Chapter Text
Finally, he could catch his breath.
Hugh took two tentative steps forward, both a labor even his exosuit couldn't quiet. He was exhausted, starving, and maybe a little bit concussed. It was hard to tell anymore. The ringing in his ears was constant by now, and the pain in his left abdomen was a hot knife twisting below his ribs. Every beat of his heart, he could feel it trying to claw deeper into his skin, tearing through his organs.
The dead filament.
When Eight had pierced his armor, the pain that came next was otherworldly. He'd taken a knife before, in his line of work it wasn't a surprise, but this was indescribable. Even with that modification, the ‘Black Box,’ he knew his time was up. It hadn't done a damn thing for him; in the end, he was going to see his squad again. A lot sooner than he had imagined.
He looked to his right. There, crushed and derelict in the launch bay, was the ship that would have taken them home. Loose panels and piping hung from its hull, and the cockpit’s glass was left a shattered lens. No way to get it off the moon, and not a viable means of getting home. But that was fine. He knew of one more way to escape, even if it came with a catch.
“Hugh…are you okay?”
Diana's voice pulled him from that numbing pain. She couldn't tell, but his teeth were gritted in the effort it took to take another step. Red codes flashed in his HUD, and none of them were good.
[SYSTEM LOG: CODE 0x0280F4]
HOST VITALS: CRITICAL
HR: 157
BLOOD OXYGEN: 79%
O2 LEVELS: 8%
SUIT INTEGRITY COMPROMISED
REPAIR ADVISED
MEDICAL TREATMENT ADVISED
CODE 12 INACTIVE
He blinked hard. “Don't worry…I made a promise, right? Better yet…” The heat in his side flared, but he ignored it. To be so close was almost relieving, but close to what, he already knew. Just a little farther, just a couple more steps. Always just a few steps away. “Once we're back on earth, you can walk for yourself.”
Diana leaned forward. “Hey! I can walk!”
“You sure?” He'd poked fun at her before, but now it took his mind off things. Her voice was a line through the fog. He wanted to memorize the sound of it. Even in another life, he didn't want to forget it.
“I do it all the time,” Diana argued, hopping down from his back. Her bare feet smacked against the cold floor as she walked past him. The weight off his shoulders was immediate. Was he really moving so slowly? “Here, look! I'm walking perfectly fine!”
It was a wonder that she didn't pick up on his labored breathing. The wheezing gasps for what little air he had left. He watched her patter further away, hopping between steps to prove herself. Through the pain, he smiled. “You'll be back on me in no time,” he huffed. Her smile. He saw it often, and usually on account of his actions, but here? It dulled the pain, if only a little.
“Thats not true!” She called out to him, already making for the shuttle bay. She couldn't know it, but she was right.
Hugh kept his pace almost even with hers. Even now, he was cautious and watchful for anything that might be lurking in the shadows. He'd been caught off guard at every corner in the Cradle, but not here. They were alone, and the quiet was deafening. “Can't rely on me forever, y'know.”
He watched her cross the catwalk, just in front of his wrecked transport ship. It felt like a lifetime ago that he'd stepped off his with the rest of the team, completely blind to the hell that waited for them. Another step, and another, and he felt the catwalk sway. No, he was falling, and his vision was getting dark. One hand gripped the guardrail to steady himself, and his suit whirled to provide support. “I'll do whatever it takes…” he gasped, “to get you back to earth. …No matter what.”
The damage to his suit arced, but he pushed himself up and drew in a sharp breath. It felt like needles in his lungs, and the air was stale and dry.
“Hugh!” Diana ran back to the catwalk, pointing a way to his left. How long had he been standing here? “Theres a cargo ship!”
“Really?” He smiled, his face filling the visor between them. Maybe it was stupid to lead her along like this, but what else could he do? He wasn’t a father, wasn’t some hero who got the happy ending. He was just a guy, hoping to do something good. As long as she made it home safe, he would endure whatever else the moon could throw at him. They'd done it together, and they could end it together, too. Maybe it was a second wind, but he took larger steps, swayed less, and managed to catch up to her.
