Chapter Text
Meri sighed, wishing—not for the first time—that she wasn’t allergic to caffeine. Currently she was weighing the pros and cons of stabbing herself with an EpiPen, informing the Secret Service, and drinking a double espresso.
At this point even a hospital visit would be preferable to the impossible hurdle she was currently facing.
Before she could decide—not that she was actually considering it—her cell phone rang.
[Dr. Ryland Grace] FaceTime’s caller ID flashed on her screen.
Meri groaned. It had only been common courtesy to give her private number to the world’s savior, but that didn’t mean she wanted him calling her right now. Certainly not after an all-nighter, and especially not after an all-nighter that left her with no more answers than she’d had the evening before.
She took the call.
“Washington,” she greeted.
“Have you found anything?” Dr. Grace demanded, hardly giving her the chance for even that short of a greeting.
“Dr. Grace,” she said sternly. “I—”
“Oooowww!” he moaned. “Not so loud!”
She blinked. “You called me, Dr. Grace,” she said flatly.
“Yeah, but you don’t have to answer so loudly!”
She squinted at the image on her phone. He was holding the phone at arm’s length over his head, with his other arm draped over his eyes.
“Are you hungover?”
She had spent all night trying to uncover anything that might have been overlooked—whether intentionally or otherwise—and Dr. Grace had been drinking the night away? While he technically had the right to after saving all of them, it did not do much to endear him to her.
He waved his hand vaguely. “Never drink with a Russian after years of going without,” he told her. “It doesn’t end well.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said dryly, amused in spite of herself.
“And to answer your question,” she added. “No, I have not found anything in the 15 hours since I saw you last.”
“Has it been that long?” Dr. Grace asked, lifting his arm off his face to squint at his phone. “Ow…” he moaned again.
“Dr. Grace,” she said sternly. “We will keep you informed the second we know anything about Stratt. In the meantime, if you want to do something useful you should go meet up with Dr. Lokken.”
“Uggghhh,” Dr. Grace grumbled.
Meri raised an eyebrow. She wasn’t even going to dignify that with a response. “Project Hail Mary is best equipped to work with you on building a translator for Ambassador Rocky,” she continued. “And while we are prioritizing Stratt as per your request…” “more like demand,” she added silently to herself. “...we don’t want the Eridian ambassador to feel neglected.”
“♫♪♬♪♪!” the Eridian vocal chimes sounded.
“Tell her yourself,” Dr. Grace mumbled, turning his phone sideways to reveal Rocky, who was pointing a spinning crystalline… something… towards the phone.
Meri felt, just for an instant, as if she and Rocky were exchanging exasperated looks—or whatever a Human-Eridian exchange equivalent of that would be.
“♪!”
Meri quirked a smile. Even she could hear the annoyance in the chime.
“Ugh fiiiine,” Dr. Grace complained. “He says he appreciates it and doesn’t feel neglected, and to please find Stratt.”
“♬♪♫♫♬♪♪!”
“Yeah, well she doesn’t know that!”
Meri sighed. Whatever Dr. Grace was or was not translating, at least it was on him and not on her.
“If there is nothing else you need, Dr. Grace…” she began.
“No, no…” Dr. Grace interrupted. “Not unless you want to bring me an aspirin. I ran out about six years ago, and could really use some right now.”
“That,” Meri answered, unable to hold back an amused smile. “Is somewhat below my pay grade.”
—
Marissa Larsson hummed tunelessly as she rode her bike down the street, happier than she had been for a long time—even if it was grocery day.
Ryland was back! It had stung five years ago when he had gone on that suicide mission without even a text goodbye, but she had still been proud of him. And now he was back! He had survived the kind of mission that nobody should have been able to!
“You keep getting in your own way, Ry,” she would always tell him. “If you stop that, nothing else in the universe could stop you!”
She was rather pleased at how prophetic her own idiom had turned out to be, and unbelievably proud of him.
