Chapter Text
Episode 1 | Ghost Signals
The Astrophage shouldn't have been singing.
It wasn't the normal infrared pulsing Ryland had spent years studying. Those emissions were predictable, mathematical in a way, and almost comforting in their consistency.
This wasn't.
The sample emitted a long, mournful wave that rose and fell like a cry. It bounced erratically inside its containment chamber, became motionless for several seconds, then attempted mitosis.
The division failed. Again.
Ryland frowned at the spectral analysis projected across his laboratory wall. The Eridians had long since constructed an extension of their astrophysics laboratory directly connected to his biome. The chamber was filled with equipment from both civilizations: Eridian resonance scanners and human computer interfaces awkwardly welded together with the planet's resources into scientific compromises that somehow… worked.
Usually.
Today, nothing worked.
Ryland rubbed his exhausted eyes. The numbers refused to make sense. The Astrophage wasn't merely behaving strangely.
It looked distressed.
Ryland didn't like assigning emotions to microorganisms. But after years of studying Astrophage? He was running out of better explanations. He tapped the display. "Why are you doing this?" The Astrophage, naturally, did not answer.
A chime suddenly rang through his biome. Then another. Then another. Rapid and urgent. Like some eridian was spamming the hell out of his makeshift doorbell.
Ryland looked up and sighed. “Rocky—” The door flew open.
Rocky practically barreled inside. Or at least the Eridian equivalent of barreling. His custom environmental suit clicked and rattled with the speed of his movement. Ryland was happy that his suit was now tailored to his friend’s body.
It made the differences… feel not so different.
"Grace!" Ryland blinked. "Jesus. Hi."
"No greeting. Come."
"What?"
"Come now." Rocky seized one of Ryland's sweater sleeves and tugged. "What happened?"
"No time."
"Rocky—"
"Human voice!"
Ryland stopped. "What?"
"Human voice. Statement." Ryland stood frozen, maybe dumbfounded? He felt as if he couldn’t process what was just said to him. "What?"
Rocky vibrated anxiously. "Human. Voice."
Ryland stared. Then laughed. A confused, disbelieving laugh.
"No."
"Yes."
"No."
"Yes."
"Rocky."
"Yes. Statement."
"Did you inhale ammonia fumes?"
"Grace joking at incorrect time." Ryland blinked. "Rocky... what?" The Eridian tugged his sleeve again. "Laboratory. Hurry."
He didn't even think. He ran.
The main astrophysics laboratory was absolute chaos. Eridians crowded around communication equipment. Resonance arrays were fully active. Displays glowed with streams of data. Somebody was shouting. Someone else was yelling alarm signals.
At the center of the room sat the Astrophage containment chamber. It glowed. As Ryland entered his segment of the laboratory, every Eridian turned toward him. Then one of them spoke.
"Human communication. Statement." Another chimed in. "Language identified as English." A third, almost scoldingly. "English translator still incomplete." Well, Ryland had learned Eridian, so there was no need for him to fully complete—Ryland froze.
English.
English.
He looked at Rocky. Rocky looked equally horrified. Then—
KSHHHHHHHHHHHHH—
Static exploded through the laboratory. Every Eridian jumped. Just for an instant, then the laboratory lights flickered. Every monitor had flashed white. A burst of static exploded through the communication equipment.
“What the hell?" Ryland flinched as Rocky flattened himself instinctively. “Danger. Danger. Uh no.”
The static continued. A speaker crackled. And then—a voice? A human voice?
"...hello?"
Silence. Absolute pin-dropping silence. Ryland forgot how to breathe. The voice sounded male, well, to Grace at least. Weak and confused. Human.
The speaker crackled again. "...is somebody there?"
One of the Eridians dropped an instrument. Rocky vibrated so violently his suit rattled against the tiled floor.
"Grace." Ryland couldn't move. "Grace."
"I heard him."
"Human."
"I heard him, buddy."
The laboratory remained perfectly still. Nobody dared speak. The voice came again.
"...okay, either my radio's broken, I’m fucking losing it, or somebody's breathing into it." Ryland nearly stumbled toward the communication console. He grabbed the microphone. His hands shook.
