Work Text:
“He’s running.”
Are the last words Ryland hears Stratt say into her phone as the doors to her office slide shut behind him. Men in suits slam it open seconds later, bursting out into the hallway behind him.
Chasing him.
Ryland ducks left, head spinning. Heart racing. Suddenly realizing, this is about his life being on the line. It should feel like one of those old stupid spy movies where bullets ring out over his ears or supervillains wear expensive gold watches and try to blow him up. But it doesn’t.
It’s just a case of someone he thought was a friend betraying him. Stratt was going to sedate him and put him on the Hail Mary, his wants and desires be damned. He said no, and they didn’t care. Planned for it, even.
He doesn’t want to die. They can’t make that choice for him.
So he runs.
Scientists and security alike yell after him. He isn’t listening.
The office is a maze of conference rooms and floors, but Ryland has spent enough time here in the previous months to know it well. He knows they’ll likely be at the elevators and stairwells but they won’t expect him to take the side stairs by the break room. They don’t know everything about him.
So he does. He makes an abrupt change of course, hands burning as he slides them over rails and slams them into the break room doors.
He startles a woman who spills coffee all down the front of her shirt, cursing at him. He only spares the coffee a passing thought as he darts through the space and into the stairs. He won’t have coffee for a long time if he's in a coma on the Hail Mary. Can’t have any if he dies out there.
“Grace—“ shouts echo from behind him as he takes the stairs three at a time. They’re all on Stratt’s orders. Stratt who didn’t care what Ryland wanted. More noble than he, willing to sacrifice what she doesn’t have.
Damn her. Damn them all. Ryland has already given them everything he has. Sacrificed it all, and they still want more. They want his life.
His body shakes with adrenaline as he reaches the final landing and escapes the building. No alarms sound behind him. No compound-wide lockdown procedures. And in a way, that’s much worse. Because Stratt knows she can send a few men after him without making much of a fuss and no one will care. No one will care because they would go. Would offer their lives to save Earth in a way that Ryland just can’t. He’s not brave enough. He’ll fail, just like he always has—
“GRACE!”
Ryland curses, putting as much distance as he can between himself and the compound building. His feet pound against the sidewalk and then the grass, trying to stay off path to get them off his trail.
This is ridiculous. And Ryland wants to turn around and express his anger. At Stratt. At all of them. But he can’t.
“Hey—Grace. Ryland! Hold on!”
Ryland slows, less for the familiar voice and more because of the impassable chain-link fence in front of him. Barbed wire curls around the top, enough to skin him dry before he even makes it over.
He whirls around, hoping—praying, for a miracle in the newcomer.
Carl.
He’s holding his hands up placatingly, face twisted in worry. Ryland pants, senses screaming at him to scale the fence while he still can.
But it’s just him and Carl. And maybe his friend will help. If he can explain the situation…make him understand.
“They’re going to take me.” he exhales. “They don’t care—I, I said no. But Stratt is going to make me go anyways. On the Hail Mary. You gotta help me buddy.”
“You…you said no?” Carl asks, looking disappointed.
“Yeah.” Ryland gulps. “And they didn’t care. I don’t want to go. I can’t do it, they don’t understand I just can’t do it. I—“
“Ryland—“ Carl says again, taking a step closer. “Hey, just breathe.”
Ryland does. Takes in a huge breath, then freezes.
Carl is too calm. Isn’t even phased by the news Ryland shared.
Of course not, the rational side of his head says. That’s because Carl is with them.
The agent must see realization dawning on Ryland’s sweat covered face because he immediately backtracks.
“No, it’s okay,” he says. “I’ll help you. You can trust me. You’re going to be okay, Ryland.”
The building doors burst open and more men in black suits come spilling out. All looking for him. All concentrated on what they think is their last ditch effort to save Earth.
Only Ryland knows the truth. That he’ll mess this up. Break it. Fail.
Panting, Ryland scans his vicinity for something, anything that can help. The fence? His phone? A weapon?
—a weapon.
Before Carl can move or react, Ryland dives at him. The man cries out, moving back, but not before his fingers scramble for purchase around the sidearm resting in a back holster.
Then he’s stepping back, holding the gleaming black thing in front of him like he knows what he’s doing.
Because what the hell is he doing?
Everyone freezes. The men chasing him. Carl. Even Ryland.
The gun is heavier than he expected.
His hands shake so badly the barrel wavers between them, never settling on anyone for more than a second. Ryland has held lab equipment with more confidence than this. He doesn’t even know if it has a safety or how to turn it off. He is ninety percent sure he’s holding it wrong.
Carl goes very still.
“Okay,” he says carefully, like Ryland is a wild animal that might bolt. Or bite. “Okay. Let’s just—let’s slow down.”
“I am slow,” Ryland snaps, voice cracking. “I’m extremely slow, actually, that’s part of the problem.”
No one laughs.
From somewhere behind Carl, Ryland hears one of the suited men speaking quietly into an earpiece. Calling for backup. Calling for sedation. Calling Stratt.
His stomach turns.
