Chapter Text
Pain radiated through my body as I started to come back to from…whatever had happened to me. I feared opening my eyes to whatever Hell had in store for me. By the pain I was in, I knew my penance would be well deserved, not pleasant.
When my eyes opened, I turned my head fearfully to take in my surroundings. My vision was a bit hazy, and all I could make out were rocks of different colours and shapes with a slight sheen, surrounding me on all sides. I didn’t have the cognition to make sense of it. There were soft, overlapping humming tunes wrapping all around me.
I took a breath, only to feel something pressing against my face, some sort of mask. I felt a woosh of air flow out against my face; the mask seemed to be feeding me oxygen. I blinked my focus back onto my body. I was lying down on some sort of cot, bed, or table. I tried to move my arm to lift the mask off my face, but something warm, hard, and solid placed over it, holding it down. I squirmed, swinging my other arm to push off whatever was holding my right arm down. Only, my left arm was gone. That sent me into panic, and I began to fight to get off the bed-cot thing.
The humming changed to chirping and squeaks as I grunted and thrashed. More heavy objects fell over me as if holding me down. The rocks… moved. They were covering me, pinning me down, suffocating me. My breathing was fogging up my mask in fear before something sharp poked my remaining arm. The next thing I knew, my vision was blurring again as a haze settled over my brain and functions. Then, I passed out.
~ ~ ~
I remained in a haze of in-and-out of consciousness. Maybe this was my Hell, the torture of being kept alive.
One day, I began to stir awake, and the foggy haze I’d been in seemingly lifted. I turned around on my cot to take in my surroundings. The rocks were gone, nowhere to be seen. Surrounding me on all sides was a sheen, glimmering glass sort of material. I couldn’t see through it; it was like it was fogged up. It trapped me inside of what seemed to be, by the minimal equipment around me, a medical room/chamber. My prison, maybe? Maybe they were running tests, experiments on me.
The mask pumping air into my mouth was gone, but I could feel other tubes… in me. I tried not to focus on them too much as I sat up and scrubbed my face. My beard was less; something must have shaved me. That was… weird. The skin on the left side of my face felt raw, disformed, patchy, like a third-degree burn. I wondered what I must look like, probably like some mangled form of meat.
“Movement detected.” An automated disembodied voice came.
“Language selection: English. Greetings.
語言選擇：國語。問候。
اختيار اللغة: العربية. تحياتي.
Selección de idioma: español. Saludos.
Sélection de la langue : français. Salutations.
Selectio linguae: Latina. Salutationes.”
The disembodied voice seemed about to spew off every language in known existence.
“English.” I spat out, my voice raw.
“Language selected. Please stay calm. You are here being looked after. You are not under any harm or danger.”
“Yeah, right.” I huffed out in disbelief.
My stomach grumbled then, seemingly in hunger.
A white mechanical arm whirled to life, grabbing something up from a crate and swinging it towards me. It seemed to be a pouch of some sort, with a straw sticking out of it. Food? The mechanical arm thrust the pouch closer to my face. I tentatively leaned down to latch my mouth over the straw to take a testing slurp. The flavours that hit my tongue were insane, and I felt like my eyes widened at how good it tasted.
“Shit,” I swore before going in for more.
The mechanical arm let me take the pouch into my own remaining hand, and I squeezed every last drop out to suck back. Then the arm picked up and swung over another pouch, a new one. I was pretty full from the first pouch, but also curious about how this one might taste, whether it’d be any different. I took a tentative sip and found it was water, refreshing, crisp. I gasped at the relieving sensation and grabbed the pouch from the arm, squeezing it all up and slurping it down. Once done, exhaustion set back in. I fell back down on my cot to fall asleep.
~ ~ ~
When I woke up next, the mechanical arm handed me new pouches of food and water. The food had a different taste that was just as good, and I slurped it happily. I warily looked around my "room," wondering what sort of plan whatever entities had me now had in store for me. Were they keeping me alive to use as the Butcher once more?
“Would you be comfortable with meeting the other human?” The mechanical disembodied voice rang out.
“Another… human?” I blinked in shock.
It felt like a test, one I was unsure of. I clenched my hand into a fist, steeling myself. “Whatever you've got in store for me, bring it on.”
The “glass” to my right began to glow a warm, white colour as if being lit up. I swung myself around off the edge of my cot to face the “wall” only a few centimetres before my face. The barrier began to defog.
