Chapter Text
When Tim’s parents basically signed his life away to Earth’s last remaining functional space corporation, this was not how he had expected to die. The second he had boarded the spacecraft he lovingly dubbed “RedBird”—thanks to its striking red hull—alongside his four comrades, he knew his life was over. This mission, the farce that it was, was never intended to succeed. No, it was meant to send a message to the human populace, a species teetering ever closer to extinction. It had been the government’s response to months of silence from its most important space station, which had only recently been supplied with fresh astronauts.
Captain Greenway had been oddly optimistic that the mission would go off without a hitch, promising they would return to the dumpster fire that was home in no time. The man had been wrong. His rotting corpse, tightly sealed inside the Storage compartment next to the First Officer’s and the Navigator’s, bore silent testament to that fact.
Breathing out a shuddering breath, Tim willed away the tears threatening to spill over his cheeks. His last emergency message to Ground Control played on a loop, his own voice cutting through the Bridge’s empty silence.
Emergency Distress Call #23: Ground Control, this is Chief Engineer Drake. Please come in. Ground Control, do you copy? I, Chief Engineer Drake, am now the last remaining person alive on this vessel. I have been for the last thirty-six hours, and I am in need of immediate extraction. Location is unknown. Please respond. Drake, out.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing had come back from Ground Control. Tim had been screaming into a void for the past two days. His hands were shaky—though no longer tainted with his comrades’ blood. They hadn’t been for the past ten hours, not since he had miraculously found the strength to wash them clean.
For fuck’s sake, he had only turned eighteen three months ago, right before he was forced up into the black. He didn’t want to die. Please, someone rescue him.
Please.
Emergency Distress Call #25: Ground Control, this is Chief Engineer Drake. Do you copy? Please. Do you hear me? Does anybody hear me? Everyone is dead. Please come rescue me. Location is unknown. Drake, out.
Emergency Distress Call #30: Ground Control. Tim Drake here. Please. Help me. Does anybody hear me? They’re all dead. I’m alone. It’s been five days. Eight since last contact. Please, I’m begging. Location is unknown. Drake, out.
Emergency Distress Call #54: Please. Please, please, PLEASE! Get me out! I’m begging! Please… It’s been a week… maybe more. Please.
Emergency Distress Call #91: This is Timothy Jackson Drake, Chief Engineer. It’s been twenty-five days since last contact. Twenty-two since Captain Greenway died, leaving me the last person alive. Ground Control, if you hear this… please rescue me. Please. Drake, out.
Emergency Distress Call #100: WHY IS NOBODY ANSWERING?! PLEASE! I don’t want to starve here alone! I don’t know why I survived… please come get me. Please, I’m begging!
Emergency Distress Call #211: It’s been four months. I think. I’m sorry, Bernard, for leaving you. I—I love you. So much. Food’s been getting low. Hull integrity is at eighty-nine percent. Thrusters are jammed on; unable to shut down. Steering broke a few weeks ago. Artificial gravity’s still working, though. Yeah. That’s it.
Emergency Distress Call #340: I wish I had died too, you know? It would’ve made things much easier. Been hearing weird things lately… I wonder how far away from home I am. It’s been approximately half a year since I’ve just been flying into deeper space uncontrollably. Rationing food’s been going well, although I think I’ve just been starving myself. But, oh well. What can you do.
Emergency Distress Call #342: Gonna go check the outer hull today. Integrity has declined to seventy-one percent over the past few days. Wish me luck.
Emergency Distress Call #343: I almost lost my grip during the EVA and floated away from RedBird. I don’t think I would’ve minded.
Emergency Distress Call #346: I want to die. I’m so lonely. Sometimes I think I’m starting to go insane… I haven’t slept a full night in months. Maybe if I lay down with the others’ bodies I’ll catch it and die too. Gruesome, but kinda fitting, I guess. Anyway…
Emergency Distress Call #389: Still alive. Hi. I’ve been hearing weird things again, though. It’s not the hull. I don’t think the noises are coming from RedBird…
Emergency Distress Call #397: The sound keeps getting louder. What is this?
Running a hand through his hair, Tim sighed. His maintenance rounds had been thoroughly uneventful again. Then again, what else had he expected? He was the only living soul left on the vessel. But still, at this point, he was craving any excitement life could throw at him.
