Chapter Text
When Simon wakes up, it takes one long, disorienting moment for him to realize that something is not right. He doesn’t know exactly what—can’t piece together anything as he peels his eyelids open and stares at an unfamiliar ceiling—but something is definitely not right.
For starters, he can't quite recall much. The last thing he can remember is drowning in blood, a warm, metallic taste filling his mouth before… well, that’s when his memory goes blank.
Maybe that would trouble him on any other day, but the foreign feeling of his body seems to be his biggest concern, pushing away all the questions about why his memory is failing him and instead dousing him with an overwhelming sense of dread. His head feels like it's about to split in two, and his breathing feels weird, like his lungs are much smaller than normal and he’s unable to get enough air.
“Simon?”
Simon blinks, turning his head slightly to the left to see a man he doesn't recognize. He's got dark hair that looks like it's been run through one too many times, and tired eyes shadowed by what looks like several sleepless nights. He looks worried, though, scared, and Simon narrows his eyes at him because no one has ever looked at him like that, looked at him like they were concerned, looked at him like they cared. And certainly not a stranger.
Who the fuck is this guy?
"Jesus," the man breathes, shooting to his feet. "You're awake."
“Wha-a…” Simon tries to speak, only to immediately realize it isn’t the right call. His throat is dry and sore, and he lets out a few nasty coughs instead.
"Take it easy." The man rushes over, hands reaching out.
Simon moves before he can think, arms shooting out to lock around the man's wrists. "Don't—" Another cough wracks through him. "Don't fucking touch me—"
The man freezes in Simon's grip. "I'm trying to help you, Simon."
Simon glares at him through watering eyes, waiting for something—for irritation, anger, the slightest sign that this is some kind of trick. But the man doesn't fight against his grip, doesn't try to pry himself free. He just stands there, continuing to look worried.
Simon hates how much that throws him off. He searches the man's face, searches for something that he can decipher, but there's nothing to grab on to.
After a long moment, Simon's grip loosens, and slowly, reluctantly, he lets go.
The man doesn't comment on it. He just reaches for a glass nearby and holds it out. "Here."
Simon takes it after a second, eyeing it suspiciously before bringing it to his mouth. The first sip is testing, careful, but it doesn't last. The water is cool against his dry throat, and before he can stop himself, he's tipping the glass back, swallowing in greedy gulps until it's empty.
“What happened?” Simon asks, blinking hard. Through the blurriness, he can make out a small badge on the man's shirt. Xander Wallace.
"You don't remember?" Xander frowns, eyebrows pinched together. Simon thinks the look he gives Xander is very telling, because he quickly adds, “We were in one of the test chambers, and an engine module came right off the rigging. You, uh..." he pauses, then swallows hard. "You pushed me out of the way and took the hit. I thought you were a goner, man. Doc was real worried about a coma for a bit there.”
Well, fuck. That explanation certainly doesn’t help.
Simon doesn’t think on it too hard, deciding to press on to more important matters. "Did the black box make it? Did anyone make it?"
Xander blinks. "I'm sorry?"
“The black box. The one in the SM-13…?” Simon says like it’s obvious.
”Uh…?”
Simon lets out a pant, something between a scoff and a laugh. “Am I speaking gibberish? How did the C.O.I pull me out? How am I even alive?”
Xander doesn't respond, but the look he gives Simon throws him for a loop. He’s got his eyebrows knitted together, arms folded across his chest and a far-off look in his eyes.
He almost looks…confused. Genuinely confused.
Simon narrows his eyes, refusing to believe Xander has no idea what he’s talking about. This has to be the C.O.I messing with him—putting him in some sort of simulation or getting his defences down so they could throw him back into another dangerous expedition without him lashing out.
Either that or he’s dying and that stupid fucking eel's a sick bastard.
Simon tightens his jaw before asking again. “I was in the SM-13. What the fuck happened?”
Xander’s expression grows more bewildered, if that’s even possible. Now he’s looking at Simon like he just grew two heads. “What are you talking about, man? You’re kinda freaking me out.”
Oh, for the love of—
“Just cut shit. You fuckers dragged me through enough, don’t you think? Did Ava put you up to this? Where the fuck is she?”
Simon can remember her blood-curdling screams through the sub speakers; she was dying, her last moments—her panicked, strangled breaths—coming in with bursts of static. She has to be alive if he is, though. Simon knows it makes no sense, but it's the only explanation he’d accept.
Xander is quiet for one long, excruciating moment, searching Simon's face so intricately that Simon starts to feel his face starting to run hot. He’s getting tired of every avoided question—not even just here, but back in the SM-13, where he was thrown towards death with no instructions or help.
