Chapter Text
She spent the rest of the days after the launch being haunted by blond hair and blue eyes.
They follow her everywhere, She sees glimpses of him in the quiet dead air of her office, in the flickering of the fluorescent lights, in the clacking and echoing footsteps down government corridors.
When she laid in bed at night in her empty apartment she would hear the sound of his screams. Books and frames falling and crashing on the floor as he pushed them off of the shelves in a desperate attempt to get away.
Eva tells herself, over and over, that it was necessary.
She had to abandon her sentiment because humanity could never survive on it. Humanity would only survive on hard decisions. The kind no one else would ever be willing to make. She built her entire identity on that principle and wore it like armor because she had no choice.
Her colleagues would do the weeping for her.
Billions of lives balanced against one reluctant scientist. It was the biggest gamble of her life.
Reports continue to arrive. Data and projections mostly, updates on the mission’s trajectory. She tried so hard to convince herself that Ryland Grace was no longer a man in those reports. He’s was a variable, a vessel carrying the hope of a dying species. That is how she has to see him. That is how she survives this.
She cannot afford to think of him as anything else.
But sometimes, just before she closes her eyes, she lets herself remember.
Blond hair. Blue eyes. She remembers the man who did everything he could to save them, who pleaded for her not to send him to his death. And she remembers the undeniable truth that she sent him there anyway.
It’s late at night.
Most of the people who worked in her building all went home already. Some nights it would just be her and a few of the security personnel. The lights in her office remain on. Harsh, overhead lighting that Ryland always complained about whenever he walked in.
‘Geez, it’s blinding in here… have you ever thought of getting one of those glowy ambiance lamps, or something?’
‘No. The bright light helps keep you awake.’
‘Or they could make your eyes sore…’
A small smile curves on her lips when she remembers. Another pang of guilt hits as the memory is interrupted by the sound of his screams again. Her smile is gone as soon as it came.
A single glass of wine sits within reach, untouched for long stretches before she remembers it exists and takes a sip, more out of habit than actually trying to indulge.
Paperwork fills the silence. Page after page, signature after signature, each one another thread tied off in the vast, questionably illegal web she managed to spin to make the launch possible. All the evidence of her misdeeds were out there on record somewhere, and she knew that sooner or later they would find her.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she already knows how this ends. She knew how it would end the moment she realized how high the stakes were. There had to be someone the world would crucify, and it certainly wouldn’t be those poor people they sent out into space to die.
She was prepared for all the court hearings and all the methodical dissections of every decision she ever made during her time on the task force. They will not care about the outcome… at least, not yet. It’ll take too long before Project Hail Mary actually yields results. They’ll care about process and laws, about the boundaries she stepped over… they’ll probably hammer her with crimes she didn’t even know she committed.
She signs another document.
She debates pouring herself another glass when the intercom to her office crackles to life.
“Miss Stratt, there’s uh, some guy out here who wants to see you?”
She sighs.
“Why say ‘some guy’ and not his name?”
“No, you know what? Let her see me. She’ll know exactly who I am!”
For a moment her breath gets stuck in her throat when she hears the stranger’s voice. The memories come crashing through her mind and for a split second, she feels like she was hallucinating. Maybe she’s just had too much wine.
“Send him up.”
“With all due respect, I don’t think that’s a good idea…”
That’s true. This madman could be a reporter, or someone who wanted to cause her harm. But she had a feeling, and she wanted to confirm it.
“Send him up.”
Click.
She waits for a few minutes. And then she hears footsteps from the hall… and it instantly disproves the thought in her head, because those footsteps definitely weren’t Grace’s. Grace would always walk quietly, head somewhere else. This person’s footsteps were loud and he sounded like he was striding even from far away. This was a total stranger with a similar voice, that’s all–
The door opens.
Eva feels like the breath is knocked out of her lungs when the man walks in.
Dirty blond hair. Blue eyes. Sort of like… if Ryland Grace was hit by a car several times. It was undeniably him.
