Chapter Text
But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden
Reality restarts in pulses like a stuttering engine. Simon feels the first shockwave like a punch to the gut as something foreign collides with him. A brief, spastic flutter along the surface of his skin forces him into a sort of recoil, and the object grasping him shudders back as if burned. There’s something wrong, something so incredibly wrong about the leverage Simon can’t quite claw out of the thin air around him and the way he can’t breathe through any known hole on his face but is somehow at no risk of losing air.
He blinks, and something blazes in front of him. A wet sort of membrane descends over his eyes when he flinches from the green brilliance in his vision, but it doesn’t block his view. He forgets everything about who he is as he grapples with the where and, even worse, the what.
The object touches him again, grasping for him. Simon twists, physics-defying and serpentine even to himself, and the flutter returns, milder this time. It pulses out and returns to him with information: the thing reaching for him ends with stubby and leathery tendrils. A better descriptor arrives as if from a deep slumber: fingers.
A sheer white cliff face shields him from the green light when he faces the direction of the object. The film over both his eyes ascends shyly as his gaze locks onto something living. It’s white, too, but it becomes clear that the thing prodding him is not an object at all. It has fingers, which trail back to arms and shoulders and a neck and a large circular head with a thick light-glazed visor.
Simon sends out another pulse. The air here, stagnant though it is, carries it as easily as light. It occurs to him that he was made for this place, wherever he is.
The thing has blood. Simon knows it like he knows how to move.
Something in Simon simultaneously curls up and prepares to lunge. The most prominent part of him, the part that doesn’t remember how to be anything but this, stays perfectly still.
The thing visibly flinches back. One of its arms holds a long wire leading to the sheer white cliff face; the more reasonable part of Simon calls it a ship, even though it’s nothing like any he’s ever seen.
Simon tries to reach out, but feels a spike of pain so immense he sends out another electric pulse on instinct. He looks at his left shoulder, at what he thinks should probably be an arm going by the familiarity of the thing in front of him and the fact that it has arms, and finds nothing.
That thing must not be the same creature as him. He squints at it, then at his own hand. He’s not quite so pasty white. In fact, he’s purely red.
What are you? he tries to say, but the only thing that comes out of his mouth is a whistle. A sensation along the sides of his throat, formerly pushed to the background, flutters briefly and then settles. Simon wants nothing more than to run from it, but he knows that it’s a part of him.
He looks around. The films descend over his eyes again, and through them Simon can peer at the blaze. It looks—
It looks like something he hasn’t seen in a long, long time.
Taking the opportunity provided by his distraction, the thing wraps those weirdly familiar fingers around Simon’s remaining arm. Simon is too distracted to send out a warning pulse.
What is that? he reprioritizes. Is that—am I—
The thing pulls him. Simon’s eyes snap back to it just as it pushes him toward the single open panel in its ship. Simon fumbles for leverage by gripping the thing’s arm, but jerks back at the sudden rush of knowledge he feels at the sensation.
He knows this thing. He knows what this thing is, at least. The two of them might not be the same creature, but they’re pretty damn close, it seems.
Beyond its visor, now eclipsed by the swirling green light behind it, it looks very—what is that emotion? Distress? Fear?
Simon releases it in surprise, and subsequently floats back into the empty panel of the ship. His back hits the far wall of the opening just as the thing pulls itself in using its long cord. The strange organs at Simon’s throat shift again, as if in a sigh.
Reality shudders back into him a second time when the panel begins closing. Simon lunges forward, using the wall for leverage, and the thing, having positioned itself near the panel, visibly flinches. But Simon isn’t aiming for it.
He’s not meant to be here, he knows. He’s not—what is he?
The panel shuts before he can reach it. He bangs on it, once, twice, and the part of him that keeps spitting electricity at things gnashes its teeth at how trapped he is. It’s a familiar feeling, he learns. That’s what he used to be, then—prey.
Simon turns to the thing. It’s staring at him like he’s a predator.
Blood. Yes, he took note of that. Blood. Is that what he is? Or is that what he eats?
All at once, there’s a hissing sound emanating from the walls. The thing panics across from him, waving its arms, and Simon, his gut swooping like he’s falling, tries to pry open the panel with his hand. The air changes around him, and the organs at his throat become useless in the same instant he drops to the ground.