"Let me get the doctor," Xander finally breaks the silence, the words rolling slowly off his tongue. "I think we gotta figure out just how hard you hit your head."
Simon’s brows furrow as he watches Xander leave. Hit his head? It sounds almost absurdly ordinary compared to what Simon remembers: controls, pressure, metal groaning around him, the dread of expecting to die. There should be more than an apparent head injury waiting for him on the other side of that.
He looks toward the door Xander disappeared through, trying to decide whether he’s forgotten something or everyone else has, and then shifts his gaze across the room. He spots a bookshelf, a sink with a mirror, a few tapestries, and what Simon could only describe as a needle pressing onto a flat plastic disc. On one of the jackets hanging on a rack, he can faintly make out his name on a badge. That alone doesn’t make Simon pause — it’s finding his name again written on the door that does.
…Does this room belong to him?
He tries hard to grasp onto any semblance of reality, to see if any visual input will jog a memory, but his mind keeps drawing blanks—he keeps remembering pain and blood and death. Keeps remembering fighting to stay alive because he wanted to so badly.
He didn't want to die, but he should be dead. Logically.
His eyes land on a cluttered desk that’s buried under stacks of papers and binders, perched beneath a whiteboard covered in equations. The board has rushed handwriting—his own, he realizes—circling the words ASTROPHAGE EXPOSURE PROTOCOL three separate times, and under it is a note that reads: CALL STRATT.
The next thing he sees is a calendar, hanging crooked next to the board. It’s got a bunch of cramped scribbles in the boxes, dates and appointments that Simon can barely see.
That doesn't matter, though, because his eyes are glued to the date plastered at the top of it.
August 2022.
The calendar isn’t in EIC. Simon does the math in his head, and once he’s got an answer, he does it four more times because he can’t be right, can he?
His blood runs cold, surging through his body in a way that makes his brain short-circuit. He doesn’t think he’s ever felt this sort of pit in his stomach before, and that’s coming from a man who looked an unknowing beast in the eye in the depths of a blood ocean.
His math is telling him 2022 is a full three centuries before he was even a thought in the universe.
Someone needs to give him answers now.
── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──
Simon learns a few more things from a seemingly patient, older man who introduces himself as Dr. Montgomery.
- His name is Simon Fischer (he already knew this)
- He's experiencing some sort of memory loss
- He's a ‘NASA’ technician (whatever that is)
The rest of the words themselves aren't unfamiliar. Simon knows what accident means. Recovery. Concussion. Temporary Amnesia. Dehydration. He understands each one in isolation.
Together, though? They might as well be spoken in another language, because none of them connect to anything in his head. They don’t give him answers—don't unlock memories, don’t explain why his body feels wrong, why every face in the room is a stranger, why the goddamn calendar says 2022. Every answer Dr. Montgomery gives only seems to split into three more questions, multiplying faster than he can ask them.
Simon is in the middle of trying to unpack all of it—trying hard to soothe the panic and confusion that's washing over him—when a sudden bang echoes in the room, the unmistakable clank of a door hitting the wall.
"Goddamn it, here we go," Simon hears Xander groan.
Simon jolts as a woman's voice bursts, furious, from the doorway.
"What kind of mess are you running here? A fucking circus?"
It's not Ava. Simon can tell before she comes into view. Her voice is higher, cleaner, touched by an accent he can't identify. Bright red hair is twisted into a practical bun that's begun to come loose, wisps escaping around her temples. She looks like she hasn't slept in days, but she's moving with the kind of purpose that makes everyone else instinctively get out of the way.
Her expression is thunderous.
Simon decides, almost immediately, that getting on her bad side would be a spectacularly terrible idea.
"Calm down, Stratt—" Dr. Montgomery barely gets the words out before she cuts him off.
"My lead technician is in a critical accident, and I hear about it three hours later?"
Stratt. That's the name on the whiteboard.
"Stratt, c'mon." Simon doesn't notice the other man standing behind Stratt at first, blond-haired and blue-eyed and looking a bit out of place. He's wearing a black beanie, and for some reason, his glasses aren't set correctly on his face. They're hanging off his ears and dangling under his chin. Strange. "I'm sure they had a reason."
She raises a brow. "Wonderful. Let's hear it then."
Simon looks between her and Dr. Montgomery. There’s something about Stratt’s stance that makes Simon think she’s in charge, that she calls the shots. She’s leveling Montgomery with a look that says ‘this better be good’.
She kind of reminds him of Ava, if Ava were a shorter, older, more commanding woman with one less milky eye.
