Chapter Text
.𖥔 ݁ ˖ִ🛸༄˖°.
blip
Ryland’s alone, doing routine scans of the atmospheric build up around Erid. He’s tired, maybe a little bored, running diagnostics for the tenth time. Maybe this sound is natural. Too regularly do things like this happen. A repeating signal buried under the noise. He dismisses it........ even if something feels off. He can atleast understand this is a normal pattern, even if the pattern’s weirdly familiar — like a heartbeat with a stutter.
........................blip........................blip........................blip
Even if theyre minutes apart, there seems to still be such an odd pattern, As he zooms in not being able to hike off this odd feeling, He notices something almost familiar.
blip
Impossible even.
blip
Half-buried in crimson dust: a wrecked sub on the coastal of a...moon? Not Eridian and not formal enough to be the Hail Mary. But the signal? That’s Earth. 20th-century naval code. His breath catches. He stared at the screen. “What is this?” And more importantly — was it there purposefully?
He leans in, fingers flying over the console. “No way… no way.”
He runs a spectral filter, strips away the interference. The signal sharpens. Still repeating. Still Earth-based. 20th-century sonar — the kind used in Cold War subs. Decades old. Impossible.
But there it is.
He pulls up the surface scan. Zooms in on the wreck. The sub’s half-buried in red sediment, hull cracked, lights dark — except for one. A single, flickering glow deep in the cockpit.
Alive?
He switches to thermal. Nothing. Too deep, too cold. But then — a spike. Brief. Faint. His pulse kicks up. “Okay. Okay. Not alone.”
blip
He stares at the screen. “What is this…” he whispers, half to himself, half to the void.
No response.
He holds his breath. Then — a flicker on the thermal. A shift in the sub’s interior. And the signal pulses once.
Clean. Deliberate.
Not random. Answered.
His chest tightens. “Okay,” he murmurs. “Somethings in there.” No grand speech. No protocol. Just that. He doesn’t know what it is. Doesn’t know how it got there. But its alive.
Ryland doesn’t move. Not even to blink. The blip echoes in his skull, steady as a drumbeat beneath his ribs. He rewinds the thermal feed, frame by frame. That spike — it wasn’t random. It pulsed after his last diagnostic sweep, like a reflex. Like something flinched at the scan. He kills the active ping. No more signals from Hail Mary. Just passive sensors. Let it think it’s alone again. The cockpit light flickers — once, twice — then holds steady. Not bright. Just enough to cast a dull glow across the cracked interior of the sub. Or… what’s in it. He zooms in. Too grainy. Dust, distortion, the angle all wrong. But there’s something off about the shape. The metallic coating over its skin. The shoulders too broad. And the arms — one is bent at a joint that doesn’t look human. Too many angles. Like folded metal.
blip
He pulls up the spectral analysis from the wreck’s hull. Titanium alloy. Soviet-era. But the corrosion… it’s wrong. Not rust. More like erosion, as if something ate through it from the inside. And embedded in the pitting — faint traces of organic compound. Not anything in his database. Unless..
blip
He checks the airlock logs. No breaches. No leaks. Hail Mary is sealed. But his skin crawls like he’s been watched for hours. On screen, the light dims. Then, slowly, it rises — not the light, but the figure. A silhouette lifting from its seat. Too tall. Too slow. It moves like it’s fighting gravity… or like it’s not used to the body. Ryland’s breath fogs the console glass. He doesn’t wipe it away. The figure turns. Not toward the camera. Not quite. But its head — if it has one — tilts up, toward the sky. As if searching for some form of answers
blip
Using the Hail Mary's remote sensors he tries to get an idea of the sound waves coming from this....moon? He questions wether or not he's so stuck up in his loneliness if he's genuinely going insane. Nonetheless he does what he needs keeping his eyes locked on this creature.
pit...pat....pit....pat
Brief sounds like these almost always brought no attention to Grace — but right now? Its the only thing keeping him on his feet. No matter how spontaneous, no matter the slim chances, no matter the likelihood, no matter what. This is bigger then him if he's right. Bigger then an entire colony of mutated rocks. If this...creature is real how many more are there? Is it some form of humanity that still exists light years away? All he wants so badly is to find this thing. This agonizing torturous thing.
