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Since gaining back his life, Colt had spent a good part of his time thinking how to approach Ryland. When he broke his back, they had a pretty ugly fight. A screaming match that was dramatic enough to compete with the scenes Colt has seen in movies. Ryland tried so hard to be there for him, changing his phone number wasn’t enough to keep him away. One day Ryland knocked on his door and offered to help him find a job, pay for his physical therapy. He offered to help him settle down and build a new and stable life. Colt told him that he didn’t need help building an unhappy life like Ryland had after being kicked out of the scientific community. Ryland pushed some more, called him delusional and his dream job an unnecessary risk, and Colt told him he had enough with trying to cope with his failures to deal with Ryland’s failures too like he always had. Then they entered the “who disappointed our parents the most” debate and it all went off the rails.
Ryland left and they didn’t speak again. Colt wasn’t even aware if Ryland knew about him faking his death at one point. So when Ryland’s name appeared on the screen of his phone, of course it took him a couple of seconds to react.
Colt was in Jody’s office, trying to help her check some dialogues for her upcoming new project, when the phone rang. He didn’t even know Ryland had registered his contact on it the last time they saw each other, when his brother demanded to let him have his new number and snatched the device out of his pocket. By Jody’s look, Colt knew he had lost at least three shades of color, fear overwhelming him the same way it did when he had to build up the courage to talk to her when they were on bad terms.
“It’s been a while, maybe this is your clue,” she told him, putting a hand on his shoulder.
Colt took a deep breath, Jody left the room, and before the call was sent to voicemail, he picked it up. Jumping off a cliff was easier than this.
“Hey-” he didn’t truly know what to say, he was just trying to break the ice, but was interrupted by the other end of the line.
“Colt! You need to help me! Please!” Ryland was out of breath, running, by the sound of it, and very clearly panicking.
“What? What is going on?”
“Please, Colt! I don’t wanna go! I don’t wanna die!”
“Hey, you are not going to die. Where are you?” Colt tried to sound convincing and calm, however he wasn’t sure he succeeded because Jody stormed inside the office as soon as he finished his sentence.
Ryland mumbled a state, "military facility” and the name of a project Colt didn’t really catch because of the wrestle that interrupted his brother. Then all he could hear was the screaming of his name and “I have a brother” until the call was ended from Ryland’s end.
Colt lost his mind the moment after, trying to call back, telling Jody that he didn’t know what was happening to Ryland, then calling the police. When the police asked when his brother had disappeared, Colt had to call Ryland’s school, because those were the only people from Ryland’s life he knew of. They told him Ryland had quit months ago to work on an international project to save the sun from dying. Colt had to pause in the middle of his panic attack to ask Jody to explain to him what the fuck they were talking about, because he though the news about the Earth colding down were exaggerations and fake news. Ryland used to explain scientific news to him, so he never bothered keeping up with them, even after becoming a-meant-to-be-responsible adult.
They called lawyers, got cops involved, the next day every worker of the film industry was aware and spreading the word about a stunt’s disappeared brother. They tried to find where these people were operating, until finally someone knocked at their door one day, shoving a government identification card into their face.
“Colt Seavers?”
“Who are you?” Jody asked, too behind Colt to actually read the ID.
“My name is Carl.”
“Carl what?” she insisted.
“Just Carl. I am here representing the government. We got word that you are looking for your brother,” Colt stayed stunned for a moment.
“You know where he is?”
“Yes, I am here to take you with me so you can see him.”
He packed a change of clothes in a blink and got in the car faster than it took him to comprehend Carl wasn’t letting Jody come with them. “It’s classified” and "strict orders” were thrown around until Colt got out of the car, kissed Jody and begged her to stay behind while both of them kept looking out for Ryland.
Once in the car, Colt counted every second of the ride until he got lost in the hours. It was long, they made the fewest stops possible, and Carl was insanely quiet. He only fed Colt with Sour Skittles when he started asking questions. It took Colt only two hours to realize the candies were the opening to the conversation he had been looking for.
“These are Ryland’s favorites.”
“I know,” was Carl’s simple answer.
“You two are friends?” Carl took his eyes off the road just enough time to let Colt know it was complicated.
“We worked together. Went shopping once, he bought Skittles for the entire team,” that was maybe the most Ryland thing he had heard in a while.
“So you all get along pretty well?”
“Dr. Grace is a good man.”