"This uh—this is Dr. Ryland Grace." Silence. Then this harsh static that made your ears burn. "...what?" The man sounded utterly bewildered.
"Can you hear me?"
A long pause.
"Who the fuck is Ryland Grace?"
For a second, Ryland almost laughed.
After everything. After waking up alone in interstellar space. After believing he was probably the most isolated human being in this existence. The first thing another human being said to him was essentially, ‘Who the fuck are you?’
"I could ask you the same thing. "Static hissed. "...hold on."
The speaker inhaled sharply. "Either I'm fucking hallucinating or my radio just picked up somebody."
"You're not hallucinating."
A beat.
"That's… disappointing."
"What?"
"Hallucinations would've made more sense."
Several Eridians tilted their bodies in confusion. Rocky approached the microphone. He produced a soft musical chord, which Grace clearly understood as, “Confused human? Question.”
Simon immediately spoke. "What the fuck was that?"
Right. Ryland pinched the bridge of his nose. Of course. The Eridians understood English to a degree given their photographic memory. But Simon couldn't understand them.
He looked down at Rocky. The alien. The rock alien. Who didn’t speak their language since they didn’t have the actual vocal cords to do so. Rocky, who probably sounded like a 90s basic chime ringtone rather than an actual dialect.
"Uh… that's Rocky."
"Rocky?"
"He's…" How did one casually explain this? "...an alien. Not human per say."
Long silence. "...right." Another pause. "Sure. Of course." Another. "I've officially lost my mind."
One of the Eridians looked offended. Rocky clicked his claws. "Very confused human. Statement. Intellectually challenged? Question."
"Extremely." Ryland cleared his throat. "Trust me, that's actually the least weird thing happening right now."
The man laughed weakly. It sounded exhausted. "Yeah? Good for you." Ryland frowned. The voice sounded wrong. "... they speak now. Great. At least physically, the self-mind insertion-abduction thing was getting on my fucking nerves."
Ryland leaned closer. "What's your name?" A breath.
"...Simon."
"Okay, Simon." A pause. "Where are you?"
The answer took several seconds. As if Simon himself wasn't entirely sure how to respond to that. "Fuck okay, I'm... under the ocean. This cave system is a—."
Ryland blinked. "Underwater?"
"No," A sigh. "The blood ocean." As if it were the most obvious response. "...the what?"
Static crackled and metal groaned somewhere in the background as if Simon had just banged his head against the pipes. "I'm still in the submarine." As though that explained everything.
"A blood ocean."
"Yep."
"A submarine."
"Yep."
"Under a blood ocean."
"That's what I said. Keep up."
Several Eridians exchanged looks. One slowly backed away from the speaker as if to catch their breath. Ryland ignored them.
"Are you sure?" "...yeah, pretty sure." A low, horrible creak echoed through the speakers. It sounded confined. Claustrophobic. Ryland suddenly pictured a tiny steel cylinder buried somewhere in darkness. He hated the image immediately.
"Where exactly are you?"
"Moon Eighty-Five."
Rocky tugged Ryland’s sleeve once more. "Human could be lying. Statement." Ryland frowned.
"Never heard of it."
"Designation is AT-5." Nothing.
"You should have." The statement carried genuine confusion. "As in... everybody should have." Ryland felt a knot form in his stomach.
"Simon." "What?" "What system is that in?"
Quiet. "...what the fuck do you mean, what system?"
"The star system."
Another pause. Simon laughed. It wasn't amusement. It sounded ugly and pathetic. "Oh." The laughter stopped. "Now I know something's definitely wrong."
"Why?"
"Because there aren't any stars."
The laboratory became perfectly still. Even the instruments seemed quieter. Ryland glanced at Rocky. Rocky was frozen. The communicator crackled.
Simon's voice returned. "Not anymore." A cold sensation crawled down Ryland's spine. "What do you mean?"
Static hissed.
"The stars disappeared along with every inhabitable planet."
"No."
"Yeah. As far as anyone knows..." Simon exhaled shakily. "They're all gone."
No one spoke.
Because somewhere, beyond every chart, beyond every map. Beyond every known piece of existence—of humanity on Earth and Erid—another human being was calmly describing a universe where every star had vanished.