"He regained consciousness less than thirty minutes ago," Dr. Montgomery explains, voice thin. "He was confused, agitated, and showing signs of acute memory impairment. Our priority was making sure he was medically stable."
Stratt's jaw remains set, but some of the fury drains from her face. Not by much, but it's just enough that she finally looks at Simon instead of the doctor. Her expression shifts. Not softer, exactly—more like she's assessing, calculating, picking something apart.
Then she speaks, not talking directly to Simon but still assessing him with her eyes. "How much does he remember?"
"He knew his name." Dr. Montgomery says.
Simon scoffs. Well, yeah. It was the only piece of information that was correct.
Stratt takes her eyes off Simon, turning to the doctor with a small, sarcastic smile. "That is not useful enough."
"Eva, he woke up less than half an hour ago, apparently. That's not really enough time to, you know, remember your entire life." The blond man keeps his voice measured, calm, almost like the way someone would speak to a child. He looks at Simon with careful, clinical concern, and Simon has to stop himself from physically recoiling at it. He doesn't like being looked at like something to dissect, like something to solve.
Stratt—Eva? Whoever—seems to loosen up a bit at his words, taking a controlled breath in before looking at blue-eyes with resolve. "Grace, time is something we do not have much of."
The words don’t come out of her in anger; they come out factual, like time is a resource she has to ration. Something about that makes Simon's heart tick a little faster.
Grace opens his mouth—probably to argue, if the look on his face is anything to go by—but she’s already turning back to Dr. Montgomery.
"Whatever happened to him, I need to know if it is permanent. If Mr. Fischer has forgotten the last six months, I need to know. If he has forgotten the last six years, I need to know. If he has forgotten how to perform his job entirely, I needed to know ten minutes ago."
“I’m still determining the extent of his concussion. I’m going to need some time—”
“You have twenty-four hours, Dr. Montgomery.”
The doctor stops.
“I’m sorry?”
“You have twenty-four hours,” Stratt repeats.
His eyebrows shoot up. “That’s…not exactly how potential brain injuries work.”
“No,” She says. “But that is how this situation works. I didn’t bring you here because you tell me what is easy, Doctor. I brought you here because you tell me what is possible. Twenty-four hours is generous. Make it count.”
She doesn't wait for a response, a rebuttal, an argument. She turns on her heel and leaves, as if the conversation is over—and to her, it most definitely is. What she just said snaps any follow-up in half.
A silence blankets the room, only broken when Simon clears his throat. “She seems, uh…”
“Like a hard ass?” Xander supplies.
“She’s…” Grace rubs the back of his neck. “I mean, she’s doing better than I’d be doing, considering, y'know, an extinction-level event and all. Maybe we should cut her some slack?”
Xander falters a bit at that, doesn't offer a response.
Simon slouches from his position on the bed. Well, that’s just great. He somehow left the hell hole of the Quiet Rapture just to be met with something else threatening life on…wherever the fuck he is.
At least that part of the whole ordeal is navigational to him. Familiar, in a way.
Dr. Montgomery sighs.
"Eva Stratt has a remarkable talent for asking for the impossible," he says, almost fondly. “Does she know regular people need sleep?”
Grace lets out a quiet breath that might almost be a laugh. “This is actually one of the more reasonable things she’s asked for.”
The doctor gives Grace a long, deeply skeptical look before briefly settling his eyes on Simon.
“Alright gentlemen, let's give Simon a little room,” Dr Montgomery says. “He's been through a significant neurological event. Before we start trying to fill in the blanks, I'd like to assess what he remembers on his own.”
Xander is the first to move, stepping toward the door. Grace follows, but not before looking back at Simon one last time. His expression is thoughtful, his brows drawn together slightly, like he's trying to make sense of something Simon can't explain. Simon doesn't know what he expects to find there, but he stiffens at the attention. Then Grace turns and follows Xander out.
Simon listens to their footsteps fade down the hall. Grace is saying something animated—something about memory loss, photographs, and... testing? Simon can't quite make out the words before the voices disappear entirely, leaving the room quiet once more.
“Fucking—shit,” Simon hisses, releasing the breath he wasn't even aware he was holding as he takes a chance at standing up. His whole body feels like it's on fire, a heat settling in his bones like it’s made a home.
His muscles ache as he navigates his way towards the calendar he saw earlier. Up close, he can finally make out words filling the tiny boxes: HM Avionics integration, cryo systems review, telemetry validation. He goes back a few months. April 23, 2022: Astrophage touchdown, May 6th, 2022: Grace - Lab 4, 14:00, May 7th, 2022: Stratt - engineering brief, 14:30.
