Chapter Text
"…Eye movement detected…"
Simon gasped for air. It was there, he was breathing, and he couldn't seem to get enough of it. Even as he inhaled a breath so deep it hurt his lungs, he couldn't bring himself to stop sucking it in.
Where am I? I'm dead, I have to be dead. There is no surviving that…thing. Unless…
Unless he was still alive, and that thing was still about to eat him, just now in painfully slow, exquisite detail as Simon's mind sped up in panic. Did he still have time to fight it off? But wait, where did all the blood go?
The thing that snapped him out of his thoughts was a silver metal probe, four twitching prongs and a red glowing eye lowering down towards his face. Attacking.
Simon jolted and moved to knock it away with a left hook, but…
He blinked. Nothing. The probe kept descending, invading his space and shining a light into his eye. He hissed and hit it hard with his other arm. This time the right hook connected and the probe disappeared from his vision long enough to roll left-
Right off the table. Simon hit the cold floor with a thud, pain echoing through his knees and the various tubes in his right arm tugging uncomfortably. An alarm went off above him, not unlike the one from the sub.
The sub.
He must still be in the sub. He must be dying, and this was some kind of hallucination. The alien talking to him again, bending his mind to create…this.
Looking up he mainly saw flashing buttons along the wall, and pristine flooring that matched the table he had previously been on. Lights were flashing red around him. That must be how he was interpreting the blood.
But then why couldn't he taste it? More hallucination?
Almost on cue, he felt his mouth aggressively water, his stomach lurch, and suddenly he was vomiting all over the floor, mere centimeters from his nose. All blood, mixed with stomach acid and burning as it came up, thicker globs dotting the puddle he created. Ugh. He heaved a few more times until the puddle had grown to begin to absorb into his shirt and his stomach was empty. He couldn't help but wrinkle his nose at the smell.
He tried to push himself up again, to get a better look at his surroundings, to at least defend against the probe that had now swung around the table and was stalking closer to him. But again his left arm seemed to be of no use, his right only beginning to roll himself over again, more pressing the left side of his face into the floor than anything. He felt a weird sensation on his left cheek, heard a strange noise that he could only describe as scraping, but was too fuzzy to truly think about it. His bigger concern was fighting off whatever creature was behind what his mind had hallucinated for him, and whatever was wrong with his left arm.
…
Where the hell was his left arm?
What had been and what felt like his arm had been replaced by a discolored stump wrapped in white bandages. He choked out a scream. Thankfully, it seemed to make the probe back off, because suddenly Simon couldn't look at anything but the space where the lower half of his bicep and the entirety of his forearm should be.
A searing pain shot up into his shoulder, and with a flash and a sickening crunch that made his vision go dark and his stomach flip, he remembered. Remembered ripping his arm from the sub wall, remembered feeling his tendons snap and his bones splintering under his skin as it ripped apart. Remembered how it had sapped the energy from him, been the moment he knew he was going to die. Alone. Terrified. Angry. The moment he knew he had nothing else to lose.
This isn't happening. This isn't real. I am having the weirdest near death fish dream of my life.
He was gasping for air again. He tried scrabbling for purchase in the space where he should be feeling flesh, right hand closing only on air. He could feel his arm, though. He could feel it. If he closed his eyes, the weight was still there, he could still feel his hand in space, connected to his wrist and forearm that weren't there when he opened his eyes. He could hear his heart pounding in his ears as he stared at it. His mouth felt oddly dry. With a trembling hand, he raised it to feel the bandages. Those were solid under his grasp, rough and real.
Except they couldn't be real. None of this could be real.
His body was gasping because he was dying. He was still in the sub. He wasn't being saved, he wasn't going to make it. His hands trembling had to be the same thing, just convulsions from lack of oxygen to the brain. His mind had hallucinated a clean cut and sterile bandages so that he didn't have to lay eyes on the mangled mess of spurting blood, bone fragments, and ragged scraps of skin reaching out for the rest of his arm that had been lost to the blood ocean by now. This all wasn't safe nor comforting, but it was worlds better than reality. And soon it would be over.
