Chapter Text
The yawning gap of space started back at Ryland. Terror ran down his back like ice cubes. Just a few minutes ago he was cleanining out the last of the Taumobea from the fuel lines. He had been thinking about a strange feeling he'd had, growing stronger with every EVA Ryland went on.
He was being watched.
Now that Ryland had spend days out in the void of space salvaging the Hail Mary's fuel, that feeling was unavoidable. He chalked it up to nerves, isolation, and the general stress of saving two planets from doom. And him and Rocky almost dying.
But that was until now. Just a moment ago, he saw something move out of the corner of his eye. It was like a star shifted, but it was more like the empty space itself moved…
There was something out there! It moved, the void of space itself moved! And, even freakier, the stars seemed to realign into a distorted face. And it looked at him.
"Rocky." His voice shook.
"Grace. What is up?" Rocky said over the comms. For a moment, Grace felt pride at Rocky using slang correctly.
"There's something out here."
"What Grace friend mean, question?!" The feed cut out. The thing's looking at him. Ginormous. The starry face split open, and distant stars became sharp teeth, a gas cloud (barely visible) seemed to operate as the thing's eyes.
"What do you want?" Ryland yelled. He tried to move, but terror kept his body frozen. Or maybe it was the thing somehow stopping him.
It looked at him. It reached out a hand that was bigger than the ship, reached around and yanked him, popping the tether right off. The smile widened. Ryland's pretty sure he just pissed himself. His breath came in short gasps.
It peered at him. He didn't want this. He didn't want to die. What the fuck was this thing? Ryland wished he were on Earth, feeling the sun on his skin, teaching his kids, cracking jokes with his coworkers on the Petrova project.
Everything was so cold out here. He wanted to go home. He didn't want to die. The sudden longing for Earth was so strong in him. The entitity seemed too understand. Ryland knew it could read his mind. He wanted all this pain and loneliness to go away. It understood his pain, felt it very deeply. It wanted to fix it. He knew that, somehow.
The entity unhinged its jaw and ate him.
Reality unwind around him. Time lurched forward and backward, sloshing like the ocean. Grace felt every moment in his life - his past, the present, his future - he experienced it all lightning fast. It came undone.
His body came apart. Brain splitting, ears bleeding, myelin sheaths straining to protect his nerves. Every one of his cells screamed. A loud slurping sound gave way to a sharp pop, then it all slipped into blissful silence.