Chapter Text
Grace was a scientist at heart and believed most things had a reasonable explanation, however he was also vividly aware that sometimes that reasonable explanation could be boiled down to essentially luck.
He was beginning to wonder if he should maybe ask the Eridians to synthesize some four leaf clovers or something. Because the situation he was in now, was beyond ridiculous.
It would probably be pretty high up there on the list of "worst and weirdest moments", and that was counting everything up to, and including: every time he and Rocky had nearly died before, during, and after the Fishing Incident. The debacle of trying not to starve to death before the Eridians could figure out how to synthesize him food. Oh yeah, and also the whole being non-consensually shot into space on a suicide mission bit that made all the rest of it possible.
His current predicament was just stupid enough that it earned a place among highlights such as those.
He'd been working on some "Big Science" in a lab with Rocky, when there'd been what felt like an earthquake (an Eridquake?) some chemicals had been spilled, he'd inhaled fumes not meant for human lungs, and fallen on some broken glass—from a cabinet not the chemical containers—and to make a long story short — He'd have a few more scars on his bad arm to go along with the ammonia burns and Rocky's handprint. Also—Far worse in Grace's opinion—he had lost his voice! Temporarily though, thankfully. According to both Armando and the Eridian in charge of his health and medical care—Doc-his voice would heal given time, rest, and plenty of water.
Rocky had made one singular joke about how that was going to be difficult because Grace usually talked nonstop. It had taken all of five minutes for Rocky to decide that Grace not being able to respond with any voice at all, was kind of a nightmare actually, it was 'BAD BAD BAD'. He'd scuttled off promising to make him the best, lightest, and most intuitive, AAC device ever made, to use until his voice was healed. Grace couldn't help but feel the tiniest bit smug that he now had proof that Rocky liked his nonstop chatter enough to go above and beyond to facilitate it. As much as he liked to tease, that little rock was the best friend in any solar system.
Adrian had come by a little after Rocky left both to visit, and also to update Grace on the news of the Eridquake/earthquake. It turned out that it actually wasn't a quake of any sort. It was an almost explosion instead! In another one of the labs where some of the Eridian scientists were doing some questionable experiments surrounding the idea of wormholes. They'd somehow managed to create a device that ripped a vortex-like wormhole open in the middle of the lab-space, and there'd been a lot of chaos involving things from either side getting pulled in and spit back out again. They'd managed to get all of the Eridian scientists on the correct side of the vortex and then slammed it shut by cutting off all power to the machine that had caused it.
The issue was—there was quite a bit from the other side of the wormhole that was also on the Eridian side when they slammed it closed.
Things like questionably crafted submarines, a truly disturbing amount of blood, and an equally questionable spaceship smaller than the Mary that looked like it was on its last legs even before the wormhole travel.
Even More unbelievably— there'd been people (Human as far as they could tell so far) inside all of the crafts. They'd found a person each in the Submarines and two more on the ship. All injured in various and wildly disturbing ways, they were currently being treated and stabilized in the section of the Lab Grace had stayed in during those initial few months on Erid where he'd needed constant medical attention.
Trying to figure out what to do with the new probably human individuals they'd accidentally stolen from god-only-knows-where through a wormhole, was an all-hands-on-deck kind of situation. They hoped that Grace would be able to help keep everybody calm once the accidental kidnapee's woke up.
He wanted to see just about everything right then, but Adrian managed to bully him into agreeing to sleep and go tomorrow once Rocky had finished crafting the AAC device for him to use.
One of the Eridians on the medical staff had watched Grace sleep, and then skittered off to presumably alert Rocky once he'd woken up. He didn't know how long he'd slept, the little guy had left too quickly for him to ask, but he assumed it must have been a long time because he felt the kind of groggy you only felt after oversleeping.
He was sat on the raised bed, sipping from the cup of water he'd been given, when the thing that put this day on the list of "worst luck EVER moments" happened.
The door to his room opened, and what slipped inside was not Rocky. It was not Doc, or Adrian, or any Eridian at all actually.
It was four entire human beings!
Grace nearly choked on his water, as the four filed in like they were planning to hide out, closing the door with careful movements like that would help when the beings they were hiding from could hear their hearts beating in their chests.
Grace's mind went blank, and he was still panicking about what to do when one of the men noticed him and began frantically tugging at the woman's shoulder to get her to turn away from the door. "Ava" the man hissed, drawing not only the woman's attention but that of the other two men as well.
Abruptly he was faced with four human faces staring him down, and—yeah this was a terrible moment to be literally incapable of talking. He was truly mediocre at charades and he somehow doubted that the people his alien friends had just accidentally abducted via wormhole mishap were going to be in a terribly patient mood.