“So you’re Eva Stratt,” The man says gruffly, slamming both hands on her desk. He looked exactly like Ryland, it was terrifying. It felt like watching a ghost haunt her in real life.
“You’re the crazy woman that sent my baby brother up into space. Let’s talk, yeah?”
She finds herself unable to speak a single word as he haphazardly pulls up a chair and spins it backwards. Sitting on it with his forearms over the backrest, he stares directly into her eyes, and she has to look away for once. Her, the woman who usually forces eye contact on people the moment she senses even a trace of fear or anxiety, couldn’t bring herself to look into his eyes for too long.
The man grins. He’s chewing… gum…? He was the polar opposite of Ryland in personality, so that helped a bit. But he resembled him far too much for comfort. They had the exact same bone structure but this man was sharp where Ryland was softer around the edges. Same eyes, too, that insanely familiar blue, but with none of Ryland’s sincerity or earnestness. This stranger’s eyes were glaring daggers into her soul.
His hair was lighter, kind of a bleached blond. Awfully messy, and not like Ryland’s was. His hair was untamed and Ryland’s was a bit… fluffier. For lack of a better word.
His shoulders slightly slouched and his weight seemed unevenly balanced. Different posture…
He rolled the gum between his teeth, eyes flicking over the room, then back to her face.
“Hey. Are you listening? I heard you’re supposed to be this big, scary boss lady who makes people shit their pants. Why can’t you look at me?” He taunts, snapping his fingers in front of her face. “Oh, right! Because you sent my twin brother up into space!” He exclaims.
“So aaaaalla this,” He drawls, gesturing to his own face, “Is probably freaking you out, huh?”
Ryland never told her he had a brother. A twin brother, at that.
“You probably did all that digging,” He goes on, pacing now, restless energy coiled up inside him. Compared to Ryland’s docile nature, this man was a firecracker.
“Background checks… the whole creepy we know what you ate for breakfast in third grade thing, and you somehow missed me? I’m guessing Ryland didn’t say anything.”
“He didn’t.”
She manages to speak for the first time.
“And she speaks!” He exclaims. “Finally! That’s all I came here to do.”
“You are… Ryland Grace’s twin brother.”
“Yeah,” he says flatly. “And before you ask, no, my brother and I do not work in the same field. Not even close.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m a stuntman. Hollywood, big blockbuster movies. You ever seen Metalstorm, directed by Jody Moreno?”
“No.”
“You have terrible taste.”
Same penchance for humor.
“Why are you here, Mr…?”
“Colt Seavers. Why am I here? Oh, I don’t know. Let me tell you a story! I was walking through set one day, minding my own business, when I saw a bunch of my crew crowded around the TV. I walk on over and watch. And I mean—hah, I don’t know what I was expecting, but it definitely wasn’t seeing my little brother’s face all over the national news!”
In the aftermath of the launch, the Petrova Task Force made a calculated decision to keep Ryland Grace’s identity buried, at least for as long as they could control the narrative.
The explosion had forced their hand, and suddenly the man sent to carry humanity’s last hope was not a decorated astronaut or a globally recognized expert, but a former schoolteacher with a background that no one would have found reassuring under normal circumstances. So they hid him. They did everything to redact him from records, they gave vague press briefings that said everything and nothing at once just to make sure nobody found out what they did.
For a while, it worked, until it didn’t. The leak hit like a detonation of its own.
Within hours, his name was everywhere, dragged across every major network. It was dissected by experts and politicians and thoroughly questioned by the public. People didn’t understand how he was even chosen. They doubted his qualifications and picked everything apart, including the mission itself.
Others were more unsettled by the implication that he wasn’t chosen at all, and that he had been coerced or outright forced onto that ship with no real say in the matter.
And perhaps most damning of all was the silence that had preceded the launch. They sent the Hail Mary off with no press coverage, so nobody could stop them. And people connected the dots very quickly.