“Hey, fuck off!” she yelled as a car that apparently didn’t care that she was biking there nearly clipped her; but the curse was half-hearted. Nothing could dampen her mood today!
Ryland’s homecoming promised a return to some semblance of normalcy. Even if she never got to see him again, he had probably already saved them from Director—”Dictator, more like,” she grumbled—Stratt’s increasingly strict regime.
And from the annoyance of things like grocery days.
Everybody on the planet got ration cards, and while she understood the necessity—she really did—the Stratt-dictated rations felt scant at best. After spending hours waiting in line, she would be provided her weekly portion: a bag of rice, canned fruits and vegetables, maybe some dried meat. Produce sections were practically nonexistent, with most perishable foods having been allocated for immediate canning or other long-term preservation, but sometimes she would get slightly-wilted vegetables or too-ripe fruits.
And the worst part was that she still had to pay for it. Reduced rates or not, it was still disheartening; especially with the knowledge that it would only get worse over time.
Occasionally they would set out “experimental nutrient bars”—probably an attempt to artificially create the nutrients that people needed to survive—free for testing. They always tasted like dog shit, but free food was free food so she always took as many as she was allowed.
But all of that would be changing soon, now that Ryland was back and the crisis averted. She didn’t really think that fresh produce would already be available—even Director Stratt’s regime couldn’t move that quickly—but she was already daydreaming about salads, steamed green beans, and roasted carrots.
She coasted into the grocery store parking lot, waving cheerfully at a tall, thin, large-boned woman as she did so. The woman’s hands were thrust deep in her pockets, and her expression was vacant—her face pale. She must not have heard the news about Ryland’s return, because how could anybody be looking this dismal otherwise.
Marissa pulled up to the bike rack, the thought of spending the next three (or more) hours in line only slightly dampening her mood. She got off her bike, carefully chaining it to the bike rack, then stretched—looking up at the cool, clear sky.
Somewhere up there Ryland’s ship was in orbit, and beyond that the sun that he had saved; and even farther still, an entire alien civilization! The past five years might have sucked, but she wouldn’t give up this moment and the exciting things the future promised for anything!
A loud pop went off behind her just as she turned back towards the doors, ready to brave grocery day.
Somebody behind her screamed, and she felt a sharp pain in her lower back. She tried to turn, wondering what was going on, and felt her legs give out beneath her. She slumped against the store wall, looking out over the parking lot.
The tall woman she had waved to a moment earlier had climbed on top of a car and was waving a gun around.
Oh.
Oh, she’d been shot!
“You are all fools!” the woman shouted, accentuating the words with another gunshot. “Thirty years of catastrophe, they said!”
Another gunshot went off, and Marissa dimly heard the sound of sirens coming closer. Or were those screams?
“And suddenly after five years, after thousands who were elderly, or sick, or disabled were eliminated, the problem is resolved!”
Another gunshot. It seemed to come from farther away, but that didn’t make sense. The woman hadn’t moved.
“Don’t you recognize a eugenics scheme when you see it?” the woman demanded, shooting her gun off again.
Marissa frowned. Would people actually believe that? Surely even the most uninformed couldn’t deny how cold it had gotten already. Nobody could fake that as part of a scheme!
She shifted, trying to move out of the puddle she seemed to be sitting in, but was too tired.
That wasn’t right.
She glanced down. She was sitting in a pool of her own blood.
Shit.
“Ma’am, drop the gun and step off of the car!”
The voice was coming from miles away; why could she hear it so clearly?
Marissa tore her eyes away from the blood, trying to focus once again on the drama playing out in front of her. A dozen police officers were there, crouched behind their cars, their guns pointed up at the woman who had shot her. One of them was carrying a bullhorn.
When had they gotten here?
“No,” the woman shouted. “I won’t be anyone’s victim! Not anymore!”
She put the gun in her own mouth.
