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Ryland ran. He ran as fast as his legs would carry him. The billowing smoke that rose high up into the sky was not a thing to run towards, neither were the flames, but still he ran. Stratt was ahead of him. Not far, she too was not a runner, but she was still faster.
Or more desperate .
Or more scared.
He wasn't so sure what was going to happen once he reached the fire, but he just knew he had to be there. If not for helping, then to be there by Stratt's side. She'd need him. She always did, somehow. Despite being such a one track, no emotion, follow the plan person, she welcomed him in quite easily.
Maybe he just understood her better.
He was not unfamiliar with people who needed some help with their humanity. Usually they were 13 years old, but sometimes the phase lasted. Sometimes one never outgrew being a teenage girl and so scared that the world would end.
Looking ahead it very much looked like the end of the world. All fire and ash, the heat palpable from far away already. Ryland felt the sting of smoke in his lungs and the pain of having no stamina to run for further than maybe a quarter mile. This was much more than a quarter mile, but knowing what would await them, he had not chance but to keep running.
Stratt only slowed down, when she reached other people standing a safe distance away. The base's fire department was already trying to contain the damage, trying to keep the people away and then specifically trying to keep Eva Stratt from coming closer.
"It is not safe. Please, stand back."
"I don't care, you moron. Let me through, my people are in there." Ryland watch the man's face derail into grief for a heartbeat, before he caught himself, shook his head. "Don't just shake your head, asshole!"
"Stay away, Ms. Stratt."
"You don't get to tell me … you …" She turned around and looked at the hand holding her arm, followed it and then Ryland looked back at her. "You."
"Come with me." He pulled her closer and guided her away from the firemen, just off to the side with no people to directly talk to them. He would have liked to give her a hug, but touching her already had felt like a bit of a stretch. She did not fault him for it, at least that.
He let go of her, tilting his head a bit. Having seen the grief on the other man's face, he felt a hole in his chest open. There was no time for it now. Stratt was dealing with worse. They had been her people. Handpicked by her.
He was just the science guy. And not even that, really. He was just here to remind Stratt that humans needed rest too. That coffee and cold sandwiches were not enough to keep someone running for days on end. That sometimes you needed to laugh too. Right now there was not laughter. There was just the fire and a loss and this woman in front of him, that was breaking her bones to keep standing upright.
"I'm fine."
"You didn't look fine. You don't look fine."
"But I am. I will be."
"That's two different statements."
"Ah, studied English too, hm?" she scoffed. Ryland sighed, took the hit without flinching. His lungs still burned from running, but his breath had calmed down. He smiled at her.
"You're one to talk, Frau Stratt." He put his best German accent in those two words. "Now, will you let someone give you a blanket and something to drink or will you run off?"
"I'm not a dog."
"No, but you bark like one."
"Oh, shut up, Dr. Grace." She turned away, walking towards the other people. Ryland watched her for a moment, accepting defeat. He looked back at the fire. The smoke burned his eyes.
But the tears fell for a different reason.
Panic made him fast.
Ryland was not running towards something, but for his life. He needed to get away, had made it out of that room and down the hallway without someone catching him. If they got him, they would kill him 13 years from now. But they would not get him.
He could be faster than them if necessary, he would find a way out of this place and off the base and he would go back home. Maybe he could get into some sort of witness protection program and teach elsewhere. Maybe he could still have a life for as long as the planet would let him.
But first he had to outrun the people he had trusted to save humanity.
They couldn't even save him.
Ryland pushed himself off of a wall to cut the corner, then again and then he finally saw a door. Everything here was guarded, but they did not stop him or the men following him. No one was wondering why their lead scientist was running for his life.
Maybe they knew.
Ryland had almost no air left in his lungs to keep up the pace, so he also had no air to scream, but he would have liked to. He would have deserved to turn around and scream and throw a punch or two. But that would mean getting caught.
He did not dare to stop.
So, he kept running. He turned a corner around the building and half expected someone to be there to catch him, but there was just another street around another building and another street and another and then there was open field stretching off into forever.
