Chapter Text
It only happens because whoever built this death trap of a sub couldn’t even be bothered to fuck it up right. There’s no reason to give the SM-13 a radio that can switch channels. The manuals quietly decline to mention it. But taking channels off a radio that already had them would have taken away precious seconds from Simon’s splendid undersea adventures. Simon’s splendid seaborne sojourn? Simon’s fantastic fucking mystery parade. Whatever. He’ll workshop it.
Point is, Simon hears the COI director asking if he’s there and he remembers pulling out the cable of a broken radio and instead of replying, he reaches out and turns a dial. Silence. Blessed silence. Not real silence. There’s still the viscous gurgle of the blood ocean and the groaning of iron sub, straining beyond what it can bear. There’s still whatever he saw down here. There’s still him. Down here. Maybe turning off the only voice he recognizes was a mistake. Wouldn’t be his first. He turns the dial again, back and forth, trying to find the COI and damn near choking on the irony. Static, static, more static, a little bit of static, a whistle, static, what was that?
He flicks back, overshoots again. Dials in the range. Music. Strange, warbling, whistling music. Nothing like the hymns of Eden or the work songs of the chain gangs or whatever little snippets his guards would hum just to piss him off. It's like nothing he's ever heard before. It's–
“Alien,” he grumbles. “Don't tell me it's more fucking aliens.”
The music pauses, then returns, loud and cacophonous, layered in on itself like folding sheet metal. There's another sound that might be static or might be clacking of some kind.
Simon slumps back against the wall of the sub. He crosses his arms. “Well?” he demands. “What lie are you trying to sell me? You the Light? You think you can save me? Or you just here to fuck with my head some more?” He is so desperately alone in this place where he is so very aware that he is not alone.
The cacophony continues. Simon considers looking for the director again, just to taste a new lie. Then, a single melody rises above the rest, a stern alto, clipped and precise and rhythmic. And then, before the alto voice even fades, a computerized tone.
<<Human question>>
Well, it's not trying to get him killed immediately. Something to be said for that. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
A similar melody to the first, but the notes next to it are different. <<Human understanding question>>
Whatever this new monstrosity is, it has a more interesting approach than “Come down and die at the bottom of the blood ocean” or “Come up and then die at the bottom of the blood ocean a little later”. So, Simon takes a risk. Not that he has safe options. “Yeah, I’m understanding.” He's not understanding why aliens are speaking Edenic instead of Standard Martian like everyone else left in the universe except his own little band of Brothers, but it's far from the most confusing thing he's dealing with right now. Just in case, he marks down where he has the dial set with his mapping pen.
<<Human need save question>>
Simon doesn't answer that one. Yeah, he could do with some saving. That doesn't mean he's giving away his location to some fucking mystery music. “That depends on who's asking.”
<<Negation see teeth towards horse gift idiom>> the music says and Simon realizes the translator is far from perfect. So it's not psychic, whatever it is. It's not inside his head. Just because it's not in his head doesn't mean he should be its friend.
The sub lurches. Metal groans. Blood drips from the ceiling and the walls. The proximity sensor buzzes. Simon holds down the camera and watches, fingers burning, as the Eel circles him and backs off. He didn't know its tail is made of human arms and legs. He is not really happy to learn that its tail is made of human arms and legs. He is not really happy, just, like, generally.
“Do you want to kill and eat me?” he asks, just in case, his voice higher than he would like.
<<Definitive negation>>
“Oh, well if it's definitive, then…”
<<Human report location vessel hazard atmosphere request respectful>>
“Tell me why you want to help me first.” Simon has no leverage here. He's brutally aware of that. But if the only thing he has to choose is which one of three suicide options he has, he at least wants to make that choice with his eyes open.
The music dulls to a whisper, only hints picked up by the radio. The sub rocks almost gently in what Simon is not naive enough to believe are currents. Then, the clear alto who seems to be the primary singer returns.
