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The submarine was suffocating. Not to mention the heat that seemed to weigh on his shoulders like a blanket stuffed in his airways and draped over his whole body. It also carried an ominous taste and smell as if he breathed through something wet and thick, a fog he could touch but not see.
Or maybe this was just Simon's madness coming to get him at last.
He almost laughed out loud, but all he could muster was a derisive, pitiful snort.
He almost looked up, expecting the crackle of Ava's voice, but the speaker remained broken and left dangling by a few loose wires. His hands still throbbed from the few punches he threw, and all the sizzling anger he had felt now melted into deep regrets. He both longed to hear something other than the low vibrations of the submarine, a voice, be it mocking him for his failures and his impending… and his imprisonment, or to admonish him. Or to remind him of his teachings. Or to comfort him in his last-
But at the same time, he also feared what he could be hearing. The sounds and noises around him had all but been harmful to him up until now. The sizzle of the photos, each time he punched the button, pierced his eardrums, and he wouldn't be surprised if his ears leaked blood at some point. Wouldn't be his first, he sneered, grimace stretching uncomfortably at his skin.
He refused to touch it. He knew something had happened to his face. The blood had to be corrosive or something because each time he thought about it, the itch came back with a vengeance, and he doubted he would manage to stop himself from peeling the skin with his fucking nails if he needed to.
So no. His hands stayed plastered on the terminal and the coordinates flashed in front of him. Sweat had gathered on his fingers and had smudged the lines he had begun to draw on that useless map. Assholes C.O.I hadn't even offered him proper materials. It felt more like a joke than anything remotely usable: black letter on a dark grey paper. In a fucking submarine with an overhead indicator for a lamp!
He glared at it for a while, hands flexing, but forced his eyes down again to try to concentrate on the issue at hand.
Then he went back to the map he had created, stuck on the wall behind him, eyes passing by the tunnels he'd discovered with a sense of despair brewing in his guts and threatening to spill over.
He forcibly swallowed. No need to actually throw up. He wouldn't like what he'd see.
He squared his shoulders and went back to the chair. All straight ahead then. There wasn't any other way out anyway. He... even doubted there would be a huge exit with bold lettering signed with a ‘❤️’ at the end, courtesy of that monstrous head he saw in those photos, but he had to try. And then he’d go higher, high enough to contact someone (anyone) at last. All the photos he'd taken so far had some sort of ceiling overhead that would block any attempt at extraction. But if he was high enough, he’d negotiate with the C.O.I, he'd plead and beg. And then he’d be out. Out. OUT.
But first, he needed to get away from those tunnels.
Simon pushed the lever up with more force than necessary, delighting in the small clunk he heard when it tapped against the surface of the table. It felt childish, but damn it felt good.
Time was an indescribable construct. By how much did he advance?
The coordinate continued to shift, a roll of numbers he forgot as soon as they appeared and disappeared.
The arrow never beeped, so he continued with the same angle, and time passed by.
And time passed by.
And-
"That is hot in here."
Simon didn't even think. He grabbed the nearest thing beside him, which was the haphazardly thrown manual he used as a hold to keep the lever up while looking blankly at the moving coordinates, and threw it behind him with all his remaining strength. He hadn't even picked it up by the cover, just whatever page he had been using as a basis for his map to hurl it behind him. The pages tore and flew all over the hull, swallowed by the darkness that hovered behind Simon at all times.
"What the fuck," he whispered, eyes frenetically looking everywhere.
There wasn't much to look around. The submarine was only large enough for him to take two steps to the side, from one wall to another. Yet, he didn't find anything. There wasn't a single presence. The light above him didn't even flicker to signal the presence of that bald, twisted abomination that spewed out some goo while he was curled up against the photo terminal.
He was alone. Despairingly so.
Yet he had heard the voice clearly and he-
He looked up.
The speaker was still dangling broken.
Nobody could contact him this far down into the heart of the ocean.
But then what did he hear?
What was going on?
"Hey, I know this is scary but a panic attack won't help and I won't be able to do anything if you collapse," the voice spoke up once again.
"Who the hell are you, show yourself!" he yelled, his head whipping from one side to another, swivelling his chair until the back of it was jammed against the terminal.
