Chapter Text
Let it never be said that Simon of Eden doesn’t go down fighting.
He staggers on his feet, agony dripping from his open arteries and veins to join the masses pooling in around him, but he doesn’t fall. Around him, the SM-13 walls shudder with the force of the Eel’s wailing. Her words are bouncing around in his skull, rattling and horrendous.
But he is still alive. For now.
“You know this is the only way!” she is screeching. “You know it! You saw the horror of it. What did it see in you!?”
A flickering figure, spindly and humanoid, flashes across Simon’s vision. Then, the all-consuming gaze of a monstrous bloody Eye in the center of a raging eternal storm. They’re staring at him right now, it’s like he can feel the pinpricks in his brain as they watch him dying. Or maybe teeth are starting to grow along the inside of his skull, too. Maybe they will puncture his grey matter and end his suffering for good.
If that’s how this will go, he hopes it’s painless. He hurts so much. He doesn’t want the pain to follow him down when he goes. “It’s more than me, it’s more than me,” he finds himself croaking, pleading as a mantra. He remembers Ava in her sub, begging up until the end not for her life, but for this. Humanity needs this. The black box must survive this. Despair almost overtakes him.
I can’t survive this.
“It saw you, Simon! And it will never let you go. It wants you to do this!” The Eel is everywhere around him, it’s like he can feel her inside of him. “Can you not see that?”
His own aching, bloodshot eyes find the porthole cover switch. For a brief moment, a weak moment, he considers giving in. Sliding the shield open. Letting the blood crash in to drown him. It’s remarkably tempting, and he fights back the sob that threatens to shake him. It’s too much. I just wanted to live.
But no. That’s over now. Life is out of his reach, that’s been made clear to him. No, now Simon wants revenge. He wants satisfaction. He wants something to fucking pay for this, the unfair misery of his end. If he can’t live, if he can’t see the freedom that he was promised, that he fucking earned a thousand times over…
If one more pain-soaked minute is all he has, he won’t let it slip away. Not without taking something down with him. He jerks the porthole shield firmly closed.
He opens his mouth to shout as much, give his rage an outlet in his final moments, but the Eel must ram the ship because he’s careening backwards into the blood again, helpless to do anything but flail and writhe in the slick gore for a few more panicked moments. The hull shrieks as it’s suddenly punctured by a host of long, razor-sharp fangs, and a fresh wave of focused terror takes Simon over.
He’s going to be eaten alive.
“WHAT DID YOU DO?” the beast with a thousand voices howls as Simon finally manages to grab hold of a pipe and haul himself, painfully, to his feet again. “You changed everything! Your ship is alive, can’t you see this is a mercy?”
A mercy. Oh, Simon has had enough of death being used as a mercy. The words break something in him, shatter something he’s held back since his imprisonment, since Filament station, since Eden. Death and Mercy, hand in hand.
He hears that fucking Eye’s reverberating voice in his head. Butcher. Simon screams.
“Fine! You want the Butcher?!” He reaches over to the wall blindly and comes away with something heavy. He can’t see what it is through the blood. It doesn’t matter. It will do.
“COME ON!” And then he’s charging straight into the jaws of his death.
Simon whales on anything and everything within his reach, screaming bloody murder. The rage is white-hot in his blood, and even though he’s bleeding out and keeps slipping in the viscera below him he manages to keep rising. He is fueled by nothing but pure instinct and raw emotion– injustice, rage, fear. He will avenge his own murder if no one else will bother. With a final roar, he manages to splinter a single fang and the Eel cries out.
Simon gets no chance to revel in his feat– the Eel jerks the entire sub in her hold, knocking him off his feet once more, and this time he can’t get back up. The hull begins to crumple under the weight of her pressure, and Simon’s heart seizes in his chest at the surge of hot blood that floods in. Oh, God, this is it. He doesn’t want to die. He doesn’t want to die–
“Pray that you stay dead!” the Eel screeches, tearing into his hull further. “We are salvation. We are hope. We can save everyone…within us!”
Simon cries out, thrashing, desperately trying to keep his head above the waves just a second longer. Every breath is like hot coals in his lungs. He’s been reduced entirely to the base instinct to survive just a moment longer. The blood is bubbling up, pushing him towards the roof of the sub, into the Eel’s teeth.
