Patron Of Monsters

Like say Grace and Rocky are on their many year journey to Erid when randomly the Hail Mary starts freaking out about an injury detected in the dormitory, but Grace and Rocky just look at each other, neither of them injured and neither in the dormitory. Rocky confirms the presence of two human heartbeats and the pair rush to the dorm to see Armando maneuvering two unconscious men into the beds of the dorm. Two very human men. Both covered in scrapes and burns, but one with a knife coming out of his gut. Armando works frantically while Grace stares in shock. There's no way two random humans have just appeared in the ship, but he can't find any other way they could have ended up in the Hail Mary.

Grace spends days trying to figure out what to do, now that his coma slurry and Taumeba food is being drained thrice as fast, while strange things happen around the ship. He constantly feels watched, even though he knows Rocky doesn't have eyes, and one night Grace even swears he feels the cold humidity of fog in the climate controlled ship. Grace just writes it off as his mind playing tricks on him.

Then the nightmares start.

A man who is all eyes watches him as he relives the terror of learning the sun was going out, of realizing humanity would be nearly wiped out in less than 30 years, of knowing his kids would grow up in a dying world.

Grace avoids sleeping as much as he can, but no matter what he does the nightmares still come. As the new passengers aboard the Hail Mary heal, the nightmares get worse, more vivid, and bloodier. Grace isn't reliving his past, he's dreaming about a dead world. A world where the stars aren't dying, they're dead, where humanity isnt on the brink of Extinction, they're already Extinct and just don't know it. Grace dreams hes a prisoner in this world, and someone offers him freedom. He takes it, even though he knows freedom is a lie. They weld him into a metal tube, a submarine, *a tomb*, and tell him to find something. They drop him. He explores. Something bumps the ship.