After hours of this numerous persecution, he was still just as desperate to find whatever made this thing. Where does he start to try and tell the Eridians this? Does he tell them at all? How could he, a few small sounds would mean nothing to them, but perhaps he wouldn't need them to know if he did it himself? It doesn't matter right now, as of current his main focus is locating this planet, moon, star, ocean? The only thing he could properly make out was an almost plasmatic body of something.
blip
The screen flickers as Ryland overlays the acoustic data — a jagged waveform pulsing in time with the pit-pat. He syncs it with the visual feed, slows it down. The sound isn’t just rhythmic. It’s modulated. Slight dips in frequency, micro-pauses — not random. Like breathing. Like the sub is regulating itself. As if something is attached
blip
He pulls up the long-range gravity sensor. There. A faint anomaly — not a moon. A body. Small, dense, drifting just beyond Erid’s outer dust belt. Iron-rich core, silicate crust… and a magnetic field. Weak, but structured. Artificial? Or something else He cross-references the spectral signature from the wreck with the body’s surface composition. Match. 98.6%. The sub didn’t crash here. It was brought. His fingers hover over the comms panel. One message. Just one. He could wake Rocky. Explain. But the Eridians think in chemistry, in bonds and reactions. How do you translate dread into molecular exchange? How do you say I saw something wearing a dead man’s skin in the language of combustion?
No. Not yet.
He plots a course. Minimal thrust. Passive sensors only. Let it think he’s gone. Let it settle. He approach's things like these like a ghost. Watch. Learn. Record. Because if this thing is alive — if it’s not alone, then the silence between stars just got a lot more complicated. And somewhere, deep in the red dark, the light flickers once. This would be the last.
blip
His system crashes. Immediate panic sets in trying to regulate what ever just happened, as unknown files overtake his computers database.
Log #1, Log #2, Log #3, Log #4, Log #5.
Almost seeming endless amongst time.
Log #6, Log #7, Log #8, Log #9, Log #0.
Just before he can process that some form of black box is downloading itself with copius amounts of evidence of lifeform, of hope that this thing can communicate
Theres a man.
" This is not an expedition. It is an execution. When they put you in here, they don’t want you to return. And even if you do, and even if they keep their promises… what freedom waits for you? A few dying ships in a sea of dead stars? If there is still hope, it lies beyond the veil. Hope in this void is as illusionary as the starlight. I will choose to breathe my last at the bottom of an ocean, unseen, unheard, and uncontrolled.
They will get their execution.
I will get my freedom . "
All Ryland finds from this is cordinates
-116.62, -520.38402
Ryland stands in the dim, pulsing chamber of Erid’s surface station, the air thick with drifting spores and the low harmonic hum of Eridian music. Rocky is already there — not just present, but active, tendrils coiled in the alert pattern, its core glowing a steady, urgent blue. It knew he was coming. Already signaling to Adrian that something big is happening.
The moment Ryland breaches the airlock, he slams the emergency data spike into the interface port — a direct neural-style dump from Hail Mary’s logs. No translation. No delay. The frequencies, the thermal spikes, the voice buried in the waveform, the coordinates — all of it, flooding into the eridians "network". Even the small distractions in their rountinely data charts.
Rocky doesn’t flinch. But it's glow shifts — blue to violet, then flickers into the rapid pulse of transmission. It’s not just receiving. It’s broadcasting. Sending the data up, out, into the high atmosphere, to the Astronomical Eridians — the ancient, slow minds who map the sky not with instruments, with gravity sense and stellar memory. Already Ryland can see Eridians pooling into their "spacecraft"
A silence falls — not empty, but full. As if the air itself is paying attention. Then a fresh pulse starts from the chamber's edge. small at first, then more powerful. An answer. Not from Rocky. Not from the station. Just a faint noise to remind them they're not alone.
As the last of the Eridian "astronomical" crew part ways from Erid's atmosphere Grace finds himself at a loss for words, questioning all that is mankind, if some human is out here, how many other people did Stratt send out to die for this? That wouldn't make sense. They dont have the particular resources for bonding multiple ships together. How much time has passed on earth? Maybe it was enough to send an unfortunate soul out to rot.
bbbbrring dong bbbrrriing dong
The intercoms loudly chirps for Graces assistance, he jumps from his spot yet even before he can answer, he hears rocky's voice from outside his atmosphere.
Rylands voice is low and tense, "Rocky. Did they get it? The signal! Did it make sense?" stuttering just barely.
"Got. But… not simple.. You know it’s there. But is it human leak? Or rock? Or… memory?" a pause, then a burst of high-pitched notes incoherent to Grace.
"It’s not just data, Rocky. It’s a pattern. The voice, the way the wreck moved, it’s not random. It’s trying to talk...or something is trying to communicate for it."
