Chapter Text
God isn’t real, Simon hopes he isn’t.
If god existed why is he about to die? Why is half of humanity gone? What kind of loving god would leave his children to die like slaughter cattle? Maybe god isn’t so loving after all, or maybe its him, he’s the unworthy one, he’s a sinner. Was this god’s plan for him all along?
He can feel the air getting heavier, the whole sub is creaking dangerously, and he knows it’s not going to hold for much longer. He’s no scientist but he knows the sound of something slowly giving way, he curses himself for ever listening to ava.
As the blood starts rising past the top of his head he can’t help but start to sob.
And as he lets the tears fall freely from his eyes the time feels like it’s slowing down. He thinks about his mother, how she would brush his hair and tell him stories about large forests and sunlight. He thinks about filament station, about Eden and the C.O.I. but most importantly, he thinks about something he’s known since the start of the mission, something that right now is reverberating through his head.
‘I don’t want to die’
His tears get lost in the liquid as he struggles for air, he can feel himself swallowing more blood, it burns his eyes, seeping its way into him. He struggles for air as he frantically waves his good arm around; looking for something, anything that might help him.
Deep down he knows he can’t be saved.
Everything hurts, he’s starting to lose feeling in his legs, he can feel more tears rushing out of him.
He can’t see anything, the blood is too thick to see though, that’s what the x-ray was for. As Simon feels his consciousness slip away, he hopes god can forgive him.
And so he prays.
‘Hail Mary, full of…’
--
“Grace!”
Rocky’s agitated trilling made Grace shoot up from his bed, his hair was completely disheveled, and his eyes were still heavy with sleep. Despite not having needed a translator for him in a long while (1 year and 2 months, to be exact, but who’s counting), whatever his alien friend is saying while he looks for his glasses sounds like complete gibberish to him at the moment. He finally puts on his glasses, albeit them being very crooked, and finally hops out of bed.
“Rock, chill out, what’s going on?” his voice is still laced with sleep as he fixes his glasses to look at rocky better. Despite having traveled together for so long, Grace is still getting used to a lot of things about him. This isn’t the first time Rocky has woken him up so abruptly, Grace has compared him to an alarm clock more than once, but this time it’s different, something is wrong.
“There’s a human spaceship on this moon!”
The words he was about to say die on his tongue as he waits for Rocky to tell him it’s just a bad joke, but he doesn’t.
The moon they’re passing right next to, AT-5, showed no signs of intelligent life, although it had some sort of liquid covering most of its surface, he didn’t see why there would be a need from earth to send anything or anyone on this planet. Considering the amount of resources it would take to send a mission on this planet and then bring them back to earth, there is no way anyone would approve of a mission like this.
Grace can’t help but feel both excitement and dread, he’s praying there is an actual human on the spaceship, even if it’s practically impossible, it would be nice to have company after all this time. Not that rocky is bad company, but the idea of having someone he can actually touch aboard the Hail Mary feels like a dream come true. On the other hand, why are they in space? Did they send someone to get him? Impossible, it would take at least 5 years to reach them, no one would waste that much time and resources on a single scientist. Not to mention, unless his videos have arrived at light speed, there is no way earth knows that there is intelligent life on Erid, nor that he’s headed there. Are they here because he failed? It’s way too early to say, and even if it wasn’t he doesn’t want to think about that prospect. He has a thousand questions, but he knows rocky can answer none.
“Are you sure?” is all he can muster.
“Yes, sure” he chirps, before scurrying away in his xenonite ball “Grace come!” Grace makes his way through the ship, careful to not trip over himself, he follows his friend to the biggest window on the Hail Mary, and before he can process what he’s seeing rocky points to something right in the middle of the moon’s ocean. “There”
Grace can’t see anything. “There’s nothing there, rock” he huffs, disappointed, to which Rocky replies with a stomp. “Yes there is, look, rocky hear sounds from it!”
He has to pause for a second, reminding himself about Rocky’s sonar. He doesn’t know how it can be that far ranged, but it’s not his biggest concern at the moment. Though now that he’s looking a little closer he can see something, it is a spaceship! Or, it should be a spaceship, from this far away all he can see is a weird orange floating blob.
“Grace and rocky go check, question?” Rocky shifts his carapace in curiosity.
