Chapter Text
Ryland was a smart man. Rational, maybe a little short-sighted to error, but he was able to take in information even if it laid on the…peculiar side of the spectrum. Hell, he had been on a spaceship with a rock-spider-alien thing for months! Learning a whole new language, traversing together, even managing completely new studies of alien life. A pretty novel concept.
All this is to say, Dr. Grace had seen a lot. So when he saw a new blip on his monitor with high levels of what seems to be the exact chemical property for blood a mere 200 meters away? That stopped him dead in his tracks. He had just finished maintaining some xenonite modifications over new cracks in the ship's hull, stepping out of his EVA suit with little grace (Ha!). It was Rocky that brought it up, having assumed it to maybe be a fault of Grace’s.
“Surface new on screen. Too big too be scrap.” At this point, the blond hadn’t looked at the translator in weeks. It made conversation far smoother, the notes being as clear as words to him. The blip (Blip C? D? He didn’t remember how many blips have been actually important) trailed at a pretty slow pace, almost out of range at the general speed of the Hail Mary. He managed to settle the movement with light bursts of astrophage, having the ship back on course with the obtrusion. He flicked the telescope on, trying to scope (ha! again!) out the surface of the blip.
No. No Way.
“That can't be a literal submarine, can it?” The mere word sounded weird, like he was in the wrong genre completely. This is space exploration with a dashing astronaut and alien sidekick. Not about a rusted over submarine aimless in deep space light years away from Earth. The model definitely predated anything that Grace had seen of contemporary military vessels, which in itself wasn’t an insane feat, but he knew submarines weren’t all too common in literal space. From the distance, its shape looked strange, separate ballast tanks, ailerons jutting on the side with what almost looked like gills.
The primary issue was the amount of living matter on the exterior, fleshy lumps spreading over metal, with deep veins twisting beneath haphazard chunks of oxidized metal. There was no way they would've sent any type of ship up, especially with this kind of model. Well it had been over a decade, but they must’ve been more precautious with their supplies. Especially not losing THAT much with the timefra- “What is the word you said, question?” Rocky interrupts Grace’s racing thoughts. Ocean exploration hadn’t come up much in passing conversation, so I guess he doesn’t know what that is… “Right, it's a vessel for ocean travel deep underwater.” Grace states, trying to get the point across. Rocky hums back his version of the word, but it seems equally finicky in his confidence. He probably didn’t get this thing being here either..
“Submarine in water. We are in space, statement. How could a submarine be in space so far, question?”
“Very good questions, Rocky.” he mused, settling into the captain chair, swiping past the monitor's interface. They would need to get closer to get any answers. As he slowly maneuvered towards the floating relic, his eyes trained the actively changing map. That's when another thing didn’t make sense to Grace. The map's original model showed visuals on what looks like a moon, barely 600 meters off from the obtrusion. But every other metric of vision outside was screaming at the scientist that there wasn’t and there never WAS a moon there in the first place, what moon, never heard of her. The map was updated constantly with any visible information the ship could calculate from its sensors, so by all senses of the word, this was all kinds of baloney. Baloney is your word for a meaty submarine and invisible moon, Grace? Not important.
“It doesn’t look to be an Erid or Earth model, from what I can see.” he squinted at the monitor's clear view of the submarine. “Last time I checked, you guys don't put meat on your ships.” he muses dryly, trying to make this situation feel anything less of…well..spooky. “Meat? Weird weird weird. No meat on ship, very silly.” Rocky chirps, thorax shifting from side to side. Grace hums. At that point, it finally hit Grace that there might really be life on there. Human or otherwise, this might have something of use on the dingy old submarine. Because this wasn't some rubble, not some lucky satellite. That submarine was large enough to have space inside for a crew. Even if it looked wonky, there were tell-tale signs of what looked like human activity. Even with an INCH of a chance, this could be important. Really important.
“Can’t hear in submarine.” Rocky stamped their legs, the front of their thorax aimed towards the sub. Now that was novel as well, Rocky could sense through such a large range, which furthered the abnormal aura of the sub. Grace huffed, leaning back in his chair, going through the possible reasons why. That's when an idea came to him.
“Rocky, how much xenonite do you have handy?” the doctor glances towards the other, Rocky now busy fidgeting with the toolkit he brought up to the control room.
“Large amount. Took much from my ship why, question?” Rocky tilted their carapace, letting the tinkering tool down for a moment.
“We gotta connect to that sub.”
~
It was different seeing the process on his side this time, especially without the little grabby robot arms making for most of the work. Grace spent most of his time situating the ship's angle to have the airlock facing the blood sub’s (I mean, it's technically the right name) general body. Rocky worked on it slowly, acting as more of a retractable platform rather than a tunnel. It would be far too much of a hassle to fill the entire airlock with ammonia and then have him make the tunnel without any proper suit, and they were already stacked with taomebia experiments. If they tampered with the environment even more, he was pretty sure the ship would tire out from constant overrides.
