Chapter Text
They were the wrong files.
They were the wrong fucking files.
Simon’s fingers clenched, smashing against the keys. He could feel the skin in his fingers sticking. Tearing. Making his eyes burn—maybe that’s why the fluorescent letters were swimming, too slanted and blurred to make out. Blood dripped down the walls now, a steady pour (when did that happen?) and landed on his forehead.
Its fiery wake seared a path down his cheek, a brutal tether to his swimming mind. He sucked in a breath, fighting the weight that seemed to fill his lungs and his chest, and blinked away some of the blur to focus.
His hands barely were barely moving, though.
Heavy. They were heavy. Dragging over the keys like he couldn’t lift them. Like his lungs. Like his head. Like the air that seemed to cloy and press and—oh, come back up. Barely in time, he managed to duck his head as his throat swelled with bubbling bile. It splattered to the floor. A macabre puddle of blood and vomit (was that flesh?) and only God knows what else pooled at his feet.
The text seemed to blink mockingly. The first program shuddered shut, and once he hit a couple keys, more began to pop up. Green text seemed to stab through the cloying dark, disappearing under the camera’s bright flash. Red dripped down onto his fingers and seared to the bone.
“Fuck!” He panted, wiping it on his pants… where it then began to bubble and dissolve the flesh there. No time. He had no time. Not when his vision was rocking, pitching to the side—
His head cracked against the floor dully. Warm blood consumed up to one eye, causing the flesh there to scream and crawl, as though he had stuck his face against metal that baked before the light of God Himself. Immediately, he felt the tissue bubbling. Someone was screaming. Someone was—was it him? The SM-8 researchers? His fingers were itching for something and someone but he couldn’t remember what—
Gore began to bubble up from a lower grate, and he had to get up, he had to get up. Without even knowing it, he was pushing up from the floor, from the metal that was weakening moment by moment under a barrage of carnivorous blood. He squeezed his eyes shut and punched oxygen in and out, hoisting up by the edge of the computer. It groaned from the wall and slanted, continuing to blink, blink, blink.
His rotten fingers refused to bend and rather seemed to snap as he jabbed at the keys. No, not this page. No, not that one, either. He didn’t care about diaries. He didn’t care about journals. He just needed the research. Something to help the people above.
Instead, streaking green letters flickered to life before him.
> FINAL_ANOM.sim
Warning: Only for use if reactor progresses past 98% failure. Proceed with caution. Anomaly is dangerous.
His head blared (or maybe that was the sirens again—Oxygen: fail. Fuel: fail. Engine: fail. It rattled on and on—) and screamed at the light, screamed for shelter, screamed for death or mercy or anything other than this. His stiffened hand smacked against the Enter button, then slammed repeatedly down, but it still wasn’t the research. It was something about an experimental program, something about the engine once in critical reactor state.
The ship gave a violent lurch, sending blood sloshing around his ankles. Some growths of blood and boils began to creep across the walls like gorey vines as the blood stench grew stronger, more metallic. The iron on the walls began to rust. If the engine was ever going to be in critical condition—it was right then.
And it was all he had.
He had nothing. No research to send back. No message to prove he was there. No way to help anyone, and no way to get out.
The page hit its end with two bold words.
DISABLED > ENABLED
The camera flashed once more, bright white exploding across the room. The floor seemed to pitch out violently from under Simon, and he stumbled, catching himself with a hand on the wall.
All it took was a quick glance back at the screen for something to creep over his hand.
Instinctively, he jerked back. But his hand was caught. Dozens of squishy vines shoved between his fingers and curled there, creeping up his arm, up his neck—
The world went red and dark. Blood shot over his eyes, a solid root.
He lashed out his other hand to reach the Enter button. But something else caught it, ripping his shoulder to the right, jerking it immediately out of place.
He cried out, tearing his throat raw, spitting blood, only to have more pour into his mouth.
The blood continued to rise up to his hips now, soon to engulf the computer. But he was pinned, his feet leaving the ground, caught between the rising blood and the blinding heat of the camera as roots crept over the glowing button.
