Chapter Text
Where the fuck is this opening, why is this god damn crawlspace so long, why is this blood so thick… why Father why. Why so much blood? Is this the blood of all the people he’s killed? Fuck! Simon’s head is reeling as he drags himself and the SM-13’s black box towards the crawlspace opening. As soon as his head meets no upward resistance, he pushes up, gasping and spitting and heaving the box and a stomach full of blood onto the ground. Once he’s done retching, he pulls himself out of the tunnel and staggers to his feet. What the FUCK… there’s so much blood and stringy blackened clots and disgusting growths all over the god damn place. He wasn’t in the tunnel that long… There’s a hole spurting blood in the porthole. He is so fucked. At least he’s still moving backwards and the eel fucker hasn’t caught up yet. He’s really trying his fucking best to atone with this whole black box thing. “You better be right about this.” He thinks bitterly to Ava. “Okay.” He’s moving. He’s clinging to the fragile bit of hope that it is worth it like it’s the bright orange life preserver he’s frantically trying to get to fucking buckle over the black box… God damn it, the strap isn’t wide enough! “Fuck!”
Wait. His harness... he grabs it from where’s it has fallen towards the back of the sub. Please mother forgive me, he thinks as he strokes the knife pouch to ground himself one last time. Yes, it fits!
*Beep*………*Beep*…….*Beep*…….*Beep*…….*Beep*…….*Beep…*Beep*…*Beep*
A shiver of ice-cold dread zaps through his system as the proximity light flickers its warning at an increasing cadence. The fucker’s found him. “Fuck.” He shoves the last buckle in place and is moving to the porthole when the sub is rammed and he’s rocked back, catching himself on the piping. It probably burns at this point. He doesn’t feel it. A new sound like creaking bones comes from his left. His gaze snaps over to be greeted by bright fresh-blood red veins clawing their way rapidly up and in his arm from the pipe. “What?” The veins connect themselves and his right arm to the piping on the other side of the sub before he can process what is happening. He is wrenched up, suspended by tendrils that are digging into his flesh, burrowing and searing their way through muscle and tendon. And fuck it HURTS. He’s screaming and pulling and flailing. Trying to get his feet on the chair for leverage. His feet slip once, blood-soaked boots slick on the leather, before he’s got one foot on the chair and the other on the pipe. He’s pulling, pulling, and pulling his right arm free of the veins, howling in pain as they tear through his soft tissues. The pain is enough to stagger him for a moment, enough to knock him to his knees if his left arm wasn’t still attached to the piping. Come on, you’ve got to move, gotta get free, he thinks as he gets his feet under him and yanks. He needs more leverage. He grasps his left arm with his right and it’s not enough against the now dark fucking blood veins that are piling on. He gets a foot up on the pipe for leverage when the whole sub shakes and the prox light starts flickering again.
“You have nowhere to run. We can hear you! We will find you!” The voices of the fucking eel groan, growl, scream as it approaches.
“Oh, fuck me.” Second foot goes up for more leverage and yes, yes, he feels the veins giving! It’s a searing pain over on top of all the other pain but they are giving, and he’s screaming with it, but he’s just gotta keep going, there, yes!
There’s a sucking ripping sound as the veins give and he’s falling against the other wall breathing hard. He looks up and in mute horror realizes that it wasn’t only the veins giving way, but he tore… He looks down at the stringy stump of what used to be his left arm, weeping his blood into the ocean that fills the sub. His right arm distantly comes over to confirm that his eyes aren’t lying to him and that this isn’t another hallucination. And it’s not. There’s an impossible pain as he presses on the exposed bone marrow and stringy sinew. His arm is really still attached to pipe with vines quickly covering it. He can barely see the pendant anymore. His last shred of hope that he could make it out of here alive dies.
He never was quite able to bury the hope that his blood would join his mother’s in the soil for the Tree, even after everything. Finally losing that hope is a fresh agony that isn’t dulled by the adrenaline that is desperately sweeping through him.
The small light of the life preserver crosses his face as it spins lazily in the blood. A whimper tears its way through his burnt throat as he drags it to him. He grasps his harness and prays that God sees that his last actions are enough penance to see his mom again before he’s dragged back down into hell. He thinks it will look a lot like this. I just wanted to live, mom, I just wanted to live. Forgive me, forgive me.
“Don’t run!” *Beep**Beep**Beep**Beep**Beep* “We.. found.. you”
That fucking eel. He’s got to get that porthole shield open. Now. Fuck.
“You know this is the only way. You know it! Simon!”
“Please keep this safe, okay, mom? It’s more than me. It’s more than me.” Simon whimpers as he gets to his feet. It’s more than him, it’s more than him.
“You saw the horror of it. What did it see in you?!” The eel roars in its discordant voices.
“It’s more than me, it’s more than me” Simon groans. He’s on his feet, his limping towards the control panel. He will make it. He has to.