As he came to a halt in front of the Storage bay—now a makeshift tomb for his three deceased comrades—Tim carefully unlatched the metal cover protecting the tiny observation window on the sealed bulkhead door. The harsh light flooding into the room illuminated the corpses, surrounded by long-dried pools of blood. The bodies had stopped decomposing at some point, freezing in time with their grotesque injuries fully preserved. Captain Greenway’s eye sockets would remain an empty, sanguine mess for the foreseeable future, Tim guessed. So would Navigator McAldee’s stumps that had once been hands, and First Officer Kim’s cracked-open ribcage, immortalized as a horrific container with the heart ripped out.
They didn’t look peaceful. Tim wished they did. It would have made the direct aftermath of the incident a little easier to swallow—or so he speculated. Not that it mattered now. They were dead, and he was still alive. Somehow.
Closing the latch, Tim turned away, his fingers lingering on the cold metal for a few seconds. In the beginning, he thought it would never get easier. But it did. Miraculously and heartbreakingly so. What kind of monster didn’t immediately heave at the gruesome scene behind that door? A person who had looked at it hundreds of times, apparently.
Tim swiftly shook the thoughts from his head and sauntered toward the Bridge, the main compartment where he had spent nearly all of his time over the past few months. The Common Room, small as it was, brought back an onslaught of bad memories filled with details better forgotten. The Crew Bunks were an absolute no-go; blood still stained the walls, entirely impossible to scrub out of the sheets. That left him with few comfortable options, the Bridge being the best. Its massive, panoramic viewport peeked out into the never-ending dark abyss of deep space, acting as a strange soothing mechanism. More importantly, it allowed him to keep an eye on all the ship’s vital stats and internal cameras, placating a paranoia that had grown suffocating.
With the pneumatic doors closing and sealing automatically behind him, Tim made his way to the lone Captain’s chair centered before the monitoring array. Scattered around the pedestal lay dozens of empty ration bags and crinkled water bottles—the instant coffee had run out a month prior, much to Tim’s profound despair. On the chair itself lay a few blankets, strategically organized into a small nest where he took his much-needed, yet entirely inadequate, naps.
He hadn’t had a full night’s sleep in weeks, his body only allowing for rest when it completely crashed. Today felt like one of those days; he could feel it in his bones, and even more acutely in the agonizing throb of a pounding headache. Sinking down into the blankets, he cast one last look at the monitors. Everything looked good—good enough, at least. He curled into a tight ball, ignoring the fact that the awkward angle would make him regret the crick in his neck once he woke up (if he woke up—shhh, yes you will, you traitorous voice), and let his eyelids slip shut.
Sleep washed over him in uneven tides, sometimes steady, sometimes rocky. Tim’s dreams were empty and soulless, matching the space around him. Thank God. He didn’t need to see the bloodbath replayed again while trying to rest.
All was peaceful, quiet, and almost blissful. Until—
Until the collision alarms suddenly started blaring, ripping Tim from his sleep. He bolted upright, hair askew and vision spotty. His heart rate skyrocketed in a matter of milliseconds, his eyes immediately fixating on the flashing monitors. The alarm was shrill, and the red-and-white strobe of the emergency lights threatened to completely overwhelm his senses.
With blood pounding heavily in his throat, his worst fear—whatever that even meant anymore; anything out of the ordinary, he supposed—was coming true. But how? How? How?
A massive bang echoed through the deck plating. Outside the sealed Bridge door, muffled, alien voices were barely audible. The security system had automatically locked the doors, trapping Tim inside. How could this be happening?
Hands shaking, frozen to his chair, Tim watched the external security camera. A humanoid alien made direct eye contact with the lens right outside the Bridge. What in the…
Tim’s breathing fractured. Was he even breathing anymore? Did this still count as hyperventilating, or had his lungs just stopped functioning entirely? Was he dead? Maybe he should wish to be.
Suddenly, the paralysis broke. His brain—his best weapon—jumped into overdrive. On the camera feed, he identified two more humanoid creatures moving into position, seemingly responding to the first one’s call. The banging on the heavy blast door grew louder, more desperate.
Okay. Think, Tim. Think.
The main flight controls had long since frozen in place. The weapons that were supposed to be secured in the bridge locker had been removed by his own hands months ago, when the mere sight of them triggered panic attacks. The cameras and the environmental controls were all he had left. Truly.