“Can we go to earth in that?”
She was pointing towards the station's autonomous delivery bay. Her messy blonde hair swayed as she walked, and Hugh's smile vanished. Frankly, it was perfect. “Yeah…might just pull this off.” More red flashes from his HUD, but he swiped them away. Too late to try now. The dead filament had him on the ropes, and according to Diana, there was nothing he could do to stop it. He opted to spend his last few minutes at peace and enjoy the company he had.
“Diana?”
“What, Hugh?” She hopped to walk beside him, her little arms swinging over her oversized coat.
“…thanks.”
She beamed him a smile. “No problem!”
It was anyone's guess what she thought he was thanking her for, but that was enough. Wherever she ended up, as long as she knew he was grateful. For everything she'd given him.
The two of them walked out onto an open platform beset by two guided rail-launch systems. Only one craft remained, left in some half-loaded state by the shipping personnel before… well, before they were killed. There were a few boxes stacked inside, leaving only a quarter of the space empty. It would have to do.
“Is this how we're going to earth?” Diana asked, pattering over to the side hatch and peeking in.
Hugh rested a hand on the side of the hull to catch his breath, his fingers trailing over the large, prominent warning written there: FREIGHTER. NOT FOR HUMAN USE. His insides felt like they were unraveling, but he ignored it and nodded. “A cargo shuttle. It is what it is.” He took to pushing the loaded cargo around to make a bit more room for her, but he was sure not to make too much.
There was dead filament in his body, and if even an ounce of the stuff made it to earth? Yeah, Diana could delete it, but why take a chance? Probably better he stayed at the station anyway, lower odds of the stuff getting loose, less headache. He knew he couldn't go, and in a minute, she finally would too.
Diana waited for him to load her into the freed-up space, and with screaming limbs, he hoisted her in. “Tight fit, but it'll do,” he huffed over his pounding heart. His exosuit groaned with the effort, like it was trying to hold him back. She was lighter than he remembered, but so heavy at the same time.
Standing in the nearly full cargo shuttle, Diana's smile finally softened. “What about you?” She asked. It was such an innocent question, but he couldn't give her an honest answer. Not yet.
“Explosions messed everything up. Full-automation's not an option,” he explained. “Gotta push it to the end of the rail. Hang tight.”
She nodded, her warm smile back long enough for him to see it through the closing viewport. The moment the door hissed shut, he realized how quiet the station was, and how loud his heart was beating. Every breath was a gasp, and each step towards the control console may as well have been a mile. If she had known better, she would have asked why the controls still worked. Would have asked why he had to push the shuttle to the launch platform. Mercifully, she didn't.
The ship slowly lowered down to the rail, Diana watching his every move with rapt interest. Even something so trivial. The circular track doors hissed open, and with grating effort, Hugh jumped down to the rail, his legs almost giving way despite his suit's assistance. He started pushing, every scrape of metal another inch towards freedom, and peace.
“Hugh?” Diana's voice, muffled by the shuttle, but clear enough to catch him off guard. “Is everything alright?”
“Yeah! It's a heavy bugger,” he hissed back, slowly pushing the craft through the waiting doors.
“I wanna help!” She called out to him.
Sweat pooled around his visor and flashes of pain nearly took him with every step, but he was getting there. “Stay put. It's too risky.” The doors behind them slowly groaned shut, and the acclimation chamber’s pods began to remove the atmosphere in the room. Finally, the weight of his suit, of his limbs, began to die down. Within moments, he was weightless, and the door to the outer launch rail opened. To give it that extra push, he activated his suit's thrusters, and the shuttle ground forward.
“Let me hack it!” Diana called out, her voice barely audible. Hugh winced, but he pressed on. Only a little more to go.
“No need, just gotta give it a bit of the old elbow grease…”
He had to close his eyes. He wasn't a cryer, never really had been, but then, he wasn't much for kids either. He'd lost enough today, and all he had to do was let go one more time. He could rest after that, find a nice corner of the platform to crawl to, prop himself up, and watch the world spin.
