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Ryland Grace sat on the bed of the chilly, quiet cell, knees pressed to his chest and head leaning back against the grey wall. He’d been here for a day already. Yesterday had been dark. After Stratt’s security threw him in here yelling and screaming, he’d spent hours pacing the room, trying not to hyperventilate or fall into a full blown panic attack.
The quiet was the worst part. No distractions, nothing to latch onto other than the small window at the end of the room. Just his own spiralling thoughts and anxiety. Banging on the door did nothing. He assumed there was someone keeping guard outside, or at least down the corridor, but no one ever responded.
“Please!” He’s struck the door again, the latest in an endless supply of tears running down his face as he pressed his ear against the metal. Nothing.
It hadn’t stopped him from trying for hours into the night. He’d thought that surely someone would have to come and visit him. Either to try and prepare him for the trip (medically, psychologically, even just to ask him how the hell he’d like to kill himself when the time came. Did he not even get the same courtesy as the others?) but today, he’d given up hope of anyone caring.
He was exhausted. He probably slept a couple of hours in total. His eyes were dry from crying so much, his voice hoarse, and his body had used a lifetime’s amount of adrenaline in just 24 hours. He had nothing left.
This was really happening. He wasn’t stupid enough to think there was any way out of it now. He tried to reason with it. To grapple with the fate currently looming over him. It wouldn’t be so bad… He was as Ilyukhina put it, in very good company, he would be remembered as a hero, and he’d probably get to do some cool science when they got there. If they got there.
But every time he thought he’d started to accept it, a fresh wave of panic bolted through his bloodstream. Instead, his thoughts turned to Stratt.
Anger was easier to deal with than terror.
How could she do this? He supposed he should have known she was capable. She was proud to be ruthless in the campaign to save the world. Grace was well aware of her self assuredness because it had been obvious since the first time they met. He’d admired it about her, actually. She wouldn’t let anything stand in her way, and humanity was better off for it. Grace could never have done her job. He wouldn’t be able to accept the damage done to his soul any better than he could accept his current predicament. She was what the Earth needed. He just never thought he’d be on the other side of it.
They had been… almost friends. With her job, he knew she didn’t allow herself to get close enough to anyone for exactly instances like this. But he thought he’d known her deeper than that. She might not have wanted to, might have fought against her own feelings, but Grace knew they’d been close. In another lifetime, they would have been friends.
Which is why it currently hurt so much. He had no tears left to cry, but he shut his eyes against the ache that had nestled its way into his chest. He’d respected her. Looked up to her. In so many ways. His life had been revolving around her since the day she entered his classroom. She waltzed into his life and transformed everything he thought he knew. He barely remembered his life before project Hail Mary. She was the reason he had everything he had. And now she was the reason he was losing it all.
The betrayal was so vast, he almost couldn’t process it. She was murdering him, in cold blood. Just because he wouldn’t die for a few more years didn’t make it untrue. He could finally see her ruthlessness for what it was: monstrosity.
Stratt was a monster, and he had been blinded by hero-worship to see it.
He jumped at the sound of the door opening. He kept his eyes closed though - in fact he screwed them up tighter. If this was it, he didn’t need to see the image of a Russian medical team descending on him.
“Grace.”
He opened his eyes. Carl stood in the doorway.
For a moment, Grace was too shocked to speak. “What are you doing here?” he finally bit out. Man, his voice was rough.
Stratt’s head of domestic security looked more solemn than Grace had ever seen him, and that was saying something. A wave of melancholy hit him as realised he missed the easy laughs they had once shared. That was before Carl had stood by as the Baikonur security agents wrestled him into this cell.
Carl looked at him like he might just regret what was happening. “I’m sorry it came to this.”
Grace scoffed disbelievingly. “Are you?”
To his credit, Carl held his gaze. After a long moment, the man didn’t deign to answer. Instead he asked something much worse. “I’m packing your personal items. Any requests?”
“Ohhhh.” A smirk pulled against Grace’s lips at the audacity as he shook his head. He really thought he had no tears left, but the stinging behind his eyes indicated otherwise. “Wow.”
It was silent for so long that Grace thought Carl might be struggling to speak.
