Swap au backstories ideas:
Simon was an engineer who was a last second switch in after the two original engineers died. He was the only other somewhat qualified engineer who had the needed coma gene to have a chance to survive the voyage.
Simon might not have had a family or a dog, and he did spend over a decade behind bars for a juvenile offense, but he had been getting his life back together. He was finally living for himself. He was happy to do his part when he got the chance to work on the project to save humanity, unaware it was because of his genes that he was accepted in. He was the back up on file if the worst happened, and the worst happened.
His response to being cornered by the agents was to Fight. He knew he couldn’t escape the building, but he could beat the shit out of every bastard that tried the take him down.
And then he woke up on Hail Mary light years away with no memory.
Adrian had been one of the researchers on Blip A. They specialized in understanding bothe animals and micro organisms that survived in extreme conditions like the Star Killers did. They were in charge of monitoring the ones that were being used as fuel for the engines. Engines that their dear mate Rocky had designed.
Their heart ached to leave him behind, but his exoskeletal molting occurred later than expected, right before the ships launch. He was devastated but Adrian assured him that his ship design was perfect and would bring them home to him safely.
It was the engines Rocky helped design that protected Adrien from the radiation blast that killed all the other crew mates.
Grace had always been too smart for his own good. He was terrified of being discovered so he kept his head down and focused on teaching and looking after the few children that lived on his station. Rations were always tight, and yet Grace still gave away half of his to his students. He taught them everything he could, using both what knowledge survived the quiet rapture and what he himself had been able to figure out with his own mathematics and theory. He also tried to give them a safe space to be kids in this dying universe.
Until he was forcibly ‘recruited’ by the COI as soon as the realized how smart he was. Chased down and stolen away from the relative safety of his home station and his students to the rogue blood moon AT-5. Despite his fear,Grace was willing to help for a time, until he learned they were sacrificing the convicts they had promised freedom to for scraps of info.
Horrified, he tried to get Ava to see reason. How flawed her plan was, how he couldn’t support this and insisted they could find another way, a safer way.
Pissed, she agreed, perhaps sending down convicts who had no idea what they were looking for was the wrong idea.
Grace was relieved, until Ave ordered Grace be welded into the next sub. The Iron Lung.
Grace then suffers the horrors of blood ocean, navigating and investigating the anomalies with his calculations and theories. He’d be so terrified but desperate to survive and do as Ava says to be freed. Until she betrays him and sends him back down into those dark depths.
Down below Grace’s mind starts to break in the isolation, under the pressure to understand the blood ocean and the voices talking to him.
