Chapter Text
Blazing hot ammonia flooded the airlock and dormitory. I slammed the airlock door behind me and spun the lock. Hissing erupted on the other side, loud and violent, but I couldn’t see anything anymore. Can’t even breathe.
The ammonia had hit me straight on. No cover. No shielding. Certainly no glasses on my face to protect my eyes even a little. Just superheated ammonia directly to the face like the universe personally decided I’d gone too long since I’d last suffered five minutes ago.
I’m screaming, I thought. Or maybe gurgling. Hard to tell when my throat felt like it’s being flayed open from the inside. I hit the floor hard, writhing as fire tore through my lungs and airways. Every breath felt like inhaling knives.
My eyes burned so badly I couldn’t keep them open. Tears poured nonstop down my face, thick enough to blur everything into useless smears of light and shadow. My nose—forget it. The smell is so overpowering that it looped right past horrible and into complete sensory failure.
I could barely breathe. My throat kept trying to close entirely, my body violently rejecting the ammonia currently invading every available space inside me. I coughed and choked and sobbed against the floor, but even that hurt too much to keep doing for long.
So I just lay there twitching and writhing and crying.
Honestly, not my most heroic moment.
Pain pulsed through my exposed skin in heavy waves. Arms. Neck. Face. Everywhere the ammonia had touched feels cooked alive. My lungs seized every few seconds, forcing broken coughing fits out that scraped my throat rawer each time.
I blacked out eventually. Probably my brain having decided that this whole experience was above its pay grade.
When I woke again, my eyes were beginning to crust shut from tears, and I couldn’t even lift my arms properly, so I just forced them open the hard way. Fresh pain spiked immediately. Excellent.
Everything was blurry, shapes and blobs of light swimming through water.
I stared at the ceiling for a second, trying to remember who I am and why existence hurt. Then it all came rushing back. Rocky. The ammonia. The airlock.
“Mmffh.”
Yeah. Inspiring first words after nearly chemically exfoliating my own face off.
I laid there for a while longer because apparently my body had unionised and decided movement was against workplace safety regulations. Every pulse of my heartbeat sent another wave of burning through me. Arms. Neck. Face. Lungs. Especially my lungs.
The room smelled like concentrated cat piss marinated in death. I couldn’t even properly smell it anymore—my nose had gone numb somewhere between 'mild irritation' and 'industrial accident'. My eyes were streaming again, tears leaking sideways into my ears. Every blink felt like sandpaper dragged over exposed nerves.
I tried lifting one arm. Bad plan. Very bad plan. Pain detonated through my skin so violently that I nearly blacked out again.
“Great,” I croaked—or tried to. My voice sounded shredded. Like I’d gargled razor blades for fun.
I stayed on the floor another minute. Or maybe it was ten. Hard to tell. Time got weird when your nervous system is on fire.
Eventually, I managed to crack my eyes open farther. Everything was still smeared together in watery shapes because my tears kept flooding my vision faster than I could blink them away. I could barely focus on anything long enough to identify it.
Then I saw it. A brown blur sat on the other side of the room. Rocky.
Thank God. Or thank science. Or thank terrifying interspecies friendship. Whatever worked.
They weren’t moving. Rocky was just… sprawled where I had left them, thankfully on their side of the airlock in an ammonia-rich atmosphere.
I stared at Rocky through the blur, trying to figure out if they were breathing. Which was difficult considering Eridians didn’t breathe in any recognisable human way. For all I knew, Rocky was perfectly fine. For all I knew, they were dead.
Panic stabbed through the haze.
“Rock…” The word dissolved into coughing. There was instant regret as my lungs seized. Agony ripped through my chest and throat so violently that I curled instinctively onto my side. Thick red globs of something mucus-like hit the floor while I hacked like a lifelong smoker who’d taken up inhaling lava recreationally.
Okay.
Good news: lungs still operational.
Bad news: they were filing formal complaints.
I forced myself to look back at Rocky. I hoped I’d gotten them into the ammonia fast enough. Hoped the delay hadn’t killed them. Hoped they weren’t currently dying while I rolled around on the floor having the world’s least dignified chemical exposure incident.
But there wasn’t anything I could do for them. That realisation settled cold and awful in my stomach. Rocky needed ammonia. I needed literally anything except ammonia currently. So unless I’d suddenly become a miracle worker who could withstand superheated ammonia, the only useful thing I could do was avoid dying myself.