<<Human fluid bigspacething human negation human one start Eridani-40 bigspacething Saviorgrace one sad start Eridani-40 bigspacething save Saviorrocky Saviorgrace hold vessel towards Eridani-40 bigspacething negation alternative Sol-bigspacething big happy big science human fluid bigspacething human follow negation one big science happy human understanding question>>
Simon thumps his head back into the wall of the sub. “Yeah, I got none of that.” He’s running on adrenaline and rubbing alcohol. The last thing he needs is puzzles. Oh fuck. If he goes with these things, is it just going to be puzzles like this forever? Another drop of blood drips on his hand and reminds him that it beats the alternative. “Alright. Let's take this slow. Atmosphere. Three parts nitrogen to one part oxygen. The oxygen is important.”
<<Three thing [Periodic Table Entry: Seven] fix one thing [Periodic Table Entry: Eight] request affirmation respectful>>
“Affirmation.” Simon doesn't have the periodic table numbers memorized but it sounds about right. They seem to understand him even if he can't quite understand them. Whatever they are. “Okay, vessel. I’m in a submarine. An underwater vehicle made of iron. I can move around, but I can't surface without a tow chain and the tow chain got cut.” He wonders vaguely how they’ll translate the concept of a tow chain.
<<Vessel human fluid vessel–>>
“You can just call it water. I’ll know what you mean.”
<<Vessel human eat fluid vessel makeup [Periodic Table Entry: Twenty-Six] negation up towchain negation fix request affirmation respectful>>
Why do these things have a word for tow chain but not water? What is he even dealing with?
“Affirmation.”
<<Towchain distance stay request information respectful>>
“Yeah, just give me a second to figure it out. Uh, I mean a short time.” Simon checks his location. Nothing but rolling hills of congealed blood around him. He can see the Eel tunnels off in the distance. He is not going anywhere near the Eel tunnels again. Not even if they are humanity's last hope for salvation. Which, come to think of it,
“Hey, do you have human food up there?”
<<Vessel negation>> Simon's heart sinks. <<Home affirmation human food affirmation human food plural plural plural>>
He has no proof. He has no reason to believe. But he has no reason to believe in the Light either. The stars are dead. It doesn't matter why and he doesn't know why a moon that appeared months after the stars died would have the answer. He turns away from the tunnels, takes another picture with his tow chain stretched out behind him.
“At least thirty meters of tow chain. It's hard to tell down here. Maybe more.”
<<Distance plural towchain. Good good good. Location request information respectful>>
This time, Simon notices the song finishes a good few seconds before the translation does. He reads off his depth, but notices a problem quickly with his coordinates. “I have coordinates, but I don't know how to give you a reference point to work off of.”
A long pause, then, <<Human understand electromagneticforce towards alternative away question>>
“Magnets, yeah, we know about magnets. Magnets pull towards the North pole.” He reads off his North-South coordinate, makes sure to specify it's out of 180. “I’m not sure how to give you East-West.”
<<Negation scared enough hear reassurance hazard request information respectful>>
Simon takes a deep breath. “Okay. Hazards. You gotta hear me out here. There’s something alive down here and it’s. I don’t know if it’s evil or just – I don’t know. I’m calling it the Blood Eel.”
<<Request information plural respectful>>
“It’s like. It’s this big, long tube shaped thing with this gross, nasty head and teeth the size of my arm at least.” Simon can feel his heart start to race as he describes it. He doesn’t have enough oxygen left for that. He should have run out of oxygen a long time ago. “It’s not right. It’s got human legs and arms and it can talk in your head and make you see things that aren’t there and it promises it’ll fix everything for you if you just do what it wants.”
<<Cylinder alien bad bad bad big big big negation fix need Saviorgrace fix plural plural plural then eye negation body [Periodic Table Entry: Six] crystal idiom cylinder understand negation towards request affirmation respectful>>
Simon takes a moment to decode what he’s been told and slumps in relief. They believe the Eel is real and a threat. He allows himself a moment to rage that these aliens understand him more than the humans who sent him down here ever did. “Affirmation. Um, second hazard. It’s really hot down here. Like, 37 degrees Celcius, if you have any idea what that means.”
