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Simon had managed to figure out three things at this point.
Maybe it was more, or maybe he was wrong about it entirely and it was less, but what he did know was this. His captors {saviours?} didn't want him dead. That was fact number 1, a fact he was reminded of with the rolling of a bottle by his side, the liquid already gone at this point, though he'd been sparing in case it was a fluke or it had been poisoned, time had passed enough where what remained of it was gone.
Water, for sure, or something that tasted close enough to it, soothing his throat like a prayer, a cool touch to his fevered state.
They had water, water to spare, and water they were willing to give him.
Okay, so maybe Simon did know more than three things, actually, but that fell under one singular bracket.
Fact 1: They Had Water To Spare.
The second one he was less certain off but it seemed like his captors couldn't speak the same tongue as him. There was a clear language barrier that he wasn't sure how to overcome or whether he wanted to jump over it in the first place. It seemed to only work one way though, for better or worse, his captors understood him. His request for water, his unspoken request to not enter his room. The weird knocking. He still wasn't quite sure what to make of the third gesture, other than they could hear him and could repeat it, but couldn't repeat the words he was saying.
If he had to throw a guess out into the abyss, it seemed like they communicated similarly through noise but the noise itself was befittingly alien. Chords and notes that he knew better than to try in his fucked up state and probably would have not been able to replicate even if he wasn't feeling like he'd been torn into tiny smithereens and welded back together.
There was a delay, but he was understood and they seemed strangely willing to acquiesce him.
For now.
So…Fact 2: They Understood Him.
And that wasn't a vague they. They, plural.
So Fact 2.5: There Was More Than One.
He's not really sure how he'd manage to pin it down, considering he kept the door firmly shut, had shoved the bed in front of it to give him some form of barricade, a warning should anyone intrude, the only way he was able to manage to close his eyes for five minutes to get some form of sleep—
Right. The half-fact, was that there was more than one captor. From what he could strain to hear, they moved similarly, their movement muffled as if there was a layer over their shoes, silencing them to an extent. Similarly, but not the same. The weight distribution was different, one moved with a little more grace, the other bulky, less concerned about knocking into things, letting out that strange chirp whenever they managed to hit Something on the other-side of the Door. At least two, though occasionally the chirps and trills and whatever noises they made overlapped and synced in such a way that it felt there were five people.
People?
He mulls it over, chewing his bottom lip and spinning the bottle around with his forefinger. People. Strangers. Captors. Whatever, the label mattered little. Multiple though, circling or standing outside of whatever container he'd been put in, and though there were no windows, the sliver of space beneath the Door his sole access without shifting the handle tiny enough that he didn't think something could Look underneath—
Simon had the discomforting sense of being perpetually observed.
Eyes staring down at him from every angle though he checked over and over and over and over—
Fact 3.
The Door.
A huff under his breath, hand tucking a couple of strands behind his ear — grim, they needed a wash. He hadn't spared any water for that, might die in filth. In filth, and darkness, surrounded and watched, but alone and— Three heavy blinks as he looks up towards a ceiling he couldn't see. Too dark.
The door, rather, he corrects. A thought that honestly makes his stomach squirm, less in discomfort and horror and more a sheer sense of embarrassment, not that anybody would be able to know how much it fucking terrified him. How much it still terrified him. He had, briefly, assumed the door had been alive.
It had in all honesty felt reasonable at the time, considering his situation and previous encounters that there was something that could mimic an object as a form of—trap? Simon wasn't really sure where he was headed with that line of thinking, dropping it before he could examine it any further.
What mattered was that he was incorrect.
Vastly.
Or well, not too vastly, the door did move, there was no mistaking that, but it seemed to be more a case of the door being made of interlocking, overlapping polygons of material, the connections smooth and hard to distinguish unless you spent far too long examining them. But it was inanimate. Not unmoving, it seemed like his captors simply implemented a mechanism that would allow them to deposit stuff into his cell without opening it.
