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It was dark. For a long time, that was all it was- just dark. He became aware of something else eventually. He could hear something. Distant screaming- the wails of the damned- and then he felt them. He felt what he could only describe as thousands of hands clawing into his skin, dragging him down. He could guess what that meant- the end. Nowhere left to run, no pleading left to do. Hell awaited him, he was sure. Anything else was too good for him. Too good for a convict. Too good for a butcher.

The first thing Simon was able to register when his consciousness started returning to him was pain. He was nearly sick with it. His body revolted against any small movement- fire shooting through every nerve at the slightest inhale. Slowly, and only barely, he managed to open his eyes. At first, he was blinded, having been in darkness for so long, but his vision adjusted eventually. The room around him was… white. Most everything was. He questioned for a moment if he had somehow managed to get into Heaven instead, but that was a stupid thought. What use could heaven have with the likes of him? Besides, Heaven wouldn’t hurt this much. Or, at least he hoped not, for the sake of all those that did deserve to be there.

He slowly began to push himself up onto his knees with-... with one arm. His left one was gone. Simon remembered then- distantly- that he had lost it. How he had lost it. The second the memory crossed the threshold of his mind his body heaved, he retched, and vomited blood up onto the floor. Not the first time, but definitely just as jarring this time as it was then. He felt dizzy as he sat there on his knees, one arm supporting his weight. He shivered from the exertion of it and blinked hard a few times, trying to remove the bleariness from his eyes. He could at least feel grateful that- as bad as everything hurt- he may have somehow managed to survive the horrors he had experienced. He glanced back to his arm, noting the blood dripping from the wound. Not in spurts that would make him fear he was near death, which was odd. It shouldn’t be languid- dripping steadily. Right. Languid, but steady. He still needed to figure that out quickly, then.

Simon closed his eyes again, centering himself and trying to collect his thoughts. Panicking wouldn’t do him any good right now. He needed to focus. When he opened his eyes again, he turned his attention more to his surroundings than to his body. Where was he, even? He would have liked to dwell on that question more for a moment, but he didn’t have the time. The adrenaline- or whatever was keeping him awake and moving- would wear off soon. He needed to fix himself- to stop the bleeding- before the pain became too much or he went into shock or something… Actually, shock should have definitely occurred by now- not the time to be questioning things. He needed to move.

Using the wall beside him for support, Simon hauled himself all the way up, leaving a streak of blood across the pristine white of the surface as he did. He remained leaning heavily against it as he limped down the hall, dripping red the whole way. As he moved, the halls would occasionally shift and morph, turning into the sub, or the jaws of that thing, or just the endless ocean of blood- one giant eye staring down at him from what would later turn back into the end of the hall. He forced himself to continue on despite the visions and his racing heart, but it was difficult when all he wanted to do was collapse to the floor and weep. He could imagine seeing God made many people feel that way.

He was shaking badly by the time he found the medical bay, which was thankfully just down the corridor he had woken up in. The only problem? It was also below him. There was a hatch at the end of the hall, and when he opened that- with surprising ease, considering the increased gravity he had barely been able to register through his addled mind- he found a ladder leading down into the room. His options were to either drop, which it was definitely too far for, or try to figure out how to climb down with only one arm. He carefully moved himself to a seated position, trying to gauge how best to descend.

Simon eventually settled on an idea- just fucking going for it. Maybe he could use his mouth to- okay, so he didn’t really have a full plan, but he had to do something. He turned himself around and moved his legs down through the hole in the floor, anchoring himself by laying on his chest until he gained footing on one of the ladder rungs. With that done, he… well, fuck. This actually was a lot more difficult than he had thought it would be. Nervously, he lifted his chest off the ground, keeping his arm outstretched so he still had an anchor as he slowly, slowly crouched down on the rung he was standing on. It was uncomfortable, and certainly not the safest option, but it was his only option. Once he was crouching and holding the opening around the top of the ladder, he carefully slid his hand down along the wall until he reached the first rung. He held it tight, and moved one foot one rung down at a time, repeating this process over and over. It was slow, and exhausting, but he needed medical supplies.