The shuttle locked into place at the launch rails' main position, and the red caution holograms blinked into place. Hugh relaxed his arms and swung to the side of the craft, but he found another problem waiting for him.
UNABLE TO INITIATE LAUNCH. INSUFFICIENT ENERGY
The words blared on the small screen, and he bit down a curse. It was hard to believe that these bozos couldn't even keep a shuttle charged, but then they went and got their station blown to hell, so that was that.
“Hugh?”
He tried to ignore her as he pried open the electrical panel, finding three separate connection ports waiting. They had kept their shuttles charged after all, just not for the long haul since they'd left them. Hugh glanced toward the earth, and for a terrifying second, he wondered if he could really do this. There wasn't anything here for her, he knew that, but…why did it feel like he was betraying her? Maybe he was. Had he just a little more time, he could have worked something out. Could have spent his last few minutes with her. He shook the terrible thought and swallowed.
“Time to bring it in.” Carefully, he pulled the shuttle's main charge pack from the panel and let it drift away. He pulled his own from his suit. Immediately, life support systems began to fail, and his emergency backup power unit kicked on. It would last for a few minutes, which was more than he needed. He plugged the charg pack into the ship, closed the panel, and drifted towards the viewport.
There, he saw Diana, watching him carefully. Her smile was gone, and her eyes bore into his with a thousand questions he couldn't answer. “Hugh…?”
As he held fast to the handles, Hugh felt the last of his worries ease. “Bad news…” he muttered. With a flex of his jaw, his visor flipped open to reveal what he'd been hiding from her since Doctor Higgins’ lab. Her eyes widened, and she flinched back in horror. “This is where we say goodbye.”
He could see his reflection in the viewport: a fine-looking man, marred by something akin to rot creeping up his cheek. Dark, iridescent filament had made its way through his organs like a wrecking ball, and now it was eating him from the outside.
Diana pressed her hand to the glass in an effort to delete the runaway substance. But it was no use. Her hacking couldn't breach the shuttle, and it would have done nothing for him anyway. She whimpered, looking around his face, the viewport, the shuttle, anywhere for something to fix this. To fix him. But he knew there was nothing that could.
“Sorry, squirt,” he huffed.
“No! I-I wanna stay with you!” She cried out, her breath almost as rapid and ragged as his. She looked terrified, but not Hugh. With the chips on the table, with his life on the line, he knew this was exactly where he wanted to be.
“It's okay,” he offered honestly, “You're gonna be okay.” She watched him, desperate for something better than what she had. He looked at her hand pressed against the glass and put his to match it. Even now, she was perfect. A light in the middle of this horrible place. Something better than the world itself had to offer, and something he knew he had no right holding onto. The green lights of the launch rail signaled an initiated takeoff, and he slowly drifted back, away from her.
“Go find the sea.”
He smiled, watching her pound on the glass and cry out for him. She was gonna be okay. She was off to a better place thanks to him, and he knew he would go peacefully, thanks to her. His HUD flashed red, repeating the warning: LOW BATTERY at the base of his vision. He ignored that too.
With a muted boom, the shuttle's engines flared to life, and Hugh let himself be pushed back. He floated harmlessly towards the station, and Diana rocketed off for the little blue marble in the distance. Then, there was quiet.
“Have a safe journey…kiddo.”
Hugh closed his eyes. All he could hear was the whir of his suit's life support systems spoiling down. The hum of his actuators fell silent. The darkness so deep and vast, it may as well have been…an ocean…he could swim in.
It was time to let go.
But then, something else.
Something not so quiet.
Something not so dark.
[CODE 12 BLACK BOX]
[INITIATE]
Hugh’s eyes snapped open, but he didn't see the stars. He saw a lattice of burning gold lines etched across the void. His heart, which had slowed to a final, sluggish thump, was suddenly seized. A rhythmic, electric jolt slammed into his chest, forcing his lungs to draw in a ragged, desperate gasp of the last stale liter of oxygen.