He glances at the computer on the desk—the date in the corner reads 2022—and then grabs some of the binders and paperwork, sifting through them hastily. Every file, every report, every document…they all bear the same year. 2022. Earlier, maybe, but never later. Nothing exists beyond it.
There are a few pictures in frames on the desk, and Simon reaches for one with a shaky hand. It’s him, a younger him, maybe by years. He’s in the middle of the forest, sitting around a campfire with a guitar in his lap, and three faces he can barely remember are staring at the camera. His mother and father are in the chairs next to him, and his sister is throwing two thumbs up closer to the fire.
The sight of them knocks the air out of his lungs. He could barely remember their faces until now; his parents look content in a way they never did, and his sister is wearing a cheesy, relaxed grin—an expression that makes his chest ache.
This picture shouldn't exist. It can't exist, not in any logical sense. He's never...he hasn't even seen a forest, let alone been in one. And his family, they're...they're—
Simon can feel his breath start to quicken, and the photo slips from his hands and clatters against the desk as his legs begin to give out. His arms spring forward to hold him up, and he shuts his eyes tight, trying to force himself to breathe normally. It doesn’t work—his breathing is uneven and shallow, his chest rising and falling like his body has forgotten how to do something as simple as inhale and exhale.
Breathe, Simon, you fucking dumbass. Breathe.
His eyes dart around, searching for something—anything—that proves he’s not losing his mind.
Then his gaze falls onto a small window. There’s light beaming in through the room, bouncing off the walls differently than he remembers, and Simon’s body seizes up before he fully understands why.
He moves before he can even think, stumbling toward it and grabbing the edge of the bookshelf for balance. He pulls himself up just enough to look outside, sucking in a breath.
He's on a boat. In the middle of a goddamn ocean.
An actual ocean. Not one made entirely out of blood, but one with a blue sky overhead and clear water crashing in waves. For a moment, he’s paralyzed with a mix of both awe and fear—he can’t remember ever seeing so much clear water and, fuck, sunlight. He’s lived in some sort of box his entire life, had been so used to the dark, and the sight before him feels like a fever dream.
Maybe if his memory wasn’t making him feel like he was going crazy, maybe if he wasn’t stuck wondering why he’d found himself in the year 2022, maybe if ghosts from his past weren’t in photos, he could appreciate the beauty.
He takes a slow step backward, turning away from the window and moving towards the sink, twisting the faucet and letting the cold water run through his fingers before splashing some on his face.
He needs to get it together. He needs to figure out where he is, why he’s here, and…and…
And then what, exactly?
To say he’d want to go home is a lie, and he’s not ashamed to admit that. Home was the endless vacuum of space and scarcity. Home was memories that haunt. Home was war and pain and suffering.
Wherever he is, whenever he is, it certainly doesn't look bad from where Simon is standing.
Is this actually real?
He watches the water run for a few seconds more before turning it off and forcing himself to look up.
The sight before him tells him that it has to be.
His first thought as he peers into the mirror in front of him is that it’s weird seeing his own face. He’s seen it before, obviously. Thousands of times and through every phase of his life. Just never like this.
The Simon he’s looking at is almost alien to him. He has the same features: the tired eyes, the sharp jaw, the scar on his eyebrow, the more rigid edges. But this Simon looks healthy, and his hair's a little shorter, more taken care of. He touches his face warily, like he's afraid of it, and then starts scanning himself in the mirror.
He looks softer—not weak, not fragile—just less worn down by loss and grief. He doesn’t have the scars on his arm, his skin isn't covered in aching, pulsating blisters, and both his arms are still very much intact (he hadn't really taken that in until now, but thank fuck).
And then there’s the ink.
It runs up and down his left arm in intricate patterns he doesn't recognize, disappearing beneath the sleeve of his shirt and reappearing again near his wrist.
Simon stares at it. This isn't his body. Or, at least, it isn't the body he remembers.
What in the genuine fuck.
He drops his hand back to his side, brushing it against something hanging on a badge reel on his belt loop.
He grabs it.
-------------------------------------
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PROJECT HAIL MARY
SIMON FISCHER
SYSTEMS TECHNICIAN
Employee ID: HM-084271
Clearance: PHM LEVEL V
RFID ACCESS • JSC • AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL
-------------------------------------
Below his name is a picture he knows is him but can’t remember taking.
And he's…smiling. A real smile. A smile he hasn't seen since the universe went to shit, since every star vanished, since blood oceans surfaced on moons.
Yeah.
Something is absolutely, undeniably, catastrophically fucking wrong.