“And it will never let you go! It wants you to do this! Can you not see that?”
One lunge and he makes it. He turns the porthole shield control to open. The porthole shield groans as it begins slowly lowering.
“Hull Breach. Hull Breach. Hull Breach."
The eel roars. Simon roars, “Come on!”
The eel is quicker than the porthole. It bites hard into the sub, long teeth piercing the hull and sending Simon and box into the pooling blood at the back of the ship.
“What did you do?!” The eel wails. “You changed everything! Your ship is alive! Can’t you see this is a MERCY?!”
FUCK THIS FUCKING EEL. Simon pulls himself to his feet, grabs the fire extinguisher, and feels the hot, sticky, pulsing, familiar rage of the Butcher slide in place as he settles into a fighting stance. “FINE! You want the Butcher?! COME ON!” Everything is screaming, the eel, the hull, the controls, and Simon as he strikes the teeth hard. Blood is pouring in from everywhere, feeding the veins, feeding the sub. He will NOT go down quietly. Surrender, he knows from experience, gains nothing but silence and condemnation.“Fuck you! Die! DIE!” Simon screams as hits and hits and falls into the slick blood, gets back up and hits again. The final hit breaks the tooth and he smirks for a moment in satisfaction of actually causing damage to this fuck off big ass bitch of a monster.
The eel wails and clamps its jaws down harder. More teeth pierce the haul and he is knocked back into the rising blood, narrowly avoiding being impaled. Blood is everywhere, his face, his mouth, his lungs. He’s spitting out as much as he can as he struggles to get back up, reaching for the teeth for purchase.
“Pray you stay dead! We are salvation! We are hope.”
The blood has risen to the control panel and Simon goes under, then he’s over, then he’s under, and it’s just endless red, blood and rage and all that he’s ever known. He was always taught that hell was all red, fire and brimstone, wasn’t he? This has to be it then, this burning blood. His mind starts an endless litany of the Hail Mary in a last desperate plea for his life. Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.
“We can save everyone… within us!”
Simon surfaces again gasping and gagging and yanking against the veins pulling him down to join the damned as the sub goes dark, the camera failing. Hail, Mary, at the hour of my death.
“WE are all. We are one.”
There’s a light. A pure white, divine light flashing in his eyes as he goes under, screaming, blood filling his entire being, veins encasing, he’s grasping and screaming for the light, mind in an endless plea, let me live, Hail, Mary, full of grace, Hail, Mary, full of grace.
“We die. We live! WE!”
There’s only the Light in its infinite agony.
David is shaking, eyes frozen on the monitors in front of him. There’s so little of them left. First Jack, to that bastard convict blasting them with radiation. He barely finished welding Ava when he collapsed, dead. Then Ava, to that, thing? They knew something was down there, but it attacked so quickly. It hadn’t done that with SM-8, it was a slow build up. This couldn’t be, Ava couldn’t be gone, she should have listened to him! They all didn’t have long post radiation blast, but she had more than hours! She… she should have had more time. He heard her screams as she died. And that fucking convict fucking got away from it, he watched the SM-13 escape. His fist slams down on the panel. It should have been the convict.
There’s static coming from SM-13’s radio now. Should have been for a while now but why would anything work right in hell?
“Convict. You heard Ava, she fucking died for that black box trying to save you for some fucking reason. You had better get it up here. Send it out the porthole and fucking drown you Eden piece of shit.”
“Convict. CONVICT.”
“We die. We live! WE!”
What. Was that the?
Then suddenly, it feels like every alarm in the station starts blaring. There’s a huge energy spike from the moon below. Everything in the station shakes. Every screen pulses and his vision is whites out. He tries to blink against the light and it has to be that eyelids aren’t responding because nothing changes. Only the blaring of alarms can be heard. And as soon as it comes, it goes. He can blink again and hazily see again. People are scrambling. The alarms are blaring. It feels like he has a concussion. Did he fall? In a daze, he answers the alarms. He knows they will have to at least do a surface scan after that. He’s not looking forward to it, there’s not many of them left and he’s on limited time anyway.
It's 12 hours before the station is recovered and prepped for a surface scan. If there’s nothing there, he’s getting welded in the last sub they have. He’s a dead man walking anyway, there’s not enough radiation meds to spare on someone who has fuck all chance to make it.
He’s on controls at least for the scan which is better than he expected, but gotta make sure someone can run this stuff after he’s gone. Fuck. He’s feverish, his brain is screaming in his skull, and his throat burns from the bile he can’t keep down so he misses the exclamation of the surface scan team into the radio. He gets the second though and he’s lanced through by panic. And nausea. His newbie is quicker than him to switch on their comms and he’s yelling a panicked, choked “What?!” into the mic.
“You’re never going to believe me. There’s a tree.”