Chapter Text
“Hmm…” Simon hummed as he squinted at the board in front of him. He was laying down on his stomach, hands supporting his chin, chewing the inside of his cheek as he thought. Across from him, on the other side of the board, Adrian waited patiently, clicking a xenonite suited claw against the lab floor. Simon lifted a hand and picked up his ‘rook’, but then shook his head, thinking better of it, and put it back down.
“Simon touch piece, Simon move piece!” Adrian whistled, somehow managing to sound offended through the translator.
“Alright! Let me think.”
Adrian was one move away from a checkmate and whatever piece Simon moved wasn’t going to help him get out of trouble. Not immediately, at least. He absently waved his ‘rook’ in the air.
He had managed to make a chess board out of bolts, nuts and duct tape after Adrian discovered the existence of the game from one of their movie nights together and practically begged Simon to teach them how to play for ‘research purposes’. He was first thinking about looking up a digital version of chess until, half a second later, he remembered Adrian couldn’t really see the screen of his laptop. So they ended up here, playing chess with pieces made out of metal.
Probably the worst part of it was that, after he explained the rules of chess to Adrian, the eridian basically was destroying him every goddamned round. Simon wasn’t really an expert chess player, but he was pretty good overall thanks to years of practice. Chess was one of the few things he could do to entertain himself in prison, after all. And Adrian was still winning with no experience.
Fucking incredible.
Simon moved his ‘rook’ so it was blocking Adrian’s ‘bishop’ and, as expected, the eridian captured his piece and Simon was in check again. Simon groaned, letting his head hang.
“Adrian has question,” The eridian chirped, oblivious, or not caring, about their human’s distress.
“Shoot.”
“Why tower move? Tower not sentient, tower can’t move.”
“I don’t know.” He was getting used to that sentence. Adrian was always asking really specific questions like this, questioning things that were so common for humans that Simon didn’t think twice about them. He guessed it was part of being the first anthropologist/human biologist of your species. “Somebody may be moving it.”
“Tower made of stone, statement. Too heavy for human to move. Even for multiple humans. Make no sense.”
“There are ways to move heavy objects around. Remember how the Egyptians made the pyramids?. Also, this game isn’t very realistic, Adrian. Like… the horse can jump over other pieces.”
“Why Simon call knight horse, question?”
“Well, because it has the head of a horse! I mean— not here, but normally it does. People call it a horse because it looks like a horse!”
“Understand,” Adrian chirped. “Adrian has another question.”
“Okay?”
“Why king only move one square, question?”
“I don’t know.” There he goes again. “Maybe he’s fat or—”
“Blip-C detected.”
Simon shut up immediately, looking wide-eyed at the ceiling, at the speakers overhead. Adrian too, became quiet, probably sharing Simon’s surprise. They waited a little bit, expecting some other alarm to sound, but there was nothing.
“What the fuck?” Simon whispered. “Mary, what did you say?”
“Blip-C detected.” Mary repeated.
“That’s not— Wait a minute.”
Simon stood up quickly, completely forgetting about their game of chess, and jogged towards the ladder leading up to the cockpit. He heard heavy, rapid footsteps behind him, Adrian following close behind white chirping insistently.
“What happening, question? What Simon do, question?”
“Mary’s detecting something,” Simon said as he began to climb up the ladder. “The autopilot is on and it should just recalculate course if it finds an obstacle in the way. So this has to be either really big or really sudden to deserve such alarm. I’m gonna go check what it is.”
As soon as he reached the cockpit, he made his way onto the pilot’s chair and brought up the radar panel. Adrian was with him a minute later and it seemed that they carried the laptop up with them because, a moment later, Simon heard the familiar computerized voice.
“What is Blip-C, question?”
“Hold on, I’m still looking.”
Simon frowned. The radar screen showed what appeared to be a pill-shaped object labeled Blip-C. It was directly in their path, a few hundred miles from the Hail Mary.
That was so fucking weird.
The radar should have noticed an object that size much earlier. They could still go past it and forget about it—that’s what the autopilot seemed to be doing—but something about it felt off…
“Is it stationary…?”
It was. For some fucking reason, The Blip-C was completely stationary. That just doesn’t happen.
“Simon tell Adrian what Simon see, statement!”
“I don’t know! I don’t know what I’m looking at! It—” Simon scratched the back of his neck before. “It’s in our direct path. And it’s like…” He gestured with his hands, mimicking the overall shape of the anomaly, “Elongated.”
“Meteorite, question?”
“No. It’s not moving, that’s the weird part.”
Adrian clicked their claws for a moment, thinking. Simon crossed his arms and waited for their input, even though all he wanted to do was ignore the blip and go back to their game—even if he was losing. Who knows? Maybe in the next round he’ll get lucky.
“How long Mary take to stop moving, question?” Adrian eventually sang, slowly moving one of their claws towards their human.
Oh, man. “Like a few days. Why?” He asked even though he already knew the answer.
“Adrian curious. Want to see closer.” They poked Simon’s cheek. “Stop ship. Investigate.”