He wheezes. There’s reality again, snapping at his heels. He spits out massive globs of blood through a mouth and nose he hadn’t previously had any use for. His eyes water, their odd films flickering like a dying light. Spluttering engine.
“Wait, wait!” the thing is shouting. “Crap, crap, crap—”
Simon’s knees ache. The throat organs fight uselessly for the air that was taken from him. All the blood in his body rushes to his legs in accordance to gravity, for the first time since—
Since when? A metal contraption, accidental radiation exposure, a long fall, a dangerous blow to the head—
Oh, God. Bile follows the blood in quick succession.
“Rocky, it—he—they can’t breathe!”
Simon curls up and hears a faint clatter like a coin down a sewage grate as he leans heavily on his remaining arm. His eyes snap to the glass still hanging from a cord on his wrist. Within it, he recognizes the seedling of the Last Tree as well as he’d recognize his mother.
Memories rush back to his head in a confusing inverse operation to the blood. A weak pulse like magnet held too far away from its opposite goes out from his skin as he despairs, and suddenly he’s never felt a worse feeling in his entire life. His throat aches, choking him like he’s swallowing an engine fire.
Eden. Eden, the war at Filament Station, the C.O.I., the—the blood ocean.
He holds the seed of the Last Tree to his chest, curls up like a beaten animal, and finally, finally catches his breath.
“Oh, wait—wait, actually, they’re—”
A cautious touch to his shoulder ignites him. The air crackles with electricity just as Simon surges toward the thing, who has taken his helmet and visor off and revealed himself to be a human being. An enemy if Simon’s ever seen one, and he has.
The guy looks distinctly shocked when Simon slams him against the opposite wall. This room that he’s been forced into, Simon recognizes, is an airlock, meaning this man has the authority to leave and come back to the ship, meaning he’s part of the crew, not a prisoner, meaning—
Meaning Simon is going to kill this motherfucker, take this ship, and flee this entire galaxy if he has any damn say in the matter.
To his surprise, though, the stranger doesn’t fight back. He puts his hands up and stares at Simon with wide eyes. “Hey, um,” he starts, “I know you probably can’t, like, understand me—but, uh, I was trying to help you. You looked a little—” He moves to gesture vaguely at Simon, but freezes when Simon tenses. “I kind of thought you were a corpse, to be honest.”
A corpse? Simon squints. The organs at his throat gasp for air strangely and then, failing that, close up with an air of finality. His knees are weakened by the sensation, like someone’s tased him. Briefly, he allows himself a glance back at the panel that leads out to where he had been, but only sees a white wall smudged with the blood he’s still coated in.
“Yeah, you were kind of free-floating.” The guy swallows. “In space.”
Simon wants to squeeze the life out of him for saying such absolute bullshit—to his face, no less. Except—except his eyes still burn from that light. That blazing light. It couldn’t have been what he thought it was.
“Hey,” the stranger says to call Simon’s attention. Simon glares at him as he pulls his hand from the wall and gestures at himself, like Simon’s stupid. “Grace. What about you?” He points at Simon.
Simon considers talking. Considers whether or not he’s capable. He turns his head, spits blood, feels more than sees Grace wince at its grotesque collision with the pristine white floor, and tries to snap, Where the fuck am I?
The pain of it almost sends him to his knees. As it is, his legs buckle for a moment, and only steady when Grace reaches for him.
“Okay, uh, is—is that, like—oh, wait, how the hell are you—can you even breathe this? Oxygen? Are you holding your breath?”
Shut the fuck up, Simon wants to shout, but he can’t, because he’s—
What does Grace mean? Simon looks down at himself, at the blood. He’s human, isn’t he? Why wouldn’t he be able to breathe oxygen? That wheezing thing was a fluke, that’s all. Too much blood in Simon’s mouth. That happened a lot, near the end.
“Okay, okay—chill, man. Are you—? Crap.” Grace pulls against Simon’s grip, but Simon, in all his limited strength, shoves him right back against the wall.
Grace gives him a long, searching look as Simon tries and fails to work out how exactly to kill him, and then calls out, “Rocky!”