Step one in helping your alien friend: do not perish dramatically in front of their unconscious body.
I groaned and planted one shaking hand against the floor. The skin on my palm screamed in protest.
“Oh, come on,” I whispered.
My exposed skin had taken the brunt of it. Forearms, neck, part of my jaw and face. Anywhere the ammonia blast had hit directly now throbbed with deep burns. The pain wasn’t sharp anymore. It was thicker than that. Dense. Like molten metal poured under my skin.
I got one knee underneath me. The room tilted, and my already distorted vision fuzzed black around the edges.
“Nope,” I muttered. “Not today, brain.”
I took another breath, tiny and careful, before I shoved myself upright using the wall. I immediately regretted that too. My sleeve had partially burned where the superheated ammonia hit hardest, and when my forearm dragged against the metal—
The fabric, and the skin it was attached to, came with it.
I didn’t understand what happened at first. Just resistance. Then a sudden wet, tearing sensation. Then agony—a horrible, bright agony so intense my knees nearly folded again.
I made a noise somewhere between a scream and a dying goat. “Oh JESUS—”
I jerked away from the wall and stared stupidly at my arm through blurred vision. A strip of skin had peeled loose along my forearm, angry red underneath, already slicking with blood.
“Oh God,” I wheezed.
My stomach lurched. Do not throw up. Throwing up with a chemically burned throat sounded like a speedrun to permanent psychological damage.
I leaned against the opposite wall more carefully this time and concentrated on breathing. In. Pain. Out. Pain again. There, no need to vomit. Wonderful.
“Mary,” I rasped.
The ship answered instantly through the overhead speakers. “Yes, Dr Grace?”
“I think…” I swallowed and nearly cried from it. Well, cried more than I already was. “I think I may be in a small medical situation.”
“Your current condition is consistent with severe ammonia exposure.”
“Ah. So you noticed.”
“Your respiratory distress is significant.”
“No kidding.”
“Chemical burns are present on exposed skin. Ocular damage is also likely.”
“Love that for me.”
I pushed away from the wall, this time with my skin intact, and staggered into the corridor. Walking turned out to be ambitious. My balance was shot to hell. Between the pain, blurry vision, lack of oxygen, and recent unconsciousness, I moved like a drunk. I bounced off one wall, corrected too hard, then nearly stumbled into the opposite side.
Every step jarred my lungs. Every breath burned. Tears kept pouring from my eyes nonstop, blurring everything into shimmering shapes.
“Medical bay is twenty paces ahead,” Mary supplied helpfully.
“Thanks.” I promptly slammed shoulder-first into what I could only assume to be a doorway. “Ow.”
“You appear disoriented. Please proceed to the medical bay.”
“Jeez, you—?” Another cough ripped out of me, hard enough my vision spotted black.
Something warm dripped from my nose. Probably blood. At this point it felt rude for my body not to bleed from at least two places.
When I finally lurched into the medical bay and nearly sobbed with relief. ARMando had already unfolded from the ceiling mount, its articulated arms snapping into motion with horrifying efficiency the instant I was in range.
I hated that robot. I loved that robot. Mostly I hated how smug it somehow managed to look despite not having a face. The arm swept over me.
“Patient condition critical,” Mary announced calmly.
“Bit dramatic,” I rasped.
“Blood oxygen levels are reduced. Chemical damage to mucous membrane is extensive.”
“Okay, yeah, fair.”
ARMando grabbed my shoulder and guided—okay, forced—me onto the medical bed. I tried helping but my limbs disagreed. Still, the moment I sat down another spike of agony shot through my arm where I’d ripped the skin off. I hissed through clenched teeth.
ARMando sprayed something cold across the wound and I nearly ascended right there and then. “AAAHH—”
The robotic arm pinned me instantly.
“Patient movement detected,” Mary reported.
“No, really?” I retorted through gritted teeth.
“Wound sterilisation in progress. Desist movement.”
“It feels like acid!”
“The wound was caused by a chemical agent.”
“Oh, good point.” My almost hysterical laughter dissolved into another coughing fit.
ARMando worked with terrifying speed. One manipulator cut away parts of my sleeve while another flushed the exposed burns. The instant the liquid touched my skin, I screamed. No dignity left. None whatsoever. Just full-volume agony.
