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It didn't take long for Simon to start hallucinating.
As the submarine shook and the woman on the intercom's voice cut out as she demanded an update from his end, Simon's life flashed before his eyes. Eden and the days before the Quiet Rapture. Filament Station torn apart asunder in space. The time Simon spent in a cold four by four cell languishing in the self-hatred and guilt at what he had not intended but had happened anyway. Then the day the door was opened to reveal a bright white light.
If he knew then what he knew now, he'd have stayed there. He'd have fought his captors kicking and screaming before letting them leave him inside his metal coffin of a sub and sending it down a moon's blood ocean.
Even so, the faint promise of redemption still lingered. The smallest hope of a life regained after important work, work that was in the words of his captors, bigger than any of them, still held sway.
At some point in all the commotion, Simon must have passed out, because when he woke up he was face down on the floor of SM-13. All the lights were out, and things were mercifully quiet. For now at the very least.
Then he thought about that very last photo he took, with the skeleton and the skull and the gaping socket eyes staring back, as if it knew what a high-powered x-ray camera was, and the dread came back immediately.
Somewhere out there, there might be something or somethings floated in the blood as they circled the sub. At any moment, at any time, it might drift closer. It might bump, and it might do more. It might lunge forward with a gaping maw to rip through the sub's thick hull like paper and collapse the sub, flooding it with blood and leaving Simon to be crushed by the sheer pressure of the ocean-
No, he could not think about all that. That way laid the end. He'd be in a ball curled up, crying and wailing as he plead and swore and whimpered for mercy. He'd be throwing himself across the room, bashing his own head out on a sufficiently hard and sharp surface.
Still, for all he knew, the woman might have changed her mind. As captain, she might have cut him loose rather than risk the lives of the crew. The crew of which no small number, including herself, were irradiated from earlier. And he wouldn't blame her if she had, he'd do it too if their roles were reversed.
He needed to do something. Anything.
So Simon got up and took inventory, groping his way through the dark with only the light of a single display panel to find his way. There was no measurement for time. Between the uncertainty of where he was, the vertigo, and the fear of what was out there, he found talking aloud to help just a little. Muttering, mumbling, cursing half-sentences to himself as he poked around his makeshift prison, finding stale water and rations and getting his thoughts together before he went down the sub-level vent to find his sub's black box with the use of a small flashlight.
He was in the middle of crawling his way back when he heard the words boom inside his head.
"Hello everybody! My name is Markiplier and welcome back to Iron Lung."
Startled, Simon grunted as he knocked his head on a bulkhead.
"What I thought I might do now that this has been out for a while," the Voice chattered. "Wanted to give you guys a sort of director's cut, if you will. Obviously I can't show you everything but-"
"What the fuck?" Simon whispered.
The Voice went silent. Then: "You can hear me?" it asked.
"Yeah?" Simon looked around. He was sure it wasn't the intercom.
The Voice paused. "Houston," it said slowly. "We have a problem."
"Who are you?" Simon asked.
"I…am your conscience."
"No you're not."
"You're right, I'm not." The Voice paused. "This should not be happening," it said slowly. "Pretty sure this is the right file," it wondered aloud. "Maybe a blooper?"
Simon didn't know what a blooper was but couldn't agree more. None of this should be happening. What he would give to be back on a space station, on solid, tethered ground, far, far away from the ocean and whatever fucked up things dwelled in its depths.
"What do you remember?" the Voice asked as Simon crawled his way back from the vent and into the main interior of the sub.
Simon figured this was a hallucination so he held nothing back. He let it all out: the first time he dived, the first photo of the skeleton, the time the captain pulled him back up before sending him back down again but not before he gave her and her crew a very warming and very high dosage of x-rays, and up to the point where he passed out. He told the Voice all this as he continued to rummage through the sub, seeing what he could fix and what he couldn't by trial and error, and before he knew it, he started talking about Filament Station and the nine days he and his fellow Eden colonists clashed with the Consolidation of Iron. "You still there?" Simon asked, suddenly realizing he hadn't received a reply.