Oh, shit. Simon straightens. He’s calling his crew. They’re going to shoot me—no, they’re going to send me back down! Habitually, he reaches for his long-lost knife with his left hand, but finds an empty place where his arm used to be. Old news, really, but it still sends a shockwave through him, like a bucket of cold water dumped on his head.
Simon doesn’t have a weapon, so he can’t hold Grace hostage. Grace’s crew will definitely have guns. And if they see the seedling in his glass pendant, or the scar from burning off the mark of Eden, they’re going to do so much worse than kill him.
Simon takes the best of a million shitty options, and books it.
He doesn’t make it far.
The door leading from the airlock to the rest of the ship demands no code or identification, but it still takes all of Simon’s strength to yank it open. He stumbles through, fumbles across the short corridor, leaving scarlet streaks on the walls, and makes a mad dash for a place to hide.
He’s leaving a trail of blood, he knows. It’s only a matter of time before Grace and his crew follow it. Every nerve ending in Simon’s body screams at him to give in, to collapse in a heap on the clean white floor and accept his fate, but he’s never been one for giving up. His stump of a left arm streams with blood when he checks on it for the second time since coming back to himself, but it’s not as bad as it used to be, however long ago he tore it off. Simon is resolutely not going to think about anything to do with how he got here until it’s safe enough to do so, which, knowing his life, might be never.
He takes a right once he’s escaped the nondescript white room that immediately follows the airlock, and stumbles right into what appears to be the cockpit.
This might be the luckiest I’ve ever been in my entire life, Simon thinks, clutching the Eden pendant to his chest briefly.
The room is oddly cylindrical and lit only by a single window. What must be the ghost light of thousands of dead stars shimmers outside, much livelier than any he remembers from Eden. The ship’s controls are all foreign and odd to him. There’s a crack in one screen, and badly mopped-up blood in the crevice it creates in the glass. For a moment, Simon allows himself to pause, a pit dropping in his stomach. They must be killers here, then. Bounty hunters sent to slaughter whatever’s left of Eden, or C.O.I. guards searching for escaped convicts, or—perhaps the best of the three options—cannibals. Either way, Simon can’t let himself he caught.
Just as the thought occurs to him, Grace appears, panting, in the doorway.
“Hey, so, I was going to, like, let this play out, but then—y’know—you got here, and—” He stiffens. The dried blood on Simon’s hand flakes onto the accelerator, sullying it. “Don’t,” Grace snaps.
Simon swallows his instinctual or what? in favor of keeping his brains in his skull. He hasn’t seen a gun yet, but it’s only a matter of time.
“Listen, I know you don’t understand what’s going on or what I’m saying, but you can’t touch that.” Grace gestures to the crack in the screen, to the blood. It’s a threat if Simon’s ever seen one. “It’s dangerous for all of us.”
As if in agreement, musical tones start up from behind Grace. Simon blinks at the emergence of a large ball to the left of Grace, and actually steps back at the sight of its occupant. For all intents and purposes, it appears to be a rock, except—
In the space of a split second, faster than Simon though him capable, Grace lunges for him.
Simon is ashamed to admit that his first thought isn’t to slam on the accelerator. Instead, he flinches back hard enough that half of Grace’s job is done for him, and it’s child’s play to shove Simon onto his back and pin his one remaining arm.
Instinctively, Simon feels an impressive electric pulse work its way up through his body as if through a layer of rubber, and strike out at Grace. To his credit, Grace only twitches back a little, apparently prepared for this, but Simon takes the split second in which he has the upper hand and runs with it as far as he can.
He shoves Grace off of him, an inhuman noise rattling in his throat like a wild animal straight from the depths of the blood ocean, and pushes himself against a wall that’s opposite Grace but still way too close to him. He doesn’t try to get to his feet, afraid that he won’t be able to.
“Okay,” Grace says, as if to himself. He shakes out his arms like that’ll make the shock of the electric pulse go away, and for some reason he doesn’t even seem mad. The rock creature keens in the doorway, but Simon only has eyes for Grace, his likely soon-to-be murderer. “Okay, that’s great. Alright.”
Simon tenses when Grace sits up, but all he does is lean against the other wall, mirroring Simon. The cockpit is too cramped for them to maintain any more than six feet between them, but it’s a comfort to Simon anyway.
