Redemption

Exhaustion

Despite the fact that there were no working clocks left onboard my vessel, their gears and springs having long since frozen and become brittle without their usual maintenance, I could tell that a few hours had passed since my 'short' visit to the engine room.

The sun, from last I saw of it through the cracks in the walls and the clouded portholes, had started to enter the last stages of the day, painting the sky in the same colors of oranges and blues I had seen just before my bridge had slipped beneath the waves, dazzling shimmers of golden yellow bouncing back into my gaze from across the waves.

It was just as beautiful a sight as the first time I had seen it, but it also showed just how much time I had spent simply on trying to procure a pair of usable shoes and some heavier clothing to replace the thin rags I had on now.

The only spare clothes I had managed to find up till now had either been far too degraded and torn, the fabric falling apart under my grasp, or they were currently occupied by a former person, the clothing draped over their rotten features like the wrappings they placed over the recently deceased. And despite the fact that some of their clothing did seem to be in a suitable condition for protecting this form from the elements, the modern soldiers' strange uniforms being a good example of such, I refused to remove anything from their persons.

To do so would mean having to strip their bodies of anything I found to be useful and I just... thought it would be disrespectful to them, is all.

A loud click sounded throughout the room as the closed latch to yet another locker unhitched itself beneath the strength of my hand, the hinges to the metal door squealing loudly as I slowly pulled it open with one of the crutches clenched tightly in my other hand just in case there was a similar incident to the ones I had had three times prior.

"Fill-ty diss-gus-ting row-den-ts." I said to myself, recalling how one of them had leapt out from a shelf onto my ragged uniform and very nearly took a chunk out of this body's right ear before I had managed to wrench it off of me and toss it to the ground, my hands instinctively clenching and reflexing as a result of the memory.

Thankfully though, this locker seemed to be empty as my eyes inspected every inch of its interior before focusing on a relatively intact-looking pair of tan shoes placed directly on the floor where I then leaned down with a hand outstretched to grab them while I held the other to the locker's edge to keep myself from falling forward.

The rough texture of the shoes rubbed against my hands as my fingers grasped onto their inner rims and for once, the material felt sturdy and just as I thought that I might have finally achieved one of the goals I had placed for myself just a few hours earlier, I raised the pair only to find that the soles of both shoes had become entirely detached from the ones currently held in my hand, rendering them completely useless.

I looked down at the now exposed soles of the shoes just sitting by themselves at the bottom of the locker for but a moment before simply letting out a small audible breath in response to my failure and returning the scraps in my hand to their place within the locker, closing the door shortly after.

There had been several of these dead ends now and on top of wasting yet more time, this fruitless search was beginning to take its toll on this body as well.

My movements, for whatever reason, were starting to slow with my limbs becoming heavy, almost like invisible weights were being slowly added onto them one at a time, the same went for my eyes as well, the struggle to keep them forced open becoming increasingly more difficult as time went on.

It was unknown to me exactly what was causing this gradual struggle to maintain control over this body until a few minutes later when I grabbed ahold of a loosened railing to ascend a flight of stairs when I seemed to freeze in place. My climb halted by my new form taking a sudden, unprompted, pause in breath, the tainted air seemingly held unwillingly within their lungs for a few seconds before then slowly and audibly escaping through a mouth held open on pure instinct.