It was fascinating to see Rocky work in his element. It was like watching somebody crochet chainmail, abnormally fast and perfectly in sync with all of its moving parts. After about an hour, the platform was ready to spread. Fondness bloomed from watching the model, bringing the memory of meeting Rocky for the first time with the whole tape measure fiasco. After transferring the model to Grace’s side of the airlock, he was nitpicked into setting it properly on the side and to not “waste Rocky's hard work”.
That means he has to put back on the EVA suit again. Yaaaay.
Grace was lucky to have gotten used to the EVA suit after all this time. It was easier to walk over a grand walkway without the gravity of Adrian threatening to crush him into the hull, so that might make this a liiiittle easier. Ah memories. His mind wanders back to his testing of the EVA suits, wading in facilities so much grander than him. Even now that he had a good bit of his memories back, they still felt fuzzy on the edges. Like all of that was so much longer ago than he could imagine. The airlock snapped behind him, Rocky bounding on the window, “staring at him” with gestures of appreciation. The radio crackled to life as Rocky shuffled to the control panels- “encouragement! Do not fall into space, statement.”- and random chatter that came along with that. It's not like Rocky thinks Grace is gonna fling himself into space, but there IS a chance he’d do something reckless.
Like fling himself into space, for example.
It was strange, taking a similar path without the guardrails of a tunnel wall. It felt like walking atop a factory bridge and worrying you might fall into a vat of some kind. But instead of a vat, it's the endless vacuum of space. His hand gripped the tether with a bit more oomf. As the blood sub got closer, it made the hair on Grace's neck stand at attention. Something about it, the way its rusted metal looked almost right, the way the meaty substance pulsed too smoothly. This was abnormal, that was apparent. But getting closer felt wrong, like it was something he was never meant to see. Like something was missing.
At his hip was more of these retractable platforms of xenonite with a few spare nails. The plan was to manually attach the sub and then make a way inside. There didn't seem to be any proper entrance or exit. After climbing onto the side, the sight of what looked to be a valve made Graces will flicker ever so slightly. It looked to have melted into the body of the submarine, coated in the fleshly protrusions. What if this wasn’t a proper submarine? What if there's nothing inside and they were wasting time with some red herring? Grace shook off doubt and decided to knock on the body.
Thunk Thunk.
Yep. Definitely hollow in there.
With delicate and deliberate action, he sealed the Xenonite walls onto the base platform and the body of the blood sub. Sealing any possible crevice, he stays diligent even with the lack of –sleep that starts to sink in. It takes nearly 3 hours to seal every crack. It gave him that same exhaustion after the Adrian “adventure”. Even now, a good time after it, his arm still screams in pain every once in a while. Burn scars will always suck, forever and ever. He finalized the most finite nit-picky look over the tunnel and deemed it ready. He is once again thankful for Hail Mary and its docking capabilities, setting the ship to pressurize after setting the valve to override the controls. That gives him some time to sit down and breathe while he waits for the tunnel to be pressurized. What if whatever was in there didn’t have a suit! What if he made contact with the first possible human he's seen in over a decade and they die by oxygen deprivation! That doesn't sound great.
“Timer is off! Timer off go go go!” Rocky seems to be shaking with excitement. Was this his reaction to seeing the Hail Mary for the first time? Probably. “I got it, Rock.” Grace chuckled a little, setting a hand to the glass barrier to balance himself. To be honest, he was antsy to see what was in there too.
He grabbed the Astrotorch Rocky had made for him and got to work.
~
Burning through this thing took a long while, even with the astrophage powered blowtorch. Whoever made this did NOT want you to get through. Yet somehow there were marks of wary fragility, marks that almost looked like something FAR larger had taken a mean bite out of it. It made Grace's stomach twist sourly. Even if the blood sub was smaller then both the Blip A AND the Hail Mary, the idea of something being big enough to sink its teeth in? That's worrying.
“Still no sign of the inside yet?” Grace muttered into the radio, as if not to alarm the submarine…As if that made this make any more sense. “No no no. Rocky does not understand. Sound does not go through. Mad mad mad.” It seemed to irk Rocky, which makes sense. If your entire species was rooted on hearing, maybe sound proofing is like a horror story to you. Was this just sound proofed?
Before the thought could come through properly, the torch finally made it through, the metal giving way as blood spilled out in buckets from the slit. Grace made a very manly squeal in shock. Yes the scanner had gotten the properties of blood, but this was liquid flowing in GRAND scales. It smelled horrible oh g-
“Go go go Grace!” Rocky cut through Grace's thoughts like astrophage through a metal submarine in space. You know, that average experience everybody feels and is SO relatable. With more fervor than before, he used the opening to his advantage and began to cut deeper into the submarine. At least he was sure now that the inside had the same oxygen and atmosphere then him, as he wasn't convulsing on the ground or burning alive this time. He had an awful amount of experience in that field. After a good couple minutes he got a hole large enough to walk into. The inside was black, so awfully and internally black. Shadows had their own shadows, and a childish part of Grace's brain was sure that if he walked inside he wouldn’t get to come out. The submarine wouldn’t let him.
He steadied his breath, turned on the EVAs rusty flashlight system, and took a step into the blood.