Ryland's mouth had gone dry. The communicator crackled. Then came coughing. Violent coughing with the sound of something splattering against the metal flooring. Simon doubled over somewhere beyond reality.
"Fuck—" Another fit. Ryland's expression changed immediately.
"Simon?" No answer. More coughing. The kind that ripped from one's own lungs when drowning. Rocky lowered himself.
"Human injured. Statement."
"Simon!" A shaky breath. “Are you okay?”
"No." Hawking of the throat. "...not particularly." Ryland hated that answer. He recognized it. It was the sort of response people gave when they were trying not to say something worse.
Ryland closed his eyes briefly. "Are you hurt?"
"... No." Another cough.
"Then why do you sound like you're dying?" When Simon finally answered, his voice was quieter.
"...because I probably am."
The laboratory suddenly felt too warm. "What?" "I'm irradiated." Another cough. "Starving. Losing my fucking mind. The sub's reactor shielding got compromised during descent."
"What descent?"
"Iron Lung."
"What?"
"The submarine's name."
"Oh." A pause. "The… blood submarine."
"You are absolutely fucking with me right now."
"No, I swear I'm not." Simon laughed. A tired, miserable sound. "Been down here so long; I’m starting to think this is actually my last hallucination. Y’know, when people see mirages before dying of heat stroke."
"How long?" "... don't know.”
"What do you mean you don't know?" "Time doesn't make sense here." Metal groaned again. The sound echoed through the speakers. Ryland didn't like it.
"Why are you still down there?"
"I…I can't go back up." "What do you mean?" "They won't get me."
"What?" The eridians were moving now. "They won’t get me." He repeated. "The sub barely made it down without leaks. Reactor's damaged. Navigation's half dead—"
"You have people looking for you, right?" Nothing. "Simon?" Another long silence.
"I haven't been able to contact the C.O.I."
"The what?" "The Consolidation of Iron." Ryland waited. Simon sighed. "...government." He elaborated. “Kinda.”
"Oh." Silence. "I don't think they know I'm alive… not that they care really." Ryland swallowed. This horrid feeling settled in his chest. Rocky's body slowly raised.
"Okay."
"...okay?"
"No. That's just me trying not to panic."
Simon actually laughed. Then immediately started coughing again. This one lasted almost twenty seconds. When it ended, he sounded exhausted.
Ryland looked at the displays. Then at the Astrophage and then at the communication arrays. Ryland was already moving with the other Eridians. He sat before the primary computer in his section.
"Pull everything." Rocky looked up. "Everything?"
"Waveforms. Signal timings. Interference patterns. Relative Doppler shifts and coordinates. Mathematical transforms. The lab was running data even they could hardly comprehend.
The source appeared as a flickering point in reference-space.
Ryland frowned. Wrinkles burrowed in his skin. "No." He recalculated. "No."
Again.
"No." Rocky approached. "Grace saying no often."
Ryland stared. Then slowly pointed. "I know this."
"Know impossible signal? Question."
"I know this geometry… well it’s not really—it’s like math! It’s math!" He started typing.
Three-dimensional coordinates unfolded. Then four-dimensional. Then relativistic transformations. The map projected itself into space. The image unfolded.
Then everything clicked. The projection filled the room. Soap-bubble-like structures. These dark clusters that would’ve never been found. The temperature was matching the empty void, and with no light, it made it impossible to see.
These filaments. Mirror symmetry. A boundary. A reflection.
Ryland whispered. "...a Hubble Deep Field." Rocky tilted. "Explain." Ryland couldn't. Because there was only one explanation. The signal wasn't crossing ordinary space. It was crossing dimensions.
Two realities had folded together.
Separated by almost nothing and yet almost everything. He checked the coordinates again. Then again. Then again. Same answer. It was as if their galaxies had collided at the far vastness of the universe and created this copy effect. A parallel dimension with a border they knew nothing about.
His eyes widened. He looked at Rocky. Then at the communicator. Then back.
"Simon."
"Still here." A sad excuse of a joke. "I think I know where you are."
"...what?"
"I think you're not very far away."
"What?" This time it sounded like disbelief.