<<Cold cold cold understand fragile human hot cold cold cold>>
Right. Aliens. “Okay, so the last thing. There’s radiation–”
The music, which has been churning away in the background the whole time, stops. Then starts again, disharmonious and grating.
<<Radiation hazard hazard hazard>>
Simon sinks down to the floor of the sub, next to the pile of tape. He’s done it again. Might as well have welded the sub himself. Probably a more moral way to die than letting these aliens come down and fail to rescue him, maybe die in the process. Doesn’t do much to change the way the despair comes up to choke him. But, the music continues.
<<Radiation hazard astrophage fix astrophage hazard [Periodic Table Entry: Eight] hot decay>>
He doesn’t know what astrophage is, but he knows what hope is. “That’s oxygen, right?”
<<[Periodic Table Entry: Eight] affirmation>>
“So, you have something that can protect you from the radiation, but it will burn in oxygen.”
<<Negation word towards>>
“It might burn in oxygen.”
<<Affirmation>>
“Don’t fuck with me,” Simon begs. “Help me or don’t, but don’t fuck with me.”
<<Fix attempt affirmation hazard plural plural plural fix attempt affirmation hazard information fix hazard small respectful respectful>>
“Okay,” Simon breathes. “Thank you. Thank you. How long will it take you to come get me?”
<<Hazard plural plural plural now hazard small towards distance [Unit of Measure: Seven Point Three Five Percent Earth Day]>>
Okay, sure. Whatever the fuck that means. And why are these aliens using Earth time anyway when even the few remaining earthlings have converted to Martian time? It makes about as much sense as music aliens understanding Martian time, at least. “Take your time. What do you need me to do to be ready?” Simon wants to be out of this blood ocean yesterday at the latest, but, as the aliens say, hazard plural plural plural. Better to give them time to do it right.
<<Hold vessel towards electromagneticforce location negation hold thing make hot decay>>
Stay where you are and power down the sub. “I can’t do that. I’ll get myself killed.”
<<Hold save negation hold alternative save>>
“You’ll come save me either way,” Simon says, blank and unbelieving.
<<Affirmation>>
Three liars now. The COI, the Eel, and the music aliens. Simon knows exactly how much his life is worth. It isn’t this. But the aliens might not. They might have no idea how expendable he is. If they want to save him, he’s not going to stop them.
“I’ll be here in a sixth of an Earth day, ready to go. We’ll talk then.” He turns the radio to static before he can hear another worthless affirmation.
Step one. Figure out– The proximity sensor buzzes. First from his left, then behind. New step one. Get somewhere else. He hits the camera. Nothing but the ever-writhing floor. If the currents haven’t moved him around too much – his compass is where he expects – the tunnels are behind him. It has not escaped his notice that the tunnels are suspiciously Blood Eel sized. What’s a better option? He checks his map. Weird rocks. That might give him something like cover. New destination: weird rocks. Camera again. Coast as clear as it’s gonna be. Get moving.
Now all he needs is to get the radio off static to a dead channel so he can listen for the eel properly. He turns back to the alien one, just to double check. There’s more alien music. After a couple seconds, the translator says <<electromagneticforce unknownword unknownword>>. Simon snorts and keeps going.
“Hello? Hello?” The COI director. Delightful. “Convict? Do you read me? Can you hear me?” Her voice sounds awful, like she’s been screaming the whole time Simon’s been chatting with his new alien friends. Pretty clever little lie for the ocean to tell.
“How do I know you’re really you?” he asks.
“Who else would I be?” the director asks. “What happened down there? How–”
“What’s my name?” Simon cuts her off.
“What?”
“What. Is. My name?”
“Is that really the important question right now? You were out of contact for days!”
By the Tree, this is really pissing Simon off. Time to take a stab in the dark. At least he’s got a little more to go on than just ramming a skeleton with his own life support this time. “It’s pretty fucking important to me, Ava.”
There’s a long silence. When her voice comes back, it’s cold. Afraid. “How do you know my name?”
“What’s mine?” Simon shoots back.
A sigh, crackled through the radio. “I. I don’t know, okay. I’m sorry.”
