Chapter Text
Grace awoke with a violent crash, startled out of sleep and tangled in his blanket before accidentally falling out of his bed with a cutoff yelp of surprise. His room was still dark, the artificial sun of the biodome still thoroughly turned off–why in the world was he up so early?? As he was rubbing his head trying to ease the throbbing pain from banging it on the ground, a familiar voice called out to him from just outside his house.
“Friend-Grace wake!!! Urgent, urgent, urgent!!!”
Ah, Rocky was the one who woke him, of course. The eridians had a sleep schedule erratic enough to rival a college student, something that had compromised his–already, frankly awful–sleep schedule. As much as he loved his best friend, he still had no idea what time it was and he was way too tired for this right now. Resting his head back against the bed behind him, he yawned and closed his eyes again (getting back on the bed was a lot of effort, okay?). Maybe if he stayed still enough then Rocky would let him sleep a little longer and he could–
“Rocky Adrian find rust object space! Full human blood! Heart pulse inside! Panic, panic, panic!”
Grace blinked blearily, still only half conscious after his rather rude awakening at the hands (voice?) of a certain musical rock. His thoughts seemed suspended in jelly, drifting slowly through his mind unable to form any semblance of coherency. His brain was the equivalent of that one rotating rainbow ball that appeared when a computer was taking too long to load, something that was quite obvious by the way his eyes were squinting against the almost non-existent midnight (?) light. Through the fog of his grogginess he continued to hear the dozens of loud chords that made up his friend’s speech, and after a few moments (throughout which he could not for the life of him figure out what was being said) he finally managed to make out what was–probably–being said and form an actual semi-coherent response! Clap for him, be proud; it was hard work and it's too early in the morning for this.
“Rocky Adrian find weird ship full human blood! Rocky hear heart pulse! Panic, panic, panic!!! Friend-Grace need come now!”
And of course his very eloquent response: “yoeeww fownd whaaas?...” a brief pause, “YOU FOUND WHAT?!?!” Grace shrieked, jolting upright and–in a manner completely contradictory to what his name would suggest–tripped over his own feet and nearly slammed into the ground again before finally managing to half-run half-fall over to the door.
Disentangling himself from the quilt that was somehow still wrapped around his leg, he finally managed to properly stand in front of the door and get it open to reveal a very panicked Rocky. The eridian was barely illuminated, seeing as it was still nearly pitch-black out, but even if he hadn’t heard the shrieking it was still obvious from the minimal light reflecting from the false moon off of the eridian’s xenonite-tile suit that he was incredibly distressed–which would make sense if what Grace thought he had just heard was true.
- - - -
In the two seconds Rocky had given Grace before bodily dragging him out of his house, he had managed to get a single arm into a jacket–that for some reason was hanging upside down from the door handle, when had that gotten there??–and was off balance trying to shove it on the rest of the way to stave off the biting chill of the artificial night.
A small handful of dirt in his shoe, a knocked over mug full of old coffee from several days ago and a stubbed toe later Grace finally got to the transition room and started the decontamination sequence that would then allow him into the lab. Meanwhile, Rocky was twitching impatiently at his side; for all the eridian loved to chide him for his constant fidgeting, he seemed almost as out-of-wack as Grace did today. Or, not today? Tonight? Adrenaline was the only thing keeping him even remotely on his feet, it must've been no later than three in the morning.
The door to the eridians’ lab facility–specifically their newer one that bordered the biodome that they had made so they could work in tandem with him despite his human squishiness and the whole will burn alive and die a horrible ammonia filled death in their atmosphere thing–slid open with a soft whoosh and he and Rocky all but ran–lab rules be darned–to the main room. Through the solid, sterile white walls–that had been slowly being covered by drawings due to his inability to work without something stimulating to use as a distraction from getting distracted–he could hear the familiar sound of Adrian’s voice, a low, deep thrum that was slightly faster and higher than usual, clearly displaying their panic at what they’d found.