Then why the hell was he being chased down during that phone call? Why did Ryland think that Colt, out of all people, was the only one that could help him out on this one, when he befriended a literal security guard?
“Yeah, he is,” Colt mumbled after drifting off for a while, because he wasn’t physically capable of shutting up or because he started feeling a little bit guilty over the fact that this random man felt the need to remind Colt that Ryland Grace was a good man.
Colt knew better, he was the twin brother. Ryland was a good person, for sure, but he also was petty, a coward, sometimes mean, and very pathetic. These people couldn’t know that loser better than him.
“You should be proud of him,” Carl added then, and Colt just knew there was a little bit of spite in it.
Carl sounded like someone who was proud of his brother, but there was something in his eyes Colt couldn’t name. It would be heartwarming if this man didn’t refuse to answer any question regarding Ryland’s whereabouts.
They arrived at a place far away from any other trace of human presence. They traversed a ton of security fences, and even when they were already inside one of the buildings, it felt like they kept traveling miles. They also walked around pretty quickly, as if Carl didn’t want him to see anything, or perhaps he didn’t want anyone to see Colt. He focused on the man once again when he knocked on one of the many doors before opening it for him to get in.
A redheaded woman was standing behind a desk, cup of coffee in hand, tired eyes meeting his.
“Ma’am, this is Colt Seavers,” Carl said, and the woman put the coffee down while she analysed him from head to foot, before contouring the desk and greeting him with a hand shake.
“You are Dr. Grace’s brother.”
“Hard to miss,” Colt replied with a tone, pointing at his face, as if this clearly high ranked person who was obviously important around here was also dumb.
“It was hard to get to you, actually, as you two don’t share the same last name, and you were presumably dead for a while.”
“I took our mother’s maiden name for my job. My birth name is Colt Grace,” he didn’t comment on the presumed death part, and he didn’t elaborate either.
When explaining his change of name, he usually made a joke about how Grace sounded too soft for a stuntman, about how that would give too much credit to luck or God, about how his brother turned their last name into a nerdish name, about how he just wanted to sound cooler than his twin. When explaining his change of name, he used to share about his life and Ryland. But these people didn’t seem to care about Ryland, because otherwise they would have already told him why his brother called him crying for his life.
“And you have not had any type of contact with Dr. Grace for more than a year.”
The way everybody kept calling Ryland “Dr. Grace” was making Colt start to feel he had missed something big. As if no one here knew Ryland, or perhaps it was him the one that didn’t know who his brother was anymore but these people, strangers that did something strange to Ryland, did.
“We had a fight, family stuff. Where is he now?”
The woman, Eva Stratt she later clarified, gestured for him to follow her, Carl was at their tails. As they walked, they crossed various people. Nobody really stared at Colt for longer than a couple of seconds, which either meant they thought he was Ryland or they didn’t care, which was very unlikely in a place like this. His suspicions were confirmed when a woman, grinning wide and with a camera in hand, approached them.
“Hello, Dr. Grace!”
“Ilyukhina, this is Dr. Grace’s brother, Colt Seavers,” Stratt answered for him, not really willing to stop chatting, as she kept walking.
“Brother?” Ilyukhina asked, and Colt felt suddenly scrutinized. “I didn’t know he had a brother. Why didn’t you come here sooner? We had our families gathering some weeks ago…”
“We would have liked to contact him sooner, but we weren’t aware of his existence.”
The fact that Ryland had never mentioned him hurt, but Colt couldn’t hold any grudge, because until that phone call, Jody and his oldest friends were the only people aware of him having a twin brother. Ryland only visited some sets at the start of Colt’s career, claiming that watching him being hit by a car was hilarious, but then his academic career ended and he refused to keep visiting. Colt always supposed it was some kind of jealousy or self esteem issues, they had spent their whole lives being compared after all, but they never talked about it. Colt also never dared introducing him to his friends in fear of his people not getting along with a nerd like Ryland, who didn’t have tons of smarty friends either.
After life changing incidents, whether academic or health related, both of them tended to drift away from one another. Or at least that’s what Colt told himself when he realized that people that had known him for years didn’t know he had a twin. He scratched his neck, suddenly shameful.
“Well, smile for the camera then!”
“Wha-?” Colt didn’t have time to even lower his hand when the flash of the camera Ilyukhina held blinded him. “What’s that for?”
“Just creating memories, space can feel pretty lonely. Having stuff to remember Earth is good” she was an astronaut then.