Suddenly, there stood a man on the other side, waving at me with a warm smile. I gasped in shock as I took him in. He looked unmarred, skinny, but healthy. He had blond hair, a soft beard, glasses over blue eyes, and wore a knit cardigan. My heart skipped a beat in confusion. Was I not in Hell? Angels did not exist in Hell. Maybe this was part of the trick, the trap.
“Hi, my name's Grace.” The man spoke. It was the perfect name for an angel. “Well, actually, it's Dr. Ryland Grace. But everyone just calls me Grace. It's so nice to finally meet you properly. I've been monitoring your health progression from out here. The Eridians, that’s the rock spiders— We're kind of on their planet–But they're really nice—They um, wouldn't let me into your room. Worried about contaminants, which I get. But man, another human! I just…” He finally breathed out.
My mind was whirling, trying to catch up with everything the guy spat out at me. I just blinked back.
The guy continued. “The Eridians, they um… found your ship— sub?— floating around in space. We have a lot of questions, but um, don’t feel like you have to answer them all right away. Maybe we can start with something simple, like… what's your name?”
I blinked more.
“Okay, maybe something simpler. You feeling–” He gave a thumbs up. “Or?” He flipped his thumb upside down. “Actually, it's pretty funny. Eridians do everything backwards from how we humans do. So a thumbs up for them,” He flipped his thumb back up. “It's actually a thumbs down.” And back down.
I was confused and blinked more at him, cocking my head. Maybe I was hallucinating. Yeah, it would make sense. This was my oxygen-deprived post/near-death hallucination.
“So?” Grace, as the man’s—angel’s?–—name seemed to be, leaned in closer to the barrier between us, head tilted to the side. He gave another thumbs up with a smile, then turned it to a thumbs down with a sad face. He was definitely… a character. I wasn't sure if I wanted to play along.
I huffed and gave the guy what he wanted. I put out my thumb horizontally and waggled it a bit. Grace hummed and nodded sympathetically, stepping back.
“Are you… real?” I asked.
“Yeah, I promise you, I am.” He put his hand on the barrier. “When the Eridians give you the all-clear, you will get to come into my enclosure, and we can hang out and stuff. It will be great!” He smiled.
I blinked more, wondering why this guy wanted to be near me. I was dangerous, a killer. But yet, I felt a pull towards him.
I stared at his hand on the barrier. I reached out to place my hand over the same spot, mirroring his, like our hands were touching. I splayed my fingers wider, and he mirrored it. I then looked up to his glistening blue eyes and saw him smiling softly. God, he really was as beautiful as an angel. He had a trusting sort of face and smile that put me at ease, yet I felt tension at the same time. I wasn't sure I could trust this, him. But… I wanted to.
“Who… who are you?” I asked, pulling my hand away from the barrier.
“I told you already, my name’s Grace, Dr. Ryland Grace.”
“No, who are you with? C.O.I., Eden? Where are we?”
“Okay, let’s take some deep breaths and calm down a little.” Grace did so as if beckoning me to follow his lead. I did not. His expression remained sympathetic as he continued. “I get you’re confused and have a lot of questions.”
I grunted.
“I um… don’t know of any of those things you said. But you’re on Erid. It’s the first planet in the 40 Eridani star system. We're um… pretty far from Earth. But you're safe here, I promise you that.”
I grunted again, glaring harshly at him.
Grace rocked nervously back and forth on his feet. “Right, so um… I should probably let you rest.” He began to pull away.
I felt a sting of desire to make him stay, just a bit longer. “Simon.” I offered.
“Huh?” Grace turned sharply around to me, his face puzzled. Then he lit up. “Oh, is that your name?!”
I grunted with a nod.
“Wow.” He breathed out, like my name was the most amazing thing in the universe that he could ever have access to.
“Well, it's really nice to meet you, Simon. I can’t wait to show you around and talk. You’re going to get better in no time, don’t you worry.” Grace placed a splayed-out hand back against the barrier for the briefest of moments before pulling away again. “You're in good hands. I was really sick when I got here, too. The Eridians took care of me, and look at me now.” He gestured down with a happy smile.
I hummed, not really sure how else to respond as I scanned him over with my eyes.
“I'll see you soon.” With that, the barrier began to fog up once more, and Grace was gone.
My breath came out shallow, and I found myself hoping Grace’s words would be true.