Simon scoffs. “Great. Just fucking fantastic. Did you know the names of anyone else you sent down here?”
“You’re the first,” Ava replies, immediate, instinctive, like she doesn’t know how to do anything other than lie.
“Really?” Simon laughs. “Because I heard your name from someone on the other fucking sub down here! The one with the big fucking hole in it!”
“What sub?” It doesn’t sound like a denial anymore.
“The SM-8. The one down in the caves. The one whose black box tried to download onto mine.”
“How did you hear about the SM-8?”
“I saw it!” Simon yells back. “With my own damn eyeballs!”
“And the black box?” Ava asks. “You saw that too?”
“Sure did,” Simon confirms. “Not that I could get the data on it. Don’t have an administrator password, of all fucking things.”
“Can you go back to it?” Ava asks, breathless and frantic.
“Why would I?”
“If you get that data, it could change everything. SM-8 was the real research sub. It has technology we can’t make anymore. If anyone found something that could save us, it was them!” Ava’s working herself up into a frenzy now. “Go back for it! Go get it! It’ll be fast! Half an hour, there and back! If you go back for it, I’ll get you out myself!”
“He’s lying to you,” the other guy, the one who isn’t Ava, says. “He’ll say anything to get out of there! He’s a criminal!”
“Did you tell him my name?” Ava snaps and the other guy doesn’t answer. “Convict, are you still there?”
“My name’s not Convict.”
Another sigh. “Right. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t do much for me down here.”
“It didn’t do much for Filament Station either,” the other one, the man, snaps.
Simon flinches. It sure fucking didn’t. Fuck him. The thing is, at the end of the day, the COI weren’t going to execute him for his sins. He could have stayed in prison, worked his cushy little prison job. They warned him this job was dangerous. Not Blood Eel, twelve teams lost before his level dangerous, but he wasn’t expecting to be on manuscripting duty either. At the end of the day, he does regret Filament Station and sixteen years rotting hasn’t done anything to fix it. If there’s something that can be done to save humanity, he doesn’t want the refusal to do it on his shoulders. Fuck him. He’s really fucking thinking about this.
“The thing that’s down here,” he says. “It goes after the subs. It hunts them.” He doesn’t have to fake his terror. “If you come down after me, you’ll die.”
“If that’s what it takes to get the black box,” Ava declares.
“Black box is a lot smaller than a sub is. I have a life jacket in here. I can tie the black box to the life jacket. Just skim it off the surface.”
“You’ll have to breach the hull of your sub to get the black box out,” Ava says like she's trying to avoid him reaching the obvious conclusion.
“You haven’t seen the SM-8,” Simon says, forcing himself to laugh. “That’s gonna be the least of my problems.”
“Right,” Ava breathes. “Right. Thank you. If. If you wanted to tell me your name…”
“I don’t,” Simon says. “But I got one insane question I gotta ask before I do this.”
“Come the fuck on!” the other one bursts out. “You piece of shit! What kind of leverage do you think you have?”
Simon switches the radio to static, counts to ten in his head, and switches it back in time to catch the tail end of Ava yelling.
“–again, I will weld you in myself!”
He doesn’t hear a reply. Just tired panting. “Miss me?” he asks.
Ava laughs without humor. “Welcome back, C–. What’s your question?”
“What percentage of an Earth day is half an hour?”
“What?”
“I’m serious. What percentage of an Earth day is half an hour?”
“You could demand literally anything and that’s what you want to know?”
“Well, I tried asking for a lift and we saw how that turned out.”
“You’re not moving until you get your answer are you?”
“Nope.”
The sound of a pen scribbling on paper barely manages to rise above the static. Then, “About two percent. Happy?”
“Thrilled.” He’s got plenty of time. “The caves where I found the sub are below comms range, but the entrance is around 380, 615. I’ll send the black box up from there when I have it. Shit’s gonna get weird. Don’t worry about anything except the black box.”
“I’m going to try to retrieve you if I can,” Ava insists.
“Don’t bother,” Simon warns her. “You’re the only person I’ve met in sixteen years who speaks Edenic. You’re about to be a lot more valuable alive.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Wait and see.”