He hadn’t gotten down very far- maybe only a fourth of the way when the slick blood on the bottom of his shoes did him in. He had been trying to account for that by making sure he positioned his feet sure enough on the runs, but that didn’t help much when placing blood-soaked shoes on a metal ladder rung and, while traveling a hand down the wall, his foot slipped off the metal. His hand came off the wall quickly, and he reached out towards the ladder with the other-... Fuck. He stared upward at the opening to the hall he had just been in as he fell, watching it get further away until suddenly-

He landed on his back- hitting the floor with a loud, wet smack- his head snapping back after the rest of his body made contact. He choked harshly, the air having been knocked out of him when he crashed to the floor. He couldn’t breathe. His vision became splotchy for a moment, and as he tried to force himself to roll over, he found that only made him feel worse- sick, even. Nausea was creeping up on him again, but it seemed his body couldn’t make anything come up with him gasping like he was, so the feeling eventually went away as he continued desperately trying to fucking breathe again. He felt dizzy and out of it by the time he finally did.

With Simon’s faculties returning and him able to breathe again, the aches and pains that had fallen to the wayside while he had been gasping returned, accompanied by a new and intense sense of fatigue. As he caught his breath and tried to regain some semblance of true cognitive function, he became aware of what sounded like voices- thousands of voices- screaming. Distantly- almost imperceivable- but they were there. At the back of his mind, trying desperately to claw their way to the forefront of his consciousness. He quickly tried to draw his thoughts away from the sound, but he couldn’t fully remove the sounds from his head- couldn’t force himself to not hear the voices that were trying desperately to gain his full attention.

For a moment, Simon considered just laying there- resting and letting the blood loss and other ailments take their course with his body. He wouldn’t do that, though. He was going to live, dammit. If he wasn’t already dead, at least. He wrenched his body upwards, forcing through the exhaustion. If he didn’t, he would die- bleed out and fucking die. The fatigue setting in was ample proof of that. He had been lucky enough that he wasn’t spraying blood from the wound in his arm- or more like the wound that used to be his arm- and where that may have been a sign that something else was wrong (which he would consider some other time), at least he wasn’t seconds from death. Still, that could happen any moment. He needed to stop the bleeding.

As Simon tried to focus his eyes after getting up too quickly, he noticed something else unhelpful about his situation- the nausea he’d experienced was getting progressively worse. Great. Another concussion. Just what he fucking needed. Once again, he had to force himself to stand, and it was even more difficult that time. Still, he managed it-... and then he turned around and noticed that there was a man in the room. A man covered completely by a tarp. There were all sorts of tubes and things that disappeared into the tarp-bag-thing, which were more than likely hooked up to whoever was inside. Simon would have been concerned the guy was dead, if it wasn’t for the steady beeping of a heart-rate monitor beside the man’s bed. Or, he assumed it was a man. He couldn’t actually see them, since the tarp was in the way… that was kind of fucked up for him to assume, actually. That could be anyone- whatever. He really needed to stop getting distracted by every stupid new thing he noticed or realized. It was slowing him down. He couldn’t help it, though. Everything that caught his attention just made him more and more aware of how little he understood about whatever the fuck was happening to him.

In truth, the lack of knowing- the encroaching fear that he would never know- was already beginning to eat at him. The less Simon knew, the worse the situation had the potential of being. What if he was still in that damn ocean and he didn’t know it? What if the C.O.I. had put him in a different ship and he was just sitting around waiting to be attacked again? He drew in a deep, shaking breath- forcing himself to be steady- to remain calm, though it was a difficult thing to accomplish. He was just so uncomfortable, and that was putting it incredibly fucking lightly.

Simon’s body was still heavy with the blood he was drenched in, and his head was throbbing- his stomach ached, he felt like he would be sick at any moment, and his arm was fucking gone. He was sore, his skin burned and- well, he began to wonder if he would die here instead. That would be a little funny, honestly. After being given a second chance at life he couldn’t make it past the first few hours- couldn’t take care of and fix himself well enough and fast enough to make any use of the Hail Mary he had been given, if that was even what this was. Maybe he just didn’t deserve to live. Maybe this was all some cruel joke at his expense- God pretending to give him another chance at life and then not actually letting him grasp it. He could laugh, really. What a cruel irony. What a rotten existence… What a rotten man.

