Chapter Text
Nobody knew how a vampire got to Mars. There were rumors that the scientists who first sent people up there knew all along, and they sent him because they knew that if nothing else, he would survive and keep working.
It was a poorly thought out plan if that was the case. Vampires aren’t known for their good behavior. Others believed he signed up for the Mars mission just like anyone else, hoping to hide from the sun in the covered domes. It really wasn’t hard to avoid the sun. I learned well enough after I was attacked. I remember very little from before I was turned, but what I do remember is the pale pink sky and the gray blue sunset. I missed both dearly while I remained on my home planet. My mother kept me by her side. She was terrified that I wouldn’t grow, that I would remain a child forever since that was when I was turned. She was so happy to see me get bigger. She fed me with her own blood as I grew up.
I was 10 when the first space station, the COI, went up to the stars. My mom saw an opportunity for me. A place without the sun, where I could make friends and be with peers. She signed me up for the next space station, Eden. They needed people of all ages. I still remember the way she cried and held me on the day she let me go. She told me it was for the best. I don’t know about that, but it did keep me alive I suppose. She told me to be a good boy, and to do my best. I did what she said.
The stars disappeared just days later. I didn’t understand. We could still see the ghost light coming from them. For a kid, it didn’t make any sense, but I did understand that the sun was gone.
All I could do was follow my mothers instructions. I asked for nothing. I learned to garden, I learned the prayers, I learned how to get along.
I learned to starve.
For two years I was terrified to ask anyone for their blood. I couldn’t die, but the hunger was consuming. I couldn’t focus on my work or on my prayers. One of my brothers, a boy around my age, found me crying in a supply closet and asked what was wrong. I spilled out everything and I begged him to let me drink his blood. I told him I only needed a little bit and I would give him all of my rations for the day. He agreed, and I was finally able to sate the hunger. I drank only what I needed, not a drop more. It was euphoric. I felt alive for the first time since I set foot on Eden.
I don’t remember every time I drank on Eden, but I do remember that first time. I also remember when I was older, the first time a man, one of my brothers, grabbed me by the hair and told me he wanted something other than my rations. I needed the blood. I did what he asked.
Eden grew more radical as the situation grew more dire. We attacked other stations. We killed, we stole. It was war. I hated war, but I didn’t mind the killing. The small band I ran with knew what I was, and they always saved the bodies for me. I was grateful for that. It kept the hunger away for longer. The trick was that they pinned the deaths on me. That’s why they called me the butcher. That’s why my count was so high.
Filament station though, that was never supposed to happen. Not like that. I never would have agreed to it if I knew that’s how it was going to go down. We wanted to take the station, feed me the blood, give the bodies to the tree. Then we would have more territory, more space, more supplies. They lied to me. They’d gone too far, all of Eden had. They didn’t believe in a life beyond this anymore, only the death of everything.
Everything but me, of course.
That’s why I turned myself in. That’s why I agreed to search for some kind of answer in the depths of that moon. I don’t remember much after going down. It all blurs together. I remember that it went poorly. I remember I was going to die. After that, all I remember is waking up in the sunlight.
“Grace like moon, question?”
I smile, “It’s perfect, Rocky.”
It really is. Just the right amount of luminance. I suppose I ought to customize it more. I could ask them to make it dimmer on full moon nights. That was always an inconvenience on Earth. Once every 28 days I had a worse night of sleep. But even inconvenient reminders of Earth make me feel that much more settled here. Really I’m just impressed that they were able to replicate the 28 day cycle.
I stare at the moon for a while. Rocky insists that it’s time to go to sleep, but I want to look at the stars some more. It’s not the sky I’m used to. They’re still working on making constellations that I will recognize, but I make up my own constellations in the meantime. Heck, maybe I’ll ask them to cut that project and I’ll just have my own custom sky forever.
Off in the distance, barely big enough to see, there’s a little ball of fire streaking through the sky.
“Rocky,” I say, “Did they add a shooting star?”
"No,” Rocky says, “Too complicated for little benefit.”
“Well… I see a shooting star.”
"Grace too tired. See things not there.”
"No, it’s there,” I say. The ball is getting bigger, actually. It almost looks like a meteor. A big meteor.
Erid’s atmosphere is too thick for meteors. At least, it’s supposed to be. They burn up before hitting the surface. This would have to be huge to be getting through. Or maybe I just haven’t seen one before. It’s interesting to watch. I tell Rocky about it. He can’t see it, and Eridians don’t have technology to sense meteors. Rather, they don’t need that kind of technology, so they never bothered to set it up. They do have cameras that can detect light, but pointing them at the sky on the off chance of seeing a meteorite is a pointless endeavor.