“You want a picture of me to take with you to space?”
“Oh, not for me. Dr. Grace would surely appreciate it.”
Colt couldn’t find any word to answer that. He turned to look at Stratt, who was already halfway gone down the hallway. She sighed, then nodded, and she dismissed Ilyukhina in a rather not discreet way. Carl put a hand on his back to make him keep walking, but Colt couldn’t put his mind to it.
Stratt started explaining what Project Hail Mary was and how Dr. Grace got involved in it. From his no-water thesis to his dumbass twin becoming the world leading expert on the alien life form that is eating the sun. She stopped in front of a door from the most hospital-like side of this enormous place. Colt assumed she wanted to establish some rules before getting in but he needed to open his mouth because the current situation was too much to digest.
“So, what you are trying to tell me is that my brother, Ryland Grace, who used to throw up in the merry-go-round and cry while climbing trees, signed up to go to space?”
Ryland very rarely tried to climb trees when they were children, but he used to cry when Colt was climbing too high, stressed out of his mind at the possibility of his brother falling. Stratt at least had the decency to frown.
“That’s precisely why your brother asked us to induce him in the coma before lunch, and not after like the pilot and the engineer that are going with him.”
Colt’s stomach did a twist, and without asking further questions he opened the door and stormed inside. His brother was lying in a hospital bed, unconscious, with tons of cables and tubes getting inside and out his body. He looked almost dead, not peaceful, but drained of any form of life besides the rising and falling of his chest. Comatose, he supposed, was the correct word to describe him.
“What have you done to him?” Colt hated the way his voice sounded shaky.
“He will travel light years away from Earth, to the only star that isn’t being killed by the astrophage.”
“He told me he didn’t want to go-”
“We talked him through after he ended your call.”
“He didn’t hang up-” his voice cracked, Stratt kept up with her explanation.
She talked about how their scientists died, how there was not enough time to find someone else, how they would have to accelerate global warming to try and save some time for humanity. She talked about a gene that would allow Dr. Grace to be the only survivor of this travel while all Colt could think about was eight years old Ryland tucked in bed because of the flu, sick pale but at the same time febrile blushed, waving at Colt who would just look at him from the door frame of the bedroom they normally shared because their parents didn’t want him to catch the flu too. It was the only time he could remember they didn’t get sick together like they usually did as kids. He was feeling the same impotence, only a few steps away and yet feeling miles away from this kid he swore during years to protect.
Then it clicked. Colt didn’t know what got into him. Maybe it was being so close to dying in that harbor, or maybe it was realizing the things he was able to do to get Jody a chance of finishing her movie. He spoke up.
“If he has that gene, I also must have it. Let me go with him, I learn fast, I’m athletic-”
“Mister Seavers, you have no knowledge in science, or mechanics, or any kind of astronaut training for that matter. You will be of no use in this mission. It would be expensive and irresponsible.”
“I can become useful if you teach me, I’m a stuntman, I became so good at jumping a boat through a ring of fire I could do it with my hands tied on my back. I can learn to do anything. Going to space is so dangerous, there are tons of things Ryland will never do. Let me go as support-”
“We don’t need to sacrifice a life for no reason, Mister Seavers. Enough people have already sacrificed themselves for this mission.”
“What if you need to repair the ship from the outside? There is no way Ryland will be willing to do it, and even if he did he is far too important for that. Also, if your pilot doesn't have the gene, who will bring that shit back? Because Ryland can barely parallel park and-”
“There will be no shit to bring back, Mister Seavers.”
The swearing from the woman would have shocked him if the sudden implications of it all hadn’t just hit Colt like a truck. It was worse than being hit by a truck.
“What do you mean by that?”
“There is no way we can equip the ship with enough fuel to go and come back. Their job will be to send the information required to save the sun back in probes, but the astronauts will not make it back to Earth.”
He took a step away from Stratt and got closer to the bed Ryland was lying on. Carl was looking at him unperturbed, but Colt was finally able to understand that what bugged him about the man’s eyes earlier was the mourning.
Because he was mourning Ryland.
“I’m sorry, Mister Seavers, but your brother decided to sacrifice himself to save humanity.”
Ryland had always been a coward, when they were kids he used to be scared of thunder, and older he still refused to get into roller coasters. He still will prefer to take the stairs and make Colt take the stairs before getting in a squeaky elevator.