"Relatively speaking."
"Which means nothing." Ryland looked at the numbers. Then inhaled. The Eridians huddled around the monitor.
"Three Earth days." One perked up, and Ryland nodded. He repeated for Simon to understand. “I think… we can be there in 72 hours.” Rocky's claws clicked violently.
"72 Earth hours. Statement."
"At maximum speed, of course," Ryland exclaimed as he looked down at Rocky. "We can get there in three days."
"...you're joking."
"I'm really not."
"You’re fucking joking and I’m dying—" A quiver of the lip. “Three days?"
"Maximum."
"No."
"Yes."
"No."
"Simon—"
"No. Absolutely not." He sounded terrified. "I don't even know you."
"I know."
"You don't know anything about me! About the Quiet Rapture!"
"I don't."
"And you're talking about coming here?"
"Yes."
Silence. "...why?" Ryland looked at Rocky then at the brightest Eridian scientists and engineers, then at the map that looked fictional to the average person.
"We come get you."
"What?"
"We come get you."
"...that's your plan?"
"It's the beginning of one." Ryland looked at the mirrored galaxies. At the dead universe beyond them. He had a mission again.
The laboratory on Erid had become organized chaos. Eridians moved in every direction. Xenonite clanged, and translation devices chirped. The data screens glowed with streams of calculations.
And Rocky was somehow in the center of all of it. "More insulation there! Statement. Humans sensitive to temperature." An Eridian carrying a panel of Xenonite weave immediately changed direction.
"Navigation crystals need recalibration. Statement." Another disappeared down a corridor. Ryland stood in the middle of his section of the laboratory with his arms folded. He had been completely ignored for nearly twenty minutes. "Am I helping?"
"No."
"Can I help?"
"No."
"Do you need me for anything?" Rocky paused.
"...moral support? Sarcasm." "I can do that." "No. Statement."
Ryland sighed. The vessel sitting in the hangar was unlike either the Hail Mary or the Blip-A. Its hull resembled overlapping layers of obsidian scales. Sections were modular and could separate in an emergency. The vessel was larger than any ship Rocky had personally piloted, though still tiny compared to the massive generation ships the Eridians had once constructed.
Its design was strange. There were redundancies everywhere. Multiple engines. Multiple human and Eridian life-support systems. Three backup reactors. Two independent navigation systems.
The thing looked almost paranoid. "What's with all the backups?"
Rocky didn't look up. "Because destination is impossible. Statement."
"Fair."
"We do not know what crossing dimensions will do."
"Also fair."
"It could damage ship."
"Yep."
"It could damage minds. Human body weak."
"Not ideal."
"It could erase us." Ryland blinked. "What?" Rocky finally looked up. "We do not know."
"Oh."
"...oh."
The ship suddenly looked significantly less appealing. One of the Eridians approached. Unlike Rocky's sandy coloration, this one's body shimmered with dark crystalline flecks.
"Rocky. Structural supports complete." Rocky clicked approvingly.
"Thank you, Slate." Slate bowed slightly before returning to work. Another approached. Her body carried beautiful streaks of blue-gray.
"The Grace-biome is stable."
"Excellent work, Shale." A third arrived carrying armfuls of equipment. This one was nearly black, with veins of silver running through his body. "Atmospheric processors are functioning."
"Good work, Obsidian."
Two more joined them. One had soft rose-colored mineral patterns. The other looked like polished white marble. "All communications systems operational."
"Fuel reserves secured."
"Excellent work, Jasper. Excellent work, Marble."
Ryland smiles. He still couldn’t quite decipher names, so the next best option was naming them what he believed could be their names. Rocky tilted and made a pleased sound.
"Grace."
"Hm?"
"You have not packed."
Ryland blinked. "Oh." The reality of it finally landed.
He looked at the ship. The airlock. The engines. The biome. The sleeping quarters. A spacecraft.
Another spacecraft. His hands became cold. The Hail Mary returned to him in flashes.
The spinning centrifuge. The endless isolation. The dead bodies. The panic. The suffocating loneliness. He remembered waking up. Alone.
Not knowing his own name. Not knowing where he was. Not knowing if Earth was already dead. His breathing became shallow.