"They feel it. Up there. Slow thinkers. Big listeners. But… confused. Like when you said ‘left’ and meant ‘down.’ Not wrong. Just… not right."
Ryland can feel himself tense.
Whilst the rocks tendrils twitch, one curling tight "Talk? Or… echo? Like when Rocky say ‘hello’ and cave says it back… but slow. Wrong note.” he pauses "But… humanoid. His breath, not make sound . Sound like… space between.”
"The silence?"
"No the wait.” with a wavering tone "Like Grace not breathe… before saying something Grace can’t not-not say.”
"Then it’s not dead. It’s… afraid."
Silence waves between the two before the translator starts growling from ongoing commotion in the near distance — before Grace can get a word in, Rocky has left for yet another mission, and without some form of 'news' Ryland is left to question what Rocky could be after this time.
Another question is why would they send a submarine out? Its inefficient...maybe this creature built it himself...how many crew members does it have....losing himself in thought he doesn't notice that hours have passed by with little to no telltale of whats happening, but at this point why should he care.
Just as he wakes, Ryland can feel something screaming at him from a distance, screeching non-sense.
"Grace come now Grace come now now now now!!! Human lookalike need Grace help."
He stares
"Grace now now now now"
Blankly
"Grace lookalike need help!!"
As one would at waves shallowing breathing from the winds pace
"Grace bad bad bad — why Grace no respond?"
Not happily
"♫⋆｡♪ ₊˚♬ ﾟ."
But calm
"‧₊˚♪ ₊ ♫ ˚⊹"
Rocky throws himself through graces made-up door, singing some tune that contradicts Rylands thoughts that Rocky's even somewhat happy with him.
"♪ ♫ ♪ ♫ ♪ ♫ ｡ ♪ ˚♬"
"Rocky buddy please calm down what...what's going on...."
"Grace being rude again. Human life-form found. Very hurt. Need Grace assistance yes?"
The small knot in his stomach tightened as if it had burst
"Rocky bring human here — Grace very bad."
Without even having to look at this poor soul the smell of iron and disease rots through his mind. Its hard to distinguish which parts of him are which, His arm — or lack of an arm...seems to be ripped from the bone. His hair mangled in dried blood with bits of metal stuck through his skull. If the blood wasn't enough — the stench of alcohol seems to rot from his teeth. The worst of all, his face seems to have been torn with sharp bits of....bone bonding it together.
Ryland steps closer, breath shallow behind his mask, the suit’s sealed — but from the sheer wrongness of the man’s form, Ryland can't even think to move. The man in front of him is frozen — maybe dead. Muscles locked in a permanent tremor, veins blackened like cracked porcelain, tracing paths beneath his skin where something else once moved. His chest rises, just barely a wet, clicking breath that sounds like rusted gears turning.
One eye is gone, socket filled with a lattice of maroon filaments, pulsing faintly in time with his breathe. The other flickers open — bloodshot, unfocused — and for a second, locks onto Ryland. No scarcity. No relief. Just recognition of light. And then, from the back of his throat, a single, sustained note, low and resonant, like the hull of the medbay is vibrating at a frequency just below hearing. Ryland freezes.
The man grabs onto Grace's collar with his last bit of strength and just faintly can deliver the words
"I just wanted to live, is that so wrong"
Ryland doesn’t pull away. Can’t. The man’s grip is weak, but his eyes — that one flicker of awareness — hold him like gravity. “Is that so wrong?” The words aren’t angry but they echo through Ryland's skull like a bullet. Not pleading. Just tired. Like they’ve been carried for years through deep water. Ryland’s voice cracks. “No...It’s..not wrong.” The boy beneath him sobs softly. Although he doesn't exactly have much to go off of he knows this creature isnt evil, he's fragile. Even with the plasma covering his face Grace wipes the stain off of the man's face with a warm towel, which is now permanently blush colored.
Ryland watches the man sleep, chest rising in shallow, uneven hitches. The filaments in his eye have gone dark. The plead in his throat is gone. Whatever bridge was open, between him and the wreck, it’s severed. He’s just a deformed mess now. Broken, burned, but his own. Ryland pulls a thermal blanket over him, adjusts the IV drip, saline, electrolytes, something gentle. Not medicine. Just care. He doesn’t know this things name. Doesn’t know where he came from. Yet still knowing the look in his eyes. Ryland leans back, rubs his face, slow, soft the kind a mother would. “You made it,” he says, quiet, like the room might be listening. “Now we figure out what it cost you.”
˖.𖥔 ݁ ˖ ⊹ ࣪ ˖