Subnautica FanFic
Author: Ian Fox
Prt. 10

Progress

It was impossible to follow the passage of time. Jason would break out of his insanity long enough to work on his task, but then slip back into it the second his mind cleared. He had tried everything, but realized quickly that he wouldn't be able to fight it. Valentine was always around now, waiting for him to drop his guard so she could drag him kicking and screaming out of reality. He rarely slept, never wanting to close his eyes for more than a fraction of a second. If he tried to rest his eyes, she would be there waiting for him.

He was out of food, although he had no memory of ever being hungry, and his body felt as if he had gotten into a fight with a star cruiser. But, for now, he was sane. He opened his eyes after an extremely traumatic hallucination of watching Valentine slowly burn to death as the Aurora crashed. He shook it off, that was all Jason could really do. He wearily stumbled over to his construction module that was now attached to a robotic arm which was bolted to the floor of his pod. He had ripped the wires that connected the constructer from the walls of his pod, and had only to re-connect them to test out his work.
However long he had been here, perhaps weeks, months even, he had been on top of his work when he wasn't spiraling in depressing insanity. He was so close to completion, if he wasn't so burnt out he'd likely be celebrating. It took Jason so long just to make every wire distinguishable from their counterparts that connecting them together after so long felt almost therapeutic. His stomach churned as hunger pangs crippled him momentarily. He grasped at his abdomen, pleading aloud for the pain to pass. Eventually it did, but looking down at his thinning body he knew he had to do something about it.

"Two more wires." He said in a raspy whisper that caused him to start coughing uncontrollably.

He couldn't keep his hands still log enough to even grasp the right wire. Struggling to his feet as he coughed he rushed to the water purifier and guzzled heavily. Jason dropped to the floor again writhing as his stomach revolted against the liquid. When it ended he shakily retrieved his wet suit, composition scanner, and new, longer, spear. Smacking open the bottom hatch he limply slid into the water. Had he even been out of his pod since he got here?

Looking down Jason was startled by the seemingly infinite inky black that lay below. How the hell was he supposed to get food here? He swam around lazily for a while, just trying to spot something. But he was so tired, after only a few minutes every muscle in his body to screaming with pain. Another bout of pain from his stomach left him limp in the water, tears flowing into his goggles. He squeezed them shut, but wrenched them open again when he saw her face waiting for him there. If he didn't kill himself, it would likely be the thought of her that would take him down.

He began weakly coaxing himself to drift towards his pod. Looking up he could see large green ropes extending down from his pod into the depths. Jason struggled to focus his vision, he hadn't seen them before. Getting closer he would see that they were in fact some kind of plant; it almost looked like a kind of kelp or seaweed. It's roots were webbed into the thick gunk that was still glazed over the underside of Jason's pod. It was the only life that Jason could see for a seemingly endless distance in any direction.

Fumbling ahold of his composition scanner he scanned in the plants' general direction. As he hoped, it was edible, plenty of common and necessary vitamins, proteins, and minerals. The gunk was rich in many things as well, even more than the plants, but Jason would starve before he put that ooze anywhere near his mouth. The very thought of if caused his stomach to turn again, he quickly gripped one of the plants and began reeling it in from the darkness below. They made the life pod look like a giant jelly fish, dead and floating on the water's surface, at the mercy of the waves.

Heavily tossing himself back into the pod he took a large bunch of the plant and threw it into stasis inside his storage unit. He was left with a handful of the stuff, dripping water and reeking of the ocean. Jason took a deep breath, expecting the worse, and almost as soon at the substance hit his tongue his stomach again began to try and wrench itself from inside of him. Jason was tired of the pain, and continued to eat the plant anyway. It was horrendous, Jason was never one for vegetables of any kind, but he was still able to stomach them. This, this was something brought into the universe if only to torture whatever creature was unlucky enough to feed off of it.

Once Jason was able to get it down, it became a serious exercise to keep it down. His stomach revolted on its own, but added with the slimy film and bitter taste it seemed he would be puking at any moment. His head spun, and he sat heavily atop his storage unit with his head in his hands. He took several deep breaths as he began to shake in a terrifying manner. The world began to tilt and waver around him, and he was forced to close his eyes if he wanted to succeed in keeping the foul food down.