“Yeah, let’s go check”
As they get closer to the moon, the thing that his friend saw is undoubtedly there, but grace can’t help but stare at the moon’s ocean. It’s tinted red and looks much thicker than any other liquid it could be, grace can’t help but want a sample of it, he’s dying to know what it’s made out of, now that he’s thinking about it, it kind of looks like…
They’re close enough to see the ship better when grace finally realizes.
Grace feels bile rising in the back of his throat, as he fights his own body to not throw up, he can’t bring himself to look at the ship for long enough to read what it says, he’s too busy staring. it’s blood. It’s an ocean made entirely of blood, or at least he thinks it’s blood, it surely look like it. “When were you going to tell me about the blood?!” grace utters in disbelief, at which rocky chirps back in annoyance , “wasn’t going to tell, grace see for himself” the way he says it so matter-of-factly would’ve made grace laugh if they weren’t staring at a sh-eep ton of seemingly human blood.
His mind finally trails back to the ship, it looks very crudely made, almost as if its covered in a thick layer of rust, how is that thing in space? Better yet, how is it floating to the surface? It’s clearly made from a metal that can oxidize, his guess is either iron or copper, but he’d have to check to be sure. Neither of those metals can realistically float above water, especially in such large quantities. Not to mention a ship built entirely out of iron would be highly impractical, assuming it’s made for re-entry, it would melt before arriving hallway down the atmosphere. Maybe it’s floating because of the thickness of the blood, or maybe…
He snaps out of his stream of thoughts as he remembers the writing on its side, which, upon closer inspection, reads ‘SM-13’, so it really is a human spaceship. But no, that’s not a ship, it’s too pill shaped, it doesn’t seem to have an engine, nor landing gear or even a fuel tank. It doesn’t even have a hatch! It’s hard to deduce anything else about it, seeing as it’s mostly submerged in blood. “So?” rocky trills, impatiently. “so, it’s human-made alright.” Grace replies “but whatever it is, it’s not a spaceship.”
He moves to his trusted whiteboard, erasing some previous calculations and some silly drawings he made to kill time. He then starts scribbling, nothing of importance yet, just some theories about what it could be.
“im thinking it’s something like a beetle, like the ones we sent to earth. It’s a very large beetle, but it’s the most plausible explanation” he absentmindedly chews on the temple of his glasses as he ponders how they could get it out of the blood, or how they could go down there and check it out. But if there isn’t anything inside it would be a waste of fuel, they already have barely enough to make it to Erid. That’s when he remembers something very important about rocky
“you can see what’s inside, right?” he says, turning to his friend, wo had been sitting beside him and watching him draw. “Yes, why, question?” he trills back, intrigued to see where grace is going with this.
“Could you look through that… thing and tell me what’s inside?” he gets up and moves back from the whiteboard to the window once again, staring down at AT-5 with the curiosity only a scientist could have. “Alright, rocky check” he shifts to get a better look, and sits there for a few seconds. Just as grace is about to chime in with a question, Rocky stands up and starts chirping in a tone that grace can now identify as excitement, though with how fast rocky is speaking he can’t quite make out what he’s saying. Until he manages to catch a word, just one.
‘Heartbeat’
His eyes widened in surprise as he looks from the ship to Rocky, then back to the ship. Once he fully processes what he just heard, he finally stops Rocky’s rambling. “wh- you- what heartbeat?!” the words come out half broken with how fast his brain is going, a heartbeat, another human aboard that ship, a human who is alive, and who probably needs help.
“Yes! Rocky hear heartbeat! go too slow, bad bad bad, grace rocky go help, statement”
He sighs, he doesn’t know if it’s relief or dread. As he walks to the control room his mind wanders to the human trapped in that spaceship, what are they like? How old are they? Why are they here? He doesn’t dwell on that too much, what matters is getting them to safety. He refuses to let anyone else die up here, he has to save them. He has to be brave.
He was brave for rocky, so he has to be brave for them too. He tells that to himself as he sits in the pilot seat, getting the Hail Mary ready to go down there. he doesn’t know what might be down there, but he doesn’t care, he just needs to figure out how to pull that thing out of the blood. Then it hits him.
He turns to face Rocky, who is sitting beside him, waiting. And finally, he speaks.
“how about we go fishing again?”