The submarine had stopped vibrating, and other than the typical low sounds of blood sloshing around the exterior of that useless chunk of metal prison, silence weighed heavily inside the hull. Simon's breath hitched and his eye began to itch again, pain spiking up. He groaned, blinking rapidly and too terrified to consider putting an arm up and rub at his face to alleviate the agonising sensation.
"Unfortunately, I don't think I can," the voice suddenly spoke out.
Simon's eyes snapped to the side, but there was only more metal panels surrounding him, despite the voice coming from the bottom left and what the fuck-
Suddenly, an immense rage seemed to overcome him, and he let out a raging, low and long, animalistic keening noise.
"I'm done playing your game," he hissed. Then: "I did everything you wanted, get me out of here!" he roared, slamming his fist on the terminal. "You C.O.I fuckers are no better than the rest of us, going on your high horses, praising your all-mighty fairness when you've broken your promise and fucked me over twice!"
Each sentence was punctuated by a slam and a kick and he finished with another scream, tears threatening to spill over his eyes in the process, blurring his vision. Fuck that hurt. His eye was burning like a piece of charcoal had been pushed behind his eyeball and now pulsed and squeezed mercilessly against the walls of his eye cavity. It throbbed and it felt like claws digging from the inside, wanting to be let out.
There was a moment of silence while Simon took a few long, unsteady breaths. He was sweating bullets and yet he felt (was) dehydrated. The hunger he had felt in that prison back in the C.O.I space station, even with meager ration he had been thrown at before getting shoved inside the SM-13, couldn't even compare with what his stomach was doing to him at the moment. It felt like a hole had been torn inside his chest and was constantly begging him sweetly for something he could not provide.
He was covered in flesh. It begged him for it. Teeth digging into his skin and tearing the muscles apart.
Then...
"I'm sorry, I meant I can't physically show myself."
Simon almost spat at the voice, "You're sorry? You're sorry? You're the one who put me in there, get me out, and we'll be even!" he continued, voice bordering on hysteria. He was begging, trembling, screaming and demanding at the same time.
"I... can't either, I'm trapped too."
"What."
Simon looked up once again at the speaker in astonishment.
It suddenly dawned on him that the voice, wherever it sounded, wasn't that of a woman's.
"You're not Ava..." Simon whispered, dread making his heartbeat pick up again. It crashed against his ribs.
"No, that name doesn't feel right," the voice answered immediately, thoughtful. Clearer and closer to him, as if it was standing just beside him.
He jerked to the side and pointed at the speaker, as if he was about to say something, but then he froze, and he suddenly scrambled out of his chair to dash to the other side of the hull, almost crashing against the wall where the button was, and mashed it with the side of his fist.
The photo didn't take long, but what he saw was still a dark vastness. A tunnel stretching ahead. There were small dots, which he could almost think were the way the grainy photo was, but they were suspiciously aligned inside the far darkness of the tunnel ahead.
They looked alive.
"No, I'm not that either, thank god."
The voice had followed him.
Simon flinched again very hard and bumped his head against the wall in his startle, cursing and swearing while his head violently throbbed. He already had a headache, lancing from the back of his head, and the hit had almost felt like someone had squeezed the inside of his brain with their bare, clawed hands. His vision went blurry and he cupped the side of his face with trembling hands, fighting against the nausea.
"I'm sorry, I didn't meant- They truly did a number on you..."
"You talk as if you weren't part of all of this," Simon slurred, delirious with pain and curled up against the corner of the room.
A sigh, "Because I'm not. I... woke up...? Not really sure if that's the right word. But I came to be not a few minutes ago, when you were having a fight with your panel there."
"So you just decided to torment me now? When you've abandoned me at the bottom of that damn thing, you just decided it was time to mock me, humiliate me? Haven't you done enough? Haven't I done enough..."
"You're not listening to me, I'm not who you think I am."
"That's what they all say," Simon sneered, to which a frustrated sigh was his only answer.