Soon this will be over. Simon weeps.
“We are all! We are one!” the Eel proclaims, fervid and righteous and triumphant. The waves are nearly at the ceiling, and Simon gasps for one last breath. It leaves him in a horrified scream as a flash of inexplicable light erupts into the sub, and a blinding pain shoots through his left eye. It feels like he’s been skewered by an invisible needle right through the pupil, to pin him to the wall like humans used to do to insects.
Something twists around him under the blood, twists into him, and begins to rip him apart.
“We die! We live! We–”
~~~
Eye movement detected.
Simon’s on the move before he can even register what he is doing. Or, at least he tries to be on the move.
Mentally he’s on his feet, but physically he only jerks faintly where he lays– oh, he’s laying down right now. On something soft, it feels like, something much softer than he can remember feeling in a very long time. The world around him is so bright, even though he doesn’t think his eyes are open. He can hear a soft, ever-present rumbling from something that feels far away, and a steady beep, beep, beep right next to him. There’s soft bandages criss-crossing and pressing into almost all parts of his skin, and the air smells clean and faintly antiseptic. Like the jar of alcohol he had drunk on the SM-13.
The SM-13. Everything comes flooding back in bright, vibrant flashes. The pain, the fear, the crushing despair that takes his breath away with a startled wheeze. The blood crashing into the sub. The Eel wailing about horror and death and mercy. His eyes fly open.
What is 2+2? a disembodied female voice asks him, and Simon jolts. Who is that? Is he being watched?
Did he make it? How is he alive?
He scans his surroundings automatically, only a little disoriented by the bandage that appears to be half-covering his left eye, cataloguing everything he sees with a practiced precision despite his frenzy. Only one entrance and exit. Remarkably clean and put together for a C.O.I. station or ship– it has to be C.O.I., he’d recognize it if he were back on Eden. Even after all this time away, he would recognize his home, and his heart throbs at the thought. But no, he appears to be in some sort of unfamiliar medical bay, so, C.O.I. Again.
Simon stiffens as a host of robotic arms suddenly swing into his line of sight. Oh, fuck!
Incorrect, the disembodied female voice says again, even though he hasn’t said anything yet. What is 2+2?
Just as he uses his right arm to sit up, a man nearly crashes into the room, sliding in on sock-covered feet. He yelps in unison with Simon and nearly wipes out, but catches himself before totally collapsing. Simon doesn’t recognize his uniform, but every C.O.I. ship or compound he’s been in have all had their own little quirks. This one is an obnoxious orange, cover-alls stripped down and tied around his waist to reveal a clean white shirt with writing on it. He tenses immediately.
“Oh my gosh,” the man gasps. He’s wearing glasses, or would be if they weren’t dangling by just one ear. He slips them off, and Simon sees he’s also wearing gloves. He’s holding something in his other hand, too, but it isn’t clear what. “You’re awake.”
Simon lunges.
He means to grab at the stranger, to shove him against the wall maybe, keep him still and demand information– Where is he? What ship is this? How did he get here? What is going on? But he’s unsteady on his feet. He trips.
And only one arm comes up to break his fall.
Unbalanced, Simon crashes straight into the man and sends them both sprawling to the floor. The man cries out under him, in surprise or fear or pain, his glasses and whatever else was in his hand clattering to the ground. Simon panics– the C.O.I. is going to think he attacked him on purpose. They won’t believe that he didn’t want to hurt him, not with his track record, but he just wanted answers. They’re going to charge in and haul him off and pin him down and lock him up all over again, all over again, no no no not when he’s so close–!
“Hey, hey, calm down! You’re gonna hurt yourself–” Surprisingly strong and possessing two arms to Simon’s one–joint cracking, pain splintering, flesh separating with a heaving wet tear–the other man manages to flip them over and get Simon onto the ground instead, pinned by his shoulders. Trapped.