He had nothing to defend himself with. He was dead. Or as good as.
What was the use in fighting a futile battle? What was the point in delaying the inevitable? He was supposed to have died six months ago. With his crew.
Blinking away a sudden surge of tears, he took a shaky breath and forced his finger down onto the comms console. He threw one final glance at the monitors, watching the aliens connect a strange, foreign control board directly to the wires they had ripped out of the door's external keypad. The door that led straight to him.
Tim cleared his throat, his voice cracking and rough from disuse.
Emergency Distress Call #402: Chief Engineer Timothy Jackson Drake here. This will be the last time you hear from me. Aliens are real. I repeat, extraterrestrials exist. Drake, out.
The exact second he hit the button to terminate the recording, the heavy whir of the automatic doors releasing filled the room. Swiveling his chair around—just like a movie villain, a traitorous, childish part of his mind whispered—Tim clutched the metal armrests until his knuckles turned white. Trying his absolute best not to sob, he came face-to-face with something humankind had fantasized about, revered, and feared for centuries.
The silence was deafening, the tension in the room thick enough to strangle him. Six pairs of eyes stared into his. They looked almost incredulous, as if Tim wasn’t at all what they had anticipated finding aboard the derelict craft.
Now that he could see them clearly, Tim fought the shivers racing up his spine. All three aliens stood a head or two taller than the average human male. The middle one—the one who had breached the door first—was the shortest of the trio by a small margin. His skin possessed a distinct bluish hue, with patches of what looked like blue feathers interspersed across his cheeks and down his neck. His limbs were disproportionately long compared to his torso—slender, yet visibly muscled beneath the form-fitting flight suit. Strangely, his most normal features were a mop of messy black hair and a pair of strikingly bright blue eyes.
Tim’s gaze flicked to the left. This creature was built like an absolute tank, its bulging muscles practically straining against the fabric of its uniform. He had curly black hair, juxtaposed sharply by a single, prominent strand of white. It was an appearance that would have looked heartachingly human, if not for the radioactive green glowing in its eyes and the heavy multitude of scars marring its face.
The final alien, however, was the most terrifying. It emanated a cold, unreadable aura, dominated by the massive, hulking black wings folded against its back. Huge, leathery bat wings. What the actual fuck. Its ears were sharply pointed and tinged a dark charcoal black, matching the wings and its dark hair, which was graying slightly at the temples. The only pop of color on the creature was a pair of icy, piercing blue eyes that felt like they were staring directly into Tim's soul.
The stalemate lasted for a few agonizing seconds as the aliens evaluated Tim’s frail form just as intensely as he did theirs. When the feathery one, whose black and grey flight suit had blue accents, stepped forward, Tim bolted from his chair, scrambling to put the heavy piece of furniture between himself and the intruders. He refused to make his death easy. He had survived this long; he could fight for a little while longer.
His explosive reaction caught the creatures off guard. The middle one froze mid-stride. The heavily scarred, green-eyed alien barked something to the other two in a sharp, guttural language Tim couldn’t understand. The command was met with a low, rough "Hn" from the bat-winged leader.
Then, all three began to move in perfect synchronization, stepping forward slowly, closing the distance around the empty Captain’s chair.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
He had nowhere left to run.
As the circle tightened, Tim desperately calculated a trajectory to dart past them, but his body was too weak. He knew he couldn’t outrun them—not one of them, let alone all three. He had been starving himself for too long to make the rations last, and his muscles were entirely atrophied.
The second a heavy, gloved hand clamped down firmly onto his forearm, a terrified, raw screech ripped from Tim's throat. It was the bat-alien. This was it. He was going to die.
But instead of a weapon, Tim suddenly found himself hauled forward, yanked tightly against the creature's broad chest. The massive arms wrapped around him, locking him into an unyielding, protective hold. The last of his resolve shattered. Tim began to sob pitifully into the fabric of the alien's flight suit, his voice breaking as he incoherently begged for his life.
As rapidly as the intrusion had begun, the world began to slip away. One of the aliens—he couldn’t tell which one anymore—vibrated with a low, rumbling purr that echoed right against his ear.
The comforting, rhythmic sound was the last thing Tim registered before his vision went completely black, and his body sagged entirely weightless into the alien’s arms.