Chapter Text
Simon was no stranger to blood.
He hadn’t exactly been the most clean-nosed child, and after his enlistment, he got fairly acquainted with what pain can do to the body, what trauma can do to the mind; what spilt blood can do to the soul. There were still nights he laid awake, listening to the muffled bombs in the distance, to the whimpers and moans of his brothers as they fought through dreams. He knew how blood smelled, how it tasted, how it felt on the skin, how there were too many types of pain to accurately describe and how to inflict each one. He’d long since desensitized himself to it— there was no room for squeamishness when you were fighting to survive, and less when you were the only one who managed it. He’d had blood on his hands for a long, long time.
But this was overkill.
He stood at the top of the ladder, looking down into the red darkness of the inside of the sub. He and Adrian had pulled it out of orbit, a rusty thing that didn’t even look suited for pressurized submarine travel, let alone that of deep space. It had no point of entry — which meant it had no point of exit — and Simon had seen bigger oxygen tanks on recreational divers. He decided it must have been ejected from another life form’s ship once it outlived its utility— or, he amended, when it became too full to use any further. He nearly gagged as an astringent, metallic — familiar — smell wafted from the opening he’d seared into the sub. Inside, sloshing around in the artificial gravity, was something to the tune of tens of thousands of gallons of what looked like human blood.
“Holy shit, I think that’s blood,” he said, trying to breathe through is mouth. He only succeeded in taking the air onto his tongue, iron filling his senses. It was horrible. There was so much. “Adrian, can you see anything through this shit?”
Adrian, sitting back in the tunnel to avoid the radiation, tapped their vents. They made a displeased hum. “With difficulty. The fluid is thick, so Adrian cannot make out much. But there is a mass inside the approximate size and shape of Simon.”
“What?” He looked back down at the sub. Was there a corpse in there? Death via drowning was bad enough— Simon could scarcely imagine how bad drowning in blood would be. To say nothing, of course, of whatever events must have occurred to fill the thing with blood in the first place. He would have to drain the blood before exploring the inside of this death trap. He really didn’t want to wade through it.
“Collect sample of fluid for later study.” Adrian pushed a xenonite capsule through a hatch in the protective seal. “Simon say fluid is human bio-fluid?”
“Sure smells like it,” he grumbled, descending the ladder to take it before returning to the sub. He dipped it inside, grimacing at the viscous coagulation toward the top. “Acts like it, too.”
“Adrian would like to study,” they reiterated, more firm this time. “Human bio-fluid rarely exists independently of a host, according to Simon. Strange occurrence.”
“You can say that again.”
“Strange occurrence.”
“Thanks.”
He shuddered, then flipped his hood back down and fired up his torch to create a drain hole at the bottom. The blood quickly poured through, seeping across the black xenonite ground. Disgusting. He cut three more around the sub, then returned to the hole he’d initially started. It seemed to be welded shut from the outside— he could see a hasty welding job around the top and sides, as well as at the front, where it looked like a tool had been affixed and violently torn away. The metal, at least, was familiar— rusted like iron, painted with recognizable letters and numbers. It wasn’t relieving.
By the time he’d finished, the blood had drained to maybe waist-level and was still going. He drew a deep breath and tried to ignore the stench. No time like the present. He pulled the flashlight from his tool belt and stuck it between his teeth to free his hands before hoisting himself up and into the hole.
“Simon needs to be careful,” Adrian reminded him. “Cannot use ship without human input.”
“’n ‘ere I t’ought ‘e ‘ere f’iends,” he spoke through the flashlight. He heard the jingling of Adrian’s bell-like laughter as his boots touched the surface of the blood. It was still warm, moving gently as he lowered himself to the ground. He squinted into the dark, pulling the flashlight from his mouth. He’d never been claustrophobic, or at least hadn’t since he’d served, but this was something else. He could put both arms to the side of him and touch that rusted, jagged metal. He hoped the med-bot had some sort of tetanus shot, or there might be lockjaw in his future.