Simon’s brain whites out. He snarls, bucking and thrashing to try and unseat the stranger. He looks alarmed, distressed, but no more than Simon feels. He needs to break free. He needs to escape. He needs the upper hand, he needs leverage. He needs–
His legs kick out, unable to find purchase on the cold ground. His one remaining arm scrabbles against the metal panels, and comes into contact with something. The item the man just dropped? He doesn’t know, but his fingers curl around it. It feels lightweight, like some kind of tool.
“Stop, stop! Rocky! Rock I need a little help in–!”
Calling for reinforcements. He doesn’t have much time. Simon rears back and headbutts him, sending a burst of light and bone-deep pain through his own skull. It has the intended effect, though– the man reels back just enough from the shock, crying out again, and it gives Simon just enough freedom to bring his arm up in a wide, slicing arc.
It connects.
The weight on him falls back entirely and Simon scrabbles backward, only stopping when he presses into a wall. Breathing heavily, he starts to haul himself to standing. His head is aching, his heart pounding. Gotta move. Gotta move. But now, he’s frozen.
He catches a glimpse of the tool in his hand, finally. It’s small, made of metal, and looks tremendously sharp on one end. A scalpel, maybe. There’s a smear of red on the tip, and Simon goes cold.
Blood.
The man across the room from him makes a small sound, strained with pain. Simon’s eyes lock onto him. He hasn’t gotten up yet, and he’s clutching the side of his neck. His eyes, bleary with pain but locked onto Simon’s face, are wide with shock. His nose is bleeding already, and beneath his palm Simon can already see drops of blood seeping out there too. Oh fuck. Oh fuck.
What if this is another hallucination? his dizzy brain wonders. What if you’re still at the bottom of that damn ocean, breaking under the pressure, and this is just another fake?
Even worse, he thinks hysterically, what if this is real?
“Where…” Simon manages to waver out. His voice is hoarse from disuse, or maybe from screaming. “Where the fuck am I?”
The stranger on the floor doesn’t respond immediately. Simon’s panic spikes. What is real? Is this real? “I know you’re fucking C.O.I., I’m not stupid,” he spits out, regaining some of his strength now that he’s already started. “Am we on a ship or a station? How did I get here? How did you get me out?”
“The Hail Mary,” the man on the ground finally says. The hand not pressed to his own neck starts to slowly raise up, placating, or maybe surrendering? “You’re on the Hail Mary. It’s a ship. We’re on a ship.”
Simon doesn’t recognize the name. His ears are ringing. He wracks his brain for any of his conversations on Eden about the C.O.I.’s forces, but they’ve happened too long ago now to be anything more than a shallow and painful memory. Dimly, he remembers overhearing Ava mention a list of C.O.I. affiliated ships still active to a fellow soldier while he was being welded into the SM-13, and he wracks his brain for one with a similar name–
Ava. Her screams in his ear. The crunch of her sub. The blood pouring, poetically, from the speaker. Suddenly everything clicks into place.
He doesn’t know how he got here, but he supposes it doesn’t matter. Because now, he knows why he’s here.
Because Ava is dead.
Ava is–was–a captain. She was a leader, she was the C.O.I. leader responsible for him by the end, but even she had higher-ups. She followed orders that had to come from somewhere. She disobeyed those orders to come and get him herself. And now she was dead.
He’d killed her. She’d died because of him. And these people have to know that.
However the C.O.I. had gotten to him doesn’t matter. He’s miraculously alive, and one of their high-ranking captains is dead. Because of him.
The C.O.I. wouldn’t go through the trouble of hauling him out of the grave they buried him in for any other reason than vengeance. Vindication. Justice. An eye for an eye, a life for a life– only one that they see as having value, and it isn’t his. They are going to finally, finally finish what they started– his execution. No more games, no more reasons to dangle the carrot from the stick to keep him calm while they build his own coffin around him.
They’ll make it public. They’ll make it torture.
Some fragile thing in Simon snaps.
The man is saying something, has been saying something this whole time, something about the C.O.I. or a mission, but Simon can’t hear him. “You can’t do this,” he mutters, and the man goes silent mid-sentence.
“What? What are you talking about?”
Simon seethes, gritting his teeth. It’s just so unfair. “You can’t fucking do this to me,” he says, louder this time. “I know why you’re here, I know why I’m here, and it’s not fucking right!”