"Grace?" He didn't answer. He could almost hear the hum of the Hail Mary's engines. Could almost smell disinfectant. Could almost feel weightlessness.
"Grace." He blinked. Rocky was beside him. "When did you get there?"
"I always here. Statement."
"Oh." Rocky watched him carefully. His species couldn't read human facial expressions well. But after years of friendship? He knew.
"You are afraid." Ryland didn't answer. Rocky's voice softened. "You do not have to go." A chime that felt reassuring. "No question. No argument. You do not have to."
Ryland stared at the vessel. The old fear crawled through his chest. The fear of waking up alone. The fear of dying in the dark. The fear of never coming home.
Then he thought of the voice. A coughing man. A stranger. Alone and dying in the dark. His eyes closed.
"...I know." Rocky waited. Ryland opened them again. "But I want to."
"Why? Question," He laughed softly. "I don’t know. Maybe… because I’m deciding now." Rocky waited. "Because someone is down there."
He looked toward the dimensional coordinates. "And nobody's coming.” He swallowed the lump in his throat. "I know what that's like."
Rocky clicked his claws quietly. "Good reason. Statement." Ryland smiled weakly. "Yeah." Rocky extended one claw.
"I am going too."
"I know."
"And four other Eridians."
"I know."
"You will not be alone." Ryland looked at him, then nodded.
"Okay."
The preparations continued. And seven hours later, they left.
Crossing the Hubble Deep Field looked wrong.
The border where space folded and stars stretched. Entire constellations appeared erroneously cloned. It looked like this wonky video game where bits of the game merged into walls and duplicated in ways that didn’t make sense. Like a distant memory from childhood where the details are blurred.
Then inverted. Then inside out. Colors existed that Ryland's brain couldn't properly process. The dimensional membrane shimmered like oil floating on water.
Then it opened. The ship passed through.
Every instrument failed momentarily. Every clock stopped. The lights flickered. Ryland's ears popped. Then suddenly, everything stabilized. Rocky stared at the display.
"...we are here." Ryland looked outside and froze. Darkness. This absolute pitch-black darkness. No stars. Not one. The universe was dead.
He felt ill. This could have been his home, Erid or Earth. "Oh my God." There wasn't even ghost light. They approached AT-5. Moon Eighty-Five. It looked diseased. A dark stone with strange ridges and this enormous crimson sea.
The moon seemed to pulse.
Ryland frowned. "Did…" The moon pulsed again. "Did it just move?" No one answered.
The ship landed and silence greeted them. There were deserted buildings surrounding the landing site. It looked dystopian. Laboratories, storage facilities, station bays, and communication towers were all abandoned.
Doors hung open. Windows broken. No people. It looked like civilization had simply stood up and walked away. Ryland slowly exited the ship, suited, despite the fact that the gravitational pull seemed similar to Erid's. Denser than Earth, but manageable.
The air was breathable as marked on his indicator. “What?” Ryland read his indicator once more. There was no vegetation on this planet. None that he could see. Could be some kind of algae that developed in the ocean? It made his head spin.
He frowned. "Do you smell that?" Rocky clicked. "No. No nose. Statement."
"Right." The sea stretched beyond the laboratories. Licking near the base as if tides had risen since it was constructed.
Something moved beneath the surface. Then disappeared. Ryland's skin crawled. The sea looked alive.
Maybe because it was.
A diagnostic scanner chirped. Obsidian looked at his screen. Then looked again. Then a third time.
"Rocky."
"Question?"
"The ocean."
"What about ocean?"
"It is organic." Ryland blinked. "What?" Shale took the scanner. Her entire body vibrated.
"Organic." "Define organic." She looked up. "... contains human species' properties."
The waves gently reached the shore and then retreated slowly. Ryland slowly turned toward the ocean.
The realization hit. The sea. The smell. The color. The viscosity. "Oh God." The entire ocean—was actual blood.
He expected a metaphor. A play on words. A ‘the ocean is red, so let’s call it blood’.
Human blood, and it appeared alive. Something enormous moved beneath the surface. A mountain-sized shape. The waves changed. The moon pulsed again. Slate slowly looked upward. "The moon is biological."