Meaning they could open the door themselves at any point and the handle was entirely for his benefit.
Or his detriment, to fake him out into believing the only way the door might open would be with the turn of the handle.
Fact 1: They Had Water To Spare.
Fact 2: They Could Understand Him.
Fact 2.5: They Were Multiple. Or, There Were Multiple. Of Them. Outside.
Fact 3: The Door, Mercifully, Was Just A Door.
…
Fact 4: Their Technology Was Entirely Bizarre, Unknown & Terrifying.
Simon had in fact been incorrect — he knew a fair bit actually, or a little more than expected, especially if he did the work to break down the facts further, like with the water, what it could mean for him, for Eden, for Humanity, for—
"-Hear?"
The static shakes him, not much, but enough for the bottle to slip away and slide toward the bed, breath held as it clinked against the door.
"Can you hear this. Question?"
It's static, the voice robotic, not quite human, though there's elements to it that echo the warmth of a person's speech. It's a little high, accented in a way he didn't quite recognize, the 'r' soft, almost slipping away, the 'you' round and warm, even though he knew for a fact it was a Machine Making The Noise. Not his captors, not directly, but something they were using, potentially? He stays quiet, silent, staring in the direction of where he'd approximate the sound came from, a corner with a speaker, perhaps, not that he could see it. "Please respond, if not, we send check inside to confirm status."
And you wouldn't like that, the threat sits pretty, simply implied and he can't help but think that maybe this was some new method of torture from the C.O.I. Maybe he'd fucked up enough that when he exploded, he got dragged out into here to—
"Yeah." A grunt, rough and unwilling to say anything more, to bow his head to his captors further than needed, not quite sure if they were able to hear him and a part of him almost wants to say something louder, sharper, a biting word in their direction to make certain they didn't drop by—
"Good, good, good." Another hint of static, the sound not quite coming through correctly as if travelling through layers to reach him. "You have drank water." A statement, not a question. Confirming to themselves what they already knew and the thought that there was something more than just a way of hydrating him in the bottle resurfaces as easy as anything. "Food come soon." One more thing to add to the list, a wary look to the door and the slit below it, noting that his captors didn't seem directly near it at this point in time. He could try and make a break for it.
Run into the unknown head first.
"Box will be moved soon."
And—
Was that another threat? That he was getting kicked out? Dragged out? Were they going to move it without him? It was a box then, that he was being kept in? Would they keep him in it? Drop him in the sea again? Drag him down into the depths, nothing but the sliver, the blood flooding in until he was submerged yet again, all for nothing, for nothing, for no—
"Sorry, sorry!" There's a high-pitched whine, breaking into the room and eardrums trying to revolt against it by deafening him and only making the whine sharper. It's not how hearing worked, he doesn't think. Then again, he can't actually think, the thoughts flopping around uselessly alongside every other question of—
Where would it go? What was the box made of? Why was he in the box? Should he just open the door? He could open the door. He should open the door. Leave. He could leave, should leave, run, run, run and don't look back but—
There was nowhere to run.
Not on Eden.
Not in the Lung.
Not in the Ocean.
Perpetually cornered.
"Human, at ease," A poor man's effort of soothing, the name, the word, nudging him towards another fact he had confirmed to himself but hadn't prepared to have proven true, the whirring of something, the beating of another, the noise. It was a mess. His thoughts were a mess. Fucking fuck, he just needed—
"You will be safe." Right. "You—" The words stop, a flicker of alarm as if the illusion might've broken, ready to face a different nightmare entirely, before the trill comes through the door, words coming through again, a different voice, still mechanical, not quite right. "Sorry, sorry, sorry — you're — you sleep. Go sleep, now."
Simon's not quite fast enough to reach the door when the slit starts to close up on itself, shutting him inside the coffin box, the promise of it moving, of him being moved, the ocean returning, mechanical whirring that he's not sure quite existed, the—