The blood stuck to his clothing; he could feel it clinging to him, weighing him down. Once again, he was baffled by the sheer volume, but he was skilled in the art of compartmentalization. He drew a deep breath and clicked on the light. He caught a glimpse of pale skin in tattered clothing a split second before a black substance shot forward, consuming the head of the flashlight. Simon yelped and dropped it, scrambling back until his back touched metal. What the fuck?
“Simon okay?” Adrian’s voice was an anxious chirp. “Adrian hear movement.”
He opened his mouth to respond, only to pause. Faintly, he heard — and might not have, if the sub wasn’t so small — a wheeze. Breath sounds, thick and mucous, as if through fluid in the lungs. Simon stood, frozen, for a moment before his body caught up and he swore, wading forward as fast as he could through the thick blood. If this person was alive, he wouldn’t be for much longer without intervention. Simon’s instincts kicked in, everything falling away as he efficiently pulled the person out of whatever was attaching them to the wall and back through the sub. He pushed them through the hole first, then followed, using their positions to gather them on his back firefighter-style. Adrian was already standing, their claws clicking and vents fluttering nervously. Simon barely saw them in the dark.
“Get into the Filament! Far as you can from the infirmary. This guy’s alive and heavily irradiated. I’m not taking any chances.”
“Human is alive? Simon said humans could not survive in space.”
“Yeah, I did say that,” Simon grit out, choking the body up more securely onto his shoulders. “Pull the shield layer with you, then dismantle it before I come through the tunnel. Go.”
Adrian thankfully listened, and Simon stalked through the tunnels as quickly as he could without scraping his cargo against the rough ceiling. He thought of nothing but the task at hand as Adrian’s protective barrier was removed from the mouth of the tunnel; he barely noticed how the person’s skin grew hot against his shoulders, staticky, charged with energy. There was no time to consider it. Once he got onto the Iron Lung, he all but ran to the infirmary, settling the person onto the bed and taking a step back as the med-bot came alive. He watched the bot cut and rip the clothing from the person’s chest. A man, Simon realized. A man whose features were indiscernible under the thick layer of blood, whose body was also covered in that same black substance that had attacked his flashlight. A clump of it flew upward and Simon tracked it to the overhead light, where it spread itself flat against the panel.
He looked down at his hands, shiny with blood. They were shaking. Was he panicking? His thoughts were both rapid fire and sluggish, his body both delayed and jerky. He hadn’t noticed how quickly his breathing turned to panting. He hadn’t realized how much tension had built in his muscles — every muscle, every bone, taut — and tried to loosen them with no luck. He knew standing there like an idiot did nothing to help, but he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if this guy died and he wasn’t there to witness it. He wondered what that said about him.
As the med-bot began to clean away the blood to reach the more grave injuries, Simon felt, unbidden, the same caustic heat of the sun, of explosives; smelled the stench of acrid, burning blood as it spattered to the wall like soot. Heard moans and cries as his brothers breathed their last. A single milligram of little black dots that Simon had never meant to send so far.
So he was panicking. That was manageable. He knew how to handle himself well enough— Eden had fucked him over in the end, but their therapists were great. He closed his eyes, drawing a deep breath through his nose and blowing it out in a harsh gust of wind. He counted down from a hundred by sevens, moving his lips around each number like he could feel them leaving his mouth. He repeated the exercise, then again, until his mind began to clear. It took longer than it should have.
By the time he was suitably calm, the med-bot was administering iodine to treat the radiation as well as IV painkillers, and the most injured areas were cleaned of blood. Taking great care to avoid the bot’s violating claw, he walked around the head of the bed, inspecting the man’s face. It was still caked with grime and blood, but he was no longer wheezing, at least; considering the tube down his airway, that fact wasn’t very reassuring.