For a moment, he was sure there would be nothing because this was probably all in his head, but then he reckoned he could just summon it back whenever wanted it to be around. "That's right," the Voice said, jolting Simon out of his thoughts.
"You said your name's Markiplier?"
"That's right."
"What kind of name is that?"
The Voice chuckled. "I mean, it's a bit a moniker actually," it said. "I know what you're thinking, and yes it's not exactly the most inspired choice. I was in comedy at the time - still kind of am - and I thought I'd be bouncing between a few sketches and bits. So I put together Mark and multiplier. You can just call me Mark, though." The Voice inhaled. "This is very surreal," it added under its breath.
"Yeah, a figment of imagination is talking back at me. It's fine, it's part of the package for claustrophobia. All in my head, right?"
"Who knows?" the Voice echoed. "Maybe it's in mine. Or it's time to add a new chapter to multiverse theory."
From behind Simon came a low rattling followed by a series of clicking and humming. Then a low, robotic voice uttered two words that Simon did not want to hear as he sniffed at the air and thought it strange that something could burn this deep in the ocean.
Hull breach.
“Houston,” the Voice said as Simon grabbed the fire extinguisher. “Fire on the bridge! We definitely, definitely have a problem. Who designed this deathtrap contraption? Is that steam? Must be like a sauna in there!”
Ava's still mentally kicking herself as she left the bridge to check up on Jack in the medical bay, putting David in charge again while she was absent. As captain of the ship, the lives of everyone on her vessel was her responsibility, and so of course she should have considered the possibility that the convict would try something. This was the Butcher, the guerilla from Eden with the highest body count in recent memory, and she should have been more careful.
But like many things since they found this moon, there just hadn't been enough time.
The sight of Jack hooked up to life support was disturbing. He'd caught the full brunt of the x-rays. His eyes followed her with a haunting gauntness as she came into the room. He'd stopped vomiting, but only because there wasn't much left in his stomach to throw up. The doctor hadn't told her much apart from the fact that her crew member's prognosis was guarded. Ava knew however, as that same man looked at her face before averting his own eyes from the tumors, that her own situation was not far off from Jack's and that she too may be in his place before long. Already she could feel the bouts of nausea, although a delirious part of her wanted to attribute it to the stress of her duties as captain and the recent debacle.
That was fine. She's ready to sacrifice her life if it gave the COI a better chance of a bright future. She just wished they had at least rigged the camera with some kind of fail safe or a way to remotely disable it when bringing the sub back from the ocean.
Now they'd lost the convict, his sub's tether line to her vessel cut, and were left empty handed. No sample to speak of, no more photos to analyze, and a long wait before they could get the next convict prepped and the next burner submarine ready for diving, while she and the affected crew members hurried about on what time they had left in this world. Perhaps if they had not been so hasty, if they'd slowed down and taken more precautions, none of them might be stuck in this situation.
She was still unnerved at the thought of Simon's last transmission before he went dark. She wanted to believe that the man was just in hysterics as he cried out over the comms, but signs of life was what they were hoping for when they came to this moon. It meant minerals and that meant vital resources to prop up a dwindling humanity. But as much as she wanted it to be true, a part of her shuddered at the thought that whatever was down there might still be alive.
And some primal part of her wondered if maybe it should be left undisturbed.
She realized Jack was trying to say something through his ventilator mask. His lips were moving. He lifted one hand weakly towards her. "Jack?" Ava asked. She came closer, hesitated, and knowing that if the doctor were here they'd certainly object, she reached out and removed his mask. "What is it?" she asked, and leaned in closer and turned so that her ear was directly over his face.
The ghoulish looking mechanic sucked in a deep breath and opened his mouth.
"TOP-OF-THE-MORNING-TO-YA-LADDIES-MY-NAME-IS-JACKSEPTICEYE-AND-WELCOME-TO-A-GAME-CALLED-IRON-"