Simon kills the comms. Okay. In and out. He’s got an hour and a half to kill. He already knows where he’s going. What could possibly–?
Yeah, no. He’s not stupid enough to even think that. Just stupid enough to try anyway.
Ava slumps against the monitoring station, her heart pounding too fast to even continue pacing. All the life support signs from the SM-13 are reading blanks and error messages. Just as they had been before the Convict had shown back up again and promised to do the impossible. It’s barely been fifteen minutes. One percent of an Earth day, for all that apparently fucking matters.
“There’s no way he’s actually trying it,” David says for the fifth fucking time in fifteen fucking minutes. “He’s just trying to lead us on.”
“To what end?” Ava asks. “He’s not even asking to come back up. Why isn’t he asking to come back up anymore?”
David snorts. “Maybe he finally realized he’s not actually worth it.”
Ava glares, but doesn’t reply. David’s better at insulating himself against what they’re doing than she is. In all this time, no matter who she sends down, COI or Eden, convict or eager researcher, no one actually makes peace with dying on the bottom of a blood ocean. This convict is in the denial phase, nothing more. Alive days past his due, his denial just has a little more merit than most. How? Why? Yet more mysteries for the blood to keep. In her darker moments, Ava wants to sit on the opening to the abyss and whisper her questions to the blood in the hope that the sacrifice of a mystery might lead to an answer. She’s never yet been stupid enough to try. Maybe by the SM-25, if they have enough iron left to make her.
“Boss! We got something weird!” Joan calls from the skywatching station. It’s probably been a couple weeks since Ava’s heard Joan’s voice. There simply isn’t much to see in the sky these days. “Looks like a chain?”
“What the fuck?” David asks.
Ava pulls herself to her feet, forcing her heart rate to calm down. The old, grainy monitors on the skywatcher cameras are always a little hard to read and they’re certainly not risking windows on the tow rig, but it does look like a string or line of some sort, swaying a little bit as it lowers towards the churning ocean of blood.
Ava grabs her radio. “Sittership, this is Tow Rig. Do you read?”
“Tow Rig, this is Sittership. Loud and clear.”
“Are you sending something down to us?”
“Negative, Tow Rig. There’s something hanging out in the upper atmosphere disrupting operations.”
“And you didn’t think to mention it to me sooner?”
“Figured you had enough on your plate, Tow Rig.”
“Well, there’s something coming down to us now, so it would have been nice to have a little warning before–”
The line touches the ocean. Something falls down it and plunges into the blood with a large splash. A moment later, the blood starts boiling.
“Holy shit,” Sittership says.
Ava grabs an emergency oxygen mask, straps it on, and runs outside. The blood is forming into a pillar of steam, quickly cooling and raining back down in the chilly, sunless atmosphere, but whatever caused the boiling is still going. The chain lurches back and forth with the pillar in seemingly random directions, then stops, then sets off in a specific direction.
“Where is it going?” Ava yells over the radio.
“Wanna guess?” David yells back bitterly.
“Cave entrance?”
“Yep.”
“Fuck me.”
Is there a way she can distract the pillar of boiling blood? Is it a good idea to get the attention of a pillar of boiling blood? The Convict will need room to escape, if he’s even still alive, but–
The ocean bulges. The ocean breaks. Blood pours over the tiered decks of the Tow Rig and then a deep, rumbling boom rattles Ava’s ribs. In the crimson sea, she sees a darker fleck, then a tiny, pulsing light.
Hope, impossible hope, flares and burns. “There it is!” Ava yells. “The black box! David, launch the SM-14! Don’t weld it, this is a surface expedition! Get the black box!”
Then, the boiling pillar reaches it. The churning bubbles pull it below. The chain settles above it. The chain reverses direction. Ava can’t breathe.
The first thing that appears is a boulder. Black and brown and blue and almost as tall as a person, it emerges with a chain wrapped around the widest part of it. The top comes to a gore-encrusted point, spearing what first looks like a massive clot of ocean blood. As the blood drips and boils away, the shapes of human legs and arms become more apparent. At the base of the boulder are five long tubes of rock. The black box is wedged in one of them. Wedged between two more is scrap metal from the SM-13, torn, mutilated, and wrapped in on itself. As the chain turns, Ava sees that the Convict is still trapped inside, cocooned in iron and soaked in blood.