Grace wipes his face with a hand. “I’m sorry about that—I just really didn’t want to break my face again. Or for you to break yours.” He sighs. “Okay, let’s start over.” He looks at Simon, holds his hands up in surrender, then slowly points to himself, carefully enunciating, “Grace. Ryland Grace.”
Simon wants to bare his teeth, to snarl. He does neither.
Instead, like one of those orphaned post-Rapture children he swore to himself he’d never be again, he whispers, “Please.”
Of course that’s the one word he manages to push past the feeling of knives in his throat. He’s not even entirely sure what he means. Please don’t kill me, maybe. Or please don’t send me back.
Either way, Grace doesn’t seem too hung up on what exactly Simon said. His eyes widen and he leans in. “You speak—was that English?”
Simon scowls. He’s from Eden; of course he speaks English. It was always an American colony, even after everything.
“Oh. Uh.” Grace blinks. “‘Please.’ Please what? We’re really not—” He shoots a look at the rock creature as if seeking assistance. “We didn’t bring you here to hurt you. We want to help.”
Simon scoffs, clear as anything. At least that’s something he can still do. Not a single faction left in the galaxy wouldn’t want to hurt Simon. Not even Eden, his brothers-in-arms, his own flesh and blood, the very same people who watched him grow up, would take him back—not after all the shit that’s gone down since Filament Station. Not after Simon surrendered.
“I’m telling the truth, I swear,” Grace insists, and actually crosses his heart, like Simon’s a child.
Simon glares, and decides now’s as good a time as any to test his legs. He gets them under him just fine, but the standing part sends him crashing right back onto his knees, almost biting through his tongue in the process. The taste of blood only makes his heart thunder even louder in his ears.
A chitter from the rock creature is all the warning he gets before there’s a hand on his arm. Simon lashes out quick as a snake, landing a punch on Grace’s nose hard enough that Grace reels back, eyes squeezed shut and no doubt seeing stars.
Oh, shit, Simon thinks, not for the first time. He returns to his task with new fervor, but gets himself no closer to a standing position. As Grace recovers, clutching his bleeding nose, the best Simon can do is press himself back, the organs at his throat that he still has no damn name for twitching in apprehension, his one remaining hand clutching the pendant from Eden like a lifeline.
“No, no, it’s,” Grace starts, wincing and congested-sounding, “it’s fine, it’s okay, I shouldn’t have—”
The creature screeches loud enough to sting Simon’s ears. He moves to cover them and again finds an empty place where his left arm should be. Like a ghost, he can almost feel it touch his face, but it’s not a sensation he can name. All that’s left for him to do is lock his eyes onto the creature and prepare to fight it.
But it doesn’t fight. Maybe the ball is too unwieldy for it, but even with Simon thoroughly cornered across from it and Grace, the creature doesn’t seem all that determined to bash his skull in.
“It’s okay, Rocky, geez,” Grace seemingly—reassures it? “I’m fine.” He wipes the last of the blood from his nose, and it doesn’t even seem broken. Simon curses himself and at the same time thanks God.
Resuming his weirdly amiable bullshitting, Grace looks at Simon, now ten times closer since Simon’s punch was too damn weak to send him all the way back, and smiles weakly. “Okay. Um. No touching. Got it.” He casts an uncertain glance at the door. “Would drinking some water help you talk?”
Subconsciously, Simon perks up at the thought of water. It’s been so long since he last tasted anything but blood.
But he doesn’t nod. That’s what Grace wants him to do, so he can play that stupid fucking game the guards at the prison used to taunt prisoners like Simon with—ask, get a positive response, and then take back the offer. It’s a game Simon’s intimately familiar with, and he’s thoroughly sick of playing it.
“Yes? No?” Grace looks puzzled—probably because Simon’s not actually as stupid as he thought. “Okay, well, I’ll bring you some anyway, okay? Just—Rocky,” he directs at the creature, “keep an eye on him, please. And don’t touch anything, either of you.”
Simon curls up the second he’s gone. Grace is probably off to get a gun. He eyes the creature, apparently called Rocky, but decides against rushing it. It doesn’t seem like the kind of obstacle he can just shove past.
There’s no escape routes. No weapons. Nothing but the creature, the stranger, and Simon. The thought makes him even more sick than the blood.