Ryland had always been a coward, and maybe that was a little bit Colt’s fault. Because of the way Colt would jump from couch to couch until he broke his nose once. Because of the numerous times Colt will get into fights in school, most of the time with some jerk from Ryland’s class. Because of the way he was always just too caught up into making his brother less scared of living, he ended up doing the opposite.
The day Ryland told him about his thesis, Colt encouraged him to go for it. His brother ended up being kicked out of the scientific elitist full-of-closeminded-idiots community. Then Colt broke his back. Even if it wasn’t an accident, Ryland only seemed to be proven right every time life decided to kick them in the balls.
So why the fuck had this idiot agreed to being send off to space to die?!
“Wake him up,” he snapped while grabbing his brother’s hand.
“Mister Seavers…”
“You wake him up and let me talk to him, because there is no fucking way on Earth that Ryland accepted to let you all just kill him!”
“Your brother is a good man, Mister Seavers. He wanted his students to have a future. He is a hero, and would be remembered as such.”
Ryland had always been a coward, yes, but he had also always been saintly good. It was because of Ryland that Colt couldn’t even kill a cockroach without feeling guilty. He had always been too empathic and caring for a world like theirs. Even his cowardness was a consequence of being worried for Colt’s poor ass.
So Colt had no excuse for being a coward right there. He leaned over his brother, hugging him the best he could with his lying form, and took a deep breath. When he felt ready, he yanked a ton of the cables and needles that were buried in Ryland’s skin out, and started shaking him in hopes of him waking up.
“Take him outside,” Stratt ordered, and immediately Carl and another man that came out of nowhere grabbed his clothes and started pulling him away from his brother’s bed side. He started trashing around and yelling his lungs out.
“Let me go! Stop! I will tell everybody what you are doing! I will stop- Don’t touch me! You can’t do this! This is murder! You are murdering him!”
And as they dragged him outside the room, the last thing he had the time to yell was his brother’s name, as the door behind the guards closed. It wasn’t until then that Colt realized how unnatural it was to scream Ryland’s name and to solely be met with silence. Ryland never ignored him, but now there was no reply. No curious eyes meeting him through glass, no tired smile encouraging him to speak, no annoyed “what now?” and no concerned “what is it?”.
“Ryland!”
To keep crying out his name until he responded seemed like the only logical thing to do in face of the absence of the person that was not only raised with him, but also born with him. They grew up to be very different people, but similar in so many ways it was impossible to not see the way Ryland influenced Colt and Colt influenced Ryland. They were one, always had been, even if life changing incidents would part their ways from time to time.
And yet, Ryland didn’t respond to his cries for the first time in a lifetime.
Colt feared he never would again.
Grace knew his first name was Ryland. He didn't wake up knowing, but he discovered it alongside with the other things that build up the personal life he used to have before being shipped to another solar system. He read it on a piece of paper, he read it out loud too, but he didn't get something meaningful from it. He didn't quite feel it as his, as a lot of his memories were of his students and school colleagues calling him Mr. Grace, or people from the Project Hail Mary calling him Dr. Grace. There weren't many memories from college or his childhood at the start, as he was trying to figure out how he ended up in space more than anything else. Then Rocky, his new and only best friend, would just call him Grace, and he had to admit he even forgot at one given moment he had a first name. When the two hundred and forty-eighth day of the second year of travel hit, Grace was already feeling kind of sick because they had been trying out ways for him to start eating Taumoeba for when he would run out of food. Rocky wanted to cheer him up, so they started rummaging through the sentimental stuff that had been sent from Earth so that the astronauts could get some comfort while being light years away from home.
Rocky and him stumbled upon a Polaroid of Grace, the drawings of his children, a couple of empty Skittles bags Grace had forgotten about, and the same documents that had enlightened Grace so long ago. When he had no clue who he was. Rocky asked about his full name, and why he hadn't shared it with him. Grace explained what he could, at the same time getting a lesson of Eridian naming. By the end of it, Rocky was convinced on using Grace’s full name, because that would mean closeness and appreciation on Erid. Grace explained to him that on his side of Earth it was the opposite, that using one’s full name was weird, that one either stuck to the first name or the last name, that depending on the culture there were more than two names even, or just one. They got carried so much, Grace actually felt really tired by the end of his explanation on why parents used a child’s full name to scold them. Rocky didn't miss it, he never did.