Simon forced the thoughts from his head. Thinking like that would get him killed, he knew that well enough. As long as he assumed he would live- assumed that continuing to try and get himself better actually had any merit- he had a chance. Otherwise, he was liable to just lay down and let death take him. He wasn’t doing that. He was going to fucking fight. It was something he would have to keep telling himself- reminding himself of. If he forgot how badly he wanted to live- if he lost his drive, his fight, his anger- he really would just lay down and let himself die. It was certainly easier, and it probably wouldn’t hurt as much as what he was currently doing. He grimaced at the thought as he pressed on- staggering over to what looked like a storage area and started digging through it.

He found food first, which was good, but he needed medical supplies. He couldn’t just sit there bleeding out forever!... Probably. He had certainly been sitting around “bleeding out” for a while. Eventually, he managed to pull a first aid kit from the storage area- a more than first aid kit, really. There was so much shit in there- fuck, he was just glad it all came with instructions. Specifically, instructions for how to properly apply a tourniquet. He sat down on the floor and got to work.

The experience of applying a tourniquet to himself was excruciating, and he almost passed out several times from the exertion alone, but he forced himself to muscle through. He wouldn’t live if he didn’t. Honestly, he still might not, considering the fact that he was still covered in so much blood that wasn’t even all his own. The tourniquet had been simple to apply, at least- instructions-wise. It was just a strap he had to fasten around his arm, then twist the stick that was attached. The fastening of it was honestly the most difficult part, but he had gotten the job done. Crudely, he assumed, but still- it was at least in place, and the flow of blood had mostly stopped. All-in-all, not the worst job someone could do… probably. He had nothing to compare it to.

He moved onto the rest after the tourniquet- to the masses on his skin that-... that were… not there. There were scars in place of them- or at least some sort of mottled, rough feeling to his skin where they used to be- but they shouldn’t have been gone. As with many of the things he seemed to be questioning at the moment, he didn’t have the time to consider it. He would have to do that later. It seemed that fucking everything was a Goddamn thought for fucking later.

With a disgruntled huff, Simon started putting everything back in the med kit, noting again that the tourniquet had only slowed the bleeding, not stopped it. He had figured that would be the case, but he had also been sort of hopeful that the bleeding would have stopped, since it was already slower than it was supposed to be to begin with. Really, he should have known better than to hope for things by now. He needed to think fast- what in the room could he use to cauterize the wound now… and then he got a pretty damn good idea. He started unpacking the medkit again, which felt a bit silly considering he had just started to put everything back in, but everything he needed was literally right there. He wasn't about to let “feeling silly” stop him from making sure he didn’t fucking die.

Aside from the things he had already used (really just the tourniquet), there was a fuck ton of gauze, cotton pads, surgical shears, a pen light, and rubbing alcohol. The pen light wasn’t something he had personally seen in a med kit before, but he was grateful that it was there, since it would make what he was going to do next all that much easier.

He grabbed some of the cotton pads and balled them up, then wrapped a few layers of gauze around them before dousing all of that in rubbing alcohol. He set that down on the floor beside him before using the surgical shears to help him pry the lid off of the med kit, placing his knee on the edge of the container and his opposite foot on the far edge of the lid to help hold it in pace. Once the lid was off, he used the surgical shears to scratch the paint off the metal- creating the largest clean area he could. He didn’t want any of the paint transferring onto him. Once that was done, he moved onto the pen light.

It was a small, cylindrical device, and Simon assumed it would be helpful for checking pupil dilation in the case of a possible concussion. If he could look at his own eyes, that would actually be extra helpful right now. Obviously he couldn’t do that, so there was only one thing that made him care about it- the battery inside. He put one end of the plastic light in his mouth and held the other in his hand. His plan was to simply bite down hard enough to keep the pen in place and then pull it away from his mouth, hoping it would come apart at the seam in the middle. However, as soon as he bit down, he heard a crack and quickly pulled it out of his mouth. He hadn’t even bit down that hard, but the shell of the light had cracked, and pieces of it fell off into his lap. He knew that shouldn’t have been possible, and yet it had happened. He was beginning to grow concerned about why his body seemed capable of things it shouldn’t. He considered setting the pen down for a moment so he could feel around inside his mouth- see if anything had changed, but he was still covered in blood, and he really didn’t want to get any in his mouth. Or, any more in his mouth, anyway.