But she was waiting there again, and this time Jason couldn't force his eyes open, he was far too weak now.

"Jason?" Valentine asked, tracing shapes into his palm.

They were sitting in Jason's quarters together, Valentine leaning back into Jason's chest with his arms wrapped around her. Jason was trying to savor the experience. There were few things on the Aurora that even came close to making him this happy.

"Yeah, Val?" He responded in a whisper.
"Are we going to go back to the colonies… together?" She almost sounded upset.

Jason was taken off guard by the question, did she mean that she didn't expect them to see each other after the Aurora's mission was complete?
"If you want to go back together, I would like that." Jason said honestly, not knowing what to expect.
"Of course I would," Jason could almost hear her smile. "But the Star Gazer program has never been fair that way."

For a moment they were both silent, because they both knew she was right. Eventually they would be assigned to different sectors of the galaxy, and likely never see each other outside of messages. Jason already had experience with this, his mother died during a fusion breach thousands of lightyears from Jason and his father.
"That doesn't matter to me. I can already tell you're someone who's never going to leave me." Jason said, almost unconsciously.
"Do you promise?" Valentine whispered, squeezing his hands.
"I promise." Jason responded, kissing the top of her head.

For a while they just sat there in silence. She'd have to leave soon. There was always more work than rest. Jason tried to capture as much of the moment as he could, it was something he had never expected to feel. The fact that it would eventually end was a grotesque reality that Jason refused to accept. He wanted every moment for the rest of his life to feel like this one. When Valentine eventually left to return to her quarters Jason turned out the lights and sat up in bed, living the memory over and over again. There was a smile on his face, but it slowly slid into a frown.

When Jason came back to reality he was surprised to see the robotic arm complete. He felt energized, that plant must have had something good in it; his head was clear, there wasn't any static in the background. Walking over to the computer's panel he could see there was only a small amount of coding to do before he could get it up and running. With a raspy laugh Jason hastily flicked his fingers across the screen, trying to get it done as fast as possible.
"It's almost done! We'll be able to go!" Jason giggled into the empty pod, turning from the screen to look at the empty space behind him with a giant grin.

For a while he stood there with his face an inch away from the screen in silence. He was biting his lip so hard that when he finished he had to check to see if it was bleeding. But it was done, so Jason flew up the ladder and out the top hatch. He didn't even bother with air, it should only take a second to see if this was going to work.
"Valentine," Jason shouted into the empty pod. "Tell the computer to start building the new pod!"

The computer immediately registered the request and the robotic arm began slowly extending from the top of the pod. It was holding together well, and when it began to bend the construction module over the water it only scraped the side of the open port. Happily Jason squeezed through what opening was left and began dancing around the robotic arm. He ran out of breath quickly and sat heavily atop his storage unit.
"Huh?" Jason asked between his laughs.

Jason's eyebrow rose, and his laughs trailed into silence.
"No, you're right," He shook his head dismissively. "We don't know how long we'll be down there. I hadn't even thought about it."

Jason began pacing back and forth, looking at an empty space in his pod and nodding his head.
"Right, but do you think there's enough there? They were large but I have no idea how long they'll stay good in stasis or if it'll even be enough." Jason's voice trailed off and he began scratching his head furiously.

Jason's hair had grown a little long since his buzz-cut before the Aurora crashed, and as he moved to rub his chin he could feel his once scraggly stubble was a beard just beginning to thicken. His hair had grown more quickly than he expect it to, he had never grown it this long before. It was something he never really wanted to waste time thinking about, there were always more important things he needed to worry about. But now, it almost felt comforting, a growing testament to his strength through the darkness of this world.

Jason snapped his fingers, pointing to the floor of the pod.
"I can make a little growing chamber, constantly cycle the oxygen and use a normal growth bulb to simulate sunlight." Jason bounced the idea off the empty space.
"Pressure? Right… Subnautica has a lower depth to pressure ratio than other habitable ocean barring planets because of its size," He began pacing again. "So the pressure difference is going to be minimal, but it's still a problem. Except, would a valve with a pressure gauge be enough? If I just open the valve whenever the pressure gets too high and drain some water, I should be able to keep it balanced with the pod."

