Chapter Text
He’s an idiot. He’s a stupid, reckless idiot.
That’s probably what Rocky’s thinking right now as he leaps after the collector hanging off the Hail Mary. Grace hears his friend panic over the comms.
“Abort, abort, abort. Grace will die! No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no—”
The sound of Rocky telling him to stop this incredibly stupid move is drowned out by the sound of his heart pounding in his ears. The xenonite chain attached to the collector snaps, leaving Grace’s umbilical cable as his only literal lifeline. A slew of school-appropriate exclamations spill from under his breath as he swings just enough to the side to avoid being hit by one of Mary's debris. He attempts to reel himself back to the ship’s surface, only for his cable to wind around and pin him against the ship instead.
The adrenaline rushing through him must be at an all-time high, and he remembers the tiny pocket knife concealed in his EVA suit, which he takes out and cuts the cable with. There’s no time to register the feeling of his stomach dropping, knowing that nothing would stop him from falling to his death now. The task of climbing back on board to the cockpit is near-Herculean—the seconds stretching to what felt like hours—and a passing thought of thanks flits in his head to Armando and the electrodes that made him so jacked during his coma.
Grace and Rocky both relax when the former finally settles in the captain’s seat, getting ready to return to Adrian’s orbit before its gravity claims the Hail Mary. Grace lets go of the gear shift when they finally make it out of the planet’s atmosphere, and all the blaring alarms suddenly stop. He holds his breath, waiting for something to go wrong as he looks around and then back at Rocky.
“Did we do it?” he blurts out.
A shadow zips through space, fast enough that Grace barely registers it at first. He only realizes that it was something when he hears Rocky’s anxious chitters and—
“Blip-E detected.”
“Grace. Grace,” Rocky tries to get his attention before Mary’s system warning could sink in. “Grace Rocky not alone.”
Before he could respond, the ship shakes violently, alarms blaring once more as they get pulled back into Adrian.
“Why ship moving, question???”
“THERE’S A HOLE IN IT!”
The astrophage, their fuel, is going to Adrian because of course it is, and with the two bad fuel tanks they eject, the force of the jettison sends them flying back, spinning way too fast. Grace feels as though he’s being squeezed by an invisible force, barely able to process what was going on, let alone move. The ship rattles him and Rocky in every direction but unlike Rocky, he doesn’t have Eridian physiology or a xenonite ball between him and the mismatched panels of the Hail Mary.
He’s pressed up against the window on the side of the cockpit. His vision has always been bad, but there’s no mistaking the shadow seemingly floating outside the ship. With each violent spin, the shadow inches closer. Another unexpected turn of the ship forces him away from the window. Rocky is trying and failing to stabilize himself within his ball.
The lever to activate the centrifugal gravity system is right there, he just needs to… get closer…
BANG.
The ship stops spinning abruptly—his mind registering within the split-second it happens that that shouldn’t be possible—but the force of it leads to Grace hitting his head against the control panel. Rocky’s terrified chitters get louder despite his own condition not being any better. Grace is seeing double of everything, the darkness creeping in from his peripherals. The last thing he feels before it all fades to black is the familiar lightness of zero gravity, while Rocky’s translator echoes glitching words into the cockpit.
“Stranger. Stranger. Stranger. Stranger. Stranger. Stranger. Stranger—”
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It’s cold, but his skin is sticky with sweat. His limbs feel like jell-o, just like the day he woke up on the ship.
The ship.
He’s on the ship. His name is Ryland Grace. He’s a middle school teacher. He has a doctorate in molecular biology. He’s a crew member of the Hail Mary. His crewmates are dead. Rocky is— Rocky.
Where is he?
“Eye movement detected. Good morning, Dr. Grace.”
He shoots up, groaning as the pain of getting up too fast catches up to him a few seconds later. His head is pounding.
Someone is by his side in an instant. “Woah, woah, woah, take it easy.”
“No, no, I need to get to Rocky— wait.”
The scream that escapes his mouth is ear-piercing (which is not the first time it’s happened since this whole journey started, embarrassingly enough), and he’s suddenly flailing backwards in an attempt to get away from the stranger on the ship that was only supposed to have him and Rocky on board. He haphazardly throws storage boxes and medical apparatuses to block the stranger from getting closer. They… look shockingly human, and wearing an odd kind of—
“Is that spandex?” he exclaims, his fear ebbing slightly to make way for sheer confusion.
“What?” the stranger’s face contorts into an expression not unlike his own, and they look down at their suit where Grace was looking. It’s blue, paired with a red cape. A red-and-yellow “S” is embossed on their chest. “Oh! No, no, it’s not spandex. At least I don’t think it is?”
A moment passes. His breathing picks up.
“WHAT IS GOING ON? WHO ARE YOU?’ he screams again as the panic swells up in his chest.
The stranger puts their hands up and backs away, their actions so human that Grace is fully inclined to believe them to be one if it weren’t for the fact that they somehow managed to get onto the Hail Mary.
“I’m from Earth!” they cry out.