Tears are building in his eyes, but he won’t give this man the satisfaction of seeing them fall. “I don’t care what you jackboot fucks think, the truth is all on your fucking black box you wanted so much. Scrub it and see that I’m not lying. Captain Ava’s death was not my fault, you can’t pin her own decision on me!”
The man’s face goes completely pale, like all the blood drains out of it. “Wait, Ava? You know Ava? How do you know Ava, what happened to her?”
“Don’t play dumb!” Simon yells, anguished. “We had a deal, the black box for my freedom, after all of that suffering that I went through I’ve earned at least that much! It’s on that damn tape, Ava knew the risks, she says it on the tape–!”
“Black box?” the man interrupts. “What black box?”
Everything stops. “The…the black box. The SM-13 black box. You…you found the black box when you found me.” Please tell me you found the black box.
The man hasn’t stopped looking confused. “...We didn’t find any black box on the SM-13. We only found you.”
It was all for nothing.
The data is lost. Humanity is forsaken. More intimately, now no one is going to believe him. Not about Ava, not about this man. The evidence they have will all stack up against him. Blood. Death. Destruction in his wake. After all of this, after everything he lived through just to get here, he’ll die with shouts of killer, murderer, butcher ringing in his ears. He’ll die screaming for his brothers. He’ll die crying for his mother.
He’s trembling. Simon clenches his one remaining fist, and feels the warm metal still inside of it bite into his palm.
It’s small. It doesn’t matter. It will do.
Simon brings the blade to his neck, still trembling. He feels a sick satisfaction in the way that the bastard across from him looks terrified, and he spits, “I’m not going to just let you murder me for this. Not this time. The C.O.I. doesn’t get the satisfaction–!”
A monster breaks into the room, and all hell breaks loose.
Reality bends around Simon as a horrible, rocky creature with too many limbs barrels towards him, screeching and flailing around in what looks like a giant glass ball. WHAT THE FUCK!! He screams in unadulterated terror as it flies in his direction and he throws himself out of the way, towards the bed he’d woken up in. The rock-spider thing crashes into the wall full force, bouncing off and near-immediately changing course to pursue him.
Sprawled back on the ground, part of Simon is almost relieved that this has all turned out to be another hallucination– more realistic than the last, this C.O.I. “rescue” is as impressive as it is horrifying, but it’s just another trick. The other, much larger part of him knows that even in these hallucinations, you can still die. And it fucking hurts.
The Eye is calling for him. He has no intention of answering this time.
The man is still here, on the floor, and still screaming as the hissing rock-spider in the glass ball careens at him. “Rocky! Rocky, stop! He can’t hear you!” he’s begging. Simon doesn’t care to wonder what that means, his life has narrowed to a single pinpoint: getting away. He scrambles backward, but the thing is gaining on him. He’s made it back to the bed and drops the scalpel so he can use his full hand to drag himself back up to standing–
“Armando, sedative, now!”
As quickly as he’d stood, Simon is restrained. He’d forgotten all about the fucking robot! How is this hallucination so consistent!? The same white-hot panic from before scorches his body, and just as quickly there’s a stab of pain in his neck. “Fuck!”
His vision swims alarmingly as something floods his system, loosening his muscles. He wrenches away from the robot, which lets him go now that its task is completed, and he immediately stumbles. He has to stay awake. He has to… Simon drops to his knees, darkness encroaching on the sides of his vision. It can’t be over. It can’t…
The man, bleeding and shaky, gets to his feet as Simon trembles, on his knees, panting. He watches him pull the hand away from its place on his neck, from the place he’s been bleeding for minutes now, staring at the blood on his own gloved hand with shock and horror.
He desperately didn’t want to before, but in his last few moments of consciousness, Simon can’t stop himself from weeping. “Please,” he begs, though he doesn’t know exactly to what. To the man, who can’t be real? To the monster, who he hopes isn’t real? To the Eel, lurking somewhere outside these melting metal walls? To the Eye itself?
“Please,” he begs again, “Don’t kill me. I don’t want to die. Not after…everything I…”
And then Simon doesn’t think anymore.