Chapter Text
The thermometer said 103° and Colt whistled. Ryland was lying on the couch, half dead.
“I don’t think you’re going anywhere today, little brother.”
Ryland only managed a weak sound, he hated when Colt said that - They were twins! - while Colt covered his shivering body with another quilt.
He made him breakfast, a burrito, but Ryland only ate half of it. He took a couple of strong painkillers because his head was killing him.
“The launch is in three days, there’s so much to do.”
“Honestly, you look green. You’ve been working without a break for months. Even I get to stay home when I risk vomiting all over the cameras, you know.”
“You and I have very different jobs.”
“You bet.”
Ryland collapsed on the couch feeling like shit.
“I’ll call that crazy woman and tell her you are sick.”
“Wh- Stratt?” Ryland said, perking up. “No, no, no. You can’t talk to her!”
“I can always go and pretend to be you,” he teased.
“She’ll kill me if she knows that I have shared the mission’s details with someone outside the project.”
“She will never know the difference. Look at us!”
In all fairness, Ryland had been working out so much lately that he was pretty muscular, like Colt, who was still shocked and used to say that it was finally like looking in a mirror.
“I mean, you look like shit now, but still. It could work.”
Colt was only half joking and Ryland was only half worried, and he was too tired to do something about it, so he pulled the blanket over his head. The drugs were kicking in, he felt his eyes closing. He wanted to say: “I need to get up.” But instead he said: “Inngheahp.”
“Just sleep, Ry.”
Ryland was already gone.
Colt looked at him for a moment, then picked up Ryland's phone to call Stratt's number. As soon as he touched it, the phone started to ring, loudly. For the surprise he almost dropped it.
It was Stratt. Look at that.
"Grace?"
“Uh” he cleared his voice, “yes?" He was technically grace. Not a lie.
"There's been an explosion, the backup crew plus the scientist are gone. I need you here. I've sent a car."
"What? I’m sorry, I can’t-"
"A car is coming for you." She repeated and hung up.
Colt held the phone even after the call was over.
“No, no, no, no, no.” He went over to shake his brother’s shoulder.
"Ry. Hey. Ryland."
Nothing.
He shook harder. "There's been some kind of incident, turns out they actually need you there."
The blanket moved. Ryland's arm swung out on pure reflex and caught him flat across the face.
Colt stepped back, pressing a hand to his cheek.
“Hey!”
The blanket went still again.
"Okay," Colt said. He tried to call back Stratt and say that his brother was sick but she didn’t answer.
He tried again with his brother, removing the blanket from his head. He was completely knocked out and had a troubled expression on his face, like not even painkillers were helping him relax. His face was bright pink on the cheeks and he was still burning up.
Colt stood there for another moment, rubbing his jaw, looking at his brother's completely unconscious form.
Then he went to the bathroom, found a comb, and did something reasonable with his hair. He changed into Ryland's clothes. He found the badge on the kitchen counter and his glasses and for just a second he hesitated.
He looked at himself in the mirror. Wow.
This is insane, he thought, with some professional detachment. He had done insane things before. He had performed stage combat, stair falls, parkour and vaulting, precision driving, high speed drifting, underwater breath holding scenes, car barrel roll, horse falls, full body burns, high altitude jumps, nitrogen cannon rolls, free falls into airbags, wing walking.
This was probably fine.
He grabbed that stupid yellow rain jacket and left.
Alright, it wasn’t that bad. Going by what Ryland always said, he was mostly always escorted by someone to the places he needed to be.
The incident was brutal, apparently the mission was at stake. They needed to find a replacement real quick. He sat at a table with other people that he was able to recognize thanks to Ryland. Big talks were going around, he was actually starting to feel a bit out of place and actually began to realize that this was not a good idea at all.
But he couldn’t leave in the middle of it. He was stuck there for now, he tried to relax, listening, not participating. He glanced at Stratt thinking about that time that Ryland called him, in panic, saying that people at Nasa believed him and Stratt were fooling around.
“They say what?” had asked Colt, very much surprised.
“But I’m not!”