A spray of blood flew behind her, arcing across the icy blue sky. It looked like the Petrova Line. Marissa frowned, confused. Shouldn’t that only be visible through an IR frequency?
The woman slumped to the ground.
There was a moment of silence, and suddenly chaos erupted around Marissa. She watched dully as people began running around. Someone ran up to her, asking her if she could say anything.
Of course she could say something! She wasn’t some kid who was afraid to talk to strangers!
She tried focusing on the person hovering over her; tried to pick out features as the face began receding into darkness.
“Someone get over here now!” the figure shouted. “She’s dying!”
Dying?
That couldn’t be right. She was about to get groceries, and then the whole future was waiting for her. She would get to see Ryland again, she would get to meet aliens, she was going to get a salad. She would get to see the world grow warmer again.
It was so cold, now. She had never been this cold before. It would be nice when she could go out in shorts and a T-shirt again.
Another figure joined the first, their features just as indistinguishable in the swimming darkness above her as the other’s. Maybe these were the aliens.
“Stay with us, Ma’am!” a voice from far away called. Where were they going? Why were they receding farther and farther into the darkness?
Wherever they were going, they were taking everything with them. She was just a tiny mote, looking up at the entire universe as it slowly winked out of existence.
“Sorry, Ry,” she thought as she felt the darkness envelop her. “I would have liked to welcome you home.”
—
“Do you know how annoying it is to not be able to control the luminosity of the sun?”
Amira turned around—of all the questions she had expected to have to answer today, that was not one of them.
Grace was standing in the doorway of her lab—obviously hungover—leaning on his cane, with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. His hair was standing up on end, he was wearing dark sunglasses, and was holding a steaming cup of coffee in his left hand. Rocky was standing with him, looking exactly as unsettlingly like a spider as he had when she first saw him.
“I wouldn’t know,” she said drily, pushing back a wave of irritation. “I’ve only spent years working on a solution because we couldn’t do that.”
“Right,” he grinned, saluting her loosely. “Sorry ‘bout that.”
Anybody else on the planet would have found that charming, even with the sing-song sound of his voice making him sound a bit condescending. Amira found it grating.
She turned back toward her computer, hoping that would be enough to discourage him from whatever conversation he had decided to inflict on her. While Grace averting the apocalypse early was objectively a good thing, the ensuing paperwork—who would have thought stopping the end of the world would require this much bureaucracy?—falling entirely to her was decidedly not. And it was all Grace’s fault for stopping the apocalypse, and Stratt’s fault for putting her in charge in the first place.
“Damn you, Stratt,” she muttered the frequently used refrain under her breath.
“What?” Grace asked.
“I said,” Amira answered shortly—and probably louder than was strictly necessary. “‘Why are you here?’”
It’s not that she wasn’t grateful that he had saved them all; it was just that if she had been less grateful—and had less paperwork—she probably would also be less annoyed.
“Ow, not so loud,” Grace complained, the musical intonation of his voice definitely sounding a bit discordant.
She held back an amused laugh. “Dimitri?” she asked, turning towards him again. He and Rocky were still standing in the doorway, and Rocky had started chiming musically. She got the sense he was laughing at Grace.
“How did you know,” Grace grumbled, tapping his cane twice against the ground, the neutrality of his expression not matching the annoyance emanating from his body language.
“Who else would welcome you to Earth by getting you drunk?” she demanded, her own annoyance rapidly turning to amusement.
“♪♪♪♪,” Rocky said. He was definitely laughing at Grace.
“Oh, shut up,” Grace said, his voice light even as he nudged Rocky with the tip of his cane.
“So why are you here?” Amira prompted again.
Grace glared at her, his body language suddenly tight again. Amira glared right back.
“I am here under duress,” he finally said, the light tonal quality of his voice gone. “And under presidential decree. By the way, how do you ever manage to refer to her by name without laughing?”
She raised her eyebrows at him.
“You get used to it.”