“THEN HOW ARE YOU HERE?” Grace cries out even louder.
“I… flew?”
That stops him in his tracks, a glimmer of hope quelling his panic momentarily. “You have a ship?”
“Uhh...” The stranger’s shoulders fall, crossing their arms sheepishly. Were they embarrassed? “No…”
“WHAT?”
“Please calm down! I’m not trying to hurt you! I want to help!” they try helplessly to convince him. Their words seem to work this time, and he finally slumps against the wall, still breathing heavily in an attempt to level his heart rate. They speak again, “I saw your ship and your friend let me in. I couldn’t understand what he was saying but he led me to you.”
“That’s Rocky! Is he okay? Is he alive?”
“He’s in bad shape but I carried him back to his, um… actually, I’m not sure what it is. His ball? But he’s alive.”
“Thank god.” He lets out a big sigh of relief, running his hands through his hair. He looks back up at them, rubbing his eyes. He’s still wary of this person, but what choice does he have? He’s never been much of a fighter. The first and last brawl he ever got into was in sixth grade, and he got his butt severely beat. All he can do now is check on his friend and hope that this stranger was telling the truth. “Where is he?”
The stranger visibly relaxes at Grace’s acquiescence. “He’s just in the other room. Do you need help?”
“No—” Grace tries to get up on his own, groaning when his arms don’t cooperate. “Yes. Please.”
They offer him a small smile as they make their way around the blockade of stuff he threw between them, taking his uninjured, outstretched arm and swiftly lifting him to his feet. He lets out a soft yelp of surprise, not expecting them to do it so easily. “You’re, uh… pretty strong.”
“It’s been said before,” they reply awkwardly.
The two of them follow the trail of liquid mercury burning into the ship’s floor. Rocky’s blood. Dread weighs Grace down with every step.
There, at the end of the corridor, is his friend, in bad shape like what the stranger said. More so. The tough, rocky exterior looks like it’s been burned, exposing a silvery interior that, despite being a completely different species, Grace knows is painful. His friend lets out a few weak chitters. Seeing him in this state is like a punch to Grace’s gut.
No, he thinks. It’s worse.
The wound on his arm stings underneath its bandages, but Grace looks down at it with unimaginable gratitude. The scar it would leave will forever be a reminder of what Rocky had done for him.
“I’ll watch you sleep, pal…” he tries to comfort Rocky, though his own voice trembles at the weight of the possibility put before him. That his friend might die after saving him. He takes another deep breath. “But, uh, you gotta wake up.”
The memory of Rocky’s “great words of encouragement” resurfaces in his mind. He gives Rocky’s ball a few taps, hoping that maybe he’ll hear it repeated to him. He doesn’t.
Deflated, he leans against the ball, facing the stranger this time and wiping the tears on his cheeks.
“He let you in?”
“He did,” they answer.
“Why?”
“Your ship was spinning too fast. I stopped it.”
The implications of such a statement take him a moment to calculate in his head. He turns his head to look at them better. “What? With your bare hands?”
“Yes.”
“And you said you’re from Earth?”
The stranger winces. “That’s… only partly true.”
“How are you only partly from Earth?” Grace presses, too tired and too sad to even be afraid anymore.
They sigh, already knowing how weird they sound. “I’m not human, but I was raised on Earth by a human couple.”
“I’m not even… I’m not even gonna get into that right now,” he groans, closing his eyes again. “Just… don’t lay eggs in me. Or eat me. I just want to save my friend and solve this… fudging… astrophage thing.”
The stranger chews on their lip for a while, debating whether or not to keep going. They settle for a simple question.
“What’s your name?”
Grace opens his eyes again, the question sitting deep in his chest in a way that’s not entirely comfortable. It reminds him of when he first awoke from his coma: weak, confused, scared. Not able to remember anything about himself. He takes a good look at them. In the past ten minutes they’ve known each other, it’s only now that he takes them all in. Apart from the ridiculous suit, they do look human. They sound human. Beyond that, they seem like a nice person, if he could look past the fact that they somehow flew to Adrian with no ship, and stopped Mary from spinning out of control with only brute strength.
But they did seem like a nice person. Far be it from him to deny the company of another human— almost-sorta-kinda human, at least.
“My name is Ryland. Uh, Grace. Ryland Grace. Grace is fine. You?”
They tell him their name, Kent, and it’s one he recognizes as being an Earth name. First name-last name and all. He can’t help the breathless, tired laugh that escapes him when he hears it.
“What? Why are you laughing?” the stranger asks, their smile mirroring Grace’s.
“I just… sorry, I don’t know what I was expecting. Something like, Bleep-Blorp, I guess. I don’t know, some sounds I can’t pronounce,” he sighs. “Not… that.”
“Sorry to disappoint,” they reply, mildly amused. He doesn’t speak again. Silence engulfs the room. Grace's eyes are still red with tears. The stranger makes no attempt to start another conversation, or even move about the ship. They just keep him company.
A beat.
Grace sucks in a breath. “What do you know about the Petrova line?”