Ryland tasted blood, but he ran faster. For the first time he dared to look over his shoulder and there they were. The street spit them out into the field and then towards him. There was no place left to hide or maybe lose them.
A terrible thought crossed his mind.
What if they shoot?
But that would mean hurting him and thus damaging the key to their mission. The guilt of having ran in the first place couldn't catch up to him, but he knew it would come back one day. Maybe tomorrow, when he found himself somewhere safe enough.
Maybe in a few years.
But it would reach him. Guilt always reached people some day.
The thrum of his steps on the soft earth matched his heartbeat. Too loud, too fast. He pushed the thought away that if he stumbled now, he'd die. Not right this instant, but in about 13 years. Then he'd die with two other people that Eva Stratt had carefully selected to be sacrificial lambs.
He should have been a Christian, maybe then it wouldn't feel so wrong to die for someone else. He wouldn't even die for himself. He wanted to very much keep living for himself instead.
There was a fence.
Ryland had forgotten about the fence.
He saw it too late, keeping one eye on the people behind him and one on the ground below his feet. And then he did something very stupid.
He stopped running.
Just for a moment he stood in front of the fence and thought himself incredibly small. Then he turned left and tried to run along the prison bars, but the footsteps were getting closer. They almost had him.
And he was getting tired.
He was out of air.
He had so little fighting left in him, but so much fear to account for.
A hand on his back. He stumbled. He fell. Someone pressing his face against the soft earth and dry grass. He thought of the color yellow — his favorite — and then red — the line that would kill him and connected every sun but one.
He tried to fight again, but lost.
The last thing he saw was the washed out color of the grass fading into the blue-grey of the sky. A rainbow. A promise that the world would never end again.
The last thing he thought was just as meaningless.
Please, no.
It was the second time that Grace trusted Rocky with the atmosphere and he was much less scared this time. Dozens of engineers had worked on this biosphere and Rocky had instructed them quite well. He'd step off the elevator — not that he enjoyed being on one a whole lot — and into his new home and he'd take in a fresh breath of air for the first time in almost two decades.
The systems on the Hail Mary did produce their own oxygen, but it wasn't fresh somehow. The air had been feeling stale in the last months. Grace missed trees.
He missed the fog.
Rocky had promised him to remake it, to fix up this corner of the planet well enough for fog to exist and light to come through.
Grace thought himself lucky to have a friend like this.
He looked down on the Eridian. He had reworked the ball and it was now more like armor covering him. He was constantly moving, the lights in the elevator — installed because Grace asked to see his environment — reflecting off of the xenonite.
"Grace nervous, question." Rocky knocked against the floor twice.
"I am, yeah. Elevator, yknow? And there is going to be so much space. I'm not used to it anymore."
"If space too big, we make small. No worry." Grace laughed.
"No, no, I'll get used to it. Humans get used to things fast. Also I'm excited to see what you've done with the place. You said, it's visible from space, right?"
"It is dome of light. Very visible."
"That's cool. Like the Great Wall."
"What wall, question."
"Of China. It's a very famous building on Earth and it's visible from space too."
"Wall no famous building. Earth stupid for making wall famous." Grace laughed again. Of course Rocky would think that. Erid wasn't as disconnected as Earth. There were different regions, but not really countries to speak of. No set borders that defined someone's entire life if one was born unlucky.
"I think, you'd find it pretty impressive if you saw it. It's really old too. Older than you."
"Is insult, question?"
"No, just a statement. You are quite old to me."
"You are baby."
"Don't say that," he said, a chuckle in his voice. "I'm getting so close to being half a century old and after .5 you round up, so …"
"Grace stupid. We are there." Rocky shuffled closer to the elevator doors, ending their talk by bouncing up and down. Grace still expected the same sounds as the xenonite ball had made. It would take some time to get used to this.
Sometimes he felt bad for Rocky having to go to such lengths to be close to him, but his friend had assured him that he didn't mind.
Grace believed him because why wouldn't he? Why would Rocky lie to him?
