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It’s super disorienting to wake up from a coma. It feels like the best night’s sleep combined with the worst hangover. It’s even more disorienting to wake up from a coma to find two dead bodies in the beds next to me.
Yao and Ilyukhina. I don’t know their names immediately after waking up, but some memories have come back to me and now I remember who they were. Yao, an incredibly qualified commander that put mission success above everything. Ilyukhina, a ray of vodka-powered sunshine and a dang good materials expert. I grieved them before I even remembered them, but now that I remember, I’m grieving even more. They were my friends. My crew mates. My only shot at surviving out here.
I’m not an astronaut.
Why am I here? Sure, I made some pretty nifty scientific breakthroughs concerning Astrophage, but that’s about all I had to give. I’ve never come anywhere close to being qualified enough for a space expedition. What am I doing? Why don’t I remember? How will I get home?
What if I can’t get home?
What if I never see another human again?
I’m mid-spiral when I see it. A brief shift of light on the wall ahead of me, in a part of the ship I haven’t explored.
I creep towards the noise. My legs are still mildly unstable, and that instability is made worse when the light shifts again and a shadow moves along the wall.
I’d done a brief inventory of the dormitory earlier; three beds for three people, two of which were dead. I’m the only surviving crew member on a spaceship in an unexplored star system and there are shadows on the walls. Maybe I’m dreaming. Maybe I’m dead. Maybe I really was in a coma and it made me insane.
I try not to let my mind wander, but there’s no stopping the conclusion I come to: Something is on the Hail Mary. Images of little gray men with oblong eyes cross my mind. I rub my eyes.
It can’t be…can it? I mean, I don’t know exactly how long we were all in a coma. It was obviously long enough for Yao and Ilyukhina to decompose a good amount, but that could be anywhere from a few months to years. It’s possible that the Hail Mary unintentionally cut her course right through alien territory without anyone knowing, and we’ve been unwitting hosts to space monsters ever since. Only one way to find out.
I use the wall to support myself. I take the last few steps to the kitchen, turn the corner, and survey the area. Everything seems to be (to my limited knowledge) as it should. Equipment here and there, either bolted to the floor or the wall. Nothing is apparently out of place. Except….
I’m glad I’m already holding onto the wall or I would have lost my balance completely.
It’s not a something on the Hail Mary. It’s someone. They have their back to me but I recognize the posture immediately.
“Stratt?” I said.
The figure turned.
“Hello, Doctor Grace.”