My burned skin felt simultaneously frozen and on fire. The saline wash carried the traces of ammonia away, which apparently was medically beneficial and spiritually catastrophic.
I bit down hard on my own wrist to keep from thrashing.
“Do not bite damaged tissue,” Mary advised.
I spat my arm out. “Then give me something else!”
A second later, a padded bite block was offered, and I opened my mouth, letting ARMando’s press it into place. Efficient machine, I’ll give it that.
I bit down just as ARMando started flushing my eyes. I convulsed immediately. White-hot agony exploded. My body tried desperately to wrench away, but ARMando held my head perfectly still.
I screamed around the bite block, wildly kicking my legs. Tears and saline poured down my face together. Unsympathetic, the robot kept going.
“Ocular irrigation necessary to prevent further damage,” Mary explained.
ARMando released my face only to jab a needle into my less burnt arm. I didn’t even feel it with everything else going on. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was some sedative for how much of a terrible patient I was being.
“Painkillers have been administered. Estimated effect onset: three minutes.”
“F’REE MIN’TES?!” I howled through the bite block.
This was going to be the longest three minutes of my entire gosh darn life as ARMando continued treating the burns methodically. Saline flush. Neutralising rinse. Burn gel. Dressings. Every step hurt differently.
My face throbbed. My throat burned deeper every time I swallowed. My lungs crackled ominously when I breathed. At one point as ARMando wrapped my forearm, I caught a glimpse of the raw red skin underneath before the bandage covered it.
Nope. Didn’t need to see that.
“Am I pretty?” I mumbled weakly and half deliriously around the bite block. I let the thing fall out of my mouth, seeing that ARMando was done treating me now.
“Facial swelling is expected.”
“So… no.”
No answer. Rude.
My eyes finally got bandaged after what felt like an entire geological era of flushing. Darkness settled over me, which honestly improved things considerably since I hadn’t been seeing much anyway besides a watery blur of pain.
But without vision, the rest of the universe narrowed down to sensations. The soft mechanical clicks of ARMando. The pulse pounding in my burns. My own ragged breathing. And underneath it all, fear.
I swallowed carefully. Bad idea. It was still wholly awful.
“Mary,” I whispered.
“Yes, Dr Grace.”
“Can you take any readings on Rocky?
There was a pause.
“Environmental conditions are currently reading as optimal from data entered into systems.”
Relief hit so hard I almost cried again. Actually, I probably did. Hard to tell anymore. My eyes had become industrial-grade saline fountains.
But okay, that was enough, I just had… to wait now to see if Rocky had made it.
I sank back against the medical bed as exhaustion crashed over me all at once. The adrenaline was bleeding out of my system, leaving behind shaking weakness and pain thick enough to drown in. The painkillers were finally working then.
“Respiratory damage?” I asked quietly.
“Moderate chemical irritation to the airways and lungs,” Mary replied. “Continued monitoring required.”
“Cool.”
“Scarring is likely from exposure amount.”
“Cool cool cool.”
“Vision impairment may persist temporarily. Damage done unknown at present, further examination required.”
“Fantastic,” I said, letting out a weak laugh.
ARMando adjusted another bandage around my hand. The touch was gentler now. Or maybe the drugs were finally kicking in hard enough that my nervous system stopped personally declaring war on existence.
Everything was fizzling together, thoughts harder to grasp. I drifted somewhere between sleep and consciousness while Mary monitored my vitals aloud in that calm voice that somehow made everything more terrifying.
At some point I realised I was clutching the bite block and loosened my grip. My hands trembled uncontrollably.
“Mary?”
“Yes, Dr Grace.”
“If I ever say ‘let’s do something’ again… shoot me first.”
“I cannot do that as it would violate my primary directives.”
“Coward.”
The darkness behind the bandages felt heavier now. Softer. The pain had dulled from screaming agony to a deep throbbing misery. That was progress. Probably.
I could hear ARMando doing something nearby. Tiny metallic clicks echoed through the room.
I tried imagining Rocky safe in the ammonia environment. Tried imagining them alive and recovering and hopefully not dead.
My thoughts drifted slower and slower. Exhaustion dragged at me like deep water. Every breath still hurt, but less now. The painkillers seemed to be hitting hard enough to pull the floor out from under me completely.
The last thing I remembered was the quiet hum of the Hail Mary around me and the dull realisation that passing out had become my body’s favourite coping mechanism.
But honestly? Fair.