He looked at the Eridian again and then forward as the doors slid open. There was no need to depressurize, so they didn't make a sound. Instead there was the rushing of water, waves against the shore. The air moved. Wind. Grace stepped out of the elevator and into his new home.
He breathed in.
Oh, the wonderful combination of nitrogen and oxygen. He had to laugh, feeling like his lungs unfolded into the empty space in his chest. As if he had been pressed into a smaller body all those years.
He could not see where the dome ended.
Everything the light touched was his. Grace did not dare feel like a prince, but he took more steps into his kingdom anyway. This was his home, carefully constructed by his best friend. By the savior of both this planet and Earth.
He watched another wave hit the sand and felt two things overcome him.
One was the feeling of coming back home after a long time gone. His bedroom after summer camp as a child or his apartment after a class trip over the weekend as a teacher. He was finally home again.
The other was the urge to run.
Grace didn't think further than that, he just gave in. He took a few steps, picking up speed, a small jump and then a run.
He had not moved this much and this fast in years. The time spent in a coma had been shorter for him, but his body kept count, he was sure of that. So, he had not run in well over a decade, almost two. He was in no condition to run, actually.
But Grace did it anyway.
He had to.
For the first time since being sent to his death, he was free enough to run as fast and as far as he wanted to.
Rocky followed him, singing and chirping, trying to get an answer out of him. He wanted to know why Grace was running.
He was catching up.
He'll get you.
Grace ran faster, panic setting in.
The gravity was off. Something was wrong and there was someone running behind him and he could hear sirens like from a fire truck and the air was filled with smoke. He couldn't breathe, the soft earth under his feet—
He fell and half expected someone to press their knee into his back, drag his hands behind it to keep him in place. But nothing like it happened. He just knelt there, knees and hands pressed into the sand below him and trying to catch his breath.
"Why Grace running, question."
He opened his mouth, but there were not words coming from his mouth. Sobs and a scream that he had no sense silencing because he was not home, he could not disturb anyone and Rocky did not count.
Rocky was just there, part of himself just like his heart was. Maybe he'd even understand this without Grace explaining it in full.
"Grace in pain, question. Need help, question. Need medication, question."
He shook his head.
"Why run, question."
"Stop asking questions," was sadly the first thing he got out, angrier than he meant to. He didn't want to yell at Rocky. Rocky hadn't done anything.
God, why did it hurt so bad? Breathing felt like metal dust covering his lungs and his joints had never been really well, but right now they felt like they were being torn apart in all directions. As if they had shattered from one small run.
"I worry about my friend, statement." Rocky stomped one of his limbs once, burying it into the soft sand. Grace felt warmth coming from the waves, the water must be hot. Carefully he shifted his weight and sat down, stretching his feet out and then pulling them closer again, wrapping his arms around his knees.
His breath still came shallow, not used to the air. But he was breathing, which Grace decided to take as a win. However, everything else was escaping him. His mind slipped away, flickered to explosions and fear like a candle. He thought of a pillar of smoke that rose up into the air, visible for miles. He thought about Stratt's face when she hadn't been allowed to run into the flames to save her people. He thought of her face as he had taken off.
The pained expression of a woman so tired of making the whole earth understand why this was necessary. Why these drastic measures needed to be taken to save the planet. And now she was failing to explain one of the measures to one single, idiotic man.
Grace had started to forget her face years ago.
He remembered that her eyes had been bright and intelligent and angry and sad, that her hair had been red and he remembered her voice. But not her smile. Not her hands. Not the way she had walked — though he did recall the way she held herself differently when they had been alone. But not the rigid stance in front of everyone that tried to oppose her. He remembered the woman that might have been his friend, not the woman who would stand tall when one day she had to face the consequences of her actions.
She was a force to be reckoned with. He had learned that the hard way.
"Grace."
"I'm fine, Rocky."
"I can hear heartbeat. Too fast. Need to slow down."
"I know, buddy. I can't … I …" He raised his hands, trying to come up with a gesture that explained away the things he couldn't say. But there was none. There was no way to shake his head that indicated that someone was dead. There was no sign to say goodbye. There was only the tight space of his mind that he had to share with all his memories.