When the pair got into the main room Rocky didn’t even bother going back to the eridian side of the glass, opting to just stay in his suit on the human side with Grace to save time. Through the clear xenonite wall Grace could see Adrian’s large blue-grey form moving rapidly–or as rapidly as someone of their size could move seeing as they were a good two feet taller than even Grace–on their side of the lab. At any other moment with any other emotion, Grace would’ve made some sort of comment on how much Rocky and Adrian were so similar in their mannerisms, but now was not the time to tease loverbirds, it was the time to deal with–
HOLY CRAP!
Okay! Yeah! That-that is in fact, oh god, that is-yep! Holyyy… because on the other side of the room, in the sectioned off space usually used for large scale contaminate experimentation (from back when Adrian and Grace had collectively panicked at the potential of alien diseases) was a cylindrical amalgamation of rust, wiring and blood. It looked like a very large capsule, and seemed meant to withstand severe pressure based on the shape–as if it was meant more for journeying at the bottom of an ocean instead of laying capsized in an eridian lab. It was clearly man-made to some degree (alien-made? Person-made? Foreign-space-entity-made???) and was covered in an ungodly amount of rust. Like, hiking 10 miles into the woods and finding a shovel with half its shovel-part (blade, shovelly thingy??) broken off and the rest completely orange. Half of him was sure that if he were to touch the thing the rust would come off on his fingers like cheeto dust, while the other half was yelling that that would be a sure-fire way to get alien-tentanus, and a third half of him (wait, that wouldn’t be halves anymore; whatever) was reminding him that tetanus being caused by rusted metal was actually a misconception and that its instead a bacteria that lives in rotting leaf matter and it's just that rusted metal often cuts you which lets the pathogen in and a fourth half was yelling HOLY CRAP THE WINDOW IS FULL OF BLOOD.
The window, if the tiny, cracked pane of what had at one point probably been glass could even be considered that, gave very little idea of what was inside the absolute rust bucket; it did give the strange metal (if there was any metal left under all that rust) object a look that reminded him, once again, of a submarine. Wait, was the whole thing welded together? Was that-was that metal wiring caging the whole thing?? Why had there been a welded-together, rusted submarine (?) caged together with metal wiring floating in space???
The weird metal capsule–which was pretty big by the way, about the size of a small shipping container–was on its side in the otherwise empty lab space looking like an OSHA inspector’s worst nightmare. Through the tiny cracked panel of glass Grace could just barely make out some sort of dark liquid inside of it. He knew Rocky had said it was human blood, but… God he really hoped that wasn’t true. How would that even work?? How would anyone have access to enough human blood to fill an entire small submarine when they were 13 and a half lightyears away from Earth. It made no sense!
Adrian discarded the clipboard they were holding (and by that he meant they threw it on the ground) and quickly walked over to stand opposite from Grace, their 5-legged footsteps causing the floor to shake slightly seeing as they weighed well over three tons. The sound was usually grounding, but at this moment even Adrian seemed to have lost their typically calm demeanor and their panic showed in their erratic steps. Their voice was much lower than Rocky’s when they spoke, and Grace could almost feel the vibrations of it in the air even through the xenonite barrier.
“Found rust metal container outside atmosphere satellite found Adrian saw tell science-eridians retrieve object detect blood detect heart pulse faint faint faint inside statement” Despite their outwards panicking, the blue-grey eridian managed to keep a surprisingly steady tone of voice; then again, Adrian had always been the calmest and most collected of them three. The contents of their words however reflected exactly what Grace had heard Rocky say originally, and the implications were horrifying. Because…well, the submarine (that was officially what he was calling it, it looked close enough to one) wasn’t large by any means, but it wasn’t tiny either. Sure, it was very small for a sub, but to be full? There would have to be gallons upon gallons of blood in there to even fill it up high enough to seem full from the window! And–
Wait
Sorry hold-hold on
They heard a heartbeat???
Of course he’d kind of heard Rocky mention that earlier, but- what?? There was something alive in there? There was-there- HOLY SHEETS THERE WAS SOMETHING ALIVE IN THERE?!?! Grace spluttered, unable to properly form a sentence in the face of what he’d just been told.
