe rust? Grace wasn’t sure, and Rocky couldn’t see it. They were almost there, and Rocky was working on an attachment to the airlock. Don’t see an airlock on the submarine. Rocky had muttered as he got to work. Grace would have to cut the person out.
Grace managed to maneuver Mary close enough to the sub that Rocky and his robot arm could attach a 10 foot tunnel to the hull. Rocky did his job anxiously, and it was the fastest that Grace had ever seen the alien do it. Heart beat slower, Rocky said, slower than when Grace sleeps. ♫♩♫♫.
They had to get in there and fast. Grace suited up, slipping into the EVA suit as he’d done several other times. He even wore the helmet, even though the tunnel had been oxygenated and pressurized. Who knows what was awaiting them in the submarine?
Rocky had crafted a xenonite device that could cut a hole through the metal of the sub. It was like a very sharp X-Acto knife. Grace had been lectured about the importance of holding it correctly so that he doesn't cut his own hand off. He wasn’t used to being on this side of the lecture, but Rocky had demanded Grace’s attention.
After seeing Grace carrying the blade upside down, as one would do with any knife or scissors, Rocky changed his worry from Grace cutting his hand off to Grace slicing clean through his own leg should he stumble.
The xenon-acto knife gained a safety cap.
Grace entered the tunnel carefully. They weren’t going to risk activating the centrifuge while attached to the sub; Mary had suffered enough from the first excessive centrifugal force, and they still had a while before they arrived at Erid.
Knocking on the hull of the submarine, Grace listened for any movement inside. Hearing no response, he began to slowly cut through the metal of the submarine’s hull. He started up higher, figuring that if whoever was inside was passed out, they’d be on the floor. But then again, there probably wasn’t gravity in the submarine. There wasn’t even gravity in the tunnel or Mary.
He cut a sizable hole in the hull, large enough that he could fit through without struggle. He pulled himself into the submarine and immediately regretted it.
There was blood everywhere.
Blood acted similar to water when it was in zero-gravity. Liquids in space tended to form into spheres or blobs if it couldn’t stick itself to a surface. Every single surface of the submarine was coated in dried or drying blood, and little blobs floated around.
“What the hell?”
What is it, question? Rocky called. He was waiting in the airlock of the Hail Mary in his ball, and could hear everything happening.
“There is a lot of blood in here.”
Is it the human blood, question?
“I have no clue,” Grace replied. “There’s no possible way all this is from one person, though. There is way too much blood to come from one person.”
Is the human okay, question? Can still hear the heart beat, but very slow. Sounds weird.
Okay, yes. Grace barely had to glance around to find the source of the heart beat. Floating unconsciously was a human being. Who also was coated in blood. They were clearly severely injured, with their whole darn left arm missing. Grace couldn’t tell what was an injury and what was just. Blood.
He felt sick.
Mixed with the blood was some weird stringy stuff. It looked similar to some kind of mushroom colony, like a cordyceps. It also seemed dead, thankfully.
Grace felt something brush his side as he moved toward the injured person. He yelped, sending himself careening to the other bloody wall. What had touched him? Well, Grace is glad you asked. It was an arm. An arm, covered in the dead mushroom blood stuff.
Oh god, he couldn't throw up right now. Then he wouldn’t be able to see. And he’d be coated in vomit.
He had to pull himself together and get out.
He gently grabbed the person by their good arm, pulling them into his grasp. Another thing about zero-gravity, it was really easy to carry people because they were near weightless. Grace was grateful for that.
Carefully, Grace maneuvered himself out of the submarine. He’d come back later to collect a sample of the blood and the fungus stuff, once he got the blood-soaked person into Mary and under the care of Armando.
And clean. Definitely clean.
Grace was glad he was in his space suit, because the Hail Mary did not have a shower.
Grace! Rocky exclaimed when he came into view. Grace adjusted his grip on the person, so he was bridal-carrying them. He used the submarine to kick off, floating swiftly toward Rocky.
“They’re badly injured,” Grace explained. He flew past Rocky and into the ship, being cautious of the person in his arms. “I need to get them to Armando.”
♪♫♩♬♪♩!
<Foreign body detected>
Floating through the doorways was something that Grace had gotten used to in the several years aboard the Hail Mary, but he hadn’t had to carry anyone since he’d sent his deceased crew off. It was awkward, but Grace quickly got to the dormitory where Armando was. About half of the room was taken up by Rocky’s xenonite enclosure, but there was still space for the beds. Small space, but space.