“I know damn well my brother didn’t volunteer to be on that ship!” Colt yells at her again. “He used to throw up riding elevators when we were kids! You think a guy like that signs up to get strapped into a tin can and shot into space?! The hardest I’ve ever seen him cry was when I put spiders under his pillow!” He exclaims, throwing his hands in the air.
“There’s no way he went willingly,” He finishes, tone getting much more accusatory. “No way.”
Eva inhales. There’s a faint tightening at the edge of her jaw, but that too, goes away quickly.
There would be no easy way to say this, but she had to say it anyway.
“Your brother,” She starts, voice ice cold. “…was the only viable option.”
It was very deliberately not what he asked.
“You’re lying.”
What is it with these brothers and their inability to accept a fact once it was placed in front of them?
“I am not lying,” Eva says evenly. Colt lets out a sharp, disbelieving scoff, but she continues before he can interrupt—because this, at least, won’t be reduced to emotion. She was good at giving the facts.
“The mission required someone who could understand Astrophage at a functional level, not just theoretically. Your brother was already embedded in the research, and was the world’s leading authority on Astrophage biology. We could not just find a substitute for him. We did not have time to start over.”
He’s listening, it seems… but his finger was endlessly tapping on the backrest of the chair. Impatience, it seems. That, or he still didn’t believe her.
“The crew was not interchangeable,” Eva continues. “Each member was selected for a specific, non redundant expertise. And had there been a backup, he still would have been prioritized.”
A slight pause.
“A significant percentage of animals died while testing induced suspension. It was not survivable for most of the population.” She exhales. “Your brother carried a genetic marker that made long term coma survival viable.”
She watches as his finger stops tapping. Finally, he does something that resembles Ryland to some extent.
He rubs his nose. He looks over to the wall, and that’s when Eva sees that his eyes were glossing over.
“They’re saying he won’t come back.” He forces out, jaw tightening so hard that she could see his veins by his neck.
“Is this true.”
She briefly thinks back to the boat. Ryland empathizing with her, telling her he knows it wasn’t easy to ask people to die for the world. And her response has been that it was.
“Yes, it is.”
.
.
.
.
“Col? Are you home?”
Shut. Up.
“Hey man, I’m not leaving until you say something. I know you’re in there, the light’s on!”
Damn it, why did I leave the light on?
“Hey, don’t turn it off now! Come on, dude. Open up.”
Colt grumbles under his breath, muttering a string of curses. He rolls his wheelchair up to the door and angles his chair slightly to the side. One hand grabs the handle and pushes it down while the other stays on the wheel to keep himself steady. As the door cracks open, he pulls it toward him, then quickly pushes the wheel forward to roll through before it swings back. He hates, HATES how even opening the door felt like a workout.
“How many times have I told you to stop visiting me?”
Colt glares at his twin brother, who was standing at the doorway with his dumb yellow raincoat and his bike helmet still strapped to his head. He has two cups of coffee and a bag of what he presumes is food.
“A bunch of times. You look awful by the way. I’m coming in.”
Arguing with him was pointless.
“Oh… wow. You redecorated.” Ryland says, taking his bike helmet off. Pointing to the piles of takeout boxes that were overflowing in the bin. And the empty boxes of pizza scattered around. And the dirty laundry everywhere. Colt suddenly feels like pushing his brother off a cliff.
“Really. Is that what you came here for. You wanna be a nagging mother?” Colt says dryly. “Sorry I didn’t have time to clean up, mom, I kind of broke my spine in half a couple months ago in case you forgot.”
“You know that’s not what I was trying to say,” Ryland says patiently, pulling out some tupperwares from the bag he’d been carrying. “Also, don’t talk about mom like that, or she’s gonna haunt you.”
“I’m not scared of ghosts. What am I, twelve?”
“With how stubborn you are? Some of my middle schoolers are better behaved than you.”
Colt pretends not to look as Ryland restocks his fridge with food that wasn’t just easily microwavable. He sees vegetables in there. Some fruit, too.
“Those look expensive.” Colt mutters.
“Hm? Oh, the produce? No, no, it’s fine.”