“Grace need sleep so Grace no stupid tomorrow,” Rocky says.
”I know, just let me watch it a little longer, Rock,” I say.
It keeps getting bigger. If it’s heading right towards me and losing mass at the same time, in theory that means it should eventually appear to stay the same size from my point of view. Instead, it keeps getting bigger and brighter until it starts to light up the dome more than the artificial moon. Before long, it’s brighter than I can look at.
"Rocky, there’s something off about this,” I say, “I think it’s gonna hit—“
Clank!
A loud metallic sound reverberates down the xenonite walls of the dome. Whatever this thing is, it just landed on top of the biosphere. Rocky jumps up as soon as he hears it. He can probably already see it, heck, with how loud it is he probably saw through it, but I can’t anymore. It stopped burning when it landed.
“Human inside!” Rocky says.
”What?!”
"Rocky save, Rocky fix!”
Rocky sprints off as fast as his five legs can carry him. I’m sure there’s already a team of Eridians doing the same. Any loud sound near the biosphere is worth investigating. I follow Rocky as far as I can, all the way to the airlock where he can go through to his side of the atmosphere. I can’t see very far through it, but I see far enough to notice that Rocky doesn’t bother to properly pressurize the airlock before heading out through the door. He doesn’t bother to take off his EVA suit either. I hear the scuttle of many Eridian limbs climbing up along the ladders on the exterior of the dome.
I wait by the airlock door, desperate to find out what’s happening up there. A chorus of voices sing above me. It sounds similar to a thrum, like the one they did to figure out how to keep me alive. That’s a whole other language I don’t fully understand. Before long, I hear them coming back down the ladder, much more slowly. Whatever hit the top of the dome, it seems like they’re carrying it down. Rocky and a few other engineers who I recognize move quicker and arrive at the airlock. None of them explain to me what they’re doing, but I can see just enough to understand that they’re making the whole thing a lot bigger. Whatever they found, it’s coming inside here.
* * *
When Rocky said there was a human inside, I had expected that a human spacecraft had crash-landed here. There was, at one point, a probe sent to Earth with a little bit of information about how I’m doing. That I’m alive, where on Erid I am, stuff like that, but it’s way too soon for them to have received it, much less for them to have sent someone after me. I was ready to believe it was dumb luck that they had found me. But it isn’t a spacecraft. It looks like a submarine.
It’s made from human materials, Rocky tells me. No xenonite or any other strange space material that we don’t know about. He gives me a tool to cut through it. The whole thing is welded shut. I don’t know if it was like that before, or if it melted shut from the journey through the atmosphere. Either way, I need to cut it open if we’re gonna jailbreak the human in there.
I cut a large rectangle into what I assume used to be the top of the sub. As soon as I open it, a wave of blood pours out. Way more blood than a human is supposed to have. Heck, it’s probably enough for several humans. The smell is horrid, like death and rot and iron all rolled into one. I pull off my shirt, which avoided getting splattered, and toss it far away from the sub, where it won’t get anything on it. Call me vain all you want, I only have a few shirts here on Erid, and I don’t want to get one of them covered in a giant bloodstain.
I poke my head through the hole I made. I don’t know why I’m surprised to see that the inside, as much as I can see, looks more like a submarine than a spacecraft too. There’s more blood here. It drips from the sides and the top. Along the bottom it pools up. I try not to gag. There’s a few nebulous shapes and—
Bubbles.
That means the human in here is breathing. I reach in and grab on to the form to pull them out. I fight the urge to vomit from the smell. It works, only barely. The blood sloshes and spills out again as I pull the person through the hole I made. I sling them over my shoulder and carry them to the house, where Armando locks onto us immediately.
“Hey bud, we have someone here.”
They’re unconscious, but I can feel the subtle rise and fall of their chest. I lay them down on the dining table and Armando gets to work. I look closer. They’re missing their left arm. Armando gets to packing the wound there immediately, but if they just lost it…
I brave the submarine again. Surely their arm is in here somewhere. With Rocky’s help I identify it. It’s… stuck to the wall. I still have the tool to cut through the submarine, so I cut around it. Armando can deal with getting the hand unstuck in his own time. For now it’s important that we can reattach it. I try not to think about the fact that I’m holding a human arm as I run back to the house to present it to Armando, who takes it and gets to work putting it back together with the rest of the body immediately.
It’s hard to watch, but I can’t look away. My head is racing, praying to no god in particular that they survive. It’s been forever since I’ve seen a human. Since I’ve touched one. I need this one to be alive.
