Chapter Text
Simon is fucked. He is well and truly fucked.
First the COI dumps him in a blood ocean to take pictures of some stupid anomalies; but now they’re telling him to ram his submarine into a skeleton at full speed.
There is no way that he survives this.
Even if the SM-13 survives the initial impact, which, Simon thinks, is already unlikely, whatever creature is down here is almost certain to kill him instead.
He hears the radio crackle.
“Hey. Convict. Stop your dawdling and ram the skeleton already.”
Right. He has a job to do. And if he doesn’t do this there is absolutely no chance the COI will bring him back up and pardon him. Simon shakes his head to clear his thoughts, and grabs the controls.
“Uh, right, sorry. Ramming it.”
After a brief moment of hesitation Simon grits his teeth and thrusts the handle forward, pushing the ship to max speed. It’s only a matter of seconds before he feels the sub hit the skull, sending him lurching forward, holding onto the desk for dear life.
He takes a moment to gather himself before he pulls the handle backwards, reversing the SM-13 away from the large, bony structure.
“Uhh… I rammed it”
“Did you get the sample?”
“I think I got it. Let me check.”
Simon heads to the back of the cabin to take a photo of the skeleton, hoping to see if he hit it with the equipment attached to his ship.
“Uh yeah. I’m looking at what I think is a hole in the jaw, I think I got it.”
“Alright, good. We’re pulling you up now, hopefully you can hold onto the sample.”
He looks back at the photo, as it fades he thinks he can see something in the background, he takes another to make sure. And, yep. There’s an eye in the distance behind the skull.
“Hey uh… Hey! There’s something else!”
“Repeat that?”
“There’s something else down here, it was looking right at me!”
As Simon finishes speaking something huge slams into the side of the sub, he gets thrown to the floor with the force of the impact.
“What was that!?” Ava’s staticky voice comes through the speaker.
“SOMETHINGS GOT ME!” He screams.
Through his panic he can hear a conversation happening over the radio. They’re going to cut the line.
No! No! NO! They can’t leave me here!
He struggles to push himself up, wanting to plead with them to save him, to bring him up to safety.
It’s not working. The monster knocks into the ship every time he manages to get to his knees.
The creature grabs the sub and yanks right as the connection to the tow ship is severed. The SM-13 tips over, and Simon falls to the back of the cabin, hitting the camera with such force that he’s knocked out.
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Grace wandered through the lab, checking on the Taumoeba farms for the third time that day. He knows he doesn’t have to check on them this often but there really isn’t much else to do. Well, he does have access to the collected knowledge of all of humankind, so he could definitely find something to do. However, nothing he can think of sounds very appealing to him at the moment.
After he’s satisfied that everything is working properly, and that there have been no complications with the Taumoeba he sits down at the desk behind him. Grace sighs and closes his eyes, he leans back as far as he can go in his chair without it tipping over.
Now there really isn’t anything to do.
Opening his eyes, Grace stares at the ceiling. Distantly he can hear Rocky working on something. He sits there for a while, contemplating whether or not he should check out what his friend is doing. Eventually he gets sick of sitting around, doing nothing, and he heads over to Rocky’s workstation.
“Hey bud, whatcha working on?” Grace says as he leans against the wall.
“Grace bored. Rocky make Earth game for Grace Rocky to play.”
Intrigued, Grace walks over to Rocky and sits in front of the barrier that separates the two of them.
“Oh? Which one are you making?”
“Chess!”
“Awesome! I used to love playing chess!”
As Grace finished speaking, Rocky finished up making the chess pieces, pushing them and the board through the transfer panel in the wall of his workstation. Grace let them sit for a minute to cool, making idle conversation with Rocky, before he set up the game.
“So, do you know the rules?”
“Yes, yes, yes. Rocky use human thinking machine to find chess. Rocky find rules too.”
“Alrighty then. Do you wanna go first or second?”
“Rocky go first. Grace move piece for Rocky.”
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Grace grabs his hair in his hands, pulling at it as he tries to think of a way out of the trap Rocky’s got him in. He’s lost the last nine games, and doesn’t want to make it ten. Accepting that he most likely isn’t going to win, he sighs, dropping his hands and moving a bishop to protect his king, letting it get captured by Rocky.
“How are you winning every game??? This is not fair!!” Grace whines.
“Grace just dumb! Dumb, dumb, dumb!” Rocky says, spinning around with two of his claws in the air.
Just as Grace is about to admit defeat and just let Rocky capture his king, they hear their communicator crackle to life. They both look at each other, then towards the cockpit, where the radio is located. Grace stumbles, nearly tripping as he runs towards the noise, Rocky following close behind in his tunnel.
“Ugh… shit…” A voice crackles through the speaker.
Upon hearing the voice, Grace freezes. Unsure what to do, he looks to Rocky. Rocky says something Grace can’t quite understand, because of course he left the translator back in the corridor. Steeling himself, he walks up to the radio, shaking slightly as he presses the button for the microphone.
“Uhh, H-hello. This is Ryland Grace of the Hail Mary. Who is this?”
There is a brief moment of silence after Grace speaks, both him and Rocky nervous for what might come through next.
“What the fuck?!”