With the shell of the pen shattering so easily, Simon was able to access the battery with relative ease. All he had to do now was break that. He moved it closer to the alcohol-soaked pile of gauze and took hold of the surgical scissors again. As many problems as missing an arm had been causing him, he took a moment to be grateful for the fact that it had been the left and not the right, since it would be far more difficult to do everything he was doing with his non-dominant hand. He held the scissors up over the battery and, with all the strength he felt he needed, jammed them into the center of the battery. Immediately, it began to fizzle- sparks flying off, and then a small flame emanated from where he had punctured it. He thought he would have had to move the flame closer to the gauze, but the sparks flying off had already lit it, and he quickly tossed the battery away in favor of focusing on the larger flame. Almost immediately, there was a robotic voice that clicked on,

“Warning- fire in med bay.” It said. Simon kept trying to get it to shut the fuck up, but it wouldn’t no matter what he tried, and he didn’t know where the fuck the speaker for it was, so he couldn’t break the damn thing like he had done on the SM-13. He would just have to ignore it- focus on the task at hand instead. He could do that.

The fire coming off the gauze was blue in color, fading into orange where the flame dissipated towards the top. It wouldn’t be burning for more than two or three minutes, so Simon had to move sort of quickly. He held the middle of the metal lid he had removed from the first aid kit over the flame. It heated up pretty quickly. Fast enough, in fact, that he ended up dropping it- shocked by how quickly the heat had spread to the edge he was holding it by. He took a deep breath and, trying not to think about it too hard, shoved the end of his left arm into the hot metal lid.

He tried his best to force himself to stay silent as his arm sizzled and popped against the metal, but that was nearly impossible. The sound of him crying out in pain tore from him, scratching up the already damaged tissue in his throat. The sound reverberated in the small medical room, poisoning the quiet. His voice bounced back at him, and then he was back again- drowning in blood, irradiated, his body tearing itself apart- he should be dead. That should have killed him, it didn’t make sense. The pain was grounding, even if it was horrific. If it weren’t, he likely would have been lost to the visions- to the memories that continued to encroach in on him, threatening to swallow him in visions.

The smell of his own burning flesh filled Simon’s nostrils as he finally pulled his arm away from the metal lid, and he immediately moved himself into a laying position. He took in big, shaking breaths, shaking and sweating as he tried to just breathe through the pain, but it was all just too much. He could still hear the robotic voice warning him of the fire, but it would go out soon enough. Besides, the voice sounded distant now- muffled. It wasn’t bothering him as much anymore. He reached over and pulled the tourniquet from his arm, wincing as he did, and closed his eyes. He could rest now, at least. Finally, finally, he could rest.

Simon woke with a start barely two hours later, not even realizing he had fallen asleep. His body was still trembling from some nightmare, but he couldn’t say what about. The memory of it was already fading. He knew he’d had one, though. He could still feel his heart pounding, despite the memory of whatever had scared him being gone. He could make an educated guess of what he had dreamt about, though. He chose not to dwell on it as he forced himself to his feet. He was more sure-footed this time around, though he could feel his knees threatening to buckle under him still. From blood loss or hunger or residual fear, he couldn’t say, but again- that didn’t matter. That was what he tried to tell himself, anyway.

He glanced over at his left arm- making sure it wasn’t bleeding. It wasn’t. He had done it. He wouldn’t die now. Not of blood loss, anyway. He could still definitely die of any other complications that might crop up. Like radiation poisoning, or the several concussions, or just whatever the hell the blood had been doing to him (and likely might still be doing to him). There was too much he didn’t understand, and too high a likelihood that any and all of it was fatal. Of course, there wasn’t any use in thinking too hard about any of it. Whether or not he was going to die soon, he was alive now. He would make the most of it, and try to keep himself alive for as long as possible. After all, that was all he had wanted before. Some part of him- a distant, yet clawing part of him- wondered if that was still what he wanted, even after everything. He did his best to ignore that thought as he moved to stand up.

