The Weight of The World

Chapter 8

Author's Note: I can't just continue to apologize for my upload schedule, so I'm just going to let it be implied from now on that I am really bad at quick uploads. I think too much about these scenes, and probably overdevelop them a bit, but this is all practice for me anyway. Fair warning, this one gets a bit dark for a minute.

Everything was cold. I tried to move, but every command I sent to my muscles was met with persistent insubordination. I tried to remember where I was, or what had happened, but there was nothing but flashes of colors and watery sounds.

As I manually put together the collection of concepts and meaningless words, it all started to slowly come back to me.

As I slowly regained consciousness, I registered the feeling of something incredibly soft and wet repeatedly hitting my face. I finally opened my eyes, but it helped very little. I could see the flickering internal lights in Perseverance's cockpit, the seamoth having clearly seen better days, but beyond the glass canopy it was pitch black.

I tried to move again with my renewed clarity and found that the reason for my immobility was that I had been tangled in the seat-belt during all the rolling. How far had I fallen?

Almost as if on cue, my neural chip reactivated along with my consciousness, allowing my PDA to wirelessly link to it. My HUD started to flicker back into my vision, and I saw that I was 300 meters down.

The strange substance pattering on my nose turned into a small trickle, and suddenly it hit me like a truck: I was well past the seamoth's safe operating depth, and the pressure was slowly starting to crush Perseverance!

I wrestled my left arm free of the tangled belt and pulled out my flashlight. I turned it on and gave a choked gasp of fear at the increasingly complex network of cracks in the glass canopy, like a spider's web. There were a couple cracks deep enough to start letting water through, and tiny trickles were falling onto me.

My breath quickened as my mind went into a panic, the submarine creaking as it's hull started to bulge inwards. I frantically tried to unbuckle the belt to get free, but the buckle had been rolled underneath me during the chaos, and now I couldn't reach it. I tried to lean back and grab my knife to cut the strap, but it was equally out of reach.

I took a deep breath and braced my free arm on the cockpit interior, and then started to rock myself left and right. I couldn't help but whimper with tears in my eyes, as the movement jostled several things in my body that were clearly broken.

I fought through the intense pain and used the increasing momentum from the rocking to try and flip the small vehicle over. I would be able to properly untangle myself if I weren't strapped down sitting on top of everything I needed!

My strength was just about to give out when Perseverance suddenly hit the tipping point, and went tumbling over.

Only the tumbling didn't stop.

I yelled as the seamoth went soaring off the precarious ledge it had apparently landed on, and I was once again sent spiraling into the darkness. The fall wasn't fast as the water slowly lowered Perseverance to the ground, but without any power or a functioning engine for said power, I had no control over the descent as I went spinning head over heels, making me sick to my stomach.

The pressure at this depth was too much for the poor one-man sub, and at this point any amount of damage was more than enough to crumple Perseverance like a tin can.

Which is exactly what happened as it suddenly hit the ground.

My yell of terror turned into a strangled scream of agony as the top part of the seamoth hit the seafloor, and then exploded inwards along with a flood of water. Sharp pieces of the titanium hull began to stab into my back and legs as the water turned red. The glass canopy shattered, sending splintered glass all over me. The damage broke the pressure seal as well and my scream turned into a silent whimper, as I saw my oxygen levels drop drastically from the air painfully being forced from my lungs, the organs feeling as if they had collapsed in on themselves.

I gasped and flailed wildly, terror setting in as I was suddenly thrust into the most painful experience of my life.

Suffocating, impaled, and delirious, I screamed for mercy.

NO! This wasn't happening! I uselessly thrashed around, beating on the insides of the increasingly smaller cockpit.

Suddenly, I noticed a blurry figure just outside of the viewport through my teary eyes. I tried to focus on it, if only to distract myself from what was surely my death, and just dimly registered those damned purple eyes. It was the same creature I had seen the other night beneath the lifepod...the creature then reached one of it's sickle arms towards me, and suddenly the world around me was filled with a blinding light.

I could do nothing as reality ceased to exist for me. I felt as if I was swimming, but not through water. It was as if I consciously existed in a state of complete nothingness, total dematerialization. It was almost peaceful…

But then the weightlessness was lifted from me, and I collapsed onto hard metal with a dull thud and a loud groan from me. As my pain returned along with my senses, I was once again thrust into a world of white-hot agony surging up and down my still mangled legs.

I shakily cradled both appendages as I mournfully surveyed the extreme damage. Despite the mind-numbing pain, I couldn't help but register that I was…inside of my lifepod?

"ATTENTION: User in intense pain. Activating partial synaptic dampener…" beeped my PDA, followed by me moaning loudly in relief as most of the pain was suddenly replaced by an indescribable numbness. I let my head thump back against the ground as I struggled to catch my breath.

Holy shit, that was intense. I had definitely never been in that much pain in my life. It wasn't safe to keep so much of my nervous system turned off for too long, so I had to think and act quickly before my neural chip automatically reactivated it.

As curious as I was about how the fuck I got back to my pod, I couldn't afford to think about that right now. I limped over to the med kit fabricator, pulling out a new health pack before squatting down on the storage chest. I whined a little as I dared to look at my legs through clear eyes. I retched, and almost vomited at the sight.