~
If Grace had to make a list of the worst smelling things, this experience would probably beat the taomebia. It was a dauntingly tight space with an absence of any form of window or light besides one dingy lightbulb that went out what looked like years ago. Wafting through the murky pungent blood that lapped up at the EVA suit’s legs (cleaning this is going to suck) that went up to about his knees made proper footing more of a miracle. There looked to be some type of control table at the end of the dingy submarine, with…A compass? A scanner? Without windows it must use that to direct which way you move. Grace was smart enough not to press any buttons just yet, but the patented Ryland curiosity made it REALLY hard to follow through.
But, it looked plainly, completely and utterly empty beyond that. This would be great to examine, maybe if he went back to the ship and got some vials he could take some samples and try and find out why old blood was just wafting around in space. Yet something in his heart was telling him this was human blood. It probably wasn’t, this was probably some really normal space thing. But still, something about it made his worst fears feel obsolete.
He clicked on the Radio on his headpiece, clearing his throat for Rocky. “Got inside. Seems empty. Could you get a section of the lab cleared? I want to look over all the blood in here.” With the ship having nearly any kind of equipment one could think of, he wasn’t all too worried about not having something to look over blood samples.
“Understand. Will destroy your bed and make table for blood.”
“D-DESTROY MY BED? How would that accomplish anything?”
“Is joke!” Rocky chirped. Oh how he got Grace so good, oh he would be rolling on the ground laughing if it weren’t from the large amounts of blood. He should have never taught the rock spider humor.
“Ha Ha, very funny Rock.” He sighed, stepping slightly deeper into the open space, sighing. A part of him was so fixed on the idea that there would be somebody in here. He loved Rocky, he was his best friend, but sometimes it was nice to have a human buddy every now and-
That was when Grace felt the unique experience of getting dragged into blood. bloodied fingers lurched onto his ankle, slamming him down onto the grated floor. Grace shrieked, trying to grab anything to keep him from getting pulled down further. The fingers then became a hand, then arm, then whole person from the gory pool. Was there some opening in the floor? A vent maybe? The figure was cloaked in shadow and coated in blood, choppy black hair and eyes that could kill. One eye a deep brown and the other a burning crimson mess, matching the aggressive scarring on the side of his face. It matched the pulsing veins of the submarine to a concerning amount.
Yet, no matter the strangeness, this was definitely a human. Was that thrilling? Yes. Was he still gonna die? Probably. Grace quickly tried to pry the ironclad grip from his leg, eyes wide and terrified.
“Who the fuck are you.” A low voice rasped out, gravely with lack of use. English! That's good, that meant they could talk! Talk before Grace lost his jugular, but still talk! “Im Dr. Ryland Grace, I'm a scientist. I-” he squirmed, the man dripping blood onto his suit, the hand tightening further. “Holy moly-im just a normal scientist! I didn’t mean to scare you! Please don’t hurt me-” He didn’t plead, he stated this all with very intimidating power! Oh screw it, he had the intimidation of a chipmunk.
“Grace! Grace Grace Grace what is happening, question? Is submarine making you die, quuuestion!” His radio felt miles away, the melody cloaked in the sheer sound of his own heartbeat. The bloody man seemed to notice, which seemed to piss him off even more.
“Who sent you? The COI? Some final attempt at my life? Another fucking hallu-” he coughs out an unpsetting amount of blood, the sound making the tightness in Grace’s chest wind up even further. “Hey, I don’t- I don’t know what that is, all I know is that I found this uh ship thing out here and-” more persuasive! Persuasion means living!
“I don’t wanna hurt you. I just wanna help. You looked stuck and I have a ship. I can get you out of here.” He started slowly and clearly, trying to stay as gentle as possible. You wouldn’t want to badmouth a bear whose one step away from biting your arm clean o-
Oh this guy only has one arm. Looking at him further, he looked really messed up, covered in open wounds aplenty. It wasn’t just some age old battle scar type of situation. This guy needed medical attention. “Likely story. Nobody wants to help the Butcher. I'm done listening to pretty words, because you CAN'T take me back there. NOBODY can.” He spat, words coated in a lethal dosage of venom. The hell was this guy talking about.
“Nobody is going anywhere. But that's the problem! You look severely hurt without enough food, you’ll die in a week! Maybe less!” Was he possibly exaggerating his diagnosis just a little? Possibly so, but you’d do the same thing. He definitely did look underfed, along with 100 other conditions. The man scowled deeper, but his eyes looked heavy. “Bullshit. I know now it won’t let me die. You don't have that luxury.” He rose further from the blood, looming over him with not a care in the world. Yet, he staggered.
In moments, it was like the blood solidified at his knees. His eyes rolled back, and he toppled over beside the paralyzed Ryland. If adrenaline wasn’t still spiking through him, Grace might’ve just went up and cried. “Holy SHIT!” he lurched up, eyes trained onto the limp body. “Grace! Grace alive, question?” Rocky panicked over the radio, audible shifting sounds through the mic made Grace finally begin to settle.
“Yeah. Yeah im-” he wiped some blood from his visor. “I'm okay. Could you set up another bunk for me? I think we might need some medical attention.”
“We?” Rocky repeats, the sound louder than normal.
“Well, I guess I should say…He needs medical attention.”