His next order of business- what made the most sense to Simon- was to get all of the blood off of him, which had now partially dried and become rather gummy to the touch. He had actually found it sort of difficult to move himself up from the ground, since he had sort of been stuck to it. The spot where he had been laying had a thin layer of tacky blood on it now. He could imagine that this- and all of the other places he had gotten blood on- were going to be hell to deal with later. And he would deal with it later. He was just more concerned with cleaning the blood on his body at the moment.

It didn’t take him long to figure out where the bathroom was, and he really couldn’t have overstated how grateful he was that everything he needed seemed to be in the same general area. He doubted he could have managed to climb back out in the state he was. He spared a quick glance back at the person laying in the middle of the room, hoping to determine that whoever was laying there wouldn’t wake up as he went to get undressed and bathe. When he witnessed no movement from the tarp-covered body for some time, he felt safe enough to go ahead and get ready to bathe.

The bathroom was just behind a lime-green plastic curtain, which he closed behind him once he entered. There was a toilet against the back of the small room, and the bathing area was in front and to the side of it, with yet another tarp- the same color as the first- covering that. It was as clean as the rest of the ship- sterile. Untouched. Simon spared a quick glance at the curtain behind him, just to make sure it didn’t seem like he was going to be walked in on, and began to take his clothes off. Unfortunately, that turned out to be a surprisingly difficult process.

Simon had to literally peel himself out of his clothes. The blood becoming tacky as it dried had adhered the fabric to his skin. Sticky strings of blood pulled taught and snapped as he sloughed the fabric from his body. He held his breath. He had to, or else he would spiral. Or else, he would think too hard- would remember removing the bandages from his arms back on the sub- seeing what the blood was doing to him beneath them. Boils on his skin. Painful, horrifying, a sign of death. A sign of slow, agonizing death- he let the breath out and drew it in again, sharp and hard. He needed to focus- or maybe to un-focus. He could drift- send his mind elsewhere. He was good at that. He had done it a lot when he was younger, when Eden had first taken him in. He had been punished for it- many times, in fact. Somehow, it had made the drifting worse.

As he shook the thoughts of Eden from his head, he realized he had managed to remove his clothing completely. So the drifting worked, then… in a way. At least he hadn’t thought about that damned moon. He brought his clothes into the bathing area with him… there was just a sponge in there. A sponge and soap and water. Nothing else. What the fuck was this place? Whatever. He would just have to make do. He guessed it was probably for the better, anyway. Whatever vague scabbing had occurred over his arm was best left in place, and a stream of water over it probably wouldn’t be very conducive to that. He left his clothes outside the bath area, since he couldn’t really wash those at the moment, and sat down to start sponging himself off.

Simon didn’t find washing off too difficult, for the most part. There were some spots on his back he couldn’t really reach (he could only hope that wouldn’t be a problem later), and he couldn’t really wash his right arm, but other than that he was fine. With the blood (mostly) washed off of him, he could get a clear picture of the state he was in. First of all, his skin was now stained red slightly from having so much blood on him for such a long time, and dark bruises covered most of his torso. There were some pretty deep scars across that area as well- many on his shoulders, his thighs, and down his legs, too. Those injuries being healed and scarred over was already odd to him, but his arm- the remaining one- that was where things seemed strange. Or, stranger.

Raised tendrils crawled their way up his arm from his hand, moving past his shoulder and likely up his neck, if he had to guess. The markings were sort of veiny in nature, but Simon knew it wasn’t just something wrong with his veins, since they seemed to have a sort of wood-like texture. So this had to do with the seed, then. It had… connected with him somehow. A sudden flash of memory shot through his mind- a memory of excruciating pain emanating from all parts of him- like his body had burst open and something had exploded out of it- branches reaching towards the heavens and then receding back into him, stitching him back together as it went. He scrambled back into the corner of the small showering area, breathing heavily. Had that… had that happened? The memory felt real, yet distant and foggy at the same time- almost like a dream.

Simon couldn’t fathom why the seed would have connected with him- why it would use his body like a host- like fertilizer, and then just… What, return to him? He couldn’t understand the why or what or how, but it had happened. He feared that it could happen again. Obviously nothing good could come of any of this, but he was alive and in considerably less pain than he had been before, so that was probably a good sign, right? Simon knew he was kidding himself, though. Things didn’t tend to work out well for him. Wherever he was, whatever was going on, it couldn’t be anything good.