Simon pulled a rag from the infirmary counter and wet it with warm water. The few times he’d been so gravely injured, he would have killed to wake up clean. With more gentleness than he thought himself capable and less than he wished to have, he wiped the blood and indiscernible black semi-fluid away from the man’s face, exposing skin so pale it looked grey. There were deep bags under his eyes, his lips dull and chapped. Simon tried his best to clean the man’s hair, but there was only so much he could do. Still, he was able to clear it enough to see a color somewhere between brown and dirty blond. His features were soft, slack in unconsciousness, gentle in a way that reminded Simon of the more naive recruits in Eden. Those young people, freshly joined brothers and sisters, who believed that they could push back the darkness by offering absolution to a world in need; optimistic children who hadn’t yet realized that salvation wasn’t given, but taken.
“Due to aggressive progression of infection by unknown organism, amputation is recommended. Commander authorization required. Confirm?”
Simon looked up to where the med-bot was hovering over the man’s left leg. He didn’t even realize it had been cleaned at first— it was red as the blood he was pulled from, the only indication that it was clear was the bruised and purple pockets of necrosis splitting the skin apart. There were parts where it looked like the muscle had been eaten away, leaving depressed dunes and valleys; there was an open cut on the top of his foot. It was too straight to be a sore, but jagged in a way that spoke to trembling hands and bitten leather. There was a black circle around it, then another around his ankle, then a third midway through his calf. The redness and discoloration extended just beyond the third line. Three of his toes were gone.
“Is…” he swallowed thickly. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d witnessed an amputation. Hell, he should be glad that he wasn’t tying tourniquets. “Is there a protocol for disposing of contaminated biological waste other than, like, just shooting it out into space? Because this shit survived in space. I don’t want it to spread or anything.”
“Unknown query. Please rephrase your question,” the med-bot replied, every bit as unhelpful as it always was. “Due to aggressive progression of infection by unknown organism, amputation is recommended. Commander authorization required. Confirm?”
“Fuck.” Simon scrubbed his hand through his hair. If he waited much longer, this guy might not even live to refuse amputation. The choice was clear, despite the grisly details. At least it would be a medically perfect amputation. “Okay, yeah. Do it.”
“Extreme recovery procedure: amputation — confirmed. Thank you, Commander Simon Fisher.”
The med-bot whirled into action, marking the points of incision just moments before cutting. Simon, not wanting to leave the man alone during the procedure, held his head steady as if he would wake up at any time to scream bloody murder about his leg getting chopped off. He just couldn’t justify leaving. The entire procedure took all of ten minutes, which had to be some sort of record. Still, it felt like an eternity, and by the time the bot had finished wrapping the stump, Simon was slumped in the chair by the bed.
“Patient condition: stable.”
“Makes one of us,” he grumbled as the med-bot pulled away. There were many smaller injuries that littered the man’s body, but Simon knew enough about shock to understand that only so much could be done at once. The removal of a limb was a necessary strain, but cleaning and dressing wounds that were already clotted might just send the guy over the edge. It could be done later, when the man’s body wasn’t so overexerted with just keeping itself alive. Survival was exhausting— Simon knew that first-hand. He studied the man’s face, the parts of his chest that weren’t dried over with blood. Strange burns made up a good eighty percent of his skin, spreading over his entire back and right side; or Simon guessed they were burns. They were an angry red-pink that looked to be chased by a deep grey-purple mottling, each patch seeming to war with another. They extended up his neck and jaw as well as along both arms, though they were still filthy.
Simon rubbed his face wearily, releasing a shuddering sigh, then looked back up. There was nothing more he could do now. He’d return once he apprised Adrian of the situation and inspected the sub a little further. What the man needed was rest and for Simon to stop ogling him like a zoo animal. He couldn’t help it— this was the only living human he’d seen in years. He stood, stretched, and hit the light as he exited the room.
The room went dark. Slowly, as if its energy had been depleted completely, the sludge that had affixed itself to the lightbulb above the man detached itself, falling limply to the freshly severed leg beneath it. Within moments, it had been consumed, leaving behind a deep grey-purple bruise.