Hours pass. Rocky wanders off pretty early on to let my students know that class is suspended until further notice. I don’t stop him. It’ll at least be off tomorrow. There’s no way I’ll be rested enough to teach. Finally, at what must be two or three in the morning, the robotic arms stop moving.
“Vital signs incompatible with survival.”
“What?” I ask.
“Paitent has passed.”
My chest feels tight. Tears spring up in my eyes. I try to swallow them down. Without speaking, I leave. I walk to the bathroom and strip the rest of my clothes off to shower. I can’t stay covered in blood all night. I’ll have to deal with all of this in the morning, after I’ve gotten a bit of sleep. Rocky follows me to the bedroom and curls up on my chest so he can watch me sleep. I remember when this used to freak me out. Now I can barely sleep without him curled up around me on the very few nights he has to be elsewhere and a different Eridian fills in. Usually Adrian. They’re wonderful, but they’re huge compared to Rocky, so they stay at the foot of my bed to watch, rather than being able to snuggle me.
“I’m sorry, Grace.”
“It’s…” I hold back tears again. “I need to go to sleep.”
"Grace knows it is okay to leak.”
“I know,” I say, “But I need rest to deal with… that. If I start crying now I won’t sleep.”
"Understand. Grace leak in morning."
* * *
A loud crash wakes me with a jolt. Rocky gets up so I can go investigate.
It’s the person from the table.
They moved.
Armando covered them with a sheet last night. Now it’s wrapped around them as they cower beneath the table. I approach with caution. My own feelings are pressed down under a strong sense of calm. It’s a skill I had to develop being a teacher. When there’s a room full of chaos, you need to keep a cool head. I get down on my knees, staying on their level.
”Uh, hi,” I say, “What’s your name?”
Their head turns quickly, eyes locking in on me. They don’t answer right away, just stare. They’re still covered in blood, but now it’s dried and caked onto them, some of it flaking off of their skin.
”I’m Simon,” he says, finally. I assume ‘he’ based on the masculine name, his body type, and the deeper voice he has. And the fact he seems to understand English. It’s a stroke of luck, really. Humans have so many languages.
”My name is Ryland Grace,” I say, “Most people call me Grace, actually. You can too.”
”I need…” Simon looks around, “to get away from the sunlight.”
”What?” I asked.
“The sun,” Simon points, “I can’t be in it.”
”That’s not the sun,” I say, “Not really. It’s artificial lights.”
”Is this a space station?” he asks, “It’s not the COI. Where am I?”
”You’re on a planet called Erid,” I say, “Humans can’t really live here, but the locals built this place for me. It’s… a long story.”
"A planet…” he whispers to himself.
”Are you hungry?” I ask, “I can get you something—“
”No,” he says. He sounds very serious. “Do you have… a shower?”
”Of course! Let me show you,” I reach out. He hesitates before taking my hand. I notice that the hand he uses is the one that was detached along with the rest of his arm last night. It’s working shockingly well for a recently reattached limb, but it does have some nasty scarring. Up his whole arm it almost looks like tree bark.
He spends a long time in the shower. I can’t blame him. I’m sure he has blood in all kinds of uncomfortable places. I take that time to start cleaning up. Armando has lots of tools for sterilizing the whole area. Between Rocky, Armando, and I, we make light work of cleaning up the front room. Armando even takes the sheet to wash. I don’t know what to do about the beach, though. Rocky promises to take care of it, so I let him at it while I wait for Simon to get out of the bathroom.
He comes out in only a towel. I notice that the seam where his stitches were is already healed up. His bloodied clothes are in his hand.
“Uh… I don’t know where to…”
“I can take them,” I say. I hand the clothes to Armando and show Simon to the bedroom where I offer him some of my clothes. My pants fit him fine, but my shirts are a little tight on him. As he gets dressed, I see that he has limited range of motion in his left arm, probably from the scar tissue. I have a million questions for him, but I don’t dare ask him just after he’s come back from the dead.
”I do need… a favor,” Simon says. He won’t meet my eye. He sits next to me on the bed. “I can repay you…” He reaches for my crotch, but I flinch away and grab his wrist.
"Woah! No need for that. What is it?”
“I need… blood,” he says. He’s looking at me now, lips open just enough that I can see his teeth. Specifically, his canines. They’re long and sharp. I get a sick feeling in my stomach. Armando was right when he said this man was dead.
He sees the fear in my eyes and looks away again. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”
“Wouldn’t that change me too?”
Simon shakes his head, “There’s a whole process for that. But forget I asked. I… it’s just been a long time.”
"That submarine was filled with blood,” I say.
Simon makes a face, “There was something… wrong with that blood. I could tell from the moment I went down.”
"Went down where?”
"The blood ocean.”
"The what?”