After Simon sponged himself down with water that had been kept in a bag similar to the one that had held the soap he used- stepped out from behind the curtain, deciding to leave his bloodied clothes behind. They didn’t really serve any purpose at the moment. He would need to do something more for them to get all the blood out. He would need to find a washing machine, if this place even had one, considering the state of the bathroom. What was the point of keeping himself alive here? He was stranded, he was useless, and he still felt it was fairly likely that his attempts to remain alive would amount to nothing. He let out a heavy sigh, deciding to set his sights on just trying to live as long as possible. Simon glanced out into the med bay past the curtain that closed off the bathroom. The body hadn’t moved. Good. 

Still fully nude, Simon crept out of the bathroom, feeling all too exposed and much chillier than he had been. He returned to the storage area, finding three separate bags- each one of them labeled with a crew member’s name. Simon reached for the one nearest to him- “Olesya Ilyukhina”, it read. Maybe that was the person’s name in the middle of the room? There was a 33% chance of that being right, anyway… actually, come to think of it, if all the luggage was labeled with all of their names and there were two more, where were the other two? Should he be concerned about that? Were they up and about, or also comatose, just somewhere else? Simon had no way of knowing. However, he could make an assumption that they likely weren’t wandering around, since all of the luggage was still sealed.

Speaking of it being sealed, Simon was having a difficult time figuring out how to open it. There were two latches on either side that would fall shut after being pulled open, meaning that they both needed to be open at once. Assholes didn’t assume a guy with one arm would be opening their luggage, apparently. Which… okay, yeah, that was fair, but c’mon! Simon huffed and sat it down on the floor. He gripped one of the latches in his hand, then moved his foot up under the other. However, the second he pressed up on it, he heard a snap and felt pain shoot through his toe and pulled back. He inhaled sharply and looked up at the ceiling, like he was asking God why- why, exactly, was he destined to just keep getting hurt every time he tried to fix something. He had forgotten how weak his nails were- how bad of an idea it was to use them for anything like this, and he could tell that the nail had just fully snapped in half. Great. Another injury he would need to work around. Honestly, it was like the world was laughing at him. He… he almost felt like he could hear it, actually. He looked around, trying to find the source of the noise, but there was nothing. He was losing it, surely. He thought rest would have fixed his haunted mind, but it seemed there was still work to do on that front yet.

“One thing at a time,” he muttered to himself, “One thing at a time.”

Simon looked back towards the luggage eventually, seeing a trail of blood leading from it towards him. Small, barely noticeable. It didn’t matter. What was one more injury? He really wanted to hit something for how often a thought would occur to him and he would immediately have to shelve it “for later”, because at this fucking point, when was later? It felt more like never, honestly. It could easily end up being never, too. He could still die… He felt like that consideration was something he went back to a lot, even though he didn’t really feel like he was dying. Still, he wasn’t about to remove death from the realm of possibility.

Simon stared at the luggage for a moment, wondering what the hell he was supposed to do now. He couldn’t get into any of the suitcases without hurting himself. So, what then? Was he meant to just sit around naked until someone could tell him where to find the damn washer and dryer, if there even was one?... Holy shit, that was exactly what he was meant to do. Fuck. He laid back on the floor, completely fucking naked, and curled up there. There was no way he could feel any less exposed without running the risk of reintroducing infections he may have just barely managed to avoid by showering. The only clothes he currently had access to were the ones still completely soaked in blood, after all. So, that was just how it had to be, then. He was stuck in some sort of strange vessel, completely nude, with a comatose person not five feet away from him, and he had no way of knowing how or why he or the other person was there. He curled up tighter, swallowing hard past the lump in his throat.

Simon felt flayed beneath the bright white lights in the room- small and weak and helpless. He felt tears prick his eyes and shut them tight. He didn’t know what to do. He had no options, no out, no nothing. The only thing he could think to do was pray. That was all he had ever known to do in situations like this- when everything felt hopeless- when he felt like he was at the whim of the world and had no control over his life or self or anything. He was no man. Men had control over their fates, their lives. He was no man. He was some wayward thing- cast off and thrown aside by everything he ever thought he belonged to and every person he ever thought he could stand beside. A nothing like that deserved more nothing in return. Endless, empty, nothing.

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