“Yeah, well Madame President said that Project Hail Mary is best equipped to build a translator for Rocky, and I was too hung over to tell her I already built one.”
Amira could strangle him.
“So then why are you here?”
Grace lifted his bag higher in the air, walking over to her. “I figured if Project Hail Mary is best equipped to build a translator, it’s also best equipped to implement it and spread it around to whoever needs it.”
Amira sighed. President Washington was right, of course, but she didn’t appreciate being given more work to do. Particularly not more work ordained by the leader of a country she wasn’t even a citizen of!
Amira resisted the urge to look pleadingly up at a god she didn’t even believe in as Grace pulled two computers—duct taped together—out of his bag.
“And this is…?” she trailed off.
Grace glared at her. “My resources on the Hail Mary were limited. Stratt didn’t exactly send me an Eridian-to-English dictionary!”
Amira rolled her eyes.
“Anyway, the translator is just Tympanum Labs Waveform Analyzer and Excel, plus my library of Eridian vocabulary,” Grace explained. “It shouldn’t be hard to share that with anybody who needs it.”
Amira stared.
“That’s… that’s it?”
Grace shrugged, the gesture sharp. “Did you want something else from me, Lokken? I’m already here under duress when I would rather be doing something to look for Stratt!”
Amira looked pleadingly at the ceiling. Grace really made her wish she believed in god, if only so that she could pray for somebody to smite him where he stood.
“I meant,” she said. “I was surprised that it wasn’t more complicated.”
“Oh,” Grace said, making an odd gesture with his right hand. Amira didn’t bother asking what it meant.
For the next few minutes nobody said anything as Amira worked to transfer the translation software onto her own computer. She was not about to send it to her list of world leaders without testing it first; the onslaught of angry emails if it didn’t work for them was not something she planned on dealing with.
“Okay,” she finally said, glancing at Rocky. “Can you uh… say something?”
“♫♪♬,” Rocky said, tapping one leg twice against the floor.
[Is this working, question?] the computer readout said.
Grace whooped, before immediately grimacing. “Ow…” he groaned, rubbing his head.
“♫♫♪,” Rocky said.
[How Grace already forget headache, question?”] the computer translated.
Amira couldn't help smiling as Grace scowled at Rocky, turning away from him and dramatically crossing his arms as best he could without spilling his coffee.
“Jerk,” Grace muttered.
“♫♪♫♫.”
[Dumbass, statement.] the computer readout translated.
Amira hesitated for a moment, looking at Grace out of the corner of her eye. As frustrating as he was, she really was grateful to him for saving them all. And he deserved to know that.
“You know, it hasn’t been the same here,” she finally said before she could change her mind. “Not since you volunteered.”
Grace smiled, but his entire body stiffened.
“Did you just compliment me, Dr. Lokken?” Grace asked, the timbre of his voice—harsh and tight—not matching the light-hearted words.
Amira frowned, surprised at his reaction. The shadow of doubt that she had dismissed the day before returned to the forefront of her mind. Washington had thanked him at the welcome ceremony, and he had cringed as if she had accused him. Initially, she had dismissed the odd reaction as nothing more than homecoming jitters; but now he was reacting the same way to her compliment.
And yes, they had never been friends. They hadn’t even been friendly. But they at least knew each other. The odd reaction now couldn’t possibly be from nerves!
“Grace?” she asked, watching him carefully.
He smiled, even as he turned away slightly, his shoulders hunched. Rocky skittered closer to him, and Amira tried her best to hide the instinctive flinch. She knew he wasn’t a giant spider, but that knowledge apparently didn’t stop her instinctive desire to stay out of his way.
“I know it’s been a varying number of years for each of us,” Grace added. “But complimenting me was nev—”
“Enough, Dr. Grace,” Amira interrupted, holding up a hand. Whatever had upset him, no matter what her suspicions were, was none of her business. “Witty banter was also not something we engaged in.”
Grace visibly relaxed, even if he didn’t quite turn back towards Amira.
