Chapter Text
'Eye Movement Detected'
The pain woke him up, he thinks. It was everywhere, but it was the worst in his arm, it burned like hell.
'What's two plus two?'
What?
Peeling his eye open, noticing that the other had something covering it, he squinted at what was talking, a... robot of some kind, he had never seen it before. Actually he'd never seen anything like it before, the COI had some bots still running but none like this, and Eden certainly didn't, where was he?
'What's two plus two?' It repeated.
"F- Four...?" Simon groaned. His throat hurt, he was yelling a lot. The bot seemed happy with his answer and shimmied away from him. Simon took in a deep breath before he tried to sit up, leaning on his right arm, his other hurt like hell, why did it hurt so much? What happened? He was in the SM-13 he knew that, he got lost, made a map, the voices, the blood, his—
Oh yeah, his arm.
Simon took a deep, shuddering breath before he made his next move. He turned his head to look at what is left of the limb, it wasn't pretty. The entire limb was gone, not even a stub left to wiggle. White bandages and gauze cover his shoulder, most of his chest, and parts of his neck.
Deciding to not think about the injury he looked around the room he was in, it appeared to be some sort of medical room, but there were only two other beds, way less than you'd expect on any space station. The beds themselves were also odd, one had proper bedding on it, as if someone slept in it regularly, it even had a quilt. The other was even stranger, it was encased in xenonite, who's station is this? And how'd they get ahold of enough xenonite to encase an entire medical bed?
Looking around a bit more Simon spotted a tunnel of even more clear xenonite going up the wall, onto the ceiling, then out the door to the room. To a hallway.
Simon would never say he was completely stupid, but he would admit he does stupid shit sometimes. This is, in fact, one of those times. Taking another deep Simon slowly moved his legs off of the mattress, and slowly let himself stand up off of the bed. His legs felt weak, but bad enough to dissuade him from continuing. Looking down at himself he was glad to see he had pants on, some kind of pajama pant he'd never seen before.
He kept his hand braced on the bed behind him as he took a step forward, his plan was going better than expected.
Letting go he walked slowly across the room to the doorway. The hallway lights were dim, unlike the bright lights of the room he had woken up in, but he could see just fine in the low light.
The hall was short and led a room that looked to be some kind of high end laboratory, the lights in this room were dim too, maybe the ship was on a night cycle if it had one. The COI prison didn't but Simon remembered how the night cycle on Eden hadn't fully shut the lights off but dimmed them similarly to the lights in this mystery station.
Looking around further he saw more of the tunnels, maybe there was an Eridian on board? The stations had lost contact with Erid after the Quiet Rapture but there had always been a rumor that some had been off-planet during it, but nobody had been able to prove it and it always felt unlikely. With Eridians being so weak against radiation they had rarely sent out manned missions to the stars. Simon didn't know if he wanted some to have survived or not.
An odd noise caught his attention, pulling the man out of his head. Leaving the lab he followed the sound down another hallway, turning a corner he entered another room, this one round in shape, almost spherical, with screens on the walls showing that what was the screens before had stopped playing and now was on some kind of screen saver.
But that wasn't half as interesting as what was on the catwalk in front of him.
It was a man, asleep, curled up against a xenonite ball with an Eridian in it, who also seemed to be sleeping. The man had shaggy blond hair, with glasses barely hanging onto his nose. He was wearing what looked to be soft baggy pants and a sweater, though the clothes didn't hide how thin he was, almost disturbingly so.
His cheeks had little flesh on them, his hands looked like someone covered skeleton hands with wet tissue, and his skin was so pale it was almost grey, infact if it wasn't for his wheezing snores, Simon might've thought he was dead.
Simon slowly stepped out of the room to not wake him, he didn't know what to do if the man woke, so he went back on his quiet expedition on the ship.
Taking a lap around the rooms and halls Simon came to the realization that the only living beings here, were the thin man, the Eridian, and Simon himself.
He stopped outside the door the the screen room, looking back onto the thin man, Simon could see now that he was shaking, shivering actually. Remembering the quilt in the medical bay he made his way back to his staring point.
Grabbing the blanket Simon looked at the patches that made it, it looked like it was made with the care you'd expect out of family, this guy must've been loved at one point, how'd he end up here?
Walking back Simon could feel exhaustion seep into him with every step he took, but if this guy pulled him out of the sub and gave him medical care while being in a poor state himself, giving him a blanket seemed like the least he could do as a thank you.
He'll say it later when he's awake.
Making it to the room and walking quietly on the grated catwalk Simon carefully draped the blanket on the man, before slowly making his way back out of the room again. Walking back through the lab, through the hall, and by the bot again, Simon laid back down and tried to go back to sleep.