“Oh no, I know, I just want to know how you managed to give anyone the impression that you’d be hitting anything.” Ryland had hung up the call while Colt was still laughing.
He was very fond of that memory.
Not exactly the time to think about it.
He was hungry. The people in the room were beyond worried and technically they had every right to be, but from Colt’s point of view, from what he had learnt from life, he knew there was always a way through.
This end of the world situation, for example, first of all a lot of competent people were solving it, also, where was the guarantee that the sun was actually going to turn off?
Colt felt a change in the air, while he was deep in his thoughts and realised he hadn’t been listening for a while.
Everyone was looking at him and he moved on the chair, uncomfortable.
Was he supposed to say something?
Stratt repeated thinking that maybe he was in shock or something.
“You have been chosen as the scientific part of the mission.”
Was she serious? He looked around. Were they serious?
Uhhh, okay maybe now was the time to say it.
“I’m not who you think I am.”
“I know you enough, you’re smart. You’ll figure it out.” Said Stratt calmly.
“That’s not what I meant. I’m not an astronaut!” he said, still thinking there was some way out of this.
But the room was full of people who had already made a decision and were waiting for him to catch up.
"You want to send me to space," he said, just to hear how it sounded.
No one denied it.
He almost laughed. "You're joking." The silence was very loud. “I am not an astronaut,” he said again.
Stratt proceeded to explain that he was the maximum expert on astrophage and how she always believed in him.
"Okay." He nodded slowly. There was always a way out. Always. "I need my phone. I need to make one call, you see…"
"Your phone has been secured."
"What? That's my phone."
"Dr. Grace, calm down."
"I’m not Dr - I mean, technically I am, but…" He stood up. "Listen to me. I understand this is important. The future of humanity, all of that, I get it. But I am not the person you need. I am not Ryland Grace. I'm not. I'm telling you. He is sick at home, I am his brother. I thought this meeting was important and that I could come here in his place and tell him about it. You see, he can’t get up now he’s too sick, so-”
"Dr. Grace." Stratt looked confused and for a second Colt thought everything was going to be alright. But then she shook her head.
“Dr. Grace. I've worked with you long enough to recognize your person and also to know that when you're scared, you get creative. I'll admit, this is new. I thought you had at least some dignity left."
Colt had still his mouth open from the unfinished sentence and a nervous laugh escaped him.
What the hell was happening? Did Ryland know about this? He would have told him if he was about to be sent to space.
Colt knew from a quick look around the room and the people present that the situation was going to escalate, so he had to be smart.
He sat down, composing himself.
“Can I think about it?”
“You have three hours.”
He wasn’t going to think about anything at all besides how to get the fuck out and go and tell Ryland they betrayed him.
Everyone and himself left the room.
The corridors all looked the same but he had a good photographic memory and he’d clocked the layout on the way in. He moved without rushing, like he belonged there. He kept his head down and walked.
He needed a secondary exit, a service door, anything that wasn’t the main entrance with the car that Stratt had sent.
They will have to find someone else. There had to be someone else. Someone who’d spent the last two years working on this instead of jumping off buildings for a living. It was simple logic, if they sent him by mistake, the scientific part of it would result in nothing at all and earth would die without any doubt.
Now, Ryland would know what to do, but there was no way he would let them take him away.
They were going to leave, disappear, something like that. Wait for someone else to be chosen.
He found a staircase that hadn’t been on the way in and took it.
He made it further than he expected. The badge got him through a bunch of doors.
He found the exit and started running.
For a few seconds he thought it was going to be okay, but obviously someone was following him.
He was running so fast and delivering the best stunt performance of his life, that the guards were actually confused.
They clearly were used to see the clumsy, uncoordinated doctor Grace.
"I'm not him!" he shouted. "I'm not Ryland Grace, I'm his brother, this is insane, you have the wrong person!"
Nobody stopped.
He was climbing the wall that separated him from freedom but he felt a sharp pain in his thigh and lost the already slippery grip he had, a shadow fell on his eyes, while he hit the ground.
A few incoherent thoughts crossed his mind. Will I be doing parkour in space? That must be cool as fuck.