Armando sprung into action, several of its arms coming down from the ceiling and grabbing the person out of his hands. Grace, his hands now free, took his helmet off and barfed in it.
Why Grace make that noise, question?
Grace, who was now dry-heaving into his helmet, managed to answer Rocky dryly. “Humans vomit sometimes when they feel sick.”
Are you sick, question?
“You’re asking me too many questions, statement.” Grace wiped off his mouth and stood up straight again, a sour taste in his mouth. His Eridian friend had entered the room, shaking nervously.
Sorry.
With a sigh, Grace shook his head and turned his attention to the person on the bed. “It’s fine, Rock, I know you’re anxious…”
Armando had managed to devest the injured person of their clothes, and Grace could see the amount of damage done to their body. It was bad. Burns, cuts, a missing arm, and there was something wrong with their face that Grace couldn’t quite make out.
Grace turned and left the room. He was a coward, sue him. He’d never liked the sight of blood, always felt queasy when he saw someone get injured. His dad had wanted him to be a doctor, and then Grace fainted when his dad sliced the top of his finger off making dinner. He became a middle school teacher with a doctorate in microbiology instead.
Hopefully Armando could fix the poor guy up.
Grace took a quick breather in the cockpit, trying to bring his pulse down by breathing in for four seconds, holding it for four seconds, and breathing out for four seconds. He was shaking, clutching at his arms. He traced the massive burn scar on his own left arm, thinking about the person’s missing arm. Grace’s scar had come from his best friend sacrificing himself to save him. Rocky had left his own atmosphere, grabbed Grace, and dragged him to Armando. Rocky ran a lot, lot hotter than Grace did, and the point of contact had cauterized instantly, turning Grace’s arm into an ugly mess of scar tissue. It didn’t hurt anymore, had healed long ago, but right now Grace could feel the searing pain.
Gosh, had the submarine person ripped their own arm off? He cringed; he couldn’t imagine how absolutely agonizing that must have been.
<Status update: Male, late 20s or early 30s. Missing arm proximal to shoulder. Several broken ribs and slipped spinal discs. Multiple concussions, some severe. Extreme radiation poisoning. Deep burns on face, chest, and arm. Appendicitis. Liver damage due to alcohol ingestion. Left and right lungs punctured, left deflated>
Okay, so the person was male and not much younger than Grace. Cool. He was seriously injured, if by the whole missing arm thing alone. But also deep burns, appendicitis, punctured lungs…and extreme radiation poisoning?
“Hey, what do you mean by extreme radiation poisoning?” Grace asked, suddenly concerned.
<Patient absorbed radiation: 3.205 Grays>
“Oh my god.” Grace began to pace, floating back and forth in the small area of the cockpit. He’d taken his EVA suit off before he’d taken his breather, figuring he should probably not be wearing a bloody suit all around the Hail Mary. “That’s like, a lot of radiation. Oh my god, can someone survive that? Are Rocky and I contaminated?!”
Xenonite didn’t protect Rocky from radiation; his entire crew had died from radiation sickness from space travel, and Rocky was only safe because astrophage blocked radiation. If Rocky got contaminated now, how long would he have to live?
Oh god.
Is Grace okay, question? Rocky skittered into the room in one of his xenonite tunnels, using a hand-hold to not float in the zero-gravity. Radiation is what killed Rocky crew, bad bad bad.
<Low background radiation detected in ship. Radiation central to patient.>
Okay, that was good. The radiation was contained to the man. But where did it come from?
“Uh, maybe don’t go into that room for a while, bud,” Grace said. “Just in case.”
Agree. Rocky stay in lab.
…
Armando kept the updates going throughout the following days. The man, who Rocky had started to call the ‘Blood Man’ in Eridian, seemed to be doing better as the days went by. Armando kept him safe from infections, managed to reset slipped discs and broken bones, and took care of everything else that popped up.
It was weird. The man’s healing process was going much quicker than it should be. His ribs shouldn’t be already healed, nor the cuts on his skin disappear. The burns quickly faded into scarring on his face and arm, and his liver seemed to have fixed itself.