“Theres- theres something alive in there?? In that?? Wha- how-”
“Yes! Adrian Rocky hear heart pulse inside rust metal container but grow weaker fast fast fast statement”
“Well then- we have to get it out! Whatever is in there is dying we- we have to-” Grace was hyperventilating at this point. He’d come to terms with the fact that he was essentially alone on an alien planet and would never see anyone (other then the eridians of course) ever again, and now hearing that there might be something alive?? That that something-that that someone could be dying?? Flashes filled his mind: Yao, Illyukina, cold, dead, limp, their bodies drifting out of the airlock into the vast, open, eternal void of space; he couldn’t do that again, didn’t know what would happen if he had to see another thing, no matter how inhuman of an alien it may turn out to be, dead on the ground, especially if there was a way to save it.
Adrian was standing in front of him still, shifting from left to right on their five, segmented, stone legs as though worried or indecisive.
“Adrian panic panic panic, Rocky Adrian Grace what do if alien violent question? What if similar alien movie question? What if alien have disease hurt squishy human-Grace or mate-Rocky question???” Adrian asked in a deep thrum, voicing all the concerns that were swirling through Grace’s own head. But what else could he do?? He couldn’t… he had to save whatever was in that sub. They could all deal with the fallout after the fact.
- - - -
Some convincing of a certain large alien rock, consoling head-pats (body-pats?) to a panicking Rocky, creation of a synthetic version of the fluids originally extracted from the sub just in case and the acquisition of an eridian-standard plasma blow-torch to cut through the metal capsule’s, well, metal, and then the trio was ready to (hopefully) save an alien from dying. Or, well, Adrian was ready to save an alien from dying and Grace was ready to cry while Rocky ran in circles panicking. Truly the dream team.
Adrian was fully suited up in their xenonite suit, the translucent panels covering their stone carapace in shifting geometric lines. They held the blow-torch in two hands, balancing on their other three that they had positioned below them like a tripod. They had previously tried to carve off some of the rust to make cutting through the metal hull easier seeing as rust has a habit of deflecting flame from properly getting through thick metals, but the sub was so severely rusted that it was decided that the plasma torch would simply have to be hot enough to get through it rust and all.
The torch ignited with a jet of energy glowing bright white, the edges where the light petered off shining with a faint purple-blue. Even with the torch being tens of thousands of degrees fahrenheit (and Grace still hated that he defaulted to thinking in fahrenheit) it still took several seconds to start making any progress on the rust bucket of a submarine.
After several seconds more the rust finally started flaking off and Adrian was able to properly cut into the sub’s hull. It took nearly a whole two minutes for them to cut an opening large enough for them to fit through into the side of the rusted metal, during which Grace could hear his own heartbeat pounding in his chest in a mix of anxiety and anticipation.
Finally, the cut was finished. Adrian stepped back from the sub revealing a circular outline carved into the side of the sub’s hull. They, rather smartly, hadn't cut fully through so as not to let anything leak out early or make it impossible to finish cutting. Now all that had to be done was apply enough pressure to break through the rest of the way and they would be in. Of course, the pressure needed to get through even that thin remaining metal would be much more than Grace would ever be able to apply, but, also of course, Grace was not the one in the room (he was a leaky mess on the other side of the glass), and Adrian was a giant sapient three ton boulder.
The metal buckled under the weight of Adrian’s front three legs as they reared up and slammed into it. There was a horrific creaking and the screech of tearing metal as the sub’s wall collapsed where they’d cut into it; then came the torrent. As soon as the hull was fully breached, the liquid previously contained within it rushed out in a flood. Deep crimson hit Adrian square in the face (body?) with enough force for them to stumble back. Rocky barely managed to skitter out of the way as Grace bent over and hurled, the entire contents of all the meals from the previous day forcefully ejected from his stomach onto the ground as the torrent of blood, gallons and gallons of it, shot out of the broken sub and quickly filled the previously sterile room.