Of course it was fine because it was for him. Colt knew that his brother lived in a shoebox apartment and also had a diet of take-out and instant ramen. He was doing this solely for him.
“....How much are they paying you at that middle school.”
“Pft. Well, I’m not making a million dollars, but it’s enough.”
“You were doing better at that big fancy science job.”
“Yeah, well, the people back at my big fancy science job don’t like me very much now.”
“What’d you do again?”
“Iiii… called someone a staggering waste of carbon at a UNESCO conference in Denmark.”
“Shit. I mean… did he deserve it?”
“Kinda. I got fired for it, though.”
“Probably the ballsiest thing you’ve ever done in your life, though. Right?”
Ryland smiles to himself. There he was. Colt knew he found some sort of joy in telling people off, even if he came off as timid to most people. Colt couldn’t help but feel a jolt of pride whenever he saw him stand up for himself like that, after years of being the one to defend him from bullies growing up.
He didn’t really understand his brother’s job. Ryland didn’t understand his, either. That was fine. They’ve always lived in two different worlds, ever since they were children. Colt would be outside scraping his knees and eating dirt and Ryland would be staying in, sick from the eighth cold he got that week, working on his science fair projects. They were polar opposites, but that didn’t make them any less close.
Which is why… when his accident happened, his brother was the first person the hospital called. And Ryland, idiot that he was, had panicked so hard heading to the hospital that he almost got into a car accident himself.
Ryland worked himself to the bone helping him. He was showing up before sunrise and leaving long after visiting hours had ended, dragging himself through shifts on pure adrenaline and caffeine. He wasn’t built for hospitals. Colt was, of course. He’s suffered through accidental burns and some fractures here and there, so the hospital was essentially his second home at that point.
But Ryland wasn’t used to it, and he had been so scared. Colt could smell his fear from a mile away, and Ryland told him that the second he found out it was a spinal fracture he almost passed out. Colt made fun of him extra hard for that.
“I swear,” Ryland muttered once, sitting beside the bed, eyes bloodshot from too many nights without sleep, “if you die, I am going to be so unbelievably mad at you.”
The easy part was laying in that hospital bed, sleeping the pain off and recovering. The hard part was actually leaving the hospital and healing in his own home. He refused to see Jody for a long time after that.
Ryland had been the one to take care of him. He was the one who saw him at his ugliest, who picked him up even when he was yelling and screaming from how agonizing his physical therapy was.
“It’s okay, I got you, I got you.” He had said, holding him after what had been the fifth attempt of trying to get him to stand long enough so he could transfer to a wheelchair. He wonders if the Ryland who was a biologist could be as patient as the Ryland who taught middle school students.
Colt did everything to piss him off. He was mad at the world, he was mad at himself, he couldn’t look his girlfriend in the eye let alone speak to her. He wanted to hole himself away for the rest of eternity, and if it weren’t for Ryland dragging him out of that hell, he wouldn’t be here today. Deep down, even if Ryland’s visits annoyed him, he knew that he owed him the world.
“You should fill your fridge instead of mine. I can get my groceries just fine.”
“You say this everytime, Col, and everytime I always tell you that it’s alright. I don’t mind. Did you check out that recipe book I gave you?”
“No. I used the internet. Who the hell has cookbooks nowadays?”
“Obviously I do! The internet has ads and sometimes you don’t even know what you’re cooking anymore!”
“That just makes you shit at following instructions.”
“You’re talking to a teacher. Say that again.”
“Teacher Ryland, it makes you shit at following instructions.”
.
.
.
Colt runs his hand through his hair. His shoulders start shaking and he gets up, the chair legs scraping harshly on the floor as he paces the room.
It was too hard to accept. He keeps thinking back to that day in the kitchen. Ryland smiling while holding a small sealed bag of mixed vegetables. His bike helmet on the kitchen counter. His stupid smile and his laugh.
He would never see him again.
Fuck.
He would never see him again.
He feels sick to his stomach.
“So he’s dead.
You killed my brother.”