He tenses when Grace comes back. A minor current runs under his skin, assessing the situation, even as Simon’s eyes tell him everything he wants to know: Grace really did bring water.
“Here,” Grace says, and without a care in the world, he hands Simon a packet of water like the kind he’d grown up with on Eden. Without waiting for Simon to drink it, he situates himself back where he’d been before Simon first tried to get up and failed, sitting against the opposite wall.
Simon narrows his eyes and holds the water loosely. It’d be pretty smart, actually, to just poison him. Less chance of him fighting back and hurting Grace even more than he already has.
But he’s very thirsty.
All it takes is an innocent look and an encouraging gesture from Grace for Simon to chug the whole thing. No point in little sips; if he’s taking the leap, he’s taking a full one.
“So, uh, you’re water-based.” In Simon’s periphery, Grace frowns.
To his own surprise, Simon doesn’t immediately keel over. That’s at least one point in Grave’s favor.
He doesn’t wait for Grace to start on another rant—Simon swallows, opens his mouth, and pushes through the gravel in his throat enough to say, “Thanks.” Because, believe it or not, he was raised with manners; they just didn’t stick around very long after the Rapture.
Grace blinks. “Okay. So. Definitely English. No problem, by the way.”
Simon doesn’t dignify that with a response.
“Well, I’m Doctor Ryland Grace, as I’m sure you’ve heard, and that’s Rocky,” Grace says, gesturing to himself and then to the creature in turn.
Simon remains silent, watching the condensation that he couldn’t quite reach in the packet of water slowly drip toward the bottom. There’s gravity here right now. He supposes that it’s easier to shoot someone when the bullets follow the laws of gravity.
After a long pause, Grace—Ryland? Last names were always very rare in Eden—asks, “What’s your name?”
Simon fidgets with the water. He’d kind of rather die than do this ‘pleasantries’ shit. It’s been a long time since anyone bothered to ask his name, and it’s incredibly suspicious that someone’s doing so now.
“Why?” Simon looks fully at Grace and squints. “You’re C.O.I. What the fuck does it matter to you?”
Well, there goes his good impression. Not that he ever really cared about that in the first place. Still, he presses back a little further, gaze retreating to the water.
“Um. I’m not familiar with anything called the C.O.I.”
Simon actually laughs, albeit bitterly, at that one. “Don’t pull that shit with me. Just don’t. I know what you are and I know what you do and I’m not falling for any of it ever fucking again—you got that? So—so I don’t care if you kill me or hang me for all of Eden to see, but I’m not going back there, and you can’t make me.”
He swallows. The water only emphasizes the shaking in his hands. For only a moment, he allows himself to squeeze his eyes shut and hold the coldness of the packet in his hands, and then he tosses it away from him and straightens his back. Whatever happens, Grace is not shoving him back in that submarine.
“I think we’re misunderstanding each other. I’m here to help. Okay? I don’t really know how to prove it to you, but I’m definitely not—well, I don’t really know what ‘back there’ even means, so.” Grace can’t quite meet his eyes; he’s looking somewhere to Simon’s left instead, which is far too transparent of a tell for it to be real. What kind of game is this guy playing?
“What the fuck did I just say? Just don’t even bother with your routine,” Simon snarls. It sounds more animalistic than he remembers. He’s working himself up to the point of rage, but he’s too angry to stop it. “I’m so sick of all the C.O.I.’s bullshit! God, sometimes I wish Filament took more of you fucks down with it.”
He actually chokes halfway through that sentence, but he’s always been pretty damn good at digging his own grave. There’s no world in which he could ever mean that—he feels sick enough at the thought of the bodies already piled up on his shoulders; he has no intention of adding more. He flinches the second he’s done saying it, a visceral reaction to what he expects is his oncoming death. If he said that in front of the guards, in front of Ava, some poor janitor would’ve had to wipe his brains off the floor soon after.
But Grace doesn’t do anything.
“Um, okay,” is all he says in response. Simon stares at him in what he hopes doesn’t look like the abject shock and disbelief he’s currently feeling. “Listen, I know you don’t trust me, but you look like you’re about to pass out.”
He’s probably referring to the shaking. Simon curls in on himself a little more.