“Clothes, favourite foods, any personal effects you’d like to have with you…”
“I haven’t been home in months. What am I supposed to take?”
His old friend must have assumed it was a rhetorical question, or else he didn’t know the answer, because once again he didn’t reply.
“Do you agree with her?” Grace asked, rising from the bed.
Carl didn't move, but his eyes sharpened. “We both know she’s doing what she must.”
“Pfft,” Grace scoffed again. He levelled his voice. “That’s not what I asked.”
“It doesn't matter what I think. Or you. What matters is the people you’re leaving behind to save. This is bigger than just one man.” Carl never raised his voice, never gave in to anger. But Grace knew from the crease in his forehead and twitch in his temple that Carl believed this was the right thing to do.
Grace stared at him. “It’s not to me,” he muttered, returning to his position on the bed.
“If you think of anything between now and tomorrow, let me know.”
Grace didn’t bother responding, even to ask how on Earth he was supposed to ‘let Carl know’ when hours of banging on the steel door yesterday had done precisely nothing.
“Tomorrow, huh?” he said, resting his head against the wall and closing his eyes.
Carl paused in the doorway. “I’m sorry.”
Of course he was.
Later that evening his stomach was crying out in pain, but he was too nauseous to eat any of the food that was passed into the room. The one silver lining was that he was so sleep deprived from the night before that he could at least fall into an uneasy slumber, plagued as it was by nightmares and hot flushes. After waking up for the third time in a panic, he gulped down the entire bottle of water left for him, and fell into a much more peaceful sleep, undisturbed until morning.
He blinked his eyes open at the sound of the door opening. What the hell? How had he slept all night? Was it time already? He vaguely registered that the light outside the tiny window was faint and grey, so it must still be very early. Two soldiers entered the cell first, the grey camouflage doing nothing to hide their intentions. Grace scrambled back on the bed but his limbs were slow to respond - something definitely felt off. As soon as he had the thought, it registered. Something was obviously in the water yesterday. How nice.
“What are you doing?” he panicked as two medical professionals entered behind him, one carrying a pack and the other with an honest-to-God stethoscope around his neck. His back hit the wall and he raised his hands up in front of him. “Please, wait-”
Then entered the final member of the entourage. Her face pale and blank, assessing the proceedings.
In the moment of discomposure that seeing her triggered, the two soldiers each grabbed one of his upper arms and brought him to the edge of the bed.
“Stop it!” He struggled.
“We do this easy, or hard,” one of them said in a thick accent.
“No,” Grace shook his head. “Not at all.” Outside the door, a handful of other medical professionals were gathered, and he caught a flash of a stretcher being prepared.
“You sit still?”
Grace’s eyes fell upon the woman he had once shared such an affinity with. Their eyes met, but Stratt had always been excellent at hiding her emotions. All that met his desperate gaze was a tight face with resigned eyes.
“Don’t do this,” he said only to her.
“You be good?” the soldier pressed, shaking his arm painfully for a response. One of the doctors opened the pack of medical supplies and began preparing the drugs - it sparked a fresh wave of panic over Grace’s whole body.
“No!” he shouted, knowing that to struggle was futile, but all rationality abandoned him.
“Okay,” the soldier said, have it your way. He spoke in Russian to the other guy and soon Grace was twisted around, his knees hitting the floor as they pressed his chest into the bed and brought his arms up behind his back. He cried out in pain.
“Please!” The pressure on his shoulders lessened momentarily, but he was still firmly trapped against the bed. The side of his tear-streaked face pressed into the mattress, giving him a too clear view of the doctors readying the supplies.
“Stratt!”
She watched him.
She just… watched him.
“Please…”
He felt the presence of the doctor moving toward him, saw the glint of the cannula and heard the muttered words from someone who had supposedly taken an oath to do no harm. “Easy, Dr Grace. You won’t feel anything.”
“Don’t do it!”
The grip on his wrist twisted, and something sharp was inserted into the crook of his elbow.
“It’s okay,” calming words floated over him.
He sobbed. A moment later something warm flowed down his arm. It travelled up towards his shoulder, into his armpit, across his chest. He was lightheaded, he was going to faint. Instinctively he looked for Stratt, but then he remembered.
She watched willingly, silent as the night, as Grace’s eyes finally closed.