“Of course you are. But uh, I don’t think that’s a good idea, man. I mean… we’re already pretty behind schedule on our trip. I don’t know if we can afford—” Simon cut himself off when Adrian placed their open claw on Simon's mouth. Simon slapped the limb away, fully knowing that it moved because Adrian wanted it to and not because Simon actually pushed it. “Stop that.”
“Simon Adrian look at blip, statement,” they said as they petted his hair. Simon squinted at them. “Could be another ship! Ship stay still! Could need help!”
Simon shook his head. “No, it seems too small to be a working ship. More than anything, it looks like a probe. Which is another kind of weird and doesn’t answer the ‘not moving’ question.”
“Maybe life inside real small.”
“I mean, I guess? But what are the possibilities of finding another intelligent species out here?”
“Not know if Simon Adrian don’t look at maybe-ship!” They poked his cheek again.
“Okay, alright!” Simon exclaimed, leaning away from the offending claw. “I’ll start decelerating and then look at this maybe-but-not-likely-ship. But if it turns out to be a weirdly-shaped, somehow motionless piece of debris, I’m making you watch Alien.”
Adrian actually stopped for a moment, likely weighting their options. Simon knew how much they hated horror movies, especially if it involved aliens.
“Deal, statement.” Adrian chirped eventually, stretching their closed claw for a fist bump.
Simon just sighed and touched their knuckles together.
It took five days to completely stop the Hail Mary on her way down to Erid. Five days spent playing chess and any other tabletop game Simon could reconstruct with an echolocation-based vision in mind. Adrian took a liking to Monopoly, excited about learning human economic systems—even if it was really basic and not at all realistic—and new words. In his free time—which was about 90% of his time now—Simon managed to put together a working radio, not like the one the ship had for communication between EVA suits and the cockpit, but an actual ship-to-ship communication radio. It was a little project that had been spinning around in his mind for a few days now, both something challenging to keep him occupied, and a potentially useful tool to help them communicate with the maybe-but-not-likely-ship.
When the Hail Mary stopped her course, Simon—and an emotional supporting Adrian—had to navigate backwards to find the elusive Blip-C. They had taken too much time to decelerate and had passed it on the way there. It was relatively easy to find, with it not moving and such.
Adrian was beyond excited to see what exactly this anomaly was, even more so at the prospect of life. Simon couldn’t say he wasn’t curious, but if he had been the only person in the ship, he wouldn’t have given it much attention.
But as they were now, they were slowly making their way towards the Blip-C. The goal was to hover close enough to see it through the telescopic cameras.
“Simon Adrian look at ship now, statement! Go, go, go!” Adrian chirped, bouncing up and down on the stop they perched on when the lack of gravity hit them.
“Jesus, calm down. I’m looking, okay?”
Simon zoomed in on the camera, squinting his eyes to better see the details. Even though it was being illuminated thanks to a nearby star, the red liquid coating the entire surface was opaque enough to make it hard to see. The vessel was a cylinder, with two smaller cylinders attached on the bottom (top?) of it. It had some kind of porthole in the front, thought the glass was shattered, it seemed like. But the first thing Simon saw, though, was the massive fucking hole on the side of the Blip-C, where the definitely-not-blood was actually coming from, which was retaining its liquid form even in the vacuum of space.
There was no way anything could be alive in there.
He distantly noticed white painting on the side of the blip, somehow untouched by the hole.
SM-13.
The shape reminded him of something, but he just assumed it was just his human brain trying to identify human-made things, but now with the Latin letters and Arabic numerals…
“That’s not right…” Simon breathed out.
“What, question?”
“This.” He gestured at the screen.
There was a moment of silence before Adrian answered. “Adrian cannot see, statement.”
“Shit, sorry, um…” Simon rubbed his eyes, as if that would make the image in front of him disappear. It didn’t. “This looks… It shouldn’t be possible but it looks like a submarine.”
“What word mean, question?”
“Submarine? It’s a vessel made for underwater exploration. Like… really underwater. This thing is supposed to be in the bottom of an ocean! Not in fucking space!”
Adrian was about to say something when the newly made radio crackled to life. Both of them stared at it as it kept making noise. It was only static, but it came in rhythmic intervals, seemingly forming a pattern.
“What the fuck?” Simon whispered and the crackling kept on going. Three short pulses, three long murmurs and then other three pulses. It almost sounded like… “Morse code! It’s more code! It’s a distress signal!”
“Life in ship, question?!”
“It has to be.” And it should be human. Unless the crackling pattern was pure coincidence or a message left behind by an already dead individual. But there was no time to think about that now. Simon reached for the microphone. “Hello? Is someone there? Do you need help?”
The static faltered in its rhythm, as if the signal itself was hesitating. The morse code-like pattern disappeared, transitioning into the constant murmur of white noise. Simon leaned closer to the speaker, sure that he was hearing something else under all that mess.
“Hello?” He tried again.
“Who is this?” The radio managed to say. The words were almost indistinguishable from the static, but Simon somehow was able to identify them. He distantly heard Adrian chirping excitedly.
The words were human. They sounded masculine and they were in a language he could understand. They must be in a suit or something because Simon was still seeing that hole on the side of the ship. But most importantly, what was a human doing all the way out here?