“I can give you more water, and some food. But then I think you should sleep.” Grace winces. “I’ve got a lot of questions, to be honest, but they can wait.”
The creature, Rocky, makes a few musical notes that Grace promptly ignores. He gives Simon an imploring glance and slowly gets to his feet. “Come on. By the way, you’re kind of covered in, um—something. Do you want a shower?” A pause. “Do you—sorry, do you know what that is?”
“Of course I know what that is,” Simon snaps, because apparently his confusion had been misinterpreted.
Simon can only translate Grace’s next glance as nervous, which makes zero sense considering he’s the one with all the power in this situation, and is quickly discarded among the swathes of other information that Simon can’t make any damn sense of.
Grace winces. “Okay. Will you let me help you walk?”
And get stabbed? Simon thinks. No, thanks. But it’s quickly clear that he’s not capable of standing any other way.
“I promise I won’t do whatever you think I’m gonna do,” Grace swears, which is not actually very reassuring. “I just want to get you checked out after eating, and, y’know, the med-bot’s right down there, so…”
“I get it,” Simon huffs, and carefully, cautiously, takes Grace’s hand in his own.
Immediately, he’s hefted up and onto his feet with a strength Simon wasn’t aware Grace possessed at first glance, which is definitely something to take note of. Cautiously, Simon slings his remaining arm across Grace’s shoulders, allowing him to pull him onward.
The rock creature, Rocky, leaves a trail of detritus and knickknacks in his wake as he carves a path ahead of them. A glance at Grace reveals he’s not particularly bothered by it. If he’s C.O.I.—and he must be, despite what he said—he must be lenient. Probably a bad sign, if he’s powerful enough to be able to afford lenience.
Simon’s just in the middle of figuring out how to make that work in his own favor when Grace leads them to a hatch containing a ladder. The creature splits off from them, skittering elsewhere. Simon tries and fails to conceal his hesitation when Grace turns back to look at him.
“I know this is probably going to suck for you, and I’m sorry,” Grace says, wincing. “I don’t think this ship was designed with amputees in mind. I’ll go down first if you want, so I can make sure you won’t fall.”
Simon assesses his options. He doesn’t think he has any other choice but to go down. If he doesn’t, Grace will probably just force him. It’s best, then, if Grace goes down first, just to make sure he won’t lock Simon down there the second he’s a few rungs beneath the hatch.
Simon rasps, “You go,” and hopes Grace won’t get angry at how much that sounds like an order. Grace only gives him a thin smile and descends down the ladder.
Without pausing to think, Simon follows him. It’s a necessary risk that he now has to turn his back to Grace; that doesn’t stop his shoulders from tensing as he gets closer and closer to the ladder’s bottommost rung. It’s tricky work, going down with one arm, but he was once forced down a ladder with his hands cuffed behind his back, only his feet and his teeth there to catch him, so he manages it at a pace he feels is acceptable.
At least, Grace doesn’t seem too impatient. All he does once Simon’s made it down is wait for him to catch his breath and then lead them down a short corridor. The new door at the end leads them to a room that appears to be a medbay. Still slightly out of breath, Simon stiffens in the doorway. He highly doubts there’s any food in here.
Grace’s voice is strange but not particularly unpleasant when it’s so close to Simon’s ear. “Hey, it’s okay. I’m just gonna ask the med-bot, Armando, for some food and water. I wasn’t lying, don’t worry.” After a moment, he pulls a warier but still relatively pliant Simon forward enough to deposit him—in a manner and Simon hesitates to call gentle only because it’s been so long since anything earned that adjective—onto a cot in the center of the room. Simon sits on the very edge, scowling.
Testingly, a low-voltage electric pulse spreads out from Simon like a radar and takes stock of his new environment, accidentally catching Grace’s skin with a minor static click. Grace twitches back, opens his mouth, but refrains from asking any questions. Simon’s glad not only because he’s hungry, but because he’s pretty sure that he wouldn’t be able to answer any of Grace’s questions anyway.
Something whirs on the ceiling when Grace looks up. Simon jumps and follows his eyes, and immediately realizes his mistake: he should’ve paid more attention to the word med-bot. He thought Grace was referring to this ship’s equivalent to the little robots that used to scan for injuries in Eden. During the war, of course, those quickly fell out of use on account of the price of constructing one, and by now they’re long extinct, but Simon had always figured that the C.O.I. had their own. Turns out, they have something much, much better.