"The moon," he repeated, "is alive."
They moved faster after that. Communications equipment was deployed near the ship yet close to the shore lines. Jasper repaired the frequency modulator to ensure precision. Marble aligned the transmitter. Rocky activated the signal.
Static. Then—
"...hello?"
Everybody froze. Simon's voice. It was weak and distorted yet alive. Ryland practically dove at the radio.
"Simon!"
"...you came back."
"We came." A shaky exhale. "You actually came? It hasn’t been three days? Are… are you real?"
“I—yeah. We’re real. We're on the surface." Ryland checked his indicator once more. The entire excursion had taken around 74 hours. Was there a different time lapse? Like Eridian time and Earth time? He shook his head. He couldn’t dwell on that.
"...what?
"We're here." Ryland almost laughed in pure relief. "We need your location."
"The cave system?"
"Yes. We need to attach the Xenonite cable to the submarine."
"... there are things down here."
"We know."
"You don't know." The words came out shaking. "You really don't." Something banged in the distance. Simon inhaled sharply. "...it's near by." His voice shook horribly.
"What?" Silence. "Simon?"
"It's here." Then a deafening metallic impact. The transmission exploded with static. Then a noise. Something was breathing… growling. Something huge.
Ryland’s blood went cold.
Far below the blood ocean, Simon gripped the control panel. The lights had failed again. Emergency red illumination bathed the submarine. The floor was coagulated and glued his feet to the ground. It felt like moving in quicksand. The creature was outside. That thing, he could hear it. It wasn’t swimming. It was crawling. With heavy feet, he rushed to the camera and slammed his palm against the button. It barely caught the edge of its tail.
The beam of radiation light. Everything hurt. His flesh burned and his bones ached. Something moved beneath his skin. He looked down. Dark tentacle-like veins slowly spreading up his legs.
“No.” He cried. “No no no!” The creature struck again, and the submarine lurched. Simon screamed. Something punched through the hull.
A black appendage. Teeth. Then—pain. He could sense that someone or something was speaking to him, but he couldn’t comprehend. His sense of reality and time constantly altering. His mind deluded from the lack of oxygen and this tug-of-war battle with The Light.
This creature of a want-to-be deity enjoyed battering into his skull with the words of a cultlike preacher.
He hated that thing. He hated it with all his being. He screamed. Blood poured in to the compartment. The creature withdrew. He stuck his hand against the punctured steel. The blood veins bolted up his arm and connected him to the hull. This coagulated mass bonded him to the side of the submarine. He tugged and wailed when he couldn’t escape.
He threw his entire weight backward. A desperate animal trying to chew off it’s own leg from a trap. The air filled with a sharp, sickening CRACK—not a clean break, but the splintering explosion of his radius and ulna buckling under the immense, mechanical torque.
A white-hot spike of agony ricocheted up his spine as the fractured bone ends sheared through muscle and pierced skin. But the hull wouldn't let go. With a horrific, wet sound like heavy canvas ripping apart, the connective tissue began to fail. Skin stretched to a translucent, pale violet before parting, exposing the deep crimson fibers of his biceps tearing away from the shoulder socket strand by strand.
The viscous, coagulated mass on the steel held firm, anchoring his severed forearm to the submarine while the momentum of his own panicked flight did the rest.
Simon couldn't breathe. The world became pain, and he collapsed against the shelf segment of the hull. The black box struck the floor.
SM-8 data.
All downloaded. Complete. He had finished his mission. He had successfully obtained the data before the C.O.I had abandoned him. That box ridiculed him.
He choked on his own laughter, but the sound didn't come out right. It wasn't the fluid, wet wheeze of a dying man. It sounded deep, clicking, and hollow.
He clutched at the empty space where his shoulder used to be, waiting for the fountain of arterial spray, but it never came. Instead, the raw, open stump was already stop-gapping itself. The deep crimson fluid from the blood ocean hadn't just anchored him to the hull.
It was pouring into him, aggressively rewriting his biology.
A profound, unnatural heat surged up his neck and flooded his face. Simon gasped, pressing his remaining hand to his right cheek as a sudden, localized agony threatened to split his skull open.