“♫♪,” Rocky said, placing a rocky claw on the hand Grace had let swing down at his approach.
Amira glanced over at the computer readout.
[Does UNKNOWN know, question?] the computer translated.
She pursed her lips, her suspicion only growing.
Grace’s lips moved, but if he said something it was beyond the range of human hearing.
—
“...six people have been confirmed injured, and three dead, following the shooting this afternoon.”
Captain Jake Holloway leaned back in his chair, watching the latest news broadcast, needing a distraction from the paperwork stacked neatly on his desk. This was always the worst part of this job, when it happened: the casualty reports. Anything was better than going through them; even watching a broadcast filled with information he already knew.
He watched as the b-roll footage played while the reporter’s crisp voice narrated over it, showing the parking lot, the yellow tape, the body bags. It always struck him as cold, even cruel, how the news media exploited tragedies for views—broadcasting one person’s personal nightmare for all the world to see.
“Thank God there were only three this time,” he thought, looking down at the papers in front of him. Cameron O’Neil, 39, Marissa Larsson, 44, and Toni Spencer, only 19; the perpetrator and her two victims.
But that was still three people too many.
Three people who had lives, who had people they loved, who had people who loved them. Three people who deserved to live. Two people who hadn’t known that this would be their last day on Earth, who never got to say goodbye to their loved ones. And now they were nothing but a footnote, bound to be forgotten by the next news cycle.
Jake tried to take a sip from his empty coffee mug, then cursed silently.
“They need to invent a mug of coffee that’s never depleted,” he grumbled under his breath before getting to his feet and heading to the break room for a refill. He could use a break from this, but he didn’t appreciate being forced into one by the necessity of an empty coffee cup.
“Any news on the, uhh… on the finger, sir?” Parker asked as Jake walked past his desk.
Jake shrugged. “Crime lab still hasn’t gotten back to us on the finger,” he said. “But sometimes it takes a while.”
Parker nodded, looking a bit green around the gills. Not everybody was cut out for police work—Jake had long suspected Parker was one of those people—but even seasoned veterans could be thrown off by finding a severed human finger on the body of a murder-suicide perpetrator.
Somewhere out there, O’Neil, the shooter—the madwoman—had left behind another victim. And their only clue was the three addresses scribbled on the piece of paper the finger had been wrapped in.
“Do you think they’ll be able to ID him? Er, her… I mean them?” Parker asked. “From the finger, I mean?”
Jake sighed. This really should wait for an official briefing, but he couldn’t fault Parker for wanting answers. He set his empty mug down on Parker’s desk.
“I’m not optimistic,” he told him honestly. “Sometimes we’re lucky, but if they're not in the system, we may not get anything.”
Parker nodded. “And the addresses?”
Jake shook his head. He had already mobilized teams to each of the addresses, and they had found no sign of J. Doe, or any other suspicious activity.
“Nothing,” he told Parker. “In my opinion—if it’s not just a red herring—those addresses are a perimeter. Which means, even with it narrowed down that much, it could take weeks to find our J. Doe.”
Parker looked down at his desk.
Neither one had to say it, but they both knew that every hour in a missing person’s case was important. Taking weeks to find J. Doe’s location meant that finding them alive was unlikely; at least not without a lot more resources than Jake had at his disposal.
What’s more, the shooting had made headlines. Even the return of Dr. Ryland Grace only mostly overshadowed the tragedy; at least locally. O’Neil’s face and name was out there, which meant her associates—if she had any—would know what had happened and might get nervous enough to move J. Doe somewhere else.
The only bright spot was that they had managed to keep the discovery of the finger, and the subsequent investigation, out of the news. If whoever had J. Doe didn’t know anything more than that O’Neil had gone crazy and shot up a grocery store parking lot, they might not move—or kill—their victim.
The phone in Jake’s office rang, startling him. He glanced longingly towards the break room and the waiting coffee pot, before heading over to pick up the call.
