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The lift down to the mining site vibrates under his feet, shadows stretching vast and deep beneath him. As he descends they rise to swallow him whole, and even as the suit protects against the harshness of space, Ed feels colder.
He doesn’t know how long it’s been since Gordo and Danielle left for home, he hasn't cared enough to check. Weeks, months maybe. It doesn’t matter. Either NASA finally gets off their collective asses and sends a relief team or they don’t. He doesn’t know what he expects anymore, only knows that the longer he stays, utterly and completely alone, the more his hope dwindles. The only other living beings for hundreds of thousands of kilometres are an enemy that wouldn’t hesitate to sabotage any chance of rescue for him, and he’s tired of constantly looking over his shoulder.
Ed steps off the lift as it comes to a jerky halt at the site, and he’s sure that if sound could travel in space it would be shrieking angrily. As it is, the only noise for company is his regulated breathing and the thudding of his heart. He wishes they’d installed some kind of sound system in the suits other than the short range comms, music would have made this all a little more bearable.
He goes about the motions, trying not to think, letting muscle memory and base instinct direct his actions. He has a job to do here, and no matter how exhausting it is to fulfil them all by himself, he must get them done. The monotony, the stability of a repetitive schedule is perhaps the only thing keeping him standing as he does what he has done every day past, mindlessly humming a tune to fill the silence.
It’s at the end of the chores that Ed breaks from the repetition, taking a moment to stand at the edge of the mining site. There’s nothing to see, really, just an impenetrable darkness that hasn’t been pierced by light in thousands of years. He wonders how much ice is down there, if it were enough to fill a lake, or a small ocean, and then he wonders what else could reside in the cold and dark. Nothing living, surely, not with the complete lack of atmosphere and sustainable resources, no matter how much it looks like the dark is looming ever closer. Sometimes he imagines if light were to ever illuminate the bottom, there’d be a sea of bones, corpses left behind by an alien civilization, or some grand conspiracy in which humans had already reached the moon, but forgot all about it. They’re morbid thoughts, but Ed’s running out of things to entertain himself with, and he’ll take what he can get.
He turns away from the crater, towards the lift, but before he can take a step, the torches start going out, one by one. There isn’t enough time to process what’s happening before the dark swallows him whole.
— — —
He’s floating.
No, that’s not right.
He shouldn’t be floating.
Why shouldn’t he be floating? Is there something else he should be doing?
Yes, he’s sure, there was something else. He was doing something important.
Why did he forget? You shouldn’t forget important things. That was a rule. Right?
…
He still can’t remember.
It must not have been that important.
…
He’s floating.
Wait, he’s been over this before.
He is floating when he should not be floating. Why?
Gravity. Gravity?
There was gravity, was there not?
It didn’t usually stop working, he was pretty sure. You can’t turn off gravity.
Or maybe you can. He can’t remember.
That’s odd. If feels like he should know. He usually knows things. He likes knowing things, he thinks. Not knowing makes something in him shiver. He doesn’t like the feeling, so he forgets.
…
Knock Knock Knock
What?
That was…a sound. That can’t be right. There should be sound. Unless he made it? He didn’t think he did. It had surprised him, and if he made it, he wouldn’t have been.
Where was he anyway?
…
He’s forgetting something.
A lot of things? Surely that's important. Maybe not the things, but the fact that he can’t remember them.
Thinking makes him tired. He wants to sleep.
…
Knock Knock Knock
There was that noise again.
He was drifting and it woke him. He’s still tired.
But…the sound. A knock? You’re supposed to answer those. How do you answer a knock? He knows this. It’s simple. He…doesn’t know.
But he must answer, so he thinks as hard as he can.
A face? Not his face. Soft eyes, dimples, and warm smile.
He forgot what warmth felt like. Who is she? He thinks he loves her.
…
Knock Knock Knock
He remembers! Or…not really. But he knows.
To answer a knock, one must open the door.
He doesn’t know where the door is. But that doesn’t matter.
It’s impolite to leave a guest on the porch.
He invites them in.
