Chapter Text
Eva Stratt awoke with a gasp that was muffled by whatever was obstructing her mouth. Foreign sensations flooded her body as she desperately looked around to find the source of her discomfort. She tried to swallow down a gulp and realized with horror that there was a tube down her throat.
“Movement detected.” A computer beeped near her and mechanical arms methodically started pulling out the wires attached to her suit.
A murmuring human voice was talking faintly near her but Eva could not see another person in the room. She remembered that Commander Yao should be waking up now too, according to her calculations. But the voice she was hearing was not Yao’s.
A blurry figure came into her field of vision as a man crouched over her. The man was wearing the same coma suit as her. His hair was long and unkempt and he appeared to be in a state of delirious confusion. Stratt tried blinking away the bleariness of her vision.
“Thank God,” the man was gasping. “You’re awake.”
His voice was ragged and raspy but Eva recognized it now and her heart sank into her chest. Dr. Ryland Grace was alive and on board the Hail Mary. Fuck…why was he here? Was this a bad dream? A nightmare as a result of a decade-long coma?
Eva felt herself shrink away from him.
“No, it’s okay,” Grace reached out before pulling away as well. “I won’t hurt you.”
His face contorted in confusion and hurt as Eva continued to shrink away from him. Her mind searched for a reasonable explanation but she came back to the same conclusion every time.
Eva Stratt was awake and for some reason, so was Ryland Grace. From what she could remember, he was supposed to be safely back in San Francisco, teaching his class at Glover Cleveland Middle School.
Grace held his hands up. “I’ll help you get out of this machine if you can trust me for a minute,” he was speaking gently to her as if she was going to scurry away from him.
When had she ever been able to escape Ryland Grace? Stratt nodded slowly and watched as he stepped up to the machine that was connected to the tubes on her body.
“I’ll first remove the tube from your mouth,” he was talking gently. “I’m sorry but it’s not going to be comfortable. I was panicking a little when I removed mine and it was painful as heck but I’ll do my best to be gentle with yours.”
Eva eyed him as he typed into the panel on the machine. A few beeps sounded off and the tiny lights attached to the various parts of her suit went off.
“I’ll be as quick and careful as I can but it’s going to be uncomfortable.”
Grace reached for the tube that was in her mouth and waited for her confirmation. Eva gave a slight nod and then the tube was being extracted from her body. Immediately she felt her gag reflex activated and blindly reached for the tube. Grace’s large hand pushed her back down onto the table as the end of the tube left her body. Eva wheezed and gagged on nothing, her body adjusting to finally being free of the tube.
Eva continued to gasp in the filtered air of the Hail Mary as she watched Grace set the tube down by the machine.
“Why” Eva rasped. Her throat was raw and unused to the sensation of talking. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Why did they send you?” She rasped.
Grace’s eyebrows shot up as he turned to look at her. “Who sent me?”
Eva frowned and rubbed at her throat. It would take a few days for it to return to normal. According to her calculations, it had been about 13 years since she was put in a medically induced coma. Being hooked up to machines for that long would cause her to feel this discomfort for a few days at least.
“They didn’t tell me that they were sending you,” Eva clarified.
“Who sent me?” Grace tilted his head and stared at her. “You know me?”
Eva felt the floor drop from under her feet as she stared at him. Grace had amnesia. She remembered a conversation with a scientist, a decade ago now, about the dangerous side effects of the coma. She had done her best to make sure she would remember everything she needed to know upon her arrival to Tau Ceti. What would be the use of arriving there to do a job she didn’t remember? So why did Grace have such a strong reaction if she could still remember her past?
Stratt quickly sorted her memories of the past few days and weeks before the coma but couldn’t find a reason why Grace would be here with her. He had refused to go on the mission. Had begged her with tears running down his face that he wasn’t brave enough to kill himself. She hadn’t been able to bear the fear in his face and voice and had taken pity on him. Sent herself in his place. She figured that with Yao and Ilyukhina, they were more than qualified for the mission. Had something changed that she didn’t remember? Maybe the coma had affected her memories more than she was aware of.
Eva sat up on the table and started removing the rest of the cables that were attached to the suit she was wearing.
“Yes, Grace, I know you. You’re part of the mission to solve the Petrova problem.”
She glanced at him and saw he had furrowed brows again.
“I’m Eva Stratt,” she clarified, “I’m in charge of the mission to save the stars.”
“The Petrova problem?” He tilted his head in a calculated way that Stratt had seen hundreds of times.
“Our sun is dying. I’m going to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Ryland Grace stepped back as Eva lowered herself to the ground. She could feel the muscles of her legs flexing more than usual as she lowered her weight to the ground but she still flailed as she struggled to balance herself. Grace’s fingers twitched to help balance her but he instead took a step back to give her room.
The machines on the ship had been pulsing at her muscles to keep them from atrophying and had even defined her muscles. Stratt took a peak at Grace and confirmed that it was the same for him. They were wearing the same coma suits but the way his arms and legs stretched out the fabric of the suit confirmed that he had considerably more muscles than before. Inexplicably, Stratt briefly mourned his lithe and diminutive body but she shot that thought down immediately. It would do no good to linger on thoughts that didn’t affect the mission now.
“Is that my job too, then?” Grace asked genuinely.
“Your job is to do what I say,” Stratt responded without thinking. Stratt froze and glanced up to gouge his expression but Grace had a faraway glazed look on his face like he was remembering a distant memory.
He nodded and scratched at his neck. “Yes, I think I remember that.”
Stratt attempted a smile, “Good,”
Stratt searched the room for a sign of the other crew.
“Have Yao and Ilyukhina woken up yet?”
Grace furrowed his brows. Oh no. “There’s no one else on the ship,” Grace said.
Stratt’s shoulders slumped down and she gripped the edge of the table to keep herself upright.
“What?”
She walked to the door and looked in the other coma chambers. They were empty. Someone had sabotaged her mission and had gone against her orders. Her two astronauts, trained and ready to give their life for the mission, had been replaced by a coward with amnesia who would buckle under the lightest pressure. The success of the mission was solely down to her and Grace. Fuck.