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David pressed his fingers into the worn leather of his palms, choking down the bile rising in his throat as he stared at the screen in front of him.
Simon was 15.
Simone was fifteen .
His breath scraped the inside of his throat as he let his knee hit the ground with a thud.
It had been two days since they'd lost signal, less than a few hours since they'd found the black box.
God he felt like an idiot. Simon was fifteen and they hadn't even known his name before they sent him down to die.
He was Tyler's age. His younger brother, the one who hadn't even gotten in trouble when he was cornered by bullies at school because it was self defense.
Simon was the same age and they deemed it fair punishment to send Simon back down into the oceanic hell scape because he pressed a button because he was scared.
They only knew because of the box. Whoever had taken the Lung before Simon had fucked with it, set up Eden's calendar.
A shorter, inaccurate calendar. One full of torture, public executions and propaganda disguised as holidays, and a year so short that it wasn't even half a COI one.
It had only taken Ava and Jack and few hours to figure out the COI never requested or checked their files. Never checked that the dates their CRP convicts gave were accurate to the COI calendar.
It only took two hours for the whole ship to know they'd been sending children to die.
David had seen the footage. The installed camera right on top of the X-Ray had kept transmitting data to the black box until it was destroyed.
Simon's death had been the worst thing he'd ever witnessed. Watching his hand tear off in a bloody stump of twisting vore and jagged bone, as he struggled and screamed.
Watching the blood- that was so hot and thick that it seemed to burn what it touched, spreading and sticking to every inch of him and the sub. Melting his skin into strands and pressing past it to hit bone and muscle. Listening to him gargle and gag as it was forced up his airways and burned down his throat.
David let out a sob, and pressed his forehead to the grated floor in front of him.
He couldn't stop replacing Simon with Tyler in his head.
If Tyler was born in Eden, what were the chances he ended up like Simon? Like every other child sacrificed by Eden to their fucked up cause? Like every other kid boiled and burned and torn apart in an Iron Lung?
He'd run the numbers already. The COI had demanded them less than an hour ago. 84 Lungs had been deployed, and not a single Convict had been over the age of 25. Every single one had said they were over 20, and only 12 of them were.
72 people with teen still stamped into their name boiled to death on this blood moon alone.
David knew there were so many more. Could see the glow of his monitor screen halo'd around him, even from where he lay under his desk with his knees and head pressed to the floor like a fucked up prayer.
He'd always wondered how Eden never seemed to run out of soldiers.
Turns out kids are easier to breed up, train, and send to die than fully trained adults.
72 children on one moon of 30.
One out of 30.
He sobbed, pressing his hands to the back of his neck as he shook.
They were Tyler's age, they were his daughters age. Kids with small hands, and bodies hardened through starvation and torture disguised as exercise.
His hands shook as he heard his mother's voice come through his door. The door of the room he used to share with his wife before the radiation got to her.
The same radiation that had been coming off every single X-Ray camera, in every Iron Lung, on every single moon. The same that meant Simon, and every child they killed, was already in slow creeping agony before their Lung's popped.
He pushed himself off the floor and forced himself to open the door. His mother stood there, Tyler behind here.
They were children .
He let out another choked sob.
“David-” Tyler's hand burned.
He stumbled back and slammed the close button. The metal closed, and his back pressed against it.
He couldn't help but see his own daughter, his own brother, choking and screaming, dying a fate worse than death under an ocean of blood.
Small, small, children.
And they boiled .
What fucking monsters Eden made of them.
What monsters they made of themselves.
“Joyfully celebrating the killing of a killer who joyfully celebrated killing carries an irony that I hope will not be lost on us.” - Brian D. McLaren, 2011