Everything was mangled and…wrong. The shredded hull of Perseverance had completely impaled both legs in several places, and they were both bleeding profusely. I immediately went to work with the biofoam canister, took some painkillers to help stabilize me for when the synaptic dampener turned off, and had to set my right leg in three different places where it had major fractures. After all of that, I slumped against the wall and…started to laugh maniacally.

"He…hehe…HAHAHA!" I just burst out laughing as I contemplated the insanity of it all.

The fact that I was still alive was absurd, and honestly just downright hilarious. I had been trapped inside of a crumpling tin can, 300 meters below sea level, and already injured from blood loss and radiation damage. I should be dead. I should be deader than dead!

And yet…here I was. The very universe itself had seemingly wanted me out of the picture, but now I stood laughing in it's face!

…Okay, maybe I was a little delirious from blood loss and a near death experience, but I didn't care. I felt invincible! If that was the worst this planet could throw at me, then it had another thing coming! I was going to make it to the Sunbeam's arrival, and then everything would be okay forever.

If I was being honest with myself, I needed to believe that, just to believe in anything right now.

I appraised my shoddy job at repairing my legs. It wasn't pretty, there were scars everywhere and even some exposed muscle in a few places, but they had stopped bleeding. With the immediate crisis having been averted, I turned my attention to the larger question at play: How the hell did I get here?

I remember falling, and then nothing but whiteness as pain took control of me, and then randomly being in my lifepod. I crinkled my nose at the still fresh dark memory. I shook my head as I tried to recall more, certain I was missing something important…

I went completely still as it came to me. The purple eyes…that thing had been there…

Had…had it saved me? Why? What possible reason could it have to do that? I thought back to the time I had seen it under the lifepod, when it had seemingly teleported. If I was willing to accept that much, then it was within reason that the very same creature was responsible for my sudden change of scenery. I brought my hands to my face and groaned, frustrated with the amount of questions that needed to be answered.

Answers that creature was going to give me the next time I saw it. It's behavior had led me to believe that it has at least some degree of intelligence, and was even seemingly on my side.

It was only then that I noticed the red flashing light on the radio, and the repeated beeping it came with. My mind immediately turned from my apparent savior to the new message…it had to be the Sunbeam!

I shakily dragged myself to the radio, and hit the play button. "Aurora, this is Sunbeam again. We're closer to the planet now, and I have to ask: What the HELL happened out here? This debris field is…god, it's hard to even look at, and none of us are able to think of a single thing that could do…this! Please, I'm begging you, if there's anyone there, respond. What kind of situation am I flying my crew into? It's gonna be hard enough to make it to the atmosphere with all this junk in the way, so if I'm going to do this, I'm gonna need confirmation that it's safe!" Captain Avery Quinn sounded noticeably more tired since his last message, like he hadn't slept.

There was a pause, and some unintelligible whispering as there was some conversation happening away from the microphone. I could hear the Captain talking to some woman. I couldn't make out any words, but it sounded like she was arguing with him. Finally, there was a loud sigh of exasperation as Quinn returned to the call.

"Okay…change of plans. Against my better judgment, we can't have come all this way just to say we didn't even try. I'm initiating the de-orbit burn now, and sending a wide-band signal to your general location with the landing site data. It will take us a couple of days to make the descent safely through the atmosphere, but when we get there, you guys owe us one hell of a story, and free drinks. Sunbeam, out."

I chuckled a bit at the last part. If the Sunbeam took me away from this hellish planet, I would give them free drinks for life. My mirth was cut short however as my PDA chimed in, "Synapse degradation detected, disabling synaptic dampener…"

I groaned, and slowly sank over onto my side as I lost the ability to stand comfortably. My legs burned something fierce, but my repair efforts were not in vain. I could at least think clearly through the pain now, which was a mercy, seeing as I wasn't gonna be moving from the floor for a while. I needed time to think anyway…

I glanced over at the new signal that had appeared on my HUD, which was labeled as the Sunbeam landing sight. It was over a kilometer away, which was about the distance I had traveled to the floating island. That was very doable.

Quinn brought up a good point though. What was he flying into? What had we flown into? I thought back to the giant, perfectly symmetrical hole I had seen cut out of the Aurora, and shivered. Then, I recalled the plight of the Degasi survivors on the island, just over a decade ago. What if the same thing happened to the Sunbeam?

This was an option I had somehow failed to consider. If there was something on this planet that was causing ships to crash, what could I possibly do to prevent it? I knew so little about this world…

Then, despite my grim thoughts, I cracked a smile as I realized. I didn't know anything about this planet, but I knew of someone who might. With newfound steely determination, I slowly pulled myself along the ground towards the storage chest and propped myself up next to it. I opened it and dug around through my dwindling resources before taking out the Mongolian styled PDA I had found on the island.

This PDA had once belonged to Bart Torgal, the young aspiring biologist with exceptional credentials, and the only son of one of the most powerful men in Mongolian space. The Degasi survivors had been around long enough to have use of at least three bases, surely they at least knew more than I did.