Under his fingertips, his skin was dying and rebelling all at once. The flesh bubbled up in blistered, blackening ridges, hardening into an irregular, calcified scar tissue that smelled of rusted iron. He pulled his hand back, watching in dazed horror as the skin over his jawline split wide open, unzipping itself to the ear.
From the exposed muscle of his newly parted cheek, needle-sharp ivory points began to erupt, crowding together and elongating into jagged, predatory fangs that scraped against the outside of his jaw. He stared at the black box on the floor through a vision that was rapidly shifting, bleeding into an acute, ugly shade of crimson.
Then something glowed outside. Light. It appeared beyond the cracks of the viewport. The creature snarled. It spoke despite the tinnitus in his ears.
[ I KNOW YOU, BUTCHER. ]
Simon stared. A dissociative look over his eyes.
[ WHAT YOU HAVE DONE. WHAT YOU ARE. BUT YOU CAN STILL REDEEM YOURSELF. ]
“Go away.” Simon sobbed.
[ DESTROY THE DATA. TELL THE WORLD THE SM-8 IS LOST. THEY HAVE LONG SINCE ABANDONED YOU. ]
“I can’t. Please, go away.” A gurgling hiccup as he tried to catch his breath. The voices seemed to merge.
[ OUR BLOOD IS ON YOUR HANDS. HOW MANY MORE BODIES WILL YOU CLIMB OVER TO SAVE YOURSELF? ALWAYS THINKING OF THE LIFE YOU'LL NEVER GET BACK. THINKING OF A MOTHER WHO WOULDN'T EVEN RECOGNIZE THE KILLER SHE SPAWNED. OR MAYBE SHE'D BE PROUD. IS DEATH THE ONLY THING SHE TAUGHT YOU?! HALF-MEASURED! HALF-COMMITTED! NEVER ENOUGH! THERE IS NOTHING ELSE FOR US NOW! ]
With the lump in his throat, Simon spat back. "Nothing else?! What do you know? What do you know?!”
[ WE KNOW MORE THAN ENOUGH, BUTCHER! THE LIGHT MUST BE FORGOTTEN! THIS MADNESS ENDS WITH YOU! IF TAKING THE STARS DIDN’T KILL YOU ALL, I WILL. ]
A confession. His entire body went rigid despite the hiccups of his sobs. The golden light expanded. The ocean seemed to recoil. The beast slammed into the hull gushing more blood inside.
[ WE ARE THE LIGHT BETWEEN REALITIES. YOU HAVE NOWHERE TO HIDE! WE CAN HEAR YOU! WE WILL FIND YOU! ]
The life jacket bobbed in the blood filled the hull. With his intact arm, he grabbed onto it and tied the black box to it’s straps. “It's more than me. It's more than me…”
[ IT SAW YOU, SIMON! AND IT WILL NEVER LET YOU GO! IT WANTS YOU TO DO THIS! CAN YOU NOT SEE THAT?! CAN'T YOU SEE THIS IS A MERCY?! ]
The computer system blared out. “Hull breach. Hull breach. Hull breach. Hull breach.”
[PRAY THAT YOU STAY DEAD! ]
“Hull breach. Hull breach. Hull breach. Hull breach.”
[ WE ARE SALVATION! WE CAN SAVE EVERYONE, WITHIN US! YOU ARE CHANGING. ]
"No…"
[ YES. ] The light flickered. [ THEY HAVE COME FOR YOU. ]
A tremendous clang echoed through the submarine. A cable. Xenonite. It punched through the sampling device attached to the bow of the submarine. They found him. It spoke one final time.
[ NO! YOU MUST DIE! ]
The cable locked and yanked. The submarine screamed as it tore free of the cave floor. The winch groaned with a mechanical shriek as the Xenonite cable reeled the battered submarine out of the blood ocean.
Simon felt his ears pop before losing consciousness.
On the shore of AT-5, Ryland stood by the landing vessel, his heart hammering against his ribs. Beside him, Rocky’s claws clicked in a frantic, blurred rhythm. "Heavy, Grace! Submarine structure filling with liquid! Mass is high, very high!"
