Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Olivia had just gotten on the bus when she got the email notification. Rekha wasn’t one for sending emails to her, so she made a mental note to check it when she got home. Stepping through her apartment door, Olivia greeted Becca, the roommate she needed to afford rent.

Waffles, Becca’s cat, was coughing up a hairball outside her bedroom. He stared blankly with his round green eyes as he spit it out onto the beige carpeting and walked away like he knew she would pick it up. Olivia went in and locked her door. Her bedroom, with its storage cubicles and tidy shelves, was the only place in the entire apartment that wasn’t a mess.

Olivia set up her laptop on her desk, finished typing out her research paper, and turned it in. After finally completing the assignment, she opened her email. After checking that her paper was submitted, she looked at a few class updates and coupons before clicking on Rekha’s email.

The email started normally, with the usual niceties about catching up. But then it took a hard turn.

Rekha started talking about explosions and illegally sending Dr. Grace up into space without his consent. Olivia knew her friend was a bit of a contrarian who never fully accepted Hail Mary as a good thing, but she didn’t seem like the conspiracy type.

Project Hail Mary was a net good, in her opinion. Even though it was sad that they had to die for it to succeed, at least they chose it themselves. They saved millions for the price of three.

Olivia had interacted with plenty of conspiracy theorists, trying to respond to her professor’s research papers with outlandish ideas such as the Earth being hollow. Most of them had zero lives, so they focused on trying to be heroes in a stupid way.

They sure didn’t act like the Rekha she met last week, chowing down on a chicken provolone melt and giggling about their childhood adventures together. Rekha was many things- chatty, nosy, and a bit too stubborn. But susceptible? Not at all. She was one of the smartest people Olivia knew, even though she spent her days around award-winning physicists.

Deciding to humor her, Olivia clicked on the link Rekha had sent her. It was a Reddit post that had been deleted by the time she got to it, but the comments were still there.

Oliva clicked on it and realized she’d been duped. Finally, the sole kind person in the comments section provided a recap.

So the vid was basically this dude getting tackled by the military and getting dragged away. Apparently, the op’s gf’s cousin’s friend’s nephew worked security for the research center and he recorded the live feed.

Why would you sit on footage like that for years?

Idk my great grandma recorded the Kennedy assassination and never told anyone.

Wtf dude

People like secrets ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Olivia was still greatly confused by what was going on when she heard the tiny chirp of a Gmail notification.

Rekha had replied to her own email saying:

Oops I think it got deleted. Here’s a downloaded copy.

She clicked on it. The commenter was right; a dude did get tackled. But it seemed far more brutal to watch. The person looked like a cornered rabbit, surrounded by a hungry wolf pack. Oliva felt for him.

However, he probably wasn’t their old teacher. Plenty of people had glasses and yellow raincoats. Plus, the government would never send someone against their will to outer space. Oliva was much more concerned about Rekha. Even though she needed to sleep, she decided to check in on her friend in the morning. Typing out a quick text, she went to sleep, her head spinning.

********

The next day, when she got on a video call with Rekha, Olivia observed her carefully. Rekha looked normal, minus the dark circles under her eyes. Her eyes were clear and focused, and her hair was neatly brushed up into a high ponytail.

“Hi!” she said cheerfully to Olivia, like she hadn’t sent an email accusing the government of blasting their eighth-grade science teacher into space without his consent.

“Hi,” Oliva said softly back. “How’s work been? Are you stressed out?”

Rekha chuckled a bit.

“My cousin got me this shirt as a joke for my birthday last year,” she said, pointing to her top. Her t-shirt said, “Some call it chaos, I call it teaching.”

“Turned out to be pretty accurate. It’s been… a lot. But I’m making do!”

Olivia shifted awkwardly in her swivel chair. Rekha didn’t seem to be in a crisis. Clearing her throat, Olivia carefully worded the question she wanted to ask.

“Um… so… about… that email you sent? Do you… do you?”

“Do you what?”

“You actually believe that guy is Dr. Grace?” Olivia finally blurted out. Rekha stared back at her, silent. Rekha had always been the chattier one to Olivia’s quiet nature. Olivia had only left Rekha speechless once, when she said that Rekha’s crush had asked her to the sophomore homecoming. This was more serious. Rekha’s eyebrows clenched, and her eyes darkened.

“Yes. Yes, I do,” Rekha said bluntly with an undercurrent of anger beneath her flat tone. “I saw that video, and everything clicked for me. Why would he leave without saying goodbye, why would he be unconscious for so long?”

Olivia shook her head.

“This is just a conspiracy theory, Rekha. If he didn’t want to go, why didn’t they just send someone else? That dude was probably just an engineer or scientist!”

“If it was just some random escaping, why didn’t they just shoot him in the head? Why would they keep him alive?”

“I don’t know! Murder is illegal!”

“They already had an explosion that killed people they hid for a fucking decade, Olivia! What makes the government more likely to respect someone’s choice not to go on a suicide mission?”

Olivia honestly couldn’t find an argument or excuse, so she fell silent. She heard a knocking on her bedroom door. Becca poked her head in.

“What are you yelling about, Olivia? It’s 10 am,” she yawned crankily. Becca was a night owl through and through, so she hated being woken up before noon on the weekends.

“Nothing! Sorry, Becks!” she called out to smooth things out. Becca nodded, not quite believing her. After she closed the door, Olivia turned back to face Rekha, who had backed away from her computer so Olivia could see that her arms were crossed.

“I thought you’d understand,” she said, “I needed somebody to talk to.”

“Why, though?” Olivia asked, “You want this to be true so badly?”

“The idea that he didn't want to abandon us feels better than the other way.”

Olivia sighed. She felt a bit mad that her teacher disappeared without any send-off, but had accepted it.

“I know I won’t get any closure now, but I feel like if this is the truth, the world should know,” Rekha said. “I know you think I’m crazy, but it’s still wrong to send someone on a death mission without their consent.”

She didn’t fully believe her friend, but she did make some good points. Olivia nodded.

“I’ll give you a bit of help. My roommate, who just poked her head in? She’s getting her astronomy Phd. Maybe she knows a bit more about NASA’s role.”

Rekha’s eyes lit up on her computer screen.

“Really?”

“I don’t know if she does, but sure.”

“Liv, I would literally hug you if we weren’t on FaceTime,” she said brightly.

“Me too, Reks, me too,” Olivia said.

She had lost touch with Rekha after she moved to Virgina, but talking to her again made her feel a bubble of excitement inside. Despite the odd circumstances, she was willing to discover the truth, even if it hurt.