“This is Armando,” Grace introduces, as if the arms on the ceiling are a living thing. He looks dead at the thing and says, “Could you bring our guest here some food and water? Don’t hover over him, come on, shoo.”
Simon watches it go for a moment and thinks it looks decidedly contrite.
Rocky comes up from behind Grace, having somehow taken its own path down a level, and chirps from where he lingers at Grace’s side. Simon wants to be able to make sense of it, to decide if it’s a threat, but it’s honestly difficult to tell. It hadn’t even attacked him when he hit Grace. Rocky is a puzzle that Simon has no time or energy to solve.
“Hey, so, uh, while Armando does that, I was wondering if I could ask—”
“No,” Simon snaps.
Grace blinks, then begins to look a little affronted for the first time since Simon first laid eyes on him. Noted: if he wants to piss Grace off, just interrupt him. “Please. Just one.”
Simon huffs. It feels so wrong to curl in on himself without his left arm. “Fine,” he grumbles.
“Okay.” Grace seems like he doesn’t know where to start for a moment, but then he does it anyway. “What’s your name? Seriously.”
Simon glares at him.
“No ulterior motives.” Grace holds up his hands like when they first met in the airlock. “I’m just curious.”
If Grace is C.O.I., he already knows Simon’s the Butcher. If he isn’t, he likely won’t connect the dots between those two names. Nobody ever really bothered with Simon’s actual name before.
Finally, Simon decides to take the leap. He clutches the seedling from Eden in his palm and mutters, “Simon.”
Grace’s smile is the realest Simon’s ever seen it. “‘Simon.’ Okay. Can I ask one more?”
Simon sighs. He wishes the med-bot would hurry up. “Fine.”
“I’m sorry if this is rude, really, but, um, what are you, exactly?”
Simon blinks. He leans back on the cot a little, shifting away from the edge. For a moment, he thinks Grace is asking whether or not Simon’s from Eden, but he could just ask where are you from? if that was the case. “What do you mean, what am I?”
“Well, you speak English.” Grace shifts to lean against the opposite wall, crossing his arms. “Your facelooks like mine, and we have the same number of body parts—or, I think we would, normally—but you seem to have the ability to breathe in space, which I don’t have. And you keep sending out some kind of electricity, and your eyes glowed in the dark back in the engine room, and you have gills, and teeth—”
“What?” Simon snarls. “Don’t—come on, don’t fuck with me.” He grips the edge of the cot with white knuckles, seething. “I’m human. Obviously.”
Grace squints at him. A look dawns on his face after a moment that Simon can’t quite read. “Do you mean you’re—”
Just then, Armando returns. It glides across the ceiling toward Simon with what looks to be a container of some nondescript but probably edible substance in one of its hands and another packet of water in another. Simon takes the food and breaks it open in one motion, even down one arm.
Grace winces a little across from him. “Oh, crap, I’m sorry, that’s all we have without me cooking, and—”
He cuts himself off as Simon wolfs the food down. It’s been a long time since he tasted something like this—it brings back memories of Eden before the war and the Quiet Rapture, when Simon’s family lived on rations sent out from Earth. Eden had its own food, of course, but Earth supplemented it. No one starved on Eden before the stars died.
Wisely, Grace doesn’t move to take it from him. It’s the most food Simon’s had in a long time and he doesn’t intend to miss out on any of it. The water goes down just as quickly and Simon is briefly nauseated, before he gathers himself and his stomach settles.
“Thank you,” he says, voice a little raspy around the edges with genuine appreciation. He thought he’d have to work for food, or else be shoved in some cell and given barely half of what Armando had delivered to him.
“Yeah, um, no problem. I do want to ask you for a little bit of a favor, though.”
Immediately, Simon gives Grace the most threatening look he can possibly muster. Grace looks adequately cowed under the force of it, but apparently not enough to just shut up.
“It’s mutually beneficial, really. Just let Armando take a look at you. Your arm’s still, uh—” Grace waves a little vaguely at the weeping stump at Simon’s shoulder, and twitches tacks. “C’mon, please. I thought you were a corpse at first, y’know, just drifting out there. But somehow you’re not, and I kinda want you to stay that way.”