The roots began to pull.
His arms stretched and stretched until they no longer could, his head swimming and legs thrashing though he was weighed down by liquid. His movements grew sluggish, his muscles aching. It was an agonizing grind against something that he could not win, could not understand. The root began to dig into one of his eyes and he gasped.
He couldn’t win.
It was over. This was how he would die. Strung apart in a mock crucifixion, hundreds of meters away from the dying stars and from the station and the people who hated him, the people who…
were counting on him.
And the only options he had left were to give up, or to go for the green light.
It could do nothing—or it could, at least, do something. His final moments of agony could finally be quantifiable, his addled mind reasoned. Maybe, just maybe, the experiment could reach the surface.
This all could’ve been worth it.
“Oh, fuck me,” he groaned, before clenching his chest and yanking his arm in.
His shoulder wrenched out of place on the very first go. But still, he pulled. And he pulled. And he pulled. The bloody vines began to give way, stretching first before snapping, one by one.
More red dripped down onto the roots and collected, trying to form. It gave a harsh and loud snap! as he ripped, and ripped, and—
His arm started to tear at the bicep. Roots had dug in, clinging, and bullets of agony shot up his shoulder, causing him to stumble back. It snapped off like a mushroom from its root, giving completely and spurting with blood.
The world faded in and out, but he couldn’t give in, not yet. The computer was just a few feet away.
The other roots gave out easier, not having dug in. His arm ached with a thousand micro-burns of bubbling flesh and still he pitched forwards onto the floor.
With a grunt, he stumbled sideways into the computer onto his stump arm. His flesh-eaten fist slammed down on the keyboard as the blood rose to his waist. It dripped from the heights now, coating his hair and getting into his eye, burning dully there.
The green text disappeared for a moment. And, for a moment, his heart seemed to fall from his chest, stopping entirely.
But then it returned.
DISABLED < ENABLED
Everything seemed to shudder to a halt for a long second. The ship, even, ceased its constant humming. The light of the camera died away. There was only the rush of blood to fill the suddenly still air.
In that darkness, something was born anew.
The ship suddenly seemed to remember its workings. It lurched forwards and nearly sent Simon off of his feet. The light of the computer grew stronger, until Simon had to cover his eyes.
> EXECUTING FINAL_ANOM.sim
All of the busy humming of technology died away, and the blood still crept forth. But it seemed to divert that power into the computer itself. Cooling systems shut down as the sub flooded with stifling heat. The speakers crackled to a slow death. And, as the air seemed to grow thicker and that ever-present whirring began to die, Simon realized that the filtration systems must’ve also died.
The creaking floor began to shiver as the computer ran frantic lines.
> Loading reactor data…
> Critical reactor state affirmed…
> Power converging…
The very ship itself seemed to swell, a low, steady whine rising into a fever pitch. The blood crashed up against the walls as Simon was thrown back, sending his balance reeling.
Though he struggled to stand, he no longer could—an almost centrifugal force seemed to pin him where he was.
> Beginning field reconstruction…
Lights on the console began to flicker to life. But all of them—orange warnings. Containment coils began to quiver below-deck. The hull groaned with a strain it was never meant to suffer.
And as the reactor approached its final ascent, a strange light began to fill the cabin.
Simon thought for a long moment that the CO2 had finally won.
The cabin was no longer as it were. It existed in two separate states. Walls where bloody panels should’ve been. Floating lights that belonged to no source. A shifting shadow that, surely, was just his eyes playing tricks on him… right?
> Anomaly detected…
> Correcting course…
The viscous liquid splashed up into Simon’s eyes as he tilted his head back, desperate for huffs of air that would never come with the depleting oxygen. The ship careened one final time, but not forward, not sideways.
No.
It fell down from underneath him,
plummeting through the shifting sands
of the benthic layer.
For a moment,
he was weightless.
For a
moment, every sound
died away,
even the
roaring engine.
For
a
moment,
the
world
grew
white.
And
Then…
Nothing.