His body felt like it'd been encased in lead. He felt heavy. Dense.
[HOST STATUS: RESUSCITATED]
[MOD STATUS: OVERRIDING BIOLOGICAL REJECTION]
The hot knife in his side, the dead filament, it was still there, but it felt... cold. The iridescent rot on his cheek felt like it had been turned to stone. He had no idea what was happening, but it felt new and invasive. Like someone had forced cool water through his veins, flushing out the steel and decay.
He looked at his hands. They were shaking, but the suit’s actuators groaned, forcing his fingers to curl into a fist.
The Mod.
Hugh felt his vision pulse. Every time his heart was forced to beat, a wave of static washed over his eyes, turning the launch bay into a ghost of itself.
[STAGE 1: VASCULAR ISOLATION]
The coldness in his side intensified, turning from a chill to a deep, biting frost. He looked down and saw the iridescent veins over his suit’s metallic layers begin to turn a dull, matte grey. The mod was cauterizing the corruption at the source. It felt like his nerves were being pulled taut like guitar strings, vibrating at a frequency that made his teeth ache. He tried to scream, but his jaw was locked in a mechanical spasm.
[STAGE 2: FILAMENT NEUTRALIZATION]
It felt like a flush; it started at the base of his skull like a sharp, electric tingle that raced down his spine. He could see it in his peripheral vision: the dark, oily shimmer of the filament on his cheek was being pushed back by a creeping lattice of white-blue light. It was a war being fought in his capillaries, in his skin, his bones. He could hear it– a faint, high-pitched whine that drowned out the silence of the vacuum. It had to have been nanites tearing into the filament, breaking the alien structure down into inert carbon.
[STAGE 3: BIOLOGICAL REBOOT]
"Get... out..." he managed to choke out, the words thick and metallic. As the stone sensation moved from his cheek down to his throat, his breathing suddenly changed. The wheeze was gone, replaced by a forced, rhythmic intake of air that didn't feel like his own. The mod was taking over his diaphragm, pacing his breaths to maximize what little O2 was left in the suit’s scrubbers. What power was it running on? Why did a mod have the capability to… he blinked, hard.
The pain wasn't gone; nothing that invasive could be painless, but it was manageable. It was a dull, heavy throb, like a limb that had fallen asleep and was finally waking up with a thousand needles. Hugh’s hand stopped shaking. He realized the pressure he felt was his suit clamping down on his fingers to give him more precise control.
[OVERRIDE COMPLETE]
[STABILIZATION REACHED]
[ESTIMATED OPERATIONAL TIME IN: 08:42]
BATTERY REMAINING: 01:34
‘What in the…?’ He pulled up his HUD and checked his vitals; despite his unfocused vision, he could make out the readings clearly. Everything was beginning to stabilize. His insides felt like mash, and everything hurt. Slowly, of course, he was coming back around. “Looks like…I might actually pull–” Hugh stopped, suddenly whipping around to face the empty launch track, and the blue sphere beyond it.
‘Diana…’
Making to push himself towards the end of the line, he stopped when the red battery icon in his peripheral flashed. Not good. In less than a minute, his suit would lose all power functions, and he'd be right back where he started: dying. But there was a chance, hidden away even up here on the elevator. The transport ship had to have spare batteries, if he could make it. Deciding that there was nothing he could do now but focus on his survival, he kicked off for the airlock and slammed into the control console beside it. He punched in the override code, slipped through the still-opening doors, already at the next door by the time they started closing.
“Come on! Why does everything here take so damn long!” he shouted. Every second was one second closer to death. The moment the airlock began to open, the weight of his suit returned, as did his feet to the ground. His extremities felt like he was wading through tar. He pushed himself through the doors and took off for the landing platform, counting the seconds in his head. No time to think, just act.
The fires raging in the loading bay cast wicked shadows through mangled wreckage, but he had a way through. ‘Two days…running around a moon base…with a kid on your back, fighting for your life? This…is nothing.’ He weaved his way through with heavy footfalls. Too risky to waste thrusters on speed, so he pushed off of any surface he could get his hands on.