Simon ducks his head. He feels a compulsion to answer only because it’s been a long time since anyone expressed that sentiment to him. “I’m not exactly good company.”
“Sure you are,” Grace dismisses. He gestures to Armando, as if signaling it. “Just a check-up. And definitely some bandages.”
Armando gently pushes Simon onto his back on the cot, which Simon is at first extremely skeptical of. The feeling only worsens when, after its scan, it moves to cut off his shirt.
Simon isn’t quite ready to break it yet, but he’s getting there.
“No, no, no, Armando,” Grace cuts in. “Simon can take it off himself.”
“No, the fuck I won’t,” Simon snaps, turning his head to look at Grace. The vulnerable position he’s in only worsens his compulsion to lash out. “You said check-up. It scanned me. We’re done here.”
Grace rolls his eyes. Actually rolls them. Simon wants to punch him again. “We are not done here.”
“I’m not dead yet. I won’t be any time soon.”
“Actually, you will if you keep actively losing blood. Blood that is, by the way, all over you right now, so I don’t think you can afford—”
That sounds like a threat, Simon thinks, even though it’s probably not, and he reacts.
He reaches for the med-bot, still frozen in indecision while Grace and Simon argue, and pulls the scissors it was planning on cutting his shirt with right out of its mechanical hand. It’s a lackluster weapon, but it’s the best Simon’s going to get, so he struggles to his feet, leaning heavily on the cot, and points the blades out toward Grace.
“Your bot isn’t touching me,” he commands.
Grace does not look afraid, is the thing. He looks concerned, and vaguely irritated, but not anything much stronger than that. For the entire length of time since the airlock, Simon doesn’t think he’s ever seen Grace afraid, and it’s putting him on edge more than rage ever could.
“Hey, okay, alright.” Grace holds up his hands and leans further back into the opposite wall. “I don’t know where you’ve been, or what you’ve been through, but—”
“I don’t care what you say,” Simon snaps. “I’m not going back. Nothing you do to—to heal me or make me happy will ever be enough to let you send me back. I’ll tear your fucking guts out before I get back in that thing!”
Rocky makes a series of trill notes and moves to stand in front of Grace, holding itself on all five legs as if preparing to lunge. Simon stumbles back a little, slamming his hip on the cot.
“Cortisol level: high,” Armando intones.
Grace’s eyes dart up to the bot, then to Simon. That glance sets Simon’s teeth on edge, but he can’t turn around, not with two distinct enemies in the room.
“I don’t want to send you anywhere,” Grace assures calmly.
“Yes, you do!” Simon shouts. “Cut the shit. Where’s Ava? Is she too scared of what I’ll do if I see her? Because, I swear to God, if you put me back in that thing I’ll take a thousand of those X-rays! You’ll all be throwing up your organs before you can even—”
“Preventative measures active,” the med-bot informs apparently no one. Simon discards it as white noise.
“—think to throw me down there!”
Simon couldn’t imagine doing that—not really. He’s killed enough people in his life. Grace must know that, the fucker, because he just keeps on lying.
“I’m not C.O.I.”
“Yeah, and I’m not the Bu—”
Something sharp pricks the back of his neck. Simon stumbles, and panic overtakes his anger like a winning racehorse on a track. A shockwave goes out from him, electricity crackling under his hands, but nothing’s close enough for it to do any real damage. Simon squeezes his eyes shut. Distantly, he hears Grace rush forward. When his knees finally buckle beneath him, Grace’s arms are there to pull him up fully onto the cot.
Oh, God, they’re sending me back. Simon chokes a little on how hard his heart is pounding. He thinks he might be able to taste it, thick and cloying, in the back of his throat, but that might just be the blood. I’m going to wake up back on that submarine. I’m going to wake up and that thing is going to be there, watching me.
He chokes out the first thing he said to Grace. Second time’s the charm, says no one. “Please.”
“It’s okay, it’s alright, Simon, you’re gonna be fine—”
But just as Simon works out what he’s saying, Grace’s face is drowned out by a great black spot in his vision, like a monster looming in the dark. In the space of a single breath, Simon slips under.