He waited with a smile to hear the empty space's response, of course, no answer came. But Jason still clapped his hands together and nodded as he made his way over to where his wet suit and gear were. After getting dressed up he shuffled over to his storage unit to check the alien plant in his stasis box. Luckily, it looked fine, even healthy, it made sense since it had given Jason such a boost. Although, he wasn't sure how long it had been in there and wasn't completely sure why. He gave the empty space a wry smile before beginning to climb out of the top port of his pod. The robotic arm was hard at work, even whining slightly as it moved to complete the body of the pod that was held over the surface with only a few self-stabilizing buoys.

Things were looking up, and knowing what deep water he was in Jason decided to dive off the top of his pod, spearing into the water and curving up to the surface, nearly ripping the goggles off of his face. The sun was waning down, and the depths below looked haunting, especially since Jason only knew a few of the recorded goliaths that the cartography team hit while trying to scan the planet's surface. Those that were known were nothing you wanted to come one on one with. Even before crashing to the surface Jason knew the raw power of this planet's evolutionary ecology.

Being a, nearly, complete aquatic planet that sustains life was something undocumented in-of-itself, that's why the Star Gazer program even held interest in the small primal planet. Although Jason himself debated if it was really primal, and certain geological formations during his own teams' sweep attested to that. Jason had put this hypothesis on hold when he met Valentine. The free time he would have had to bring this forward was, in his opinion, better used on the girl of his dreams.

Jason stroked quickly along the surface, laughing breathily and looking down periodically for any horrors. Once he was under his pod he cut lose all the plants and began reeling them into a gigantic ball. Eventually he realized that attempting to collect the entirety of the plants was a little ambitious, they were still snaking below him into the depths. Jason popped open the bottom hatch and left the massive ball of plant there, with its tendril floating slowly, still hanging into the inky depths. Jason Hoisted himself into the pod after it, tearing the tendrils from the mass of plant and weakly stuffed it into the "Think that's enough?" Jason chuckled.

By the time the sun was going down on the Subnautican horizon the new pod was nearly complete. It looked to be much more sleek, clearly a better model than the one Jason had been living in. Jason's eyelids were heavy, threatening to force sleep upon him. But why not? He couldn't remember why he didn't want to fall asleep, or even close his eyes for too long. So, after searching his memories for the answer and finding nothing, he curled up on the storage unit and let his eyelids close.
"Huh," Jason grunted, straightening himself against the wall. "Yeah, there's room for both of us."
In the darkness of his pod Jason allowed himself a victorious little smile, but it slipped away along with his consciousness. When he awoke the next morning he immediately started getting his necessities together. Jason must have checked them over at least a hundred times before he got his wet suit, an air tank as well as a spare, and goggles and threw them all on. Slipping through the bottom port of his life pod Jason hung still in the water for a moment before registering the new pod as a way-point on his goggles. He almost couldn't believe it, progress seemed like such an unattainable treasure on this planet.

And yet, here he was, swimming between the two pods to transfer himself into the one that would bring him down the Djupr drop off. It was almost magical, knowing how close he was to the first of what would probably be many objectives before he was rescued.

Rescued.

The very thought of it made Jason's heart pound as he brought himself into his new pod for the last time. Looking over the inside Jason almost felt as if it weren't really made for him. It was clean, of course, but Jason hadn't seen anything quite this clean since he was on the Aurora. The sight of it fired old synapses that were beginning to gather dust, bringing with it a flood of emotions that Jason had been trying to avoid. He allowed himself to give in to them, if only for a moment. Once he wiped the tears from his face and slipped out of his wet suit he cracked his back and faced the computer's terminal.
"Computer," Jason called out excitedly. "How long until we reach the rescue beacon?"
"If submerged within the next minute we will reach the jettisoned section of the Aurora in approximately three hours and fifteen minutes."
"Make it happen." Jason smiled, sitting himself down on the larger, more luxurious storage unit and listening to the mechanical buoys fill up with water.