“Holloway,” he greeted. “Do you have something?”
“Yes, sir!” a female voice answered. “The finger it… it’s in the system. We ID’d her. But it doesn’t make sense…”
Jake frowned. “Why the hell not? Are you getting more than one DNA sequence from one finger, or what?”
“No sir, it’s not that, it’s…” she trailed off again.
“It’s what?” he demanded.
“Sir, I know it makes no sense, but… the DNA is a match for Eva Stratt.”
Jake fell back in his chair. He might have more resources to find their missing person than he had assumed he would.
—
Vince Hogan swore, throwing the TV remote across the floor.
“Cam, what the hell have you done!” he muttered angrily.
What had she been thinking? Was it a distraction, meant to delay the search for Stratt? Why else would she go out there and stir up trouble spouting insane rhetoric about the Astrophage crisis being a hoax which he knew full well she didn’t actually believe! And why kill herself before they were finished with Stratt?
He had suspected for a while that she was suicidal—that once they were finished with Stratt she would take her own life to be with her daughter again. He hadn’t cared before and he didn’t now; what Cam did with her own life was none of his business.
But this?
This made no sense.
“Damn you, Cam,” he swore, adding a long string of invectives.
Throwing the remote wasn’t enough, he decided.
He flipped the table. The mug of weak tea slid to the floor and shattered, spilling lukewarm liquid everywhere, and the stack of papers left behind by whatever defunct administrative team that had used this office before everything went to hell scattered across the floor.
He stomped out of the tiny office, ignoring his team as they shouted angrily at each other, the noise of the TV behind them drowned out by their racket. They would have to vote on what to do next, now that Cam had fucked them all over with her little meltdown, but for now he had something more important to check on.
Without even pulling on his coat, Vince went out into the cold toward the warehouse where they were keeping Stratt. He didn’t even need his coat—right now, he was angry enough that the icy air was almost a relief.
“If you killed her, Cam…” he muttered threateningly under his breath.
It’s not like he could do anything if she had. In fact, it would make the need to vote moot, and they could all just dispose of the evidence and go home. But this wasn’t how he wanted it to end. It wasn’t satisfying if Stratt died quickly and quietly with only Cam to witness it. She deserved for her final moments to be public, humiliating, and painful.
He jerked the warehouse door open, not even bothering to slam it behind him, as he made his way over to where they had left Stratt. She was still tied to the chair where they had left her, her shorn head hanging limply down on her naked chest. In the dim light, he couldn’t tell if she was still alive, but even from across the room he could see the handle of Cam’s knife sticking up out of Stratt’s left arm.
“Damn you, Cam,” he growled, rushing up to Stratt.
With his left hand he grabbed her by the chin, forcing her head up, and with the thumb of his right he lifted one of her eyelids. Stratt’s eye twitched involuntarily, and she let out a soft groan.
Good. She was still alive.
He gave her a backhanded slap—“Might as well,” he thought—before looking her over carefully. He didn’t particularly care how much damage Cam had done before she left, but he wanted to be sure Stratt wouldn’t die from it.
Stratt’s entire left palm was bloody, and one of her fingers was missing. Most of her remaining fingers were turning a purplish-blue color—probably from poor circulation—and had begun to swell. Other than that, and the knife sticking out of her forearm, Stratt looked much the same as she had when he had left her.
Whatever Cam’s motivations were, Stratt was still alive, and Vince saw nothing that suggested she was going to die in the next few minutes.
Stratt stirred slightly. “Water…” she whimpered, not even opening her eyes. “Alsjeblieft, ik heb dorst.” 1
Vince punched her in the face, nodding contentedly at the wet crack he heard at the impact, before turning to leave. His rage was diminished enough that he was starting to get cold without his coat.
“What the hell are you playing at, Cam?” he wondered silently as he made his way back towards the office building.
------------------
Translation key:
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Please, I'm thirsty