“The blood ocean,” he says again, “You know… the COI, they found that moon covered in blood. They were sending people down…” he looks at me, searching my face. “You’ve heard of the COI?”
I shake my head. He’s talking complete nonsense.
"Simon you’re the only human I’ve encountered in years,” I say, “I didn’t even know there were others out this far from Earth. Were you trying to figure out astrophage too?”
“Astro-what?”
Huh. So neither of us know anything about the other’s mission.
"Let’s start over,” I say, “I came from Earth because the sun was dying. They sent out a last chance type of mission to figure out how to save it. I met an alien there and he brought me here once I was able to send data back to Earth about how to solve the sun issue.”
Simon nods.
"I come from Mars.” Already an insane place to start, but I don’t interrupt. “I was on a space station called Eden from when I was ten or so. The point was to make a functioning colony on a space station, or a network of space stations, but just days after launch, all the stars, planets, and everything we knew just vanished. The different stations started fighting over resources. I… became a prisoner of war. The COI, a rival space station, offered me a chance at freedom if I went down into an ocean of blood they found on a moon that was still around. Things got bad down there. I thought I was going to die, but… I can’t die. Not from drowning in blood, at least. Next thing I knew I woke up here.”
Nothing about his story sounds legit, but I don’t know why he would lie to me. Before his explanation he was talking like I must know about all of this history. I choose to believe him. At least for now.
"Why did they send you down there?”
"I don’t know,” he said, “I guess they were trying to find some way to keep going. I don’t know why they thought they could find that in a sea of blood, but at least it was better than floating around in space with dwindling resources.”
I nod.
"And did they know—“
"No,” he says, “I don’t exactly go telling just anyone.”
"You told me.”
"You…” Simon blushes as much as a vampire can blush, “You’ve been kind to me.”
His bar for kindness is a tripping hazard. I take his hand.
"If I let you…” I say, he looks at me. His eyes, they’re human. I feel less alone. “Does it hurt?”
"Yes,” he says, “Not much, I hope, but I can’t promise anything.”
At least he’s honest.
"I won’t do it unless you agree to it,” he says, “I don’t want you to be afraid of me. I can manage without it.”
"You’ll be starving,” I say, “Won’t you?”
"I’ve starved before,” he says, “You get used to it.”
I’ve starved too. On the way to Erid, food was a scarce resource. The few plants we had on the Hail Mary didn’t produce enough and we didn’t have soil to help them grow bigger. It was all I could do to keep them alive without getting root bound. When we got to Erid, it took a while for the plants to start growing. It was priority number one to get me healthy, but it took a long time and a lot of testing. They figured out how to clone the plants to get me more seeds to plant sooner, and they were able to make vitamin shakes to replenish my nutrients. It was a year or more before I felt normal again.
I shake my head, “No, that’s not right.”
I can’t believe what I’m about to agree to.
"Does it have to be my neck or is that just movie stuff?”
”It can be anywhere,” Simon says.
I roll my sleeve up, “How… how much do you need?”
"Not a lot,” he says. He stares at the veins in my wrist. I can’t watch this.
"Okay,” I say, “Go ahead.”
He lets out a grateful sigh. I look away as I feel two pricks in my arm. I do my best not to squirm and flinch, but it’s hard to do. It hurts. Something feels so wrong about it. He takes less than a minute before he pulls away.
"Thank you,” he says, “And… I’m sorry.”
I look down at my arm. The holes are small enough, and the bleeding has already stopped. My hand feels cold, as if the circulation was cut off. I guess that’s the only comparable thing to what just happened. I pull my sleeve back over it to cover the marks.
"It’s okay,” I say, “It wasn’t bad.”
I don’t know if that’s really the truth. It wasn’t good, that’s for dang sure. I dread having to do it again, but I also know that Simon is my guest. Or… roommate? I don’t know what to possibly call this relationship at this point. Whatever he is, I won’t let him go hungry, even if it means this.
"Uh, I should show you what we have here,” I say, “It’s small, but it’s cozy.”
"We?” he asks.
”You and me,” I say, “You live in this little dome here too now.”
I take him out to the beach. Simon squints in the artificial sunlight. Rather than looking at the space around him, he stares at his hands, as if he can’t believe he’s out in the day without burning to death. The submarine is still there. It looks like it’s been crushed by a giant hammer and set on fire. Simon looks terrified staring at it. I take his hand and guide him around it. Rocky joins us on our walk and Simon is startled when he catches sight of him.
"What is that?” he asks.
"This is Rocky,” I say, “He’s the alien I met. He sticks around to help out.”
Rocky hums out a greeting and I translate for Simon. Simon smiles a little.