"I don't remember who I am. My memories are... fuzzy at best-"
"And I'm a Convict about to die, that's marvellous!" Simon yelled again, cutting the voice off. He sprang up to his feet and almost wrenched out the speaker from the wall, letting out a delighted maniacal laugh when he saw that the wire had been torn off. "You're a voice in my head, great. I'm about to die, and I'm going fucking crazy! Cool, perfect, gives such a sweet picture, oh, I love it!" he wheezed, coughing and laughing at the same time. His lungs burned atrociously.
"You think I'm... No, I'm not just a voice, I'm. I'm inside here as well, with you. Don’t you see me?!"
Simon stared blankly at the empty submarine.
"And I'm fucking C.O.I. Shut the fuck up and let me do my work in peace. Doesn't make a difference, you'll die with me anyway," he finally grunted.
Turning away, he heavily sat again on his chair.
The adrenaline boost he's felt had left him feeling powerless and heavy, as if he was about to collapse. Sweat was now gathering in his eyes and tickling his chin whenever a droplet threatened to fall. He rubbed his jaw against his clavicle, using his vest as a tissue, but when it scraped against the skin of his shoulder, he let out another expletive swear and began to flail, angrily getting out of his coat and almost tearing the fabric in the process. He threw it on the side. It didn't even thunk. It flopped and lay there, useless.
Another wave of anger that bordered on a sob made him look blurrily at the coordinates, and he pushed the lever silently.
The lever felt heavy in his hand. It took him more force than before to properly propel the submarine forward.
"I'm telling the truth,” the voice tried again. “I'm... here, with you. I swear."
"Then we're both lunatics for being inside the blood ocean."
"Blood ocean? We're in... blood?!"
The shellshocked tone of the voice made Simon freeze for a second. But then he went back to push the lever back to full speed. He didn't have the energy to stand up again and take the papers that now inundated the floor of the submarine, or even snatch back the covers of the manual from the corner of the room.
He was fine in his chair. He could do it alone anyway.
"Tell me about it. Yes, we're in blood. And there's something swimming in there as well. Hence the 'I'm about to die' spiel. Whoa, what a surprise! Not what I’ve been raging about for the past what. Hours?” he dragged on the ‘s’, not truly sure how much time had passed since he’d been dumped back in the ocean at this point. He just grunted again: “Get used to it."
"That's impossible, I don't remember any of that..."
Simon expelled a long sigh and threw his arms up in the air. The strain it put on his muscles made him wince in pain and curl up a bit on his side. He squeezed his eyes shut against the pain and he almost hallucinated the brush of something against his shoulder. He batted it away on instinct. His hand only met air. He scoffed.
"What do you remember, then?"
"Earth."
He stared blankly at the coordinates. He had never thought about Earth before, except for the sayings of the older members of Eden, who reminisced about that planet with both melancholy and disdain.
"Earth is gone," he enunciated slowly.
"No. I remember, I was there, I was- I was teaching and… searching!"
"Earth has been gone for more than thirty years. Stars too. Everything. You slept for a long time," he mocked derisively, calling back to the voice's first words. "What were you searching for anyway? A way out? Nice. Me too."
"Stars are gone...? I... I remember, there was... The Hail Mary failed... They... Did I...?"
The voice had gone almost extinct, murmuring, then hissing, and then sputtering out like a flame snuffed out with a sudden breeze.
The last words had sounded almost broken, filled with so much sadness and denial that-
The submarine went back to its silent state, and Simon only realised now that even if the voice had sounded clear, there had also been a sort of buzzing sound that had slowly grown in volume the more he indulged in the conversation.
His muscles tensed and he drew his shoulders up to his ears, eyes once again wildly looking everywhere.
The silence now felt empty. Filled with misery and malevolence.
The voice had filled in that part of the void he had tried to ignore as it took more and more pieces of him.
And now it was gone and only now he realised how much he relied on them. He had listened and answered to them like a dog waiting for a treat. He hadn't even seen the coordinates go by while he spoke.
Now the numbers seemed to crawl towards him, gripping at him, dragging him down, tearing him apart, while the groans and rumbles of the submarine around him increased and suffocated him.
"Hey, you still there?" he whispered.
Only the silence answered him.
He screamed to try and fill the void.
The darkness looked back at him with a ruby eye.
.
.
.