“Go sleep, I watch.”
“It's alright, Rocky. Just let me clean up this mess a little bit.”
“Ryland. Sleep now!”
It held Rocky's usual annoyed tone, perhaps with some more energy than usual. Grace didn't know if it was the sickness that froze him in place or if this was a normal reaction to hearing his name being said out loud after so long. Maybe it was the familiarity of the interaction, or maybe the way he just happened to be holding the picture of himself in his hand to hide it in the deepest corner of a box, wearing clothes that didn’t feel like his.
He suddenly remembered a bunk bed and “Ryland! Turn off your light and go to sleep already!”
Then to his mind came grass and “Ryland! Ryland, look what I can do! Look! Look!”
A bright screen and “Ryland! It's my turn to pick the movie!”
A lot of tears and “What's wrong, Ry?”
A party, loud music and “Uuuugh Ryland! Quit being so weird!”
The groggy feeling of waking up and “Happy birthday, Ryland.”
“Happy birthday to you too.”
Grace gripped the Polaroid until his hand started to shake. He heard Rocky's voice calling his name, Grace, distantly, but he feared the memories wouldn't emerge if he drifted away from it now. Because these were new memories. This was a new voice that sounded just too familiar, comfortable and annoying at the same time.
The voice was calm and steady as they placed a hand on his shoulder, murmuring “Hey, Ry, it's ok. I'm here with you. You will be fine.”
But the voice could also sound angry and resentful. “Get out of my house, Ryland.”
He knew it was a voice that, from time to time, when no one was there to tease them, would say “Love you, man.”
“Love you too, dipshit.”
He loved that voice in the same way he had come to love Rocky's voice. It brought peace, despite the hurtful fragments that wouldn't leave enough room for the nice ones to stay.
“Get off my ass and let me deal with my shit like you did with yours!”
“You are my brother, you asshole. I will not let you throw your life away like this!”
Brother. The voice was his brother’s. They were brothers that shared birthdays. Brothers that shared a bedroom and their toys and a childhood and a life. Grace had a brother.
“Grace hurt, question?!”
“Ryland. Does it hurt?”
“I can't breathe.”
“You are having a panic attack. Can you try and breathe with me?”
“I can't.”
“It's ok. Try again.”
“Colt-”
“It's alright.”
“I'm sorry.”
“Colt.”
Rocky heard Grace’s breath stop before his heart started rising like a quiet alarm preventing a small problem that was quickly becoming more dangerous. Then everything unleashed, and Grace cried for five thousand four hundred twenty three seconds, until he was too exhausted to keep leaking. Rocky gently nudged him towards the sheets he kept on the floor for them to be closer while Grace slept. His friend got settled for bed, Rocky told him he would watch, but Grace didn't fully close his eyes.
“Rocky.”
“Grace sleep.”
“What am I going to do?”
Rocky didn't know. Rocky genuinely had no clue and it horrified him. He couldn't just say so to an emotionally distressed human, his emotionally distressed human for that matter.
“Grace Rocky think about it in twenty eight thousand eight hundred seconds, after Grace sleep.”
They stayed in silence for fifty one seconds before Grace sighed.
“The last time we talked ended up in a fight.”
He mumbled it so quietly, Rocky doubted it was in the human hearing range. He thought for a moment that maybe Grace didn't mean to say that out loud and it was just the tiredness of his body betraying him, but Grace knew Rocky could hear even his heartbeats. Rocky decided to try to take some of the metaphorical burden off Grace’s literally weak body.
“Rocky find solution.”
Grace had a brother. That meant someone was waiting for him on Earth.
“How? He must be older than I am now, and we are not even halfway through the way to Erid…”
“Rocky find solution. Grace sleep.”
They could start by sending a video back to Earth, so they would need to build a probe before thinking further in a way to return Grace to Earth from Erid. Returning him back on time before his brother died of old age. That sparked a question Rocky felt awful for making.
“How many years is Grace brother, question?”
“He is the same age as me, he should be in his thirties… I should do the math, I’m not even sure of how old I am.”
Rocky did the math for him, it was very approximately, considering the time Grace had been traveling and the estimation of his age, comparing it to the average age for humans to die and then adding the years required to travel across the space that kept their worlds apart.
It didn’t add up.
“Grace don’t worry. Rocky fix.”
Grace wasn’t aware that Rocky had learned what a lie was. Rocky would try it stays that way.