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Inhale…

…Exhale.

Repeat.

Keep your composure, Simon tells himself. Panicking won’t do him any good here. It won’t help him survive. It won’t synthesize oxygen out of blood.

…Blood.

The rustic smell hovers in the air of the sub. Simon can’t fathom how the scent is so strong inside. Surely, his own blood can’t smell so pungent? Surely his own pain isn’t so palpable that even he can smell it?

Maybe he’s imagining it. Maybe he’s going crazy.

Maybe none of this matters. This moment doesn’t matter. In the dark, sitting on the cold, unforgiving floor of a stagnant, unforgiving vessel that he knows is going to be his tomb – Buried in blood where he knows no one is ever going to come looking for him.

He knows this doesn’t matter.

They didn’t go looking for the crew of the SM-8. And he’s down here in the SM-13. He doesn’t want to know what happened to the SM-8’s crew. He doesn’t want to think about if there were subs 9, 10, 11, or 12. 

But they lied to him. They told him this was the test. Like he was the first one they’ve ever sent down. The porthole of his ship was made from scavenged glass from Filament Station.

Simon doubts they ever intended for him to come back up. The first time was a miracle, but now he’s down here alone. Sightless in the dark, floating in an endless abyss of congealed blood that he swears he can hear shifting, sloshing just outside the iron walls that keep him alive. 

Hospice. It’s like hospice, he thinks. He’s going to die down here. For nothing. For no reason. Sent down here to experience prolonged suffering in his last moments, kept alive, kept breathing, by this useless hunk of iron they probably just cobbled together to kill him in.

…They lied to him. Over and over. He wasn’t the first. And he won’t be the last, probably. He doesn’t know what they’re trying to find. What might be down here. If they know, they’d never tell him. 

They didn’t even tell him about the camera. And now a man will die because of it. Subjected to the same fate of knowing he’s already dead, but being forced to suffer continual minutes onward until the moment finally takes him and he becomes nothing.

Simon doesn’t believe in god. He doesn’t believe in something that comes after.

There’s nothing waiting for Jack when the radiation kills him. There’s nothing waiting for Simon when his oxygen runs out, or that creature comes back to finish him. 

There’s nothing. Just like the endless black expanse of their world, there is nothing beyond. Just darkness.

Simon has already embraced the darkness. He has no choice. He has no need for light, now. What would be the point? There’s nothing new for him to look at in here.

This iron tomb that will be his grave has no comforts in it. Only reminders of the suicide mission that was thrust upon him. 

Simon grits his teeth. It’s not fair. He didn’t mean– Filament Station. It wasn’t supposed to end like that. And it sure as hell wasn’t his fault! 

He was the only one. The only one who wanted to stop it. Lost his nerve, they’d said. But no, that wasn’t it. Nerve had nothing to do with it. That was humanity. That was Simon knowing that no more of them needed to die. 

Not his brothers and sisters of Eden, but people. Humanity is fading and they all know it. He grew up watching the stars fade and the last tree in the known universe die.

He knows there’s not enough of them. And he knows all too well that he’s already taken enough lives. The ones that he had to. The ones that left him no choice.

…And now here he is. Welded into a metal box that’s slowly killing him. With no choice in the matter. Is this his punishment?

Being incarcerated wasn’t the punishment, he thinks. This is. Stranded down here, dying all alone for nothing. This is his punishment.

This is what Simon the Butcher gets.

And doesn’t he deserve it?

That’s what the voice had said, right? After he told her about Filament Station. She said he deserved this. Maybe she’s right. Maybe he does. Maybe the world doesn’t need him.

But it doesn’t change the fact that he’s human. It doesn’t change the fact that he wants to live. He doesn’t want to die down here in the dark, forever to be buried in iron and blood.

Forgotten. Unmemorialized. Pointless.

Simon buries his head into his knees. It’s all been for nothing, hasn’t it? Everything. His entire life. Pointless.