[BATTERY: 2%]
The hanger beyond the loading bag was a twisted cathedral of scorched white plating and sparking wires. There, slumped like a dead beast in the center of the bay, was the transport. The ship that should have taken him home, dead or alive. But just as he was approaching the airlock, the gravity gave out, and the lights flicked off. “Damnit!” he shouted, “Not yet! Just a little more!”
His movements were jerky and puppet-like. His suit was overcorrecting his delayed movements to stay upright, but it was the least of his concerns. He couldn't waste power on a light, so he kept pushing for the airlock. They had a manual release, and he didn't need the pressurization systems to engage. He reached the darkened doors, his fingers numb from the cold as he punched in the manual override. The hangar doors began to groan open with emergency servos
[BATTERY: 1%]
He had seconds. Hugh floated into the airlock and forced the release lever down. The door cracked open and ground to a stop. Absent of the rush of air through the slim opening, he pried his fingers into the gap and pushed, hoping for a miracle. Slowly, the orange metal sheets began to separate, letting the light from outside pour in as air poured out. With a gap just big enough to squeeze through, Hugh let the rush of the artificial atmosphere carry him through and let his suit drift towards the transport.
[BATTERY: 0%]
The HUD flickered once, offered the pathetic ghost of a "Goodbye" message, and then died. The internal heaters cut out, his air scrubbers died, and then his visor went black. The silence of the vacuum became absolute, save for the sound of his own frantic, shallow pulse echoing in his jaw.
Not yet. He didn't need eyes.
He held his hands in front of him, ignoring the futility of his breathing for the dead air in his suit. He could feel himself drifting until finally, he felt the hull of the transport. ‘Door to the right, find the release, get inside. Charge packs should be right around the corner.”
He patted the cold hull of the ship, though cold was irrelevant, given that he could only feel the resistance of his unpowered suit. The hatch release rose to his falling hand, and with searing effort, he forced it down. A muffled groan of metal through his suit told him the door was open, and with a final pull, he knew he was inside. There were white stars flickering in his vision, dancing around his peripheral and fading in and out.
Slowly, he reached into the ship's power containment unit, his hand closing around the cold, heavy brick of a spare battery.
With a guttural grunt, he ripped it free and slammed it into his suit's external port.
“Please…just once…gimme something…”
Silence.
He was dying, and the silence was all he knew.
BATT_CELL_DETECTED: [FUSION-X9DS3]
VOLTAGE_IN: [STABLE]
INITIATING_COLD_BOOT…
>CORE_SYSTEMS_INIT
>CPU_ARRAY: [ONLINE]
>NEURAL_MESH: MAPPING PATHWAYS... [SYNCHED]
>HAPTIC_FEEDBACK: TESTING... [CALIBRATED]
>O2_SCRUBBERS: FLOW NOMINAL
>INT_TEMP: 22°C // EXT_TEMP: 4°C
ACTUATOR_DIAGNOSTICS
>SERVO_L_ARM: [OK]
>SERVO_R_ARM: [OK]
>SERVO_L_LEG: [OK]
>SERVO_R_LEG: [OK]
>TORQUE_LIMITERS: DISENGAGED
[SYSTEM REBOOT]
[POWER RESTORED: 100%]
The HUD flared back to life with a searing blue that made him wince. Oxygen hissed into his helmet, sweet and sharp. He slumped against the ship, gasping as his head thudded against the hull. He was alive, and now, all he wanted to do was rest. "Okay. I think…I'm ready to clock out for the day," he wheezed. While he used a repair cartridge, he looked toward the distant, reinforced doors of the landing pad. The elevator was definitely not viable; maybe he could perform a controlled descent? Use his thrusters to scale down, or even a combat rig?
He glanced back towards the shipping bay, and his heart sank.
She was gone.