Grace was immensely grateful that it was Adrian in there and not him or Rocky; the blood was flowing fast enough and shooting out high enough that Rocky would've likely been tipped over and completely covered, and Grace probably would've just curled into a ball on the ground and given up on everything if he was in there. He couldn’t even smell the blood through the xenonite walls, but the phantom tang of iron still coated his throat and tongue regardless.
Several seconds in and the sub was nearly half empty, the swirling flood of thick red fanning out to cover the floor for several feet in every direction from the sub and- holy- was it steaming?? Adrian quickly stepped back as something fell out of the gash in the sub’s side, caught up in the torrent of liquid flowing out of it and pushed into the lab to fall to the ground in front of their towering figure.
Grace’s breath caught in his throat. It was clearly biological, limbs and appendages folding around each other as it fell limply to the ground. It lay completely still in the still swirling pool of blood, completely coated head-to-toe (if it even had a head or toes) in red.
It was very difficult to make anything out through the thick bubbling crimson, but–and it was likely just Grace’s brain desperate from any sort of human contact after so long without anyone who wasn’t a rock–...it looked almost human. He could make out what seemed to be a pair of legs, an arm, and what could be a head. The shape was…well it was undeniably human. That was until the swirling red managed to knock it around some more and the curled up form unfurled slightly in the current to reveal- okay, yeah, definitely not human. The blood caught on the side of what he’d thought of as its head and flowed through teeth the shape and size of ribs, the opposite side of its torso held no second arm, leaving it with only three limbs, and most importantly, the tail. It was massive, likely seven or eight feet long, the width of his torso and sporting a fleshy sail nearly a foot tall along its entire length that glinted in a way that made it clear why the sub had been made of such strong material. As the blood slowly ran off part of the thing’s body, dark scales were revealed to be covering the entire tail's length and large sections of the thing where there were no scales glowed a bright red that served to highlight how very much not a human the thing was. It reminded Grace a lot of an eel.
Great, alien eel covered in human blood. Somebody pinch him please. But he was on an alien planet surrounded by eridians who would die in his atmosphere, and he hadn't made physical contact with another living being in two decades.
Adrian got over the shock much faster than Grace did, only staying frozen for a few seconds before they stooped down to look over (listen over?) the thing as it lay there limp, quiet and unresponsive. Grace suddenly felt like an idiot; what did it matter if it was human or not? They were over 13 lightyears from Earth, of course it wouldn’t be human! It was still alive and dying! He quickly wiped his mouth off on his sleeve (he’d clean it later…or just leave it abandoned on a random chair for a week, whatever was easier) and ran up to stand directly in front of the xenonite wall, calling out to Adrian.
“What is- what are they?! Are they okay?!”
“Heart pulse there, faint faint faint, fading” Adrian gently scooped up the limp body in two of their arms, the thing–no, not the thing, the person–hanging over their extended limps like a dead snake, still dripping with blood.
Rocky made a series of panicked, chittering squeaks, skittering over to the far side of the pair’s current side of the xenonite wall to enter onto the other side and join his mate. The eridian managed to get open the door to the other side faster than Grace had ever seen him do it before, before he fully entered the other side (still in his xenonite suit due to the potential for contamination and the fact that the atmosphere in the room was kept at a human atmosphere seeing as the sub had contained what seemed to be human blood) and ran up the wall to open up the top of the prepared tank of synthetic fluids meant to mimic those found within the sub.
Adrian quickly walked over to the tank, still holding the limp body of the bloody alien. The creature–the person, they were a person… probably–sank to the bottom of the tank of synthetic blood, barely suspended in the thick liquid.
Unfortunately, as Rocky loved to remind him, Grace’s main sense was rather limited in what it allowed him to do, and with the dark red fluids blocking the light from penetrating the tank through its xenonite exterior, he was now completely unable to make out the shape he knew still lay limply inside it. He’d just have to trust Rocky and Adrian to keep an eye (an ear? An external sensory organ that allowed them to hear?) on them.
Grace let out a shaky sigh, all he could do now was wait.