Chapter Text
Oxygen.
The green light indicating the oxygen available on the SM-10 dipped lower. He now only had three. Which wasn’t much more exciting than his previous four, but was somehow, in that moment, not as pressing. No. He had a much bigger problem.
He pressed the rectangle that served as both his camera and only view of the outside. A moment as the x-rays and radiation blasted through the sea of blood and then the image formed much like the ultrasounds and x-rays he looked at on Filament Station.
The creature- this thing- it was massive. The Scientist's quick math suggested it was at least eight times larger than his sub. Which was much terrifying in its own right- but to add to it was how it simply watched him. Its human-like body unmoving.
He ran a hand through his wet hair- from sweat or radiation- he didn't want to think about it. How did he end up here?
He pushed the button again. The creature was gone- leaving a tunnel or perhaps the entrance to a lair in its wake. An abyss in the blood.
How the fuck did he end up here?
He thought back to his lab back on Filament. Last week he had been teaching the station kids about the stars and planets and telling them they had a good future. Then he would go back to his lab after and realize how fucked they really were. Kids can always tell when you were bullshitting them yet he never had it in his heart to tell them the truth. He wanted them to just be kids. But it was likely they would never have a future. There simply wasn't enough food left.
Then the blood samples came.
A box tightly sealed just for him. The page said it was from Ellie- his former lab partner. But that was a lie. He knew her handwriting like his own, and it wasn't hers.
She had been drafted- much like what happened to him. A woman he had never seen before came for her with armed guards and a promise of retirement on a better station. Then Ellie was gone, and he hadn't heard from her again.
"Fuck this."
The Scientist triggered one last photo- verifying that the creature was really gone. Then he headed to the front of the sub. They had dropped him on the last launch, and he hit his head. He thought at first that the concussion was just part of the experience, but now he wondered if maybe he had died instead. His head pounded incessantly. The churning of the blood ocean all around his sub made his stomach queasy.
He straightened the crappy chair that he was given. Then sat while opening the binder with loose instructions. There were maybe ten pages in all. Instructions. Barely. He read them all already, on his initial launch, and now he was just searching for anything to give him purpose. A sign. A clue. A way out. Something.
He looked back at the camera and sighed.
"Well, if anyone's looking for a missing scientist. Just uh, send them my way? Yeah?" He sighed. "Talking to a fucking fish. Get a grip, Grace."
He pulled out the map they gave him. It was crude. A satellite image that that mapped the terrain- albeit poorly. It was better than nothing. At least he had a vague idea of where he was. Even if he was technically off the map. He could see how to get back. That was something.
He started looking at everything like a resource the second they welded him in. Instructions- read. Water- rationed. Giant death ray camera- use sparingly. Computer- attempted hacking but he wasn't very good at that. He knew how to program, but not much more. It was password protected and very clearly off limits. The computer bothered him. A loose end. He didn't like those.
What he needed now was to get in contact with Stratt and the rest of the C.O.I. He may have been drafted for this mission, but he was certain he was more valuable to them alive. He just needed to remind them of that.
Grace looked at the crude controls to his sub- the green lights that gave him proximity and the coordinates that he was currently sitting. He knew where he needed to go to get signal- the skeleton. He just needed to get there.
Preferably alive.
"Knock knock."
"Who's there?" Grace asked without looking up from his microscope.
When no one replied, he sat up. He pushed his glasses to his chin, taking in the stoic woman in his lab. She had heavy set eyes and red hair that was pulled into a bun at the base of her neck. She wore a black turtleneck and military grade pants and boots. Behind her was a large black man in a military uniform. Neither person did Grace recognize, but they also had no markings on their person.
They weren't marked as important, but the woman commanded such a presence that Grace fought to remain seated.
"Have you looked at the blood samples yet?"
"That's what I'm currently doing," he replied slowly, measured. "And you are?"
"Tell me what you've learned."
She walked directly up to him and peered over his shoulder at the microscope and his ramblings on paper.
"Um. Hey you can't just-"
"Actually she can."
Grace looked at the man who was apparently her guard. "I didn't get your name."
"Carl."
"Right." His eyes trailed back to the woman. "Look, I'm still in the trial phase- if you can call it that. My biggest problem is it's not normal blood."
"What do you mean?"
"It doesn't react to oxygen. Or dries. It stays...fresh."
She doesn't seemed phased at all by this information. Which makes Grace wonder if she's the one who sent the blood. Which means she knows what happened to Ellie.
"My partner would be better suited at this," Grace said, watching the woman carefully. "She's a doctor- in medicine. Not microbiology like me."
"Yes. She was very helpful." The woman replied calmly and Grace choked on his own saliva.
"What do you-"
"Dr. Grace, I need you to come with me."
"I- but- no! Look lady, I don't even know who you are! Why would I just-"
Carl came up behind him, taking him firmly by the arm. Grace scoffed.
"Really Carl? And here I thought we were getting aquatinted." He turned to the woman. "Who are you exactly?"
"Dr. Eva Stratt. I'm overseeing humanities survival. Dr. Grace, you will be joining me on AT-5."
He wiped more sweat from his brow. On the table before him was the map, with his crudely drawn visuals of what the proximity alarm was reacting to and walls of various tunnels. He added a decent amount to it, but he kept running into dead ends. No way out.
He needed to get out.
It pissed him off. This was supposedly congealed blood, but it operated like an underwater cave system. It didn't make any scientific sense. But none of this really did.
Especially a gigantic humanoid eel creatures that lived in it.
He looked at his wounds. He got banged up in the fall. Asides from the concussion, splitting headache, and ever lowering oxygen- his arms were scraped up too. He also had a decent bruise forming on his back. He had wrapped his cuts in gauze, washing them with the alcohol and a small amount of water, but they still stung like they were fresh. Not healing. Not scabbing.
