Chapter Text
When Ellie woke up she did not come to slowly but rather sharply, suddenly. A discordant note of aching consciousness.
Pain was the first sensation she recognized. Before sight, before sound, before smell. Ellie was awake, and she was in agony.
An automated voice said something imperceptible given the ringing in Ellie’s ears.
The last time she felt pain like this was when she’d had her appendix removed as a child and woke up before her surgery was completed, unable to indicate her wakefulness to those present in the operating room. They’d attributed this to her hair color, something that made no sense to her as a child that had just been rushed through emergency surgery.
Her mother had been prepared for litigation. Her father began research on the empirical, peer-reviewed data regarding redheads requiring more anesthetizing.
Ellie groaned, or attempted to, struggling with an onslaught of wires and tubes encompassing the whole of her with sluggish movements.
“Motion detected,” that voice continued its observations, much to Ellie’s chagrin. “Cognition assessment: what is two plus two?”
Ellie ignored the voice in favor of removing wires from adhesive electrode pads with broad, sweeping motions along her chest, midriff, and upper thighs. A sharp throb pulled at her lower abdomen as she attempted to sit up. She traced a wire between her legs to a drainage bag strapped to her knee. Her heart rate jumped as she abruptly realized that someone had placed a foley catheter in her.
The computer lady repeated her previous question, oblivious to Ellie’s dawning horror. “Four,” she attempted to say. It came out sounding more like ‘ffffmmph’.
“Incorrect. What is two plus two?”
Ellie huffed, tossing her head back against the table with a dull thud that rattled the strap of the mask she hadn’t noticed until then. She attempted to speak again after doing a tongue stretching exercise and a short burst of vocal warm ups. “Fo-ourr,” she ground out, tasting sweat from her upper lip.
“Correct. What is the cube root of eight?”
“Tw-two,” Ellie spat, removing the IV from her dominant left hand with an indelicate yank. It sounded like ‘tutu’.
“Incorrect. Please remain still. What is the cube root of eight?”
“Two!” Ellie yelled, muffled by the oxygen mask as she removed the other two IV ports from the crook of her right elbow and the back of her left hand. Arms finally free, she removed the silicone and plastic mask from her damp face. She found another tube in her nose, one that connected with the irritation in the back of her throat. She removed the tape and pulled it out slowly, gagging as she went. She tossed it to the ground when it was finally out like it had personally wronged her.
“Correct. What is your name?”
Ellie sat up, ignoring the yanking sensation she felt low in her belly as she swung her legs over the side of the table she was on. Distantly, she noted she was clothed in a semi-opaque plastic suit, white blobs of adhesive circles visible beneath its surface as well as some of the fine details that make her nude form.
Strangely, her well-worn adidas sneakers remained on her feet over a pair of mismatched socks. Typical footwear for her.
Before she could tell the annoyingly insistent robot her name, a figure rapidly descending a ladder— one her eyes trailed towards a hatch in the ceiling— spoke frantically.
“Ellie!”
She startled, falling to the ground with a raspy yelp.
“Movement detected. Please return to the medical platform. What is your name?”
“Elysie Carroll-Stratt,” she mumbled the answer, squinting at the tall man who came to rest not three feet from her. “Dr. Grace?”
Her manager-turned-friend, for all intents and purposes, crouched on his feet to speak to her at her level, remaining a healthy distance away from her. He took a blanket he had been balancing over his shoulder and threw it gently onto her lap. A quiet urging to cover herself that he had clearly anticipated.
“…I think I told you to call me Ryland,” the words had the potential to be teasing, but were instead spoken like a revelation. Like he had been previously unable to recall his own actions when they had met, despite working together everyday for months on end.
Grace must have read something on her face, something Ellie was unaware she was projecting, as a rubber emesis bag was thrust into her shaking hands mere seconds before bile burst from her throat. Something else he had prepared for.
“Don’t move,” Grace murmured. “I’m gonna grab clothes and some water for you.” He was being strangely reverent, like the doting devotee of a grecian priestess. She imagines herself— clammy white skin, sweaty, shuddering— as the oracle of Delphi, trading riddles for standard issue barf bags. She giggles, in spite of herself.
He returns with a shirt that has some chemistry pun on it—a few sizes too big for it to have been hers— and a pair of thick sweatpants with a drawstring at the waist and cuffed ankles. Perfect for making adjustments to account for the disparity in length and width one could expect between the two of them.
“Why’m I wearing m’shoes?” Is all she can think to ask, throat sore and gravelly from her short lived vomit sesh as she stares at the green suede.
Grace blurts out a startled laugh, eyes crinkling at the corners. “I can’t believe you’re awake,” he rubs a hand over his eyes beneath his glasses. “Wow.”
“What?” Ellie struggles with his quilt, pulling it up her lap and tossing it over one arm like a toga.
“You’re awake and you’re asking about shoes. You’re awake!” He laughs again, that quiet worshipful demeanor replaced with childlike wonder. He beat his hands against the ground in a triumphant little rhythm. “Oh!” He used his hands as leverage and spun in place on the floor, wordlessly imploring her to change by showing her his back.
“Trying not to think about the catheter, Dr. Grace.” Ellie coughs, unzipping the strange suit slowly. “Are we in quarantine? Did something happen in the lab?” Ellie frowns at the length of her wavy red hair when it is unearthed. It’s long, reaching beneath her bottom.
Grace is silent for a long moment and Ellie lets it stretch, thinking he’s gathering his thoughts before he explains what exactly went wrong.
“…You don’t remember everything, then.”
Ellie pauses with only his shirt on. It falls to her mid thigh. “What?” She asks, voice small. She stares at her legs, blond little hairs long and clearly unshaven for a significant amount of time. Longer than she’d ever allow for.
Ellie turns her eyes back towards the room they are in. The walls appear padded at first glance, but under further scrutiny she notes they are white cushioned panels of some kind. A large window to the side indicates that it is nighttime and she shuffles towards it as quickly as she can manage while trying to stuff herself into the sweatpants offered to her.
She slips once, sneaker finding the bottom of the pant leg instead of the ground beneath her. She catches herself against the glass with a loud smack of her palm. “Oh, fuck!” she gasps, scrambling backwards and away from the 360 view of nothing but cold and dark and stars. No land, no atmosphere, no horizon line in sight.
Her hands, grappling for purchase on the ground, slide out from under her as one gets caught in her cascade of hair. Her head smacks the floor hard and she’s left panting, blinking up at the ceiling.
Grace’s worried face eclipses her vision, petrified ice blue eyes colliding with his own steely grey. His brow furrowed as he tried to speak to her, but Ellie could do nothing but succumb to the urge to sleep that swept over her like a tidal wave, fingers still tangled in her unkempt hair.