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it came with a gentle curl of the tide, the idea of a Something– first formless, then tall, then human, and then, with a final burst of concentration: a man.
the whispers the Whispers the whispers overlapped and threatened to gnaw away at the little voice which still lingered in the vestiges of a human brain but it kept on, shoving itself through the muck and the thick, endless blood, through the pain that suffocated the wispy fragments of a self beyond the hungering, beautiful collective, and it could see the sky somewhere in the distance so it fought more and lifted a man’s arm high above itself, and with the gasp of a man’s rich voice it broke free of the surface and felt, for what had been hours or years or anything in between, air.
And as that made itself known, as lungs came into existence from gills and thick globs of formless blood, there came something else so important he (he!) would have become disgusted with himself for losing: memories.
FIRST, there had been Eden, beautiful and sterile, her veins flush with nothing but sulfonamides and false syrup, and she had taken him in her many arms when he was shoved away from his mother’s womb ferocious and howling like a dog– all of them, all of them had, they’d seen a Light in him, and their hands had most often been pale and cold and not like his mother’s (which were tanned and warm) at all, and they had called him brother and son even when they were neither of those things in a tangible sense, and, and–
–well, most crucially, they had named him he-who-hears.
He-who-hears. Simon, yes, yes, that’d been his name, Simon, and he, the floating static-flesh in the swell of the thick red ocean, laughed– it was an echoing noise that was distinctly not human, but he knew it had come from his mouth– he had a name again, Simon, Simon, Simon, and the Ocean could not take it from him, no matter how hard it tried– it had taken his body and his sense and his mind, but it would never find his spirit from where he had buried it deep within himself, inside a lock-box which was made of old leather and freshly-grown sinew– it would not be taken from him, not by the hands of the Butcher or the Convict or the Ocean or whichever else it was he should have been made–
And Eden, again– they had seen the way he was always tall, always strong, even as a boy, always outgrowing his skin before the rest of him knew to catch up– he would be their crusader, they said, with soft, gentle smiles that made him think there could be no other answer, and the blood fit him like a glove, a second skin, and his hands began to shape and mold themselves around the handle of the axe. They said God loves you, making sure he was staring up at His branches and His wilting roots and His crimson-stained soil– and they said it again, God loves you, Butcher, you are his sword, you are his lungs– but he did not believe them anymore.
SECOND, there had been the Consolidation, the rust and pipes and the sweaty, painful desperation, but he hadn’t pitied them, not really, because they took his name away from him and gave him nothing but Convict instead– they muzzled him and shut him in a coffin to die, a poisonous, suffocating thing that left him choking on his own radiation-sick breath, left him breaking out in crude lumps and shedding layers of skin with the impossible force of the heat. The pealing of a death-bell, disease crawling in sinuous strands up the walls, buzzing with electricity or insects or something else entirely— they wanted him dead from the beginning, they had no intention of opening the Iron Lung back up ever again—
—and he meant nothing to them but a tool, no matter what they’d convinced themselves of, just a wrongdoer and therefore it would not be wrong if they hurt him, they could maintain a clear conscience at the end of the day, knowing they were the heroes and he was a villain, a broken, murderous thing poisoned by a cult’s encouraging whispers, irredeemable, so no matter what they did it was good, it was righteous, and the tiny little fragment of humanity would benefit from it—
THIRD, there had been the Ocean, the great, terrific thing that stretched on for eons and gorged Itself on Its own blood, blood that may have been ripped from eight billion and counting human beings, or perhaps blood that meant nothing at all besides the fact that it itself was an organism, just as desperate and as cruel as any, and it longed for connection.
It was amassed of voices which did not belong to it, and it wanted to take his, too— he knew it was maybe even fascinated by him, and it did not understand but it felt it unnecessary to try and learn the desires of a human mind, so insignificant in comparison to its own consciousness, after all.
And still Simon fought on, struggling to keep himself afloat in the vast emptiness which so many others had lost themselves to, and he could hear it, and see it, too: his mother’s voice, thick black hair trickling down to her collar, face soft and open– her voice, the sound of it’s alright, Simon, you can let go, you’ve done enough– and then there came Ava and her screams– nothing more than her screams, but Simon knew intuitively it was her because he knew far more beyond himself now– and then, there, finally, was the sound of the Ocean or possibly something within the ocean, an echoing hollow of voices that said NO, BUTCHER, YOU CAN’T LET THEM HAVE IT– ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME, BUTCHER–
But Simon had not listened to the Ocean, he knew this now, and the thought brought him great relief– there was something he wanted, something he’d set out to do, and he’d done it, hadn’t he— the blackbox the blackbox the blackbox, it was there– the Ocean hadn’t gotten it or taken it, it’d taken him, but it couldn’t take salvation–
I’m sorry, Mom, and Ava, and that stupid bastard I irradiated, he thought with some degree of levity– I’ll save you. I’ll save– a–aall of u–ss– and his thoughts became difficult to properly conceive of or accurately form, but he held tightly to them regardless– there was no world in which he would have made it out of this misery intact, no universe where he lived and breathed wholly as himself again, if at all, and he knew this now, too– and yet– and yet–
YOU’RE–E-E MI-MI–MINE, BUTCHE—R–R, THEY GA–A–AVE YOU YOUYOUTO MEEE…
That isn’t my name, he said, and it satisfied him so, even as the thing held tight to him, almost desperate in Its anger– it wanted to understand him, he thought, and he would take pleasure in stealing that away from it– it had not been able to gain sight of his mind, not even when it had stolen his body and his self and tried to make those things part of its gaping emptiness.
YOU’RE NOT SIMON N-N–NOT ANY-YYYYMOREMOREMOOOOREE
It was useless, he thought with a spark of internal laughter, for it to try and convince him of this, all of this which he already knew– it did not stop his head from crashing forward and breaking the surface of the Ocean, sucking in new gulps of air and finding itself carefully-defined once more, stringy blood clutching to his neck and stretching as he rose, dripping sinew still fading into something complete. And Simon was real, and here, and alive—
He did not know if he was Simon. He did not know if the real Simon had died along with the wreckage of the Iron Lung and its newly-formed biomass, if he himself was only a fucked-up approximation of a human man from blood taken form, if the memories which had flooded back to him were little more than his idea of what a life would be— but it mattered hardly at all, didn’t it. He grinned, feeling the wonderful sensation of curly hair (the hair he’d gotten from his mother) brushing against his cheeks, and he was new again, clinging to the lifejacket and the blackbox, and inexplicably,
he had lived.
—
Commander Ava Käufner’s body has yet to be recovered. However, the Consolidation has managed to acquire someone else from the ocean of blood.
At 21:43 UTC last night, a man washed up on the Consolidation’s doorstep, naked, shivering, and covered in blood. His body was somehow free of any cancers, scars, or other signs of radiation. In his only arm which was not amputated at the shoulder, he held tight to what resembled the blackbox of the SM-8. He bore significant resemblance to the convict who had been sent down a week prior— however, many Consolidation members have insisted this is impossible. Further identification tests are underway.
Upon discovery by Staff Sergeant Eto, the man reportedly said only this: “I deserve my freedom now, don’t I?”