That bothered him too.
Static got Grace to pause. He stopped, turning to the radio whose light flickered slightly before dying.
"Hello?"
"Dr- can- he- hear-"
Grace turned back to the depth meter. Though he had no actual measurements to go off of, it was higher than before. Maybe the signal was getting through finally.
"Hey!" He yelled, pushing his sub forward a bit. "I'm right here! Say something!"
"How...alive- days-" Static filled the silence. "Hello?"
He looked st his map. He had gone in a circle- reaching the same part of the cave he had been in before. Which meant the only way out- or the only one he hadn’t tried yet- was the eel’s layer. He cursed.
He turned, planning to head towards the camera, but stopped dead.
He wasn’t alone.
The entity was blood soaked, arms and legs covered in wounds. Skin peeling from bone and teeth protruding from the side of its face. If he had anything left in his stomach to throw up, he would have. Even still the bile rose. He gagged, held back as the entity stepped out of sight.
He looked for a weapon. Of course there was nothing. He tried the pipes- then thought better of it. He didn’t know what they did afterall. Nothing was labeled. It was frustrating.
He stood slowly, creeping his way forward bit by bit. The only noise were his slow steps and the blood churning outside.
He was so fucked.
He jumped out not sure if it was out of fear or desire to be put out of his misery. The sub was empty. He was alone. He had always been alone.
“I’m loosing it. Fuck.” He punched the wall, flinching when his knuckles burned with pain.
“He-hello? Who’s there? Eva? Can you hear me?”
Grace froze again, breath caught in his throat.
“Hello?”
The voice panicked. “Eva? Can you hear us? Please!”
“I’m not- who are you?" Grace asked. "Did they…leave you down here?”
There was silence. For so long Grace wondered if he was actually going crazy. Now he was seeing and hearing things. Great. What was the diagnosis though? Lack of oxygen? Despite the lights indicating he had some left, he didn’t really know. In a ship this size, it certainly wasn’t a lot. He did have a panic attack earlier. That would have eaten up some more. Not to mention the talking.
“Hello?”
He couldn’t resist. He needed to know he wasn’t alone and forgotten down here.
No response.
“Damn it!”
He punched the wall and seconds later a photo appeared on the screen. Odd. He was sure he hadn’t touched the button.
The terrain was similar to before. Maybe slightly more jumbled. He wished he could compare it to the other photos. His eyes fell onto the computer. Then a glisten he hadn’t noticed before. He hit the button again.
An electric box waited. Mounted to the wall at knee height. Grace knelt beside it. Just as he thought. There was something etched into the side. A symbol he knew very well.
The Tree of Eden.
Huh.
The box fell back into darkness as Grace sat on the floor besides it. He reached around and absentmindedly pushed the button again. As it lit up, he saw the loose screw in the corner and began to work at it.
“You tested this thing, right?” Grace asked, staring at the window as it turned to res and then black.
“This is the test,” Stratt's voice came through the radio. “Do your best, Dr. Grace.”
“It would be helpful if I knew what I was doing.” He complained, pulling out the binder he found and flipping through it.
“You’re smart. You’ll figure it out.”
He wiped around in his sad chair and stared at the radio light.
“That’s not how science works! It took them two hundred years to understand bacteria!”
The silence was deafening and Grace figured the conversation was over. He turned back to the book. He found the instructions on the camera. And it was just a giant x-ray machine.
“What the f-“
The sound of the hatch closing and the radio static pulled him back. He watched as a piece of metal not unlike the rest of his tomb slid over the glass porthole. His only view of the outside. Gone. His heart sank with it.
“Remember Dr. Grace, this is for humanities survival.”
“Fuck them,” he muttered, staring at the page. Then he remembered his kids. “Damn it all.”
He looked back at the radio but it’s light was off. It was dead. The blood would block the signal if he was too deep. And judging by the depth meter, he was at his limit already.
He didn’t want to know what happened if he fell further.
Grace held the charm like it was the most precious thing. He had fallen onto the floor, back against the wall. Using the green light from the camera switch, he stared at his discovery.
A seed with a single leaf pressed between glass. It fit comfortably in the palm of his hand and had a leather cord fitted to it. He'd never seen a living plant before. That was one thing he envied about Eden. Their tree. He wanted to study it. He wanted to make more.
Now he held a seed- a sprout- and he had no way to check if it was alive.
It came with a note "Cross the wires" but that wasn't the only information it offered. No. This meant that other people had been in this same sub. Someone from Eden. It was no stretch to assume they were a prisoner. The C.O.I. liked to use all available resources after all.
Crossing the wires did two things for him. One, it allowed him access to all the photos the SM-10 had taken. Two, it played a message left behind from the dead man. That was the least exciting part.
"This is not an expedition. It’s an execution. When they put you in here, they don’t want you to return." The strangers voice echoed throughout the chamber. "And even if you do, and even if they keep their promises, what freedom waits for you? A few dying ships in a sea of dead stars? If there is still hope, it lies beyond the veil. Hope in this void is as illusionary as the starlight. I will choose to breathe my last here, at the bottom of an ocean. Unseen. Unheard. Uncontrolled."
Grace sat once more at the front of the sub. The pendant of glass with the seed inside bound to his wrist. His map spread out before him and only one way to go.
"They’re gonna get their execution. I will get my freedom."
He wasn't the first. He probably won't be the last. But he'll be damned before he dies down here. He should get back to his kids. He should find out who the hell was in charge of this stupid mission. Maybe he'll join Eden- that crazy cult- just to fuck with the C.O.I.
He wasn't dying down here.