"You understand that?” he asks.
"There was a learning curve for sure,” I say, “But when it’s all you hear for years on end you figure it out.”
We make it all the way to the classroom. It juts out into a cave where the Eridian students sit in an amphitheater style. Embedded into the wall between us, there’s an organ where I can play notes that correspond with Eridian words to teach the class. I explain all this to Simon while he looks around the area. There’s a few models and 3D charts on the walls. An Eridian periodic table hangs behind where the students sit. It looks similar to the one we use on Earth, but it has its differences. On the top of the organ, there’s a variety of little trinkets and knick knacks that the students have brought me or made for me over the years. Kids really are the same everywhere.
Simon smiles as he looks at the decor. He sits next to me on the organ bench.
"It’s a nice place you’ve built here,” he says. We look out across the beach together. There’s a cliff near the house that has a path up to it. That’s where I was sitting when Simon crash landed onto the dome. Lucky him, I guess. Drowning in blood wouldn’t have killed him, but he would have turned to ash in the Eridian atmosphere, and I don’t know how long the submarine would have held in the state it was in. I guess the hull being full of blood is what saved him. There was no way for Erid’s air to get in if it was full of something more dense, even though there was clearly a leak.
“Thanks,” I say, “I’ve tried to make a home out of it.”
Simon smiles. “I never really had one.”
"A home?”
He nods. “On Mars and on Eden everything was sorta communal. We slept in barracks and ate in cafeterias,” Simon says, “Well, everyone else ate in cafeterias. I usually traded my rations to someone and ate in some broom closet in secret.”
"You traded your rations for…”
"For their blood, there were only a few people who knew,” Simon says, “On Mars it was easy. My mother was able to feed me and keep me in dark rooms during the day. They thought putting me on that space station would help me live a more normal life, staying on the same schedule as the people around me. There wouldn’t be sunlight there, and I was ten, no position to be doing EVA walks.”
"Grace Rocky speak alone, question?” Rocky interrupts.
"Uh, sure bud.” I look at Simon. ”You should go get some rest at the house,” I say, “I’m sure you’re exhausted after last night and this morning and… just everything.”
He nods. “Thank you.”
As he walks away, I speak again, “Oh and Simon?”
He turns back to look at me. “You’re always welcome inside that house,” I say, pointing, “In fact, you can consider it your house too, now.”
He smiles, “Thank you.”
I don’t know if the rules about entering homes applies to real vampires. Heck, until about an hour ago I didn’t know there were real vampires. But I want to be sure to cover my bases just in case.
Once Simon is back at the house, Rocky speaks.
"Why injury on wrist, question?”
I was hoping he wouldn’t bring it up.
"Uhh,” I say, “You remember when we watched Dracula?”
"Yes.”
"Well, I guess…” I shrug, “Simon is a vampire.”
"Can’t. Grace say vampire not real.”
"I know what I said, Rock.”
"Grace lie, question?”
"No, I just didn’t know,” I say, “I told you what I knew to be true at the time, but now… I don’t know.
Rocky stays quiet for a bit before asking, “Simon danger to Grace, question?”
"I don’t think so,” I say, “He seemed willing to starve if I wasn’t willing to let him drink my blood.”
"Grace become vampire, question?”
"No,” I say, “I guess it takes more than that to make me a vampire. I got all the information I could before agreeing to it.”
"Good good good,” Rocky says, “Rocky keep watch. Ensure safety.”
"Thank you, Rock,” I say. My stomach growls. In all the chaos of the morning, I had neglected to eat. I walk back to the house, and the little garden next to it. I pick a variety of fruits and vegetables and head into the house, where Armando is holding a vitamin shake for me. Technically I could live on the vitamin shakes alone. They’re custom made to provide everything I need to survive. The fruits and vegetables are there for taste. Turns out that a slurry of nutrients with a bit of glucose isn’t the most delicious thing to eat for three meals a day, every day.
When I finish eating, the exhaustion from the late night starts to set in. I’m sure that the blood loss from this morning doesn’t help either. I head into the bedroom where Simon is laying on the bed, not quite sleeping.
"Hey,” I say. I climb into the bed next to him. He glances over his shoulder at me.
“Oh, did you need… I can go out.”
I shake my head. “It’s alright, there’s enough room for both of us.”
“All three of us,” Rocky says. I chuckle and translate for Simon. Rocky crawls up to sit on my chest. I explain to Simon about the Eridian customs around sleeping. Rocky curls his arms around me and I flash a smile at Simon. He smiles back at me and looks at Rocky.
"That’s beautiful,” Simon says, “That you watch out for each other.”
Rocky hums out a small agreement.