“Don’t,” he says, louder this time. “Don’t come any closer.”
“Ryland,” Carl says, softer now, “you don’t want to do this.”
“Do what?” Ryland growls. “Get kidnapped by all the governments on Earth? Because I feel like that part’s already happening.”
Another step.
Ryland jerks the gun upward.
Carl stops.
His own pulse is so loud Ryland can barely hear himself think. His finger hovers near the trigger, the action feeling like the first in a list of cosmic mistakes.
He doesn’t want to shoot anyone. Gosh, he especially doesn’t want to hurt Carl. But if he lowers the gun, this is over.
They’ll take him. They’ll strap him down, drug him, and when he wakes up he’ll be millions of miles from Earth with no way back.
No choice.
No no no—
“Ryland,” Carl says, and there’s something awful in his voice now. Pity. “You’re not going to shoot anybody.”
It lands like a slap. Carl is right. Of course he’s right. Ryland isn’t a killer. He’s a scientist, but…
He looks at the gun.
Looks at Carl. The men lined up behind him.
Looks at the fence at his back.
There’s no good options. No miracle exits or science solution where everyone claps and he gets to go home.
Just him. Cornered.
Terrified.
“I know,” he says, voice breaking. “I’m really, really not.”
And before he can think better of it—
He points the gun down.
Carl’s face twists.
“Ryland—“
The shot is deafening, louder than the explosion that injured everyone else and got him into this mess.
For a split second, Ryland feels nothing at all. The the pain tears through his foot like the planet itself is splitting in two underneath him.
He screams.
The gun clatters uselessly to the pavement as his leg gives out and he hits the ground hard, hands dragging in the grass, vision exploding white-hot.
That—
—that had been a catastrophically bad idea.
He’s vaguely aware that someone takes the gun. Moving it somewhere beyond his comprehension. Other hands swarm him, worried faces. More pity.
“You can’t—“ he gasps. “You can’t take me now. You can’t. You can’t. I’m injured. You can’t…”
Over and over. A pathetic mantra to ward off the panic that’s barely receding in his gut. Tears fall against his cheek. Half from pain. Half from fear.
“You can’t make me go.” he shudders against someone’s hands as they help him lie in the grass. He catches a glimpse of pooling red coming through his shoe. It hurts. He groans.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
“Dr. Grace,” a sharp voice sears through the commotion. Stratt. She kneels next to him in the grass, looking him over in worry. Her expression morphs from confusion, to concern, to cold all in one go, and Ryland’s chest goes cold before she opens her mouth.
“Thank you for proving you are medically capable of surviving the mission.” she says, simply. “This changes nothing.”
Choking on tears, Ryland scrambles to push himself up from the grass. Pushes hands away, the first aid officers who have just arrived, and tries to crawl away. He gets about a foot before someone stands and blocks his path.
Stratt.
“You can’t do this to me—“ he sobs, foot laced through with agony. “Please—just let me go.”
“I can’t do that Grace,” and there’s a note of sorrow in her voice, like she’s the one sacrificing everything for a suicide mission. “We’ll treat your injuries then induce your medical coma early. You will be under extreme supervision as you are treated so as to not cause further harm to anyone.”
She pauses, scanning him over.
“Or yourself.”
Ryland collapses, arms giving out under him.
Grass presses damp and cold against his cheek. Someone is still talking—Carl maybe, or one of the medics—but the words blur together under the roaring in his ears.
His foot burns like it’s been fed to a woodchipper.
His chest somehow hurts worse.
All of this—running, stealing a gun, shooting himself like the dumbest man alive—and he still lost.
Strong hands roll him gently onto his back. Someone cuts open his ruined shoe. Fresh pain lances through him so violently he nearly throws up.
He makes a sound he’ll pretend later never happened.
Above him, the sky is offensively blue.
The sun is dying.
Soon people will too.
And Ryland Grace is lying in the grass, for what might be the last time, because he shot himself in the foot trying to avoid being kidnapped into space.
Something cold slides into his arm.
He jerks.
“No.”
A medic avoids his eyes.
“Just something for the pain, Dr. Grace.”
“No—no, don’t—”
But he already feels it.
That awful softness creeping into his veins. Heavy. Warm. Wrong.
Sedative.
Of course.
Of course they wouldn’t risk him trying again.
Panic surges sharp and desperate.
He fights, or tries to, but it’s like trying to swim through wet cement. His limbs won’t listen. His words slur before they even leave his mouth.
“Please,” he whispers, because dignity apparently packed its bags an hour ago. “Please don’t do this.”
For one second, Stratt’s face cracks.
Just slightly.
Enough to show she hates this.
Not enough to stop.
“You are the right man for this mission,” she says quietly.
Ryland lets out something between a laugh and a sob.
“…mm not…,” he murmurs, vision blurring at the edges. “You jsst…can’t see it yet…”
Darkness pulls at him, thick and inevitable.
The last thing he feels is someone lifting him onto a stretcher.
The last thing he thinks is that he never even got to say goodbye.
Then everything disappears.