Suddenly, horrifyingly, Simon heard footsteps.
Heavy, thudding footsteps that were rapidly approaching, followed by what sounded like that fish banging on the side of the hull again. He gulped, managing to stand and only briefly blacking out, raising one shaking fist in defense for whatever was coming. This had to be it. It had to be the end. His final dying breath as the alien fish swallowed him whole or split the sub in two.
And then there was a man.
Or at least, it looked like one. Simon supposed that was what his mind had decided to create in his final moments, not some horrifying fish alien. He was tall, taller than Simon, though thinner, so if he managed to dodge his reach he could probably take him. He also sported short messy blond hair, blue eyes behind glasses, if one considered the glasses hanging wildly askew off his face as in use, a white T-shirt, bright orange sweatpants, and a wide-eyed, crazed expression that made every hair on Simon's arm stand on end. Whatever this man-illusion was, he was a threat.
He had both of his hands up, palms facing Simon, protecting himself.
"Hey! Hey, it's okay! Christmas Eve, he's-it's-they're-awake! Awake!" He wasn't talking to Simon but to someone over his shoulder, and through the blaring alarm Simon heard what sounded like music. "Yeah, I know I'm stupid, but I'm learning! I was wrong at first about you, wasn't I?" More whistling. Meanwhile, while he was distracted, Simon scanned the room frantically for any form of weapon that he could use with one hand. His eyes landed on a tray lying on a small stand next to the table he had rolled off of. It had a few sharp objects on it that made Simon shudder, but any would do.
The hallucination was stepping closer, and, panicked, Simon grabbed the largest object-the metal tray itself-and swung with all his might at whatever monster hid under it.
The tray connected with a dull thonk sound against the side of the creature's face, squarely over the temple. Simon heard a small snap as the hallucination's glasses buckled from the force, followed by a heavy thud as the monster hit the floor.
Simon stood over it, panting, waiting for it to get back up. To mutate into its true form. For the world to go black and for him to finally let go of this hell of a life he was living. For the alarm to stop blaring so loud it felt like it was worming into his ears and taking up all the space in his skull.
It didn't. None of it. He couldn't handle it.
"Shut uuuuuuuuuup!!!!!" he roared, feeling his cheek stretch in a foreign way, and hearing the sound morph into an animalistic screech.
Silence.
Praise Eden.
He sighed, panting, and rubbed his eyes with his thumb and pointer finger.
Waited.
Why the hell was this thing not mutating?
The rumbling around the hull and the musical chattering had become incessant now, and it left a pit growing in Simon's stomach. He had never heard any sound like that before.
Hoping he was wrong, hoping it was a ruse, he nudged the hallucination with his foot.
There was weight to it, and warmth. He nudged again, and felt the pit settle permanently as he realized that everything about this hallucination was completely, painfully human. A human. This was a human. A human that Simon had smacked upside the head with a piece of metal as hard as he physically could. A human that had hit the ground as fast as a dropped sack of potatoes.
Fuck.
Hand still trembling, he knelt down and as gently as possible flipped the man onto his back, mindful of the bloody vomit. A goose egg was already forming, which made Simon wince but also comforted him to some extent, since he knew from experience that it meant no bleeding and no concussion. At least, no concussion from being hit, hitting the ground was another situation entirely. Carefully, he pressed two of his fingers to the soft skin under the hallucination's-the man's-chin, to the right of his voice box.
A pulse.
Simon breathed a sigh of relief and, exhausted, let his forehead fall to the other man's chest, further relieved to feel it rising and falling beneath him. He hadn't killed again. He sent out a thank you to anyone and everyone who would listen, then looked around the room again. If he wasn't dying, and he wasn't hallucinating…
He caught the attention of the robot with the probe that had tried to attack him before. It had retreated to a corner, but now watched him silently, unnervingly. Perhaps it was recording. He didn't like the idea of that. But still, maybe it could be useful.
"Where the fuck am I?" he gasped.