The PDA was rusted and cracked to hell though, and on top of that it had a dead battery that was beyond recharging. However, despite their many flaws compared to Alterra's model, the Mongolians had a feature that my own PDA actually didn't. The ability to store all of its data into a blackbox that ran on its own separate tiny battery. In this compressed state, very little energy is required, so theoretically a single blackbox could survive with it's data intact for over a century after the main power had failed.

Not seeing much point in being careful, I fit the tip of my knife into the seam below the monitor and forcefully pried the device apart, before it snapped into two pieces. I silently insulted the device's designer for how easy it was to do so, before carefully fitting my blade into the half that I knew contained the blackbox to fish it out.

Afterwards, I had the small hard drive in my hand, and I tossed the destroyed PDA into the corner and out of the way.

I slumped back against the wall with a loud exhale, my work complete. I had rigged a connection line between the blackbox and my PDA with some copper wire and a computer chip, and was now waiting for all of the data to finish transferring. I still had my fingers crossed that the data wasn't corrupted, I didn't have much faith in Mongolian engineering.

My legs were starting to feel much better, the strength having mostly returned to them by now. I was starting to feel like I could swim again, and was preparing for a resource trip while I waited on the download.

After changing the battery on my seaglide and scanner, I took a deep breath to prepare myself, and climbed up the ladder. As I emerged from the hatch and painstakingly stood up, I gasped audibly as I saw the Aurora.

The entire front half of the kilometer-long ship was just…gone. Disintegrated by the explosion. God, I hope it hadn't ruptured the drive core again, that had taken a lot out of me. The drive core was located in the still intact portion of the ship, but there was no telling what kind of internal damage had been caused by the detonation.

I slowly lowered myself into a sitting position on top of the pod, with my legs dangling off the side, before slowly letting myself slide down the side and into the cold water below.

I hissed as the cold irritated my legs, but it quickly became soothing instead.

The safe shallows were as beautiful as ever, and I had to crack a smile as I watched the peepers darting around the rocky arches and nibbling on the coral tubes. I immediately got to work, searching for scrap metal since I was nearly out of titanium.

…Only to find a giant pile of scrap metal directly underneath my lifepod, with a familiar stalker lying on top of it. My eyes went wide as I saw the shark, who was still alive somehow. He had been with me when the Aurora had exploded, and that shockwave had given the seamoth's titanium hull a beating.

He definitely hadn't escaped unscathed, however. It looked like there were severe burns all over the back half of his body, areas that also oozed small bits of green blood. He hadn't responded to my approach, and I feared that he had succumbed to his wounds, but my fears were unfounded as I saw a green eye crack open.

The second that eye saw me, the large fish bolted up from his bed of metal and damn near tackled me in his enthusiasm, sniffing all over. I laughed warmly and scratched the side of his snout, which made him purr, a sound I was really starting to enjoy hearing from the stalker.

I glanced back at the pile of scrap and guessed that he had simply moved it here from his cave on the creepvine forest floor. It didn't look at all comfortable to lie on, so I guess he just slept there to keep other stalkers from stealing his stash.

I tried to grab a rather large piece of scrap for the titanium, only to be fiercely rebuked by a growl and a light shove from my friend. Point taken, no touching. I don't know how he planned to guard it while he was away, but I guess that was a problem for him to solve.

I glanced at his wounds wearily. He hadn't died yet from them, but he couldn't have a lot of energy, and there was no telling if they would get worse, or even infected. The lifepod's environment scanner showed an unusual amount of bacteria in the water, so who knows what kinds of microorganisms could take advantage of such wounds?

I glanced down at the still slightly exposed wounds on my legs at that scary thought…I had been so caught up in worrying about the creatures I could see, that I had completely neglected to prepare for the creatures I couldn't.

I decided to run a self-scan, the first in a while. I took my time waving the scanner slowly over every part of my body to get the most accurate reading possible. As it finished, I felt my heart drop into my stomach at the bright red label on the scanner's screen that clearly read: INFECTED.

My PDA chimed in with slightly more information, "WARNING: Foreign bacteria count has reached statistically significant levels. No adverse effects detected. Be vigilant for symptoms."

I closed my eyes and forced myself through my now practiced breathing exercise. "Stay calm Riley", I said out loud. The PDA itself said that there wasn't anything wrong yet. There probably never would be. It would make sense that I was taking in a bunch of alien bacteria. I've been drinking the water and eating the fish. Nothing was out of the ordinary.

I instead set about the task of mending my stalker's wounds. Finding that thankfully, the biomfoam canisters worked across species.

The whole time I was reassuring myself that nothing was wrong.

Nothing at all.

Author's Note: Poor Riley (who's name I have apparently been misspelling the whole time, but I'll just stick with it for consistency), he has no idea what he's about to go through. Also, fun fact: The stalker was supposed to die in the last chapter, but a PM from a reader (NPCrusader), actually made me completely re-evaluate my plans for him, as is probably evident by how forced his presence is in this chapter. I also just wanted to take the time to really demonstrate the INSANE capabilities of late 22nd century medicine. As always, feel free to leave a review, and if you don't, I still appreciate you reading!