Even weirder? Not only did he seem to be developing gill-like flaps on his chest, under his armpits, but the man’s radiation levels were going down. Like. He went from 3 point whatever Grays of absorbed radiation to 1 Gray in a matter of two days, and now nearly a week later, he was back into ‘safe’ territory. He was still radiated, but most of his DNA seemed to be recovering and it was okay for Grace and Rocky to be in the same room as him. After all, he absorbed it, he himself wasn’t radioactive.
Around day 2, Grace had started to wonder how this guy even managed to accumulate so much radiation. So he suited up and back into the submarine he went.
He hadn’t been back in the submarine since the first time; any time he thought about the blood, he felt sick to his stomach. This time, he took a nausea relief pill or two before putting his EVA suit on, to at least have some kind of safe guard to spill his guts into his helmet. He was using Yao’s now.
Grace carried a sample collection kit with him, equipped with a few swabs and test tubes. He wanted to grab a couple samples of the blood and the stringy stuff, and see where the radiation might have come from.
It was just as gross going into the submarine the second time as it was the first. At least this time, Grace had something to expect. But still gross.
He quickly grabbed his samples of the blood, taken from multiple points in the ship to compare. He also took samples of both still-liquid blood and the dried blood on the wall. The stringy stuff was not as simple; it was incredibly brittle and broke off into fine dust when Grace tried to grab it. He huffed with frustration, having failed to successfully capture an intact string after nine attempts.
Instead of using his hand, this time he carefully slipped the glass test tub around a branch of dead goop and then lightly touched the attachment point, so that it broke there and landed in the tube safely.
“Ah-ha!” Grace exclaimed when he got three intact strings of whatever. He knew Rocky could hear him from inside the ship, but the alien was watching the Blood Man sleep. Watching an injured person sleep was much more important than watching Grace screw around for a half hour.
He carefully tucked the sample kit into one of the pockets on the EVA suit so that it wouldn’t break and began to look around the cramped space.
Grace could identify what seemed like the control panel of the sub. He couldn’t see much of what was on the control panel, due to the mass amount of dried blood coating it, but he was pretty sure. Towards the back was a computer, which interested him. If he could get it working, maybe he could get vital information about who this person was and where he came from.
And then there was the button.
It was large and threatening, and on the wall adjacent to it was a large screen. Against his better judgement, Grace pushed it.
The screen flashed bright light, nearly blinding Grace, who had not suspected that to happen. When his vision cleared, he only had a second before the light was gone. “The heck?” Was this a camera of some sort?
He pushed the button again.
The light flashed again, but this time he was prepared. There were black spots dotted across the screen, like the night sky in reverse. It faded quickly again.
Huh.
Grace turned back to the computer and attempted to boot it up. It made a loud SCREECH noise, like the whole damn thing was trying to disconnect from the wall. He knew that the noise had probably startled Rocky, being it was loud and grating and Rocky could hear like a billion times better than Grace could.
But eventually it started, loud fans beginning to spin within the massive machine.
[PASSWORD: ]
Shoot.
He tried a few different passwords, including:
123456 [INCORRECT]
123456789 [INCORRECT]
0987654321 [INCORRECT]
SM-13 [INCORRECT]
Grace gave up. He’d have Rocky make some kind of device or flash drive to connect to the computer and just download all the information on it. When the Blood Man woke up, maybe he could help decipher whatever there was.
On the way out, Grace nearly knocked his head on a medium-sized black box with a life vest strapped to it. Hmm. How hadn’t he noticed that before? Grace grabbed it and carefully pushed it out of the opening in the hull and into the tunnel. He followed suit, feeling a bit claustrophobic now. He couldn’t wait to disconnect from the damn submarine and leave it behind.
...
Grace worked on decoding the black box's information over the next several days. He was not a tech expert by far, and he was like 80% sure that if he gave the black box to Rocky, it would melt instantly. Luckily, Stratt had him equipped with every single bit of information on the planet, so it wasn't too hard for him to find a way to extract the information. Turns out, the Blood Man had already downloaded all the information from the sub's computer into the black box. He was likely trying to send the black box to the surface of whatever he was submerged in, if the life vest around it would suggest.
He managed to move the data from the black box to one of the computers in the Hail Mary's cockpit. Mary, what Grace had taken to calling the computer's systems, began to analyze it and pull out the most important information. But before he could begin to read what the SM-13 had been carrying, Grace heard a deafening scream.