There’s no goal post for him to reach. Nothing of value he will leave behind. No one will know how or when he goes. No one will mourn him.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this…” Simon groans to no one. To the air, to the blood, to the dead machinery… To himself. As if he needs to remind himself.

His eyes burn with hot tears and he tips his head back to keep them from falling. “Augh… Fuck…”

He’s going to die alone down here. With no answers, no vindication. This truly is an execution.

…He’s going to die alone down here.

No one to see him. No one to hear him…

Well fuck, what does keeping his composure matter, then? Who’s here to judge him?

Simon takes a long breath and lets it out as a blood-curdling scream. A wail of agony and betrayal and heartbreak and resignation. The tears fall and every part of him feels like fire.

He lowers his head and pulls at his hair. This is how he dies. He cannot stop it. But he knows it’s coming. He knows. And that’s possibly the worst terror he thinks anyone can know.

How many more before him knew this feeling? How many after him will?

“Fuck…!” Simon pounds his fist against the wall behind him, a hollow iron thud his reward. 

This is all pointless. It’s all worthless.

“Fuck!”

Simon stands and grabs the chair, that stupid fucking chair, and tries to rip it from it’s place. It doesn’t budge, no matter how hard Simon pulls. So he resorts to aggressively kicking over the bag full of manuals and documents they uselessly sent him down here with.

The pages scatter everywhere, hitting the control console, flinging onto the floor in dark corners Simon can’t see. 

Fuck them. He doesn’t need them. He’s already dead and this doesn’t matter!

“I just want to live!” Simon screams to nothing, to no one. He screams it because he can. Because a dying man has to hope that something can hear him.

“I’m fucking human! I don’t want to fucking die down here!” he continues. His ribs ache from the force of his voice, but he doesn’t care. He’s going to die and it’s going to hurt much worse. 

“This is fucking pointless!” Simon roars, slamming his fist into one of the pipes lining the walls.

He gasps for air. Stands there. He’s dizzy. Head pounding. His own voice rings in his ears.

And then another one joins it.

"̸̧̦͍̟̳̮̰̮̩̎͊̃I̵̡̝̯̻̼̜͓͍̦̘̼̹̦͑̒̍̓̿̄̎̚͝͝͝ͅs̶͇̋ ̶̨̹̋̾̅́̂̕i̶̢̧̫̞̪̗̗̝̭̮̗̫͙̠̳̓͐͛̆̐̚͘͠ͅt̶̡̧̨̯͚͔̜̬̮̜͈͉̫̞͎̀̀̀̂͑̿́̋?̴̡̡̼͙̗̹̺͇͇̲͈̿̅͊̉́̓̈́͐̋͑̄́̂͝ͅ"̷̩̆̐̄͛̀̈̀̿̔̓͌̆͒͘

Simon spins around, as if he expects there to be someone behind him. But all that’s there is the darkness of the control console. Simon steps towards it. He squints.

One of the manuals landed on the console, open to what certainly has to be a random page. 

But…

Simon picks it up. Squints at it in the dark. Then he scurries over to the camera and slams down the button to give himself some light.

He doesn’t look at the picture it takes.

The manual is open to the page on emergency re-starting the sub’s engines.

Simon looks down. He slams the camera again; Still doesn’t look at the picture. He sees the hatch for the maintenance tunnel underneath his feet.

…There’s no hope for him. He’s a dead man, and he knows it.

But there’s nothing more human than continuing to fight, right? To try. To hope that against all odds you can tip fate into a different track. To hope that your efforts can mean just enough that they save your existence for just a while longer. 

Simon has to hope. 

Simon has to try. 

Simon has to believe that his actions mean something.

He will not die down here quietly. Even if no one is here to see him, to watch him, to try and save him or capture a fleeting bit of him to remind everyone he existed – Simon will not go quietly.

Even if he’s still destined to die down here, he will be the tree that falls in a vacant forest. Even though no one is here to witness him, he will still make a sound.