Did it count as trauma?
Probably.
It had to. Grace thought that if someone sent him into space against his will to die for all humanity and then some, he could call that a traumatic experience.
Same as seeing his crew members dead.
Same as seeing the fire that killed two of his friends that he now barely remembered.
Same as feeling a knee pressing into his back because he was treated like prey and not like a person. The words shared some letters, but one was a son and the other only asked why. It was a stupid joke that he didn't even chuckle about.
He wanted to go home.
"I wanted to run because it felt right, but then some things came back to me. Bad things. And … that's about it. Bad memories."
"Is like nightmare, question."
"Yes. Just that I'm awake and can't wake up to end it."
"Maybe fall asleep. Maybe day nightmare end when asleep." Grace laughed. What a freeing sound it was, tucked in between them and the waves.
"I don't think it's that simple, but I appreciate it. I don't want to sleep. I want to" — he looked around — "I want to see, what you did with the place. It looks amazing. Is that real water?"
"Stupid question. Of course is real water. Comfortable 87 degrees Celsius." Grace looked at Rocky. Rocky didn't look back at him, he was turned towards the water. "Is joke. Is too hot for Grace. We work on it."
Again he had to laugh.
It made all this much easier. The weight lifting from his chest and the pain ebbing into something bearable. He would get used to it. He had gotten used to almost everything but the food. They were also working on that.
"Thank you."
"Nightmare of home, question. Of home on Earth."
"What else?"
"Explain."
"I can't."
"Try." Grace groaned slightly, rubbing his face. His fingers ached just a little. It was really getting better with every minute. Maybe the run had been too much both physically and mentally. Maybe he thought of his pain too much in relation to other pain. Maybe it was his turn to suffer and to heal.
"I … I wasn't always brave. I tried to run from things once and they caught up to me. I thought you were those things. I thought I'd get … I thought it would happen again. That I would lose my home again." Grace realized that he had never told Rocky this. That the Eridian might have connected some dots himself, but the fact that Grace had only risen to bravery because he had to had been his little secret. This confession was closer to the truth than anything he had ever said about leaving on this mission.
"Erid your home, question."
"Erid is my home, statement." He smiled at Rocky. "I know that I am safe here. I know it's in the past and things will only get better. But … it's a lot. You know, I …"
Rocky came closer, letting himself flop down and pressing some of his weight against Grace. "I know. I know day nightmare."
Without speaking further, Grace put an arm around him. For a moment they just sat there. grace felt his heartbeat calm down and then he didn't feel it anymore. As if wave by wave all the tension left his body and nothing was left.
He sat at the beach of a planet that had had no beach and that didn't even have a suitable atmosphere for him and who's gravity was off, but adjusted. And somehow he felt safer here than he had aboard a ship that had been built to keep him alive. The ship had failed twice.
This here thing had not.
Yet, maybe.
But even that didn't scare him. Because he did what he had been sent out for. He saved Earth and he saved this planet and most importantly he saved his best friend.
So, why was there still guilt? Why was there still fear?
Why did the nightmares haunt his day?
Why did he feel like he was being hunted and getting so, so tired of running?
"Grace need help, question."
"With what?"
"Everything."
"No, I'm good. I'm … I'm okay. Just tired. Hungry, to be honest. And there's sand in my shoes." He smiled. "I don't like sand. It's rough, it's coarse, it's irritating—"
"Get everywhere." He laughed and Rocky laughed too. "Should get rid of sand, question?"
"No. No, don't do that. I like it. I will … no, I already like it. I just … I'm so tired. Can we go back? Can I go sleep, question."
"You mock me."
"No, I wouldn't dare."
"Is joke, question."
"It's sarcasm."
"Hate sarcasm. Stupid. Statement."
"I know." Grace grinned at Rocky. "Let's go."
He held onto Rocky to push himself up from the ground. It was harder than usual. His hands still trembled a little, but his mind was more at ease. He was safe.
He was not hunted.
And no one would kill him if he got caught.
Grace was finally home.