— — —
Ed gains awareness of his body slowly. His mind is sluggish, but clearing, as if rising from murky waters. He can feel his breath rattling his lungs, his heart pumping blood through his veins, each muscle micro-correcting as he balances on his feet and electricity firing through neurons, activating and deactivating cells. He shouldn’t be this aware of himself, it’s overwhelming and he struggles to keep breathing.
Something clicks in the back of his mind, and he can no longer feel everything. Ed breathes a sigh of relief as his overtaxed mind finally tugs itself into gear. He blinks, clearing his vision, only to find himself in the decompression chamber of Jamestown. He was just at the mining site. Surely he didn’t dissociate so hard he missed the entire drive back. Hell, Ed couldn’t even remember getting back into the lift.
He clears his throat with a cough, and ice escapes his lungs in a flurry of flakes. He watches with wide eyes as they drift down, landing on the helmet he hadn’t realised he was holding. His helmet, with the polycarbonate shielding completely shattered . Ed drops it, backing away until his back hits the door, warm metal poking into his back. That wasn’t right, none of this was right . The door should be ice cold, barely warmed from the decompression air of the base, instead its heat seeps into him, as if he was the thing without a high internal temperature.
‘But…,’ Ed stared warily at the helmet, broken face staring at the ceiling, ‘maybe I am.’ He brought his hands forward hesitantly, shaking as he was met with frozen, frostbitten fingers. They were blacked and covered in frost, and yet he could still feel them as if there was nothing wrong. Clenching them into fists, he stepped over his discarded suit and the broken helmet, opening the door into the only home he’s known for months. Warm air hits him, and he knows this time that it hasn’t actually changed from what it’s always been. He is the thing that is wrong.
Ed stands in front of the mirror and stares at an unfamiliar face. Sure it’s got most of the elements, a defined jaw, sharp brows, a slightly crooked nose and deep set eyes, but that's where the familiarity ends. He’s impossibly pale, the tips of his ears dark with the same frostbite that gnaws at his fingers. His cheekbones are more defined, as if he’d gone a little too long without food, and his eyes…they’re the colour of a starless night. The pupil, in contrast, is a glowing white.
It’s completely and utterly inhuman.
— — —
Ed sits in the dark of his bunk, curtain pulled, hiding from the too bright lights that burn his sensitive eyes. He sits and he breathes and he thinks.
He doesn’t actually feel all that different. Colder, sure, as if his core is frozen (and perhaps it is), and sharp lights are painful now, but other than that he feels almost exactly the same. Except for, of course, that dark spot in the back of his mind. He hadn’t noticed it before, the panic blinding him to anything but the physical differences, but there’s this… presence in his head that hadn’t been there before. It’s not…sentient, as far as he can tell, not the same way a human is, but it’s dark and cold and strong. It has wrapped itself around his mind like a dragon curled around its hoard, spread itself through his veins and cells and atoms . It’s become intertwined with him in a way that has permanently changed him, but it seems content to just rest. He gets the impression that it was…strained, before, in the crater, trapped hiding from the light, spread thin like fog trying desperately to stay together, to live without a shell.
It had waited for so long, so alone, that its tears formed the very ice they were digging for. And then the humans came and it felt their warmth, it craved it, but they were so small, so bursting with life, that all it could do was hover close. And that’s what it had done, until Ed Baldwin came down into the crater, alone, hope dried from the reservoir of his soul and it found that there was room for it. It found that there was someone similar to it, and it wished to comfort him.
So now Ed had an entity of unfathomable power and age playing passenger in his body, an entity acting like a cat sleeping in a sunbeam.
Oddly enough, or stupidly enough, Ed wasn’t afraid. He was a little miffed that it hadn't asked permission (though he remembered knocking??), and very worried about contacting NASA when he looked like…well… this , but other than that, it’s…comforting. He’s not alone anymore, and neither is the entity. He thinks that everything will turn out alright. Hope has found residence within him once again, hope made of darkness and ice but hope all the same.
Maybe he can convince it to change his eye colour back?