With a final, wet surge, the iron-hulled Iron Lung broke the surface of the ocean. The sub was dented, punctured, and coated in a thick, clotting layer of organic sludge that smelled heavily of copper and old pennies.
"Obsidian, Jasper, secure the secondary gantry!" Ryland yelled. "We need to breach that hull right now! He’s running out of air!"
Slate and Marble moved with Eridian efficiency, using high-frequency resonance cutters to slice through the compromised hatches of the submarine. The moment the steel gave way, a torrent of dark, viscous fluid spilled onto the dead stone of the moon.
Ryland scrambled inside the cramped cylinder, his flashlight beam illuminating the husk. What he found made him freeze.
Simon was slumped against the console, completely drenched in the sea's fluid. But he didn't look entirely human anymore. His right arm was gone, yet instead of an open wound, the stump was sealed with a living, throbbing mass of crimson tissue. His face was worse. The skin along his jaw had split open like a broken zipper, exposing sharp teeth that looked entirely predatory.
"Oh, sweet Jesus," Ryland breathed. Simon’s remaining hand was loosely curled around a heavy black box. His scleras were bleeding into this acute red as his pupils shrunk to pinpricks.
"Hey, hey! Simon?" Ryland dropped to his knees, carefully avoiding the black, tentacle-like veins pulsing beneath Simon's skin. He wrestled the black box free and threw it out the hatch to Rocky. "We’ve got you. We're getting you out of here."
Ryland shouted, grabbing Simon beneath his uninjured shoulder. "Rocky, help me lift him! Carefully!"
Rocky barreled into the hatchway, his three-pronged grip effortlessly managing Simon's weight without putting pressure on the severed arm. They hauled the unconscious convict out of the suffocating iron tomb and rushed him up the boarding ramp of the Eridian vessel.
Inside the dedicated human biome, the Eridians had already prepped the atmosphere. Ryland tore off his own helmet and immediately began hooking Simon up to the specialized life-support sensors.
| Heart Rate: Erratic, fluctuating between 40 and 190 BPM.
| Blood Pressure: Unmeasurable by standard human algorithms due to the changing viscosity of his blood.
| Cellular Activity: Rapid, aggressive mutation occurring at the genetic level.
The Eridians had managed to duplicate Armando’s automated medical rig, adapting it with precision Xenonite arms to manage human medical crises.
The robotic apparatus dropped from the ceiling of the biome, its multiple jointed limbs whirring with frantic, highly calculated movements. Two arms immediately began deploying intravenous lines, while another three calibrated a modified electroencephalogram around Simon’s rapidly changing skull.
A low, soothing hum echoed through the biome walls despite the chaos. On the monitors, the expansion of the black veins under Simon's skin visibly slowed, buying precious time. But Simon was fading fast. His breathing became a series of ragged, wet clicks. The crimson glare in his eyes dulled as the pupils dilated entirely, slipping beneath his heavy, blackened eyelids.
"He's slipping into a shock-induced coma," Ryland muttered, watching Armando pump a synthesized saline and glucose cocktail into the convict's remaining arm. "The trauma from the amputation alone should have killed him, but this... this cell conversion is keeping his organs running."
Simon’s eyes were now moving regardless of his lids being shut. "The... Light..." Simon whispered, a final, trailing breath escaping past the jagged, ivory points protruding from his unzipped jaw. "...took... everything..."
Then, his monitor flatlined into a unresponsive neurological baseline. He was entirely unconscious.
"Armando, initiate therapeutic hypothermia!" Ryland commanded, his voice cracking as he adjusted the life-support dials. "We need to preserve his brain function until we can get him to the main facilities on Erid."
Outside the viewport, the diseased red moon pulsed one final time against the absolute vacuum of the universe. "Engines ready! Statement!" Jasper called out from the cockpit. "Dimensional membrane is shifting! "
"Get us the hell out of here!" Ryland yelled back, securing a safety strap across Simon's chest as the ship began to vibrate violently. "Punch it, Jasper! Take us back to Erid! "
With a sudden, sickening lurch that turned the universe inside out, the Eridian scale-ship plunged back into the shimmering, oil-slick membrane of the Hubble Deep Field, leaving the silent, bleeding cosmos behind.