“Oh, my God. Shit, okay. This is Simon Butcher and Adrian of the Hail Mary, We received your distress signal. Are you in need of assistance?”
What kind of question was that, dumbass? Why broadcast a distress signal when you weren’t in—
“What signal?” The other side said quietly. “Wh— The Hail Mary? Are you… Are you with Eden?”
“Eden?” What? “Like in the… um, no, we’re not—”
“Gosh, how am I even talking to you? Why am I even talking to you?” A humourless laugh. “You’re just another trick, aren’t you? Whose voice did you steal this time? At least it’s pleasant to listen to.”
“Person on radio okay, question?” Adrian chirped quietly.
“Who is this?”
“This is Adrian of Erid.”
“Why do you sound—? You know what? I don’t care. Just shut up.”
“Hey, man,” Simon tried gently. “Listen. I know you may be really confused right now, but we just want to help. Just tell us what you need, okay?”
“I need you to leave me alone!” The words almost got swallowed by the high pitch hum and broken static. “I’ve done enough to at least deserve a moment of peace when I’m about to die! Get out of my head!”
“Okay, okay. Calm down.” He was really unprepared for this situation. “Can you at least tell us if you breathe oxygen?”
“Stop! Just stop! I can’t do this anymore! I want this to end, please—” White noise absorbed the rest of the sentence, but Simon could still faintly hear a sob from the other end of the line.
That was it.
Simon fiddled with the controls to connect the signal to the EVA suit’s radio and pushed himself towards the airlock, not turning back when Adrian called out his name.
“What Simon do, question?!”
“I’m gonna get them out!” He said as he grabbed a helmet and suit.
As soon as he got the EVA suit on and grabbed his tethers, Simon cycled the airlock and launched himself into space towards the Blip-C—or, he guessed, towards the SM-13. The hole he saw before was directly in front of him, suspicious liquid shining in the starlight. Now that he was closer to the ship, he could see the seams and ridges from the pieces of metal that were crudely welded together. So this thing was made from scraps? It’s a miracle the person inside was still alive and talking. But why afford a spacesuit and not the materials for the vessel itself? Was it even a spacesuit they were using.
Simon shook his head. He had a job to do!
As he finally touched the surface of the SM-13, his suit’s radio crackled to life. He was kinda hoping for the man to speak to them again, but his helmet was instead filled with the monotone voice of Adrian’s translator.
“What Simon see, question?”
“Uh…” He squinted his eyes as he got closer to the opening, turning on his helmet light. It didn’t help. “The liquid is blocking my vision. The sub is fucking filled with it. He didn’t even hear the radio static from the vessel anymore, now that he thought about it. “Hey, man, are you still—”
Then, he saw it. On his peripheral, something flashed for a second. Simon immediately turned his head and found it, gasping softly. A tiny glimmer of light, like a star far, far away, met him. It moved gently from side to side, as if beckoning to get closer, and it seemed to get brighter as the seconds passed. Simon couldn’t take his eyes off it. He raised a hand, something in him urging him to reach for it. His gloved fingers brushed the red liquid and something suddenly grabbed his wrist.
Simon yelped, the strange feeling instantly disappearing. He pulled his hand towards himself but that only made him come closer to the definitely-not-blood even closer thanks to the zero-g. And the thing just wouldn’t let go! No, not a thing—a hand. A five fingered, webbed, clawed hand. He uselessly pulled again, and this time the little light emerged from the liquid and revealed itself. It was a lure, the kind anglerfish had to attract prey. It was glowing a reddish color thanks to the opaque liquid covering it. Either way, Simon became transfixed on it again, stopping his attempts to free himself. Another hand shot out and grabbed his shoulder, breaking the spell again. He yelped again.
“What happening, question?! Simon okay, question?!” Adrian’s shrilled notes broke through the radio.
“Something’s got me!”
He was about to kick whatever this was still attached to him when he actually saw said thing appear. He was covered entirely in red, had a lure coming out of his head and his eyes were all wrong, but it was unmistakably a human. Simon stopped flailing as the other man stared at him.
“You’re actually real.” The stranger’s voice came through the radio, strangely clear. The man in front of him didn’t open his mouth, but Simon was sure the voice belonged to him. Somehow they were communicating with him without a radio of any kind.
“I—”
He didn’t have a chance to say anything else as the man’s eyes rolled back and his body became limp, grip slacking and lure dwindling.
“Simon! Simon, answer!” Adrian wailed again.
“I’m fine! I’m okay!” Simon reassured, pulling the man close to him and wrapping an arm around his torso as he used his free hand to yank his tether and haul himself back to the Hail Mary. “Shit. He just passed out, I think— I mean, he was alive in the vacuum of space just now, maybe—”
“Person from radio okay, question?”
“I sure fucking hope so.”
After what seemed like an eternity, he finally reached the airlock. He shed his helmet as soon as the pressurizing cycle ended and immediately pressed his ear to the man’s chest, not caring about staining his face with red. He waited for a moment, two, not breathing until he heard a heart beat. Alive.
Simon hung his head.
“Oh, thank fuck.”