As if today isn’t strange enough, the chain moves over a few feet and deposits the whole grisly affair on the deck of the tow rig. The tube-like rocks bend, support the boulder’s weight. And then one of them reaches out and shakes the black box at Ava.
“You’re alive?” Ava breathes.
The boulder rumbles and shakes the black box again.
Slowly, carefully, Ava steps forward. As she closes the distance, she can see that the boulder is covered in some sort of glossy coating. She reaches out her hand.
The boulder pulls the black box away.
Ava stops. Takes a step back.
The boulder points a free limb at her.
“What do you want?” she asks.
The boulder taps its limb on the deck of the ship. Tap. Taptap. Tap. Taptap. A clear pattern. It points at her again.
This is completely insane. Ava looks where it’s pointing exactly. Finds the radio on her hip. “Is this what you want?”
The boulder taps several times in quick succession. It seems excited or maybe impatient.
Ava tosses it the radio. The radio bounces off its covering and hits the deck. It twists the knob back and forth violently, then with a little more care. Then it lets out a long, chirruping warble. To her astonishment, the radio warbles something back, followed by a translation.
<<Human greeting human fluid human fix fix fix>> comes through in mangled Edenic. It kind of pisses her off that aliens speak Edenic.
The boulder in front of her points at the Convict, still cocooned in a blanket of sheet metal and tubes.
“Can you understand me?” Ava asks.
The boulder taps, taps, taps and shakes off the gore stuck on top of it as it warbles to its translator. <<Affirmation affirmation affirmation fix fix fix now now now>>
“Follow me.” Ava turns and goes towards medical. She doesn’t have to look over her shoulder to check if the creature is following. The sound of metal scraping over metal is pretty obvious.
To his credit, Medic Taniela doesn’t freak out at the sight of the talking boulder. He gets Ava to help him haul the Convict into bed and then speaks slowly and carefully into the radio. “The iron is in the way. I cannot reach my patient.”
The boulder unwraps the Convict with the same ease as unwrapping paper and Ava nearly loses her lunch. He had seemed fine when Ava had last heard from him. Scared, the way they all are, but not badly injured. Somehow, in the past fifteen minutes, he’s managed to tear an arm off, burn half his body, and grow another mouth. What the fuck has she been feeding people to?
Medic Taniela works and the boulder chatters away down the radio to whatever its own commander seems to be.
“He’s probably gonna need a blood transfusion to survive,” Taniela says after a little while. “Should I bother?”
Ava shucks off her jacket and pulls up her sleeve. “Where do you want me?” It had been a long and bitter fight with the Council to get her off the mandatory donation list as a universal donor, but her argument that you never know when an on-site donation may become necessary had won out. What an honor to save her blood for such a moment as this, she thinks bitterly from the surface of the blood ocean. Water, water every where nor any drop to drink.
The blood transfusion goes without a hitch, but it seems to upset the boulder. It keeps tapping and making low, sharp warbles down the radio. The cool alto on the other end just sounds like a relaxing melody. No translations this time. Finally, just as Ava’s vision is starting to blur, Taniela takes the needle out of her arm and bandages it. Then he does the same for the Convict. He speaks into the radio.
“The patient is stable enough for transport. He will require further medical care. I have done everything I can.”
There’s a computerized warbling, then the alto, then the boulder stands up and steps over to Taniela. It taps the floor by his feet twice, then folds the iron sheeting back over the Convict’s body like a cross between a stretcher and a body bag. It even curls the bottom up around the Convict’s feet. It drops the black box at Ava’s feet.
<<Fix gratitude>>
The boulder drags the Convict back outside, wraps them both around the chain, and slowly ascends into the empty sky.
Ava turns on her heel, takes down the closest first aid kit, and opens the bottle of rubbing alcohol. It’s already empty. Fuck her.