She was probably a thousand miles out by now, and it wasn't like he could walk after her. She would land somewhere, maybe at a Delphi shipping depot, and… He didn't want to dwell on the idea of what might happen to her. At best, she would be taken in by Delphi for study and allowed to live as freely as she had with Doctor Higgins. At worst? He didn't wanna dwell on that either.
‘But you're alive,’ he thought wryly. ‘You can find her. It's just gonna take some time. And a shitload of luck.”
Time. He didn't know how much of the stuff he had. Maybe an hour, maybe a week, years? Whatever the Black Box mod was doing to him, he couldn't imagine it was permanent, or good for his health, for that matter. He needed medical treatment. And something to eat. Maybe some rest, and eventually, a way off this rock that didn't involve a freighter. His helmet scraped the hull of the transport as he looked around at torn plating and hanging wires. “Yeah…probably not.”
At least a couple of his immediate worries could be solved with a trip back to the shelter. So, he pulled himself up and took a deep breath. The numbness hadn't abated, but at the very least, all of his suit's systems were in working order.
He gripped the rails on either side of the hatch, but he stopped short. Staring down, he didnt see the Cradle, or the damage. He saw his team in their final moments, cracking jokes and horsing around with each other. And then they were gone. Everyone was gone. He was brutally alone for the first time in a very long time, and he found the bitter taste of it familiar.
“Only person alive on the moon,” he huffed to himself. “Never thought…ugh…I'd miss people so much.”
The trip down the exterior maintenance spine was a slow-motion nightmare. With the main elevator car nothing more than a twisted cage of steel thousands of feet below, Hugh was forced to use the emergency service rungs. Normally, the suit’s mag-grips would make this a breeze, but the mod was doing something to his neural interface. Every time he reached for a bar, there was a half-second lag. Like he was blinking between movements without realizing it.
He climbed in a rhythmic, mechanical stupor. Left. Right. Lock. Slide. Below him, the Cradle looked like a toy city broken by a frustrated child. Technically, thats exactly what it was. From this height, he could see the sprawling domes, the wrecked shell beneath IDUS's mainframe, the solar array; everything. It was a tomb. A multitrillion-dollar monument to a dream that had turned into a parasite.
He paused on a narrow ledge to swap his internal O2 filters.
The silence was the worst part, but there was beauty out there, even now.
“Hey, squirt, look at the–” The words died in his throat, dry and bitter. He’d reached for his shoulder to point out the curvature of the lunar horizon, a habit he'd only picked up over the last day or so. His hand met empty air. The weight was gone. The constant, shifting pressure of Diana’s small frame, the way she’d lean into his helmet to see what he was looking at. It was like a phantom limb now.
He caught his reflection in a shard of glass near a shattered observation port. The "Vascular Isolation" the suit had performed wasn't pretty. The right side of his face, the side with the filament rot, looked frozen. The skin was a dull, necrotic grey, and tiny white-blue pinpricks of light, probably nanites, pulsed just under the surface like a heartbeat that wasn't his.
He looked less like a man and more like a piece of salvaged hardware. “Just keep moving,” he croaked. His own voice sounded foreign in the small confines of his helmet. “Tram station. One foot. Other foot. Heh…now look who can't walk on their own.”
By the time he reached the upper tram hub, his legs were locking up. He felt hollow, or maybe that was because his organs were still failing. The station was a ghost town. A lone tram car sat at the platform, its doors cycling open and closed in a mindless loop. The "Arrivals" board flickered with names of destinations that no longer existed, or at least, no longer held anyone living.
He stepped into the tram. The floor was littered with dust and scraps of half-printed filament. The giant thing had torn through much of the station, but with luck, there was enough left to navigate. After punching in his destination, Hugh slumped against the chair as the tram lurched into motion. He didn't say a word. What was the point of saying it when the one person he wanted to say it to wasn't here?
He watched the moon's grey surface blur past the window. When the tram slipped below ground, he caught the reflection of his helmet staring back at him. It looked…scary. Dented and scarred, even with his repairs. With a flex of his jaw, the visor flipped open. He